DIALECTICAL SPIRITUALISM

DIALECTICAL SPIRITUALISM

[Dialectical Spiritualism] – Marx and Engel’s powerful materialism theory has a spirituality root. Though their students around the world prefer and want to expound more on major aspects – especially those of the ‘economic and political rule’ factors.

It appears, we Africans have been meditating too much on the ‘revolutionary’ aspects – for the end game of attainment of political and economic [material] wealth power. Moreover, to get there, it has always been through the over amplified political activism… and mobilized ‘proletariat’ violence – seen as popular and colorful if often violent revolt!

Though Marx and Engels theory plays out as holistic, the early generation students of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s implementing groups, hardly ever looked seriously at the scope of ‘dialectical spiritualism’ – probably due to how the Leninists initially down-graded religion – and, probably thereby creating the negation of ‘dialectical spiritualism’. So that, today, as the world advanced into the digital age, the real root of this enormous thinking still remain hidden.

However, what to me is probably more tenable [in thought] is fact that the dialectical thinking of ancient times… whose unfolding include the solid fundamental revolutionaries and the many-many fanciful and romantic revolutionaries; Lenin, Stalin and down the revolutionary lines to Castro, Che Guevara and the host of their African followers oversimplified the Marx and Engel dialectical thinking to media loaded undue proletariat type African violence…

Simple – the ‘dialectical spiritualism’ factor I am trying to freely visualize and expound seems to me as ruling over all factors including political, economic and militancy factors.

FAUST, the German tragedian grand heavenly play is to me the indicator to the root of dialectical thinking in all its varied components... This to me again, on the other hand seems to manifest itself in that ‘Fine Art Student’ College conflict of Vienna that is historically said to have eventually plunged the world into the two main world wars! So that, in our twenty first century, we should see that vision of the fine artist.

That whole backlog of world literature still does not specifically address themselves to the African Continent. We have therefore been aping, following and part stage [Shakespeare] players – deftly trekking after ideological principles we actually do not know how to identify with.

To get wind of my direction, one needs to sample certain aspects of world history - as supplementary to or actually part play, in the implementation of the dialectics.

In the old East, ‘Dr. Zivako’ captures it very well – while in the west ‘Clark Gable in [Gone…]equally captures the western aspect very well.

The modernist history plays itself out finally highlighted by the Western and Eastern confrontation over the [Iron Curtain] beginning with Gary Power’s U2 [the point of entry for Pan Africanism] with FAUST’ tragedy [Nazi] power-play fitting well in that ‘dialectical materialism’ locking of horns over Nazism... What eventually creates space for the writing of current history?

Two previously missing pieces of the zig-saw puzzle, were Africa’s entry points into the dialectical materialism as played-out between the old ‘Communism and Capitalism’. Seen through the old lenses that focuses on the spy plane U2 politics and, on the other hand, Che and Fidel seen playing golf on the green courses vacated by the Belgians in the old Katanga.

Today – Ugandan political opinionated and discussants, like their brothers around Africa, search for the “Ideological” way-forward; they are looking for ‘theories’ that might help blend our local thinking with that of the International political, social and economic ideologies.

In my own view, I think the African search should start with the understanding of ‘dialectical spiritualism’ as part of the teachings of Marx and Engel that is not so clearly absorbed in Africa. Bearing in mind that, despite the old Curtain wars… actually Marx and Engel theories weren’t exactly Communist nor even Capitalist - but rather theories that exacted the functions of systems based on their material needs and applications.

Africans therefore in my thinking need to be less followers of the old fundamental and even charismatic revolutionaries - but to heck-out newer lines of thinking based on the zig-saw puzzle pieces I observed above. Here, I am open to critical views and challenges on my direction of thinking and interpretation of that ancient dialectical thought. It is only an attempt at looking more closely at life. END

The Girl who Changed a Tradition

The Girl Who Changed a Tradition

Short Story

Sam Mwaka-karama

She looked. Then walked and looked back again her heart skipped… knocked her toe and stumbled two then three steps. She bent forward looking. No blood! A burning hot pain, that was all - must hurry, it was getting dark! Abeca hurried along she should have left earlier. Now you see, she had feared to take her early escape all this time… everybody in the village seemed to be looking at her – and strangely, even to make matters worse, her own aunt Lakwel did not understand.

“What did I tell you Abeca?” Aunty Lakwel had been angry and also doing all she could to keep her voice down and solicitous at the same-time. There were people within earshot… “Nen ba – the elders have already been here and, your issue has now been resolved! You can’t change what the elders have agreed upon: Wife heritage is a tradition. That culture will fight you”.

“A-a it is enough Auntie, I don’t want that man” said Abeca decisively

“Do you know what you are talking about?”

“Auntie I know exactly what I am talking about – my husband died and was buried; I can’t take another man even if he is his cousin brother… well maybe. Just maybe!”

 Abeca fell silent for a moment… bit on her lower lip contemplatively; she shuddered at the thought of having to sleep with Ogil Lajok for the rest of her life!

“Abeca stop playing around, you are not a little girl ‘just maybe’ what! Say it!”

“Maybe if it was someone else and not Ogil Lajok, I might have considered”

“That is a load of rubbish to say Abeca – it is the tradition you have to respect; do you know these people, you could wind-up dead”.

“Auntie, that is exactly what I want to get away from… there seem to be too many of very dark secrets in Larwecce here and I have come to hate this place ever since Ulaa-wiic died”. They fell silent another moment… slowly the charged atmosphere passed.

“Dok cen… go back Abeca – life is not like that; I also need you here which is why I introduced you to Ulaa-wiic… he was such a good looking nice person. A brave hunter - only to be put down by a Buffalo just after fatally spearing it; the short period you have been married to him here, things had become a lot easier for me – please go back to Ugil Lajok… you will get used to each other and eventually live well”.

“I was married to a good looking strong and brave hunter, Aunty, he is dead and gone – it is you who introduced me to Larwecce village people; it is not right to try to tie me down here for the rest of my life – to an ugly, invalid, poetic, lyrical Lukeme or Nanga and Adungu crooner” – what will the crooners sentiments help me? Help me cry all my life?

Auntie Lakwele Ukato - wanted even begged Abeca to stay – she had pleaded with her niece the day before, had tried to wring-out some agreeable commitment from her niece but it wouldn’t work. Things otherwise were falling to pieces between Auntie Lakwel and her niece Abeca.

Abeca couldn’t stand living with Ugil Lajok.

To Abeca, worst problem with Ugil was first of all his hideous looks having been born with a crack down his upper lip and a breakage down between his front teeth to give him a scatter-mouth and then, elongated spread-out front teeth. It was hard for a young woman to look at that face for a long moment. Let alone play a whole lifetime wife…

Even to further compound matters Ugil’s squint eyes were cataract blinded; even though at least his left eye had some small slot and through the thinned-out membranes of the cataract Lajok could see with strain and difficulty.

Ugil Lajok was talented otherwise in a weird sort of way, in days gone-by not long ago when his cousin brother Abeca’s husband Ulaa-wiic was still alive; the guy often played his Lukeme or sometimes Nanga in accompaniment with his haunty songs. The ugly crooner spread his poetic lyrical poverty through sometimes terribly dark nights… at first, as a newly married young woman less than a year before death of her husband; Abeca had even enjoyed Ugili’s crooning. Often in company of her great hunter husband, she had felt elated by the songs of the blind ugly man.

She had walked. And walked. The little numbness she had felt when she knocked her toe had gone. She was walking east then after crossing the Acwaa River, she would head north.

The sun had just gone down over the vast horizon. Crickets chirped. And the Ayweri bird scraped its last sundowner cried; wrrrret, wrrrret, wrrrret, wrrrrret, wrrrrret… she looked. And true the Ayweri bird was perched on top of an anthill a little way from the scanty trail she was following. The bird of the sunset had also seen her. Abeca mouthed her own self-blessing invoking the spirits of her ancestry to walk with her – suddenly, the fears all vanished.

The moon was still high on the eastern horizon at sundown. So that the night was immediately cloudless, clear. She could see very far. Another night bird had started her continuous nonstop song; tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot… then the song of the children came to her mind in rhythm with the beat of that night bird; the song “Langwinye ki moo” . Now she really walked.

Her loincloth Udiye’e made of softened animal skin felt loose over her front and and lightly slapped her behind rhythmically.  She had several rounds of colorful beads on her waistline, round her wrists and neck. Abeca was bare feet and had nothing to cover her tiny molds of breasts. She held a small animal skin Kibeggu bundle whose long strap passed over her head to her other shoulder.

Abeca was young in her teenage and was childless. Her husband the hunter Ulaa-wiic died when they had only lived together one hunting dry season. It was in the second dry season that he died in the wilderness. Abeca had defied her favorite Auntie; Lakwele Ukato. And hardly did she know, but as she walked away that night – in her womb was a little fetus, pregnancy of the dead hunter. The man she loved had left her a seed! She was walking away towards another life. A change!

The Writer: Sam Mwaka-karama – Is an Independent Thinker, Author and Blogger      

Racial Privilege & Discrimination is a form of 'roots'denial...

Racial Privilege & Discrimination is a form of ‘roots’ denial…

Sam Mwaka-karama

Probably the most exhaustively analyzed, studied, discussed and written social enigma of modern times is the concept of “discrimination” and distinctly, it is ‘racial discrimination’ that accrue from white privileges.

The disconsolate blind hate among some white skinned people, against the black skin color, initially must have occurred way back down the corridor of human history – probably at some point where the [re-contact] had happened – which would mean that at some much earlier point in pre-historic time mankind may have been of a single skin color, as some early thinkers long since observed.

And perhaps, due to the only known massive continental “drift” and migratory nature and ancient movement of people, some group may have ventured much further than considered normal by the ‘roots’ people and, in the process scaled over into terrains, farness and awesomely spirited panoramic experiences that generations on – cut off this “some group” from the knowledge of its own historical origin. Having gone over the climatic “pigmentation” fringe and blanched-out!

