‘Peaceful’ Uganda is now a police besieged state

A military officer disperses supporters of opposition leader Kizza Besigye who had gathered to welcome him back to Kampala from Nairobi where he was seeking medical attention on May 12.

By Julius Barigaba, Special Correspondent




Posted  Sunday, May 29 2011 at 14:26

With armoured vehicles popularly known as Mamba sealing off the Constitution Square in the middle of the capital, the possibility of it creating a Ugandan version of Tahrir Square looks remote.

Tear gas and water canons have been parked around it for several months now, with policemen keeping vigil. But that might be a good thing. For all its resonance with Africa — and much of the Arab world — the Egyptian Tahrir is an aberration that is not going to happen every day, everywhere — least of all, in Uganda.  

Security is blocking access to Constitution Square, not to prevent a Tahