Café Culture – café life – and now, café death?

Café Culture – café life – and now, café death?

I consider myself lucky [for once], to have been born about five years after the end of World War Two. Going by what several early writers, I have read, did say of the fifteen years after WW II – those fifteen years were said to have been “baby boom” period worldwide. Populations began to explode – and life style came to be definable. Moreover, among them was the “café culture”.

Sidewalk café had become a big thing. In other words it was the new ‘café life’ style.

Journalists and photographers spiced their newspapers and magazines with [life] loaded pictures that gave business to the sidewalk newspaper stalls. Even here in Africa, where I write from – the sidewalk café became the point of popular contact making…

The spot where deals and multi-million businesses were hatched and clinched. The café was a living place – many marriages were sparked at the café.

Out there in the greater world - the dress code also came to be known as pacesetting fashions. With designers often, scripting or doodling their design outlines on the sidewalk café. Landscapers and architects visualized their concepts from the sidewalk cafes.

Great Novelists, men and women, were often spotted candid, brooding over their many-many book plots on the sidewalk café… in all the leading cities of the World.

The compact American suit, Stetson and cowboy boots – were dropped for a pair jeans and T-shirt [James Dean & Marlon Brando] ‘50s looks changed everybody – as we were growing up – to later consume all that in vast literatures of the world and, the Hollywood movies created out of them throughout the 1960s and 70s. We read and watched them all.

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The Internet Café – did not emerge out of the blue, as the younger generations born after the 1960s seem – not to imagine!

The ‘Café Culture’ has a history… it is therein that writers, authors, thinkers, designers, artists, architects and later software engineers evolved.

In the early days of the [personalized] computer, was the [Java script] – the first time I became aware of that software. I was reminded of Java, which is a place somewhere in the vast Indonesian Islands.

Many fantastic ‘Java [movie] Scripts’ shot by Hollywood groups in Indonesia with lead characters like ‘Brad Harris’ sent us lining up the box-office in Kampala Cinemas – that time run by Asians.

So when some two years or so ago, when I re-visited Kampala and, there it was [Café Java] – where now Kampala’s young enjoy each-other’s company, I was amazed in a different kind of way!

Meaning that, I see a lot more than the average – though I am sure, my type of fellows do exist around the world. Those who have lived and survived through the entire post WW II evolution - that characterize the milestones our contemporary civilizations are actually made of or hooked to.

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I am sure though that if ever they exist anywhere in the world [I don’t want to Google out] – anything called [Café Death or Death Café]. Or even enter into or sit on the sidewalk table of one.

Because I believe completely that, the “Café Culture” has always been pro-life. The World’s Arts and Sciences were thought-out and written by very creative writers and authors who were consumers of the Coffee. If ever there was anything called so… then at the background of the founding mind – is HIV/AIDS. I say this without any disrespect to entrepreneurship ideas and principles. Though, even the mad-mad scientist who created the virus might have been or is a consumer of Coffee. Which perhaps to a certain point - justifies the existence of the ‘Death Café’.

       

The African politics of the stomach… can the AU ride this crazy buffalo herd!

The African politics of the stomach… can the AU ride this crazy buffalo herd!

IDEOLOGY - is an old and odd herd to fathom. In the African context, this factor is complexed-by the ‘eating’ phenomena; Africa is hungry. Insufficient. Capacitiless, Wanting and largely bizarre!

 Preys to the aggressive foreign avians, as it were… because Africa might actually never unite.

The Pan African dream, as conceived by the fore-bearers of the ‘African dream’ lived and died with unfulfilment! Generation of the African Independence leadership peers, thought that they had the African vision and, what remained was only ‘good leadership’ – but hardly had they experienced the sunrise morning, than, the old “Wind of Change” was to blow them away - As a British Prime Minister was to once upon a time, see it, back then!

The Independence politicians knew nothing or very little of ‘security’ beyond the guards outside the gates. Mostly they were outsiders! Furtively at the head of anti-colonialism struggles whose [labor   union] up-rise motivations were triggered by the bully-man-ship of white rulers of Africa that time.

The post Independence ‘wind of change’ was unavoidable, since the category of men that headed the forces and security generally – knew and talked directly to the colonial powers that be, most of them had fought in the Whiteman’s World War Two - so that the figures at the head of the states throughout Africa, were flanked by a variety of forces and security heads, whose attentions were very much progressively divided.

The political leaders became ‘rhetorical’, loud and sentimental… whatever Pan African dreams they had, were to eventually be construed, as unifying Ideologies. In some Anglo-phone countries like Uganda, Prematurely, they – the post Independence administration cut-off from the Cambridge Examination and system of education. Between primary and HSC, they created new curricular-combinations. The exams were suddenly marked locally.

Anti-neocolonialism slogans and words like ‘comrade’ or ‘cadre’ or ‘elute’ now decked their rhetoric and conversations – suddenly, the recipe for the ‘wind of change’ was on the enormous menu. With it, things began to fall apart. The story differs though - from one African country to another… but the underlying thematic was the same or at least similar.

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The African is a miserly character – we shamelessly celebrate when the others sleep hungry! We insult, when we are begged! [Why don’t you work hard, you can’t beg all the time – go and work!] Yet, even the little that we pride ourselves of having achieved – were actually foreign donations. We do not stop to think, that everything we have - come as welfare - from a consortium of donors. This factor hardly ever seem to makes sense to most Africans - even leaders.

The African is a jealous character – we interfere with progressive activities of those members of our country who may hail from faraway places we don’t relate to easily. We summarily regard and dismiss them as either ‘the enemy or the poor’. It is just as well, that political systems and the laws actually curtail our meanness. But, by and large, we are tribalists. However, the cynics of our individualism perforate our tribalism.

In our ‘stomach thinking’, we promote productivity with one hand and, meddle-up productivity with the other hand. So that year in and year out, the story of development is a kind of merry-go round! War and Hunger is permanently on the front pages of African Newspapers. Our domestic animals are charred by the sun-rays – due to cultural practices and behaviors that interfere with our root management!

We are perennially experimenting with a variety of Aid/Grant based activities that seem never to solve the problem of ‘lack’ – Africa still lack so much – so that the negativity of African politics will forever remain in the ‘negative celluloid’ form  – like in the ancient photographer’s studio work. Production of the ‘positive picture’ remains an elusive challenge. That challenge is actually, what shows AU as an in-effective entity. Composed of this group of African [diaspora] minded men and women – designer suits, weird and nice everything theorists.

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If the AU were ever effective, foreign engineers wouldn’t be independently manning Africa’s infrastructure constructions. AU might have taken over direct management of especially, sewage in all the cities and towns around Lake Victoria – to allay the enormous contamination of the fresh water lake.

The AU might also have directly taken over management of solid waste throughout Africa. That is how the ‘negative celluloid’ would be washed [as in the ancient photographer’s studio]. To produce the clean ‘positive picture’ of the African environment and expose the cleaner path to the continental development.

It is safe for us who dare think, that current African Head of States, are direct signatories to all the protocols that engender the AU – they too might have to contribute in creating and cash-supplying some ‘African Bank’ that fund the activities directly managed by the AU.

So that, these African Political Heads remain what they are – Political Head of African States. Even then, the AU protocol they sign, actually take a minute bit of what their executive power is country to country.

In view of the status quo otherwise, the AU officials at their Head Quarters in Addis, might instead cause some of us Africans to hold them suspects for aggitative-indecision and inactivity also – I think it is not far from likelihood that, they, the AU officials may have poured, one too much crude Oil cartel into the fires that eventually [for example] burnt South Sudan – and nearly created difficulty for Ethiopia.

To some of us African indigenous free thinkers, the AU has to pull-up and be properly mobilizing the African Engineers and Economists – for the more committed trans-Africa infrastructure management. I mean the real hardware jobs.

It is not right – hearing of an AU official work-shopping limited ideas… advising [for example] the Nile referral – or Lake Victoria basin countries to [somehow] work towards bettering the hazardous environmental conditions inherent there-in… consultants can talk such vagueness, but not the AU. They are by virtue of their many-many mandates – planners and implementers. At least some of us readers into the purposes of the Union – believe so!   

Individual African countries are struggling… barely scratching for survival of populations. The AU cannot perennially be large [AU] painting on military trucks that are run by a group of sacrificing African countries taming [some] rebellions of the continent.

Uganda [for another example] is almost caught-up in the neediness of war-torn South Sudan! The meager agricultural output by some regions of Uganda disappears into the whirlwind of the current South Sudan situation. It is true that we cannot even [freely] afford tractors to help us roll one or two acres… and how do the experts sit around talking shop! When more than two countries have to share-in on the meager subsistence resource of one country.

Africa is vastly stranded in the politics of political change… leadership change, social services dogmatism - even with all the Universities that have mushroomed all over the continent. The job market [even at AU level] seems to be a pin-hole intake affair…

At the AU level, what are the continental planners doing? Where is the Continental Central Bank, what about the Continental Development Bank  – and, how much do African countries contribute to Africa’s collective financial weight Annually? And what is AU’s Annual Budget.. beyond secretariat funding. 

Otherwise, we can’t avoid the worry – that Africa might be massively contaminated by the sweet-toothed and threatening ‘Fifth Estate’ and the fanatic criminals within the African governments – who are actually by-products of corporate life style and the sweetness of extravagant nightlife – those laughing and ‘dancing’ ones former Apartheid President Botha talked about!               

Fifth Estate

Fifth Estate

In political [power-play] definitive terms, ‘fifth estate’ might be observed as an illegitimate, ambiguity that exists as an intertwine [influence] that network itself within the various structures of government. Parenting absurd corruptions.

Fifth Estate’s main purpose is to leech… on the juicy and nutritious body of the fat governments!

It is an [influence], which would mean that its origin is outside [the box] however, its powerful tentacles twine its way through and into every department of government – including military and other security establishments.

Once homed-in among the political and administrative classes, the fifth estate assumes supremacy…

 Consolidates itself into a very humble, fatally aggressive and money hungry group. The fifth estate is a very difficult entity to identify, relate with and get to know.  Fifteen years ago, this pseudo political -economic crime organization was largely non-existent. However today, in Uganda the fifth estate is also beginning to spread its tentacles. In Kenya, the fifth estate is known as “Mungiki”. In Uganda it might be identified with activities of “Kifeci” though, even Kifeci’s activities might not be influential enough to merit having their tentacles thickly twined into various departments of government, like it is with ‘Mungiki’.

After the recent electoral violence that sent Kenyans into Uganda [as exiles] for the first time – ‘Mungiki’ became a vivid political player… today, the pseudo-political crime based entity has their tentacle in various government offices. It has also gotten various local community organizations under its umbrella and several NGOs and global aid organizations assist their shadowy projects.  The crime-based foundation of these ‘WaOrdinary’ communities is also slowly changing characteristics – so that today, the fattening “criminals” run very legitimate concerns. In Nairobi, the story of the transformation of [Mathare and Kibera] are no longer some shameful shanty of shacks on the backside of [Ngong road, or Thika road].

One area of Mungiki influence is at the Cargo handling Mombasa port. It is also public knowledge that the Labor Unions in Mombasa are cramped with Mungiki Influences… what has for decades affected the handling of Cargo – especially those Uganda-bound – that the criminals leech on them! Is also public knowledge.

After the killing in Kampala of Ugandan AIGP Kaweesi and the acceptance by President Museveni, that “Criminals have [infiltrated] Uganda Police” – it now becomes safe for some of us free and independent thinkers – to also weigh-in with this sort of analysis, to highlight the background of this matter.

It is my guess, that if an equivalent of Mungiki exists in Uganda, it might be at an embryo level… though it is also possible, that the embryo is effective – also considering fact that there are scores of various former fighters or retired members of the forces loose in the country.

As a writer, Book Author and Researcher, this is an area of interest to me.

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