What therefore, otherwise, we humans now experience as ‘racial discrimination’ may only be the friction and fictions of this massive ‘re-contact’ – the gone ‘some group’ that eventually blanches-out in the gone cold trails… as the sciences had it, eons later re-emerges and finds the unrecognizable “roots” and is thrown into a hate stupor – “no you wouldn’t have been our roots” which is the ‘denial…’ at the top of this page.

To me this matter, is probably better understood, not from the principles, but more from the ghostly and ghastly characteristics of the ‘Ku Klux Klan’.

I kind of see that they, the KKK actually could represent some actual ghosts, as seen from their relic imagery, as representing the spirits that polarized the divide between the black skin color and the white skin color… in an attempt, for some reasons, to actually rub-off understanding of the ‘roots’ concept so as to perpetrate the ‘denial…’ and, validate racial discrimination based on the concept and actually realities of “whites privileges”.

∞∞∞

 In the “Tragedian” heavenly German play FAUST, some light is somewhat thrown about… shading a hue over the biblical story of the “dark surfaces” – as the ‘root’ of the light and creation of the physical universe as in “Let there be light…” big bang thing!

Faust also describes “serpent” as the “grand old wine bag Aunt” – so that in my own deductive understanding of what I have read of the German literature is the concept of “Fall of Lucifer” that may hitherto have had an accompaniment only Faust could see; slithering down towards earth in that ‘flash’ under yet unknown ‘dark surfaces’ [curse] circumstancially - there may have been, among the fallen Luciferan Angels – also the drunken old wine bag “Auntie Serpent”!

Deductively understanding it all; in the “Garden of Eden” this Auntie Serpent materializes and tricks Adam and Eve into eating the ‘forbidden fruits’ and, therefore earn for mankind the wreath of God! Exhibited by the Eden curses an presence of an Angel with the burning sword who sees to it that the human ROOTS couple were ‘denied..’ sanctuary in the Garden and banished to very harsh existence we humans all know today.

“The denial…” as an evolving process is therefore probably what we all experience today in all manner of segregate forms of social phenomenology that polarizes into racial biases, privileges and discriminations by scales of inspirational and spiritual favors and disfavors… what are inherent in the materialism of knowledge and wisdom again, by scales of perfections in thought and performances which are all domains of spirituality, we are granted or denied accordingly!

In a very recent Huffington article, also shared on Face Book; this topic ‘racial privileges’ was toyed with by a leading writer – a keyhole view through some awesome solid rock cleft in some vain attempt to see beyond that cleavage and try as it were to look into the bizarre dark and claim the unfathomable beyond. The dark surfaces ‘root…’ $$$    

Taxation and the Indigenous Property Owner/developer

Taxation and the Indigenous Property Owner/developer

Sam Mwaka-karama

SHOCKING – but the local and indigenous property owner and developer is an endangered species – this shockingly is primarily a situation affecting indigenous Ugandan businessmen and entrepreneurs.

Over the last three or four years, Uganda’s brand name property owners and developers have been quietly disappearing [as in dying away slowly] and, hardly do people notice, but the indigenous local rich and propertied are silently vacating their place in society.

Today [Friday 20^th June 2014 – a year ago from the date of publishing this blog post], I was in the Shell Bugolobi / Mall areas – and met a long time friend of the Kampala streets of the 1970s and 80s. A hard working person of my generation who is now an extensive property owner and developer allowed me conversation with him [name withheld] for over an hour.

As usual we had random chit-chat touching on nearly every topic strictly in the business and trade, entrepreneurship fields…

We have always been free with one another, despite the enormous economic divide now between us - so at a certain moment during our conversation, my mental alarm bell went off, as we drove away from the filling station area – when an employee of his had joined us in a brief drive towards Jinja road very much within town.

 My friend [a Muganda by tribe] who runs his empire from the sixth street, in Kampala, was sending his employee [also a Muganda] to his other businesses, making instructions – suddenly, I noticed a previously unknown characteristic in my friend, when his temper flared [over such a tiny issue – shouting!] at his long-time employee and, with that I saw a raw and deadly combination of pressure and hyper-tension live! [He was hospitalized months later].

Such that for an instant, as you are driving – your anger and tension might cause your neck to stiffen and for an angry moment you couldn’t look left or right with ease… in the maze of fast traffic!

I immediately was concerned even alarmed and, soon as the employee was dropped-off, I softened talks between my friend and myself – what I mean is, without having to be a physician – the obvious raw pressure and hype-tension I had seen that accompanied the eruption, was a telling enough symptom to trigger my mild inquiry into how life was with him lately… at least the last two years I wasn’t seeing him much!!

My friend just groaned and said - “O No.. Those URA taxation people are killing us”.

I have practiced journalism for three years in my life and, I am experienced enough in as far as Ugandan society and community existence were concerned – without being a radio talk show anybody - I have immense backlog of sociology materials and, journalistic experience to deduce a lot out of a tiny comment - I am capable of drawing from my book research and writing experience to place a very relevant and safe pointer on an issue.

The taxation killer… is a real phenomenon – in Property and Entrepreneurship.

Taxation is the undoing of property ownership and development in Uganda… unless some or an association of indigenous Ugandan property owners and developers come-up ASAP with a bright enough piece of parliamentary bill maker… petition in-which the indigenous Ugandan property owners and developers seek a partitioning of the law on property taxation - to separate between out-right foreign property owners and the local property owners if only in taxation regime terms. And again, if only to slightly scale down the pressure-point for the local Ugandans – and reduce on the s-t-r-e-t-c-h of the definition and emphasis on ‘struggle to live’! What actually trickles down to the ordinary citizenry with dire consequences – besides killing the welfare aspect of country existence completely.

Because, beyond every reasonable doubt the condition the Ugandan citizen entrepreneur goes under to build a structure at all, are extreme and, prohibitive. It is an effort against real, and enormous odds.

While an outright foreign property owner and developer may have come-in with foreign privately donated philanthropy capital and, overnight, easily invested in the open property markets in the country. The local developer generates capital the harder way. And, I think here the locals deserve concessions here.  

This taxation factor in combination with property regulatory ground rental fees and other trade charges regularly or annually paid; apparently home-in a combination of devastating impact on the property owners individual lives – who often have to hike their own property rentals beyond affordability of a larger percentage of the local business companies and individuals… as a result mostly, higher grade and prime properties weren’t fully rented all year round.

A cursory research might reveal that an average mall or plaza and block of flats or apartments, might have annual [un-occupancy] of up to 30% by average easily. What would, all the more, aid an indigenous association toward convincingly agitating for a valid parliamentary bill maker – to redress property tax laws.

This [flash and] very impromptu article my latest blog post, is not in any way meant to malice any foreigners doing business in Uganda, but an expression of concern with the life expectancy decline of property owners… who are evidently dying quietly of hypertension  and pressures. A valid area of human concern. Moreover, not an insult to any groups of people – but an objective overview. Actually written a year ago! ***      

Writer is an Independent Thinker, Author and Blogger

  

    

Author of - The Water Trap - My Homily

Author of - The Water Trap – My own Homily

Below is extract of my book as it is on Amazon Kindle Direct and Create Space. The Water Trap – was first published in Kampala 2009. And the ‘Second Edition Revised’ whose content is here-under extracted was Author ‘Self Published’ on Amazon Kindle Direct and Create Space from November 2013.

Since the book initially came out five years ago and, on Amazon over a year ago, the main subjects of my theme discussions in the book has gone through tremendous impactful changes – in Gulu’s administration and beyond. Though my book dwells on the 7^th and 8^th Parliament – I am happy for the beneficiary communities - to note that the current 9^th Parliament and Local Government Council has exhibited tremendous achievement in planning and implementation works visibly… I believe that given another five more years for the performing Local Councilors – Gulu Municipality is on course to changing into a modern progressive ‘mini-city’ to be. [I am yet to take a personal tour of all the sites I cover in my  researched essay; especially the Oitino Water Dam.

However, even if my book did not make for me any royalties… I am contented that I wrote a ‘Change Maker’! In addition, am more confident of my brain and sure of my mind as healthy and uninfected – a bigger blow to the Avian “Kite Spirit” who made formal education difficult for me as a younger person – having picked on my mind from a tender age. My [resistance] is thus exhibited in this book. I managed to hold out – walking in the wild; ‘outside the box’ as it were. I am happy that; as African Authorship of quality, self-published works picked-up in the first decade of the new Millennium – my non-fiction researched essay is one among those African books that appeared in that first decade of the 21 Century. The powerful Avian “Kite Spirit” with all her ferocious venom hatred can go hang herself on her own Tomato tree – somewhere in her village! Aha ha…

                                                

            The Water Trap                                                         Sam Mwaka-karama

       Second Edition Revised

             Chapter Three

       Pg 42-45 @ Pg 49-52

                 Amazon

Up till the time I submitted the first edition of this book to the USAID and later to the President’s Office, in seeking of funds for organizing that proof-reading edition for major editing and printing production - local leaders and legislators in the area had never openly spoken of this particular water project.

     Though some speeches emanating from the (eighth parliament) and Gulu local leaders about ‘Tochi River Project’ eventually materialized much-much later – in discussions there, after ‘The Water Trap’ was out.

      It actually took me a little bit of time to realize that I shouldn’t have approached USAID with my first edition (imperfect) book material. I am not saying this because USAID refused to fund my book – No!

      I have in my life read lots of materials written by ‘deja vu’ characters hating it all... why in the first place they blundered into America at all. Many foreigners naturalized in the US are virtually walking around in circles with scarf-bands tied over their eyes... and mouths stuffed with all manner of the goodies – I think ‘going to America’ is a great concept, but I also think it is a challenge to the individual; why for instance do people who re-migrate back to their own homeland after long-life in America, turn bitterly against the US?; it does seem to me that something often goes all wrong after living in the USA for a while - I have since resolved to try theoretically to help Africans remove that blind-band from over their eyes! It is reason enough for me regretting having ever sought official funding from a US agency – which help was denied me isn’t the issue.

      The dire reality is - my type of book are what the Americans might fight against - because in it there is a Ugandan African writing language they will never like! To them the good African book ‘must’ be loaded not in the sense mine is, but, in a way of being packaged with opposition-ism and, attack on incumbent governments or, misguidedly addressing human rights from the state machinery versus the ordinary wanainchi point of view. To me that is not our literature!

      The Americans want our analysis perennially quagmire-ed in the 1970s and 1980s perspective that created Museveni’s resistance - this time around the Americans want us Ugandans - turning that old garment inside-out and dress ourselves in them... I think that is the real bull-crap! It is for the center for African studies perhaps... me I don’t like that packaging! I can’t blindfold Africans with that sort of fancy crap! We have to visualize our problems from the more realistic point of view – based on the premise that someday, we won’t need foreign aid and grants anymore. That is when local government will become the focal-point of our development everything.

.           .           .           .           .

The wrong traditionalist kraal-home village tyrant mentality – where the elected local representative – also trapped between certain dubious situations; even if they had noticed the defunct project, long before my first edition of this book, would prefer matters to be referred and reported via the political campaign or security human infrastructure. Just like the old African tyrants used to wait for all matters brought up forward from below…

      So that, information on project matters (like Tochi) carried forward would have a political voter weight bearing – where upon the problem might be introduced during a political meeting…

      And matters thus carried forward with a heralding of provider stakeholders, who thus would foot the seminar bills.

      And the project matter thus discussed would as well become a political argument contention-point. Perhaps a challenge point at the incumbent! Needless to emphasize here, Ugandan oppositions for example have traditionally developed this overview that the incumbent President was always the culprit for all blames in his government.

      Here a legislator of the modern-day, would thus, prefer to look at the now politicized ‘project-matter’ from the standpoint of confrontation with the hitherto ‘unconcerned’ government authorities - preliminarily over the FM radio.

      Instead of the more progressive approach of perhaps calling the attention of ‘The Parliamentary Group’ in conjunction with the District Local Councils… over the issue of revival of the Tochi project – the naïve politicians rumble around over the radio – thereby misleading the people to imagine that government was malicing the people... like in “hidden agenda” so that, the failure of the project is ‘blamed’ on central government – actually the President initially.

       I am not in any way suggesting that central government is not to blame - for what often goes all wrong at local government level. And yet again seen very closely, central government has responsibility to a point - the major glitch there is certainly not at policy level, but more at the technocratic and bureaucratic (rotten-wood) corruption-able  levels - the ‘boom-town rats and the scrawny country rats’ – characterized by the satirical short stories as told by the cock and bull political analysts... in the Ugandan tabloids!

      And then the water management corporation or local engineering officers - have African traditionalist hiccups of their own.

       For example the local decision maker official might not hail from the district… so what he does is sit on the whole project till someday he is transferred away.

But then the legacy (of none-action) he leaves behind, continue to ignore the project, as a result another concept of traditionalism stayed the project say by yet another five or ten more years.

      Cumulatively as it would, this sort of mentality offset or cause to be delayed or often binds the matter onto unclear graying annuls of history - and eventually distorts and causes the loss of meaning, in particular areas of progress and development.

       An element of African ‘bondage to poverty’ by educated traditionalism would have deferred a vital program from being either created or accomplished.

       Low cost housing projects for up-country towns for example are not viable at all; in the first place, most councilors might not understand them and so plan and budget arguments in local council meets might turn into madness…

      Not only that - the amount of water supply needed to build one

Hundred housing units are massive, and then amount needed to maintain its occupancy – here; it is direct element of ignorance that deferred a vital program… so that habitat development as an organized municipality program is relegated.

                     

      Given that on the ground environmentally; Africa still seriously lack knowledge and skills development in the water and waste management sector – and that is the base-mark for stimulating growth and development up country; “create the habitat and you will attract local developers” and development participants from neighboring districts, the region and beyond.

        This little book is a serious proof of this unfortunate fact; that as much as the political class generally seem to think that development is personal to the Executive Head of State; a factor that wrongfully mislead the opposition thinking straying towards violence… the actual and real prospects are held at utility services that work!

        Even with the vastly widespread availability of land.

        For another example - the national water and sewage corporation NWSC couldn’t structure a safer and more viable facility for such a small town like Gulu in this age and times…

       Then how would we ever hope to build our small municipality into a city? Village criers have been shouting of prospects for ‘Gulu City’ a long time now - evidently in vain, as they lack the leader cadre-ship! They lack the vision and local government leadership principles!

       Pece River that runs south along the outer rim of Gulu’s east side down to join with Tochi river is sewage contaminated… and very seriously at that.

       All these factors point towards one direction – that yes! Tochi River water pipeline project was valid, called for and even timely. Back then.

      On the other hand - that it failed was certainly regrettable, however also now that the actual project has been rendered non viable - by factors related to impact of tree planting and perhaps also influences of global warming…

      There might be time enough certainly to update the original water source concept plan. But do we have the ability to take-on that challenge?

       Meaning that the need is seriously there more than ever, to revive the defunct project but with a different water source.

       Something more realistically difficult to ascertain.

       Considering all these factual ‘bondages to poverty’ – that are inconsiderate mentalities that bedevils our African societies and communities.

                                                 

           

    

Our African political class is rooted in arguments over democratic theories contrived by practical experiences of the world’s leading first world countries – in ideologies experienced and written by people whose basic communities and societies were driven into development not by political personality, but rather by extreme climatic conditions and harsh environments that more and more destroyed their citizenry…

       Forcing their intellect to contrive ideas that made life bearable to the citizenry – this meant that the intellectuals created habitat that were conducive to guaranteed livelihood and continuity – in return the intellectuals won the (political) right to rule over the people, since the habitat environment they created called for a orderly, controlled  living by the citizenry.

      Most developed world democracies were cultured along that building

“Masonry” kind of principles and mentality!

      Those who built the conducive habitat environment got the democratic right to

rule over that metropolis!

       It is the orderly living – that drove the European intellectuals to develop the ideologies and, these were ideas that placed control over the life-style of the citizenry built and developed by the nobles…

       What our own African political class learnt in the classroom and evidently are failing all the time in correctly applying to our own communities and societies – so that it has become broadly necessary for foreign governments to expedite their arm into our countries here in Africa and create and supervise programs directly administered to our local peoples by their foreign government accredited and deployed NGOs… 

        What amounts to the passage for foreign NGOs to part-take in the planning and implementation of African rural development, and urban slum-dwelling human concern (health, shelter etcetera) developments and contribute to industrialization by, doing what our own political class actually fail to do - like in Gulu’s endemic water scarcity.

        The challenges to the African academic and intellect have never been more vivid! Real and glaring.

         People looking at themselves as well learned are beginning to slowly realize how actually ill equipped the African engineering experts, political legislators and project planners, managers and developers are.

         Projects fail and dilapidate under their very noses with huge piles of up to five/ten-year-old documents stacked (as pending etcetera) on their desks, and strewn right down to the floor of their offices and beyond.

        And young University graduates roam the streets as the jobless or

Hang around foreign NGOs picking a few thousand shillings as gatherers of research data for foreign students obviously researching for their own degrees – it is all so fake!

       Another bondage to African poverty.

       By absolute lack of open mindedness, at the top of every office in various areas of local human need...

      The absolute inability to fully employ the use of the younger generation – local governments adamantly refuse to expand their ancient offices, as a result they maintain the old inadequate office space and indeed its minimal employment – yet by contemporary advancements in all fields of humanity, they should be employing five to ten times the official workers they restrictively maintain...

      And the boys and girls are growing, hardening, and wasting away into un-moldable young people. Five or ten years on the (dole) jobless list are enough to harden the youthful graduate beyond molding.

      As even more and more are dispensed from the Universities annually, the youth are cumulatively more and more stranded.

      Local governments can’t create larger project work environments that can absorb them and still stimulate scores into the informal activities around – to expand Local Government administrative and management human resources and, enlarge the towns by creating larger habitats... LC 5 should for example have three deputies responsible for various areas of administration and that for development projects.

     Where these graduates might get absorbed.

     Yet there is so much emphasis on national quality education! This apparently is spot-on.

      But then these quality educations don’t seem to bear the quality fruits – obviously not because of wrong executive head of state… but simply because the decentralization, now largely in the hands of the younger people themselves, are trapped in the same legacy left by the older now departing generations!

     Okay, by and large the youth now running their districts are the ones who are not creating the projects likely to expand their playing fields.

     And the young are not doing it because it is the ‘norm’ “you don’t re-discover the wheel” - full stop. You follow the norm!

     If an LC 5 chairman and his local government fail to create the conducive environment for their own government’s work seat – then how would they ever get expanded? The administrative head quarters built by colonialism – can’t hold ten times the workforce it was created for, fifty years down the road. The only logical thing is to collapse it and build a plush new multi-storied structure on the site.

To plan for and build the physical capacity [municipality] for reaping even larger revenue… you would certainly begin by expanding your base – then employing enough human recourse to tackle the planning mechanism for structuring the estates development; with ample manpower to handle the district’s expunction projects… and certainly before you even think of estates, you would have water to tussle with.

      In view of this analysis as a means of driving-home the understanding that - yes! Uganda’s decentralization is still a new-born baby of President Museveni! Call it a grandchild!

      It is imperative to enlarge the perspective a little-bit, to create a much larger sound-boarding parameter that pulls in the central government... those in a hurry will always jump to the conclusion; that it is the ministers who are night-dancing paka-cini behind the Ugandans!  But then come to think of it...

       There is a whole body of qualified men and women in the main area of policy implementation, way down below the minister, the technocratic and bureaucratic levels - why blame the top man - by falsely and stubbornly insisting that “the fish begins to rot from the head” when you know very well that, the fleshy part of the fish is what begins to ferment out of water, if not exposed to either tremendous wind or tremendous sun-heat to accelerate the beginning of a drying process.

      Besides, nobody ever climb the tree from the top - to go-up the tree you have to scale it carefully up from the root, the trunk and, eventually you reach the branches and top.

      Uganda’s biggest problem is there! Central government technocracy and the bureaucratic work forces; while everybody attack the president and the cabinet ministers and, other top officials - most things get bogged-down at the middle of policy planning and implementation. The real ‘nibblers’ who fail the country are actually well known, popular and very smart individuals you won’t ever suspect. Because they are also the most likable people you will meet in Uganda!              

∞∞∞

MEDIA HUB - Closes shop in Uganda and melts away quietly - and, it is not news item in Uganda

MEDIA HUB – Closes shop in Uganda and melts away quietly – and, it is not news item in Uganda

Sam Mwaka-karama

For most of the world’s elite; those with the money, a good comfortable home is endowed with a sizeable home library.

Seasonal book buying is a must-do in those homes. A home that is host to several author’s works is a knowledgeable home. Children who grow-up in such homes are a university degree guaranteed kids.

However, a phenomenon is developing itself in my country – Uganda. There are no elites to support a bookshop. Foreign book outlets like the Media Hub get eaten up by local book vendors and street peddlers… only in Uganda is this possible! Media Hub went under and melted away!

National book activities are centered on the textbook industry. These local publishers, target schools, colleges, tertiary institutions and lay organizations. There is a myth about dis-interest in novels, especially the outright foreign ones…

The new generation seems to be middle of the road about fiction. There is a new kind of writers who appeal to these young; ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ or books on ‘Power of….’ Or ‘How to blah blah blah’ and those host of religious books by various world famous Pastors and Preachers.

Those have placed the lid on internationally known book vending shops. Media Hub just closed its shop which was situated on the upper floor of the Oasis Mall in Kampala. That typically international characteristic of book vending can only survive as a locally founded and owned enterprise or family business. Below that level is the street pavement vendors [whose stock you will never see] because they are a huge prey for the City Council. Often you will notice (Book Seller) notice on a small placard with telephone number and, perhaps some silent guy fidgeting on his cell phone.

Those are the piranhas who ate-up the Media Hub! And all those old international bookshops…

They will sell you a title you wouldn’t expect them to have! They turn and churn the belly of the top notch elites because even their English is subterranean – they might or might not lead you to where their stock actually come from; mostly they might just place a call and shortly someone walks by with the title in hand. You pay and get lost! For some reason it is all so clandestine… like dealing in contraband!

The big international gallery bookshops folding-up here and there seem to think – that it is the advent of the eBook era and the Kindle reading tabs that is changing people’s reading habit. So that the print book is getting out of circulation.

Which to me leaves one question unanswered – what has it got to do with the elite home library of print books the prestige home stock? When the Chinese created the Plastic flowers, did it wipe-out natural flowers?

The reason the African elite are not buying books is more cynical and mean than that! It is called the DEATH of the African Reading Culture. That is why; when the Media Hub closed shop in Uganda, the issue was not news worthy in the country. **

   

AFRICA - Disorganized Development and Development by destructive medium

AFRICA - Disorganized Development and Development by destructive Mediums

Sam Mwaka-karama

AFRICA – is certainly developing. There is no doubt about that one. What seems to pose challenges, in visualizing the scopes of its small advances, is the modality by which African developments are being forged.

To appreciate this enormous landscape and see clearly through the maze of reality and mythology, one needs to imagine Africa’s developments by blocks of country characteristics and, in the comparative analysis it is possible to make-out what slows African developments.

Prominently, two things appear; firstly the countries that are developing by ‘disorganization and forgery’ and the countries that are developing by ‘destructive mediums’.

This is the deep-end view that might not actually make sense to un-practiced random and shifty shallow thinking people.

In shifty and shallow appraisals firstly, the tendency is to look at Africa’s development from its under-development: by dwelling on donor Aid and Grant mismanagement as the sole base for the imperative analysis. This is mostly visible in what many of the newspaper writers discuss in their articles - daily.

It is of cause true that over the past five decades the developed world committed and often wrote-off huge sums of Aid and Grant funds injected in various African Countries for development purposes.

While it is also true that similarly huge amounts have been availed off the developed world to help Africa meet certain emergencies; both natural and also man made – but then as the usual African newspaper writers often digest – all these [aid and grants] inputs seem to disappear below the surface through the vicious sinkhole into the enormous [corruption-land] below the sea; where the ‘demons of economies’ consort with the fat Mafia Hokes and other strangers and ‘Duple Gangers’ and irate crazy nibblers. So that what actually takes place down there in the dungeon of the economic bottomless pit defies all manner of audit and accountability.

Development by disorganization

 Under this first ‘country category’ characteristics – defining those African states that are developing by disorganized means; most Ugandan newspaper writers often compare that category with previously [second world countries]; like Singapore and Malaysia or perhaps Bangladesh whose GDP were perhaps somehow at par with those of some East African countries like Uganda; way back in the 1960s as they decolonized and thus became Independent.

And today in the continued comparative analysis – the local writers often wonder how Uganda for example is left standing as; the Asian countries have leaped into First World status. Ugandans seen stranded in that comparative note and, the discussants can’t identify what makes the Asians move while Uganda is on ‘Mark Time’ and the ‘forward’ command is absent!

In my view, it does appear to me as if to explain this situation in answering the newspaper contributors’ questions - observed over a long time; we have to look back at the modalities of ‘skills and technology’ transfers applied after decolonization of most Asian countries – how did the Asians move?

 In the first instance, those Asian countries were catapulted into second world status by factors of European ‘Industrial technology and skills’ transfer that bolstered base Asian industrial developments.

Huge Industries were built under license, offered by the parent Industries from Britain and Europe; to many of the Asian countries including; India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and others… those European licensed Asian industries quickly developed outlets for their finished products in Africa.

Many of the African newspaper contributors also penalize Africa’s former colonial masters with undue exploitation of Africa! They seem to be convinced that the colonialists left Africa without Infrastructures.

They don’t remember for the sake of their younger readers that; for example East African Community EAC was colonially created between Kenya Uganda and Tanzania.

The character of the Community was modeled on logistical Infrastructure; Comprising the Railway and Harbor, Post and telecommunication, Airways and Air Traffic Control. To mention the main structures only – otherwise the Community had included East African Currency Board that capped and controlled the Banking systems with a single East African Currency. These Infrastructures were otherwise unfortunately dismantled by the Independent states of the EAC barely ten years after Independence.

For our local newspaper contributors to continually and repetitively claim that the Colonial masters exploited our EAC countries or left us without infrastructures - is redundant gossip: Uganda’s railway was cannibalized by Ugandans! While Kenya preserved and still runs its antique Locomotive steam Engine Trains; Ugandans ruthlessly scrapped the entire system and, were chopped-up and sold as scrap! Bought-up by foreign scrap buyers abroad.

The Asian countries often cited by the Ugandan newspaper contributors had very long history of advantageous Diaspora life – with their citizens as early as the 1800s and for others even earlier migrating to Britain, Europe and the United States, Canada and Australia where they engaged in serious skills and knowledge developments including University Education and, Industrial Apprenticeship working in Steel Industries and various other manufacturing and fabrication or building construction industries; accumulating knowledge and skills that became more than just handy back in their Asian countries after decolonization.

The building of the Harbors in the East African coastline and, subsequent building of the railway tracks from Mombasa to Kampala – labored for by the Indians under the British Engineers clearly confirm the knowledge and skills transfer factor am talking about; that we Africans picked these things along the way as the Colonial authorities involved us in the works; step by step!

While many of our Diaspora migrants now living abroad, are learners and Apprentice in the software skills and mostly engage in teaching or lecturing jobs. The difference is; while the Asian Diaspora of pre-decolonization eras went for the heavy industries, our own Ugandan Diaspora fellows of today are mostly into the software.

So that comparatively, we are not likely to get values in human resources out of our own now living in the Diaspora. This is why we might not merit well in the next level of our African developments: Oil Industry, Steel mining and processing, the next levels of buildings, roads and railways construction.

With our brands of Diaspora migrants abroad whose sole interests are grounded in white collar jobs; Barristers, Economists, Educationists, ICT, Managers, Cinema Music and entertainments, Hospitality and many other social driver professions.

It is certainly true also that back home in Uganda for example, these white collar trainings are hugely in the works also with graduates coming out in droves annually.

So that, the heavier industries will perennially remain our skills and expertise deficiency point – where the heavy industries will remain a difficult economic works area, if at all established, like Oil is in Uganda, what might be driven by the foreigners. 

Developments by Destructive mediums         

Though Somalia is an extreme example, it is also the best under the circumstances; because, despite the constant war, internally the country has been forging forward even if it has been a [Bomoa na Kujenga] with the rebuilding element much-much slower than the destroying element. So that the country could have actually been in a state of progressive stagnation.

Otherwise Somalia has a huge human resource in the workable Oil and heavy logistics industries – mostly developed in the African Diaspora. Somalia’s overseas Diaspora Immigrants are probably the richest in the World.

However their wealth mostly belong to the [end thing justify the means] dirty money and blood money of the laundering type category. It is also these often questionable massing of dirty money and the means by which they were made – that breed the negative human resource responsible for the laying of the state to waste… as failed state.

Here I would imagine that religious extremism; which actually only plays the catalyst to the ‘destructive medium’ - is more the opportunistic ailment that take advantage of the actual genesis of crime-driven vicious circles of conflict and bloodbath. The extremist religions only take opportunity of an existent characteristically self destructive genetics in the people of a particular country… 

African analysts writing in the newspapers only apply [cosmetics and perfumery] analysis and avoid the genecology of country characteristics and, its role in rendering the host or mother or maybe father country dysfunctional, obsessively violent or xenophobic and self centered.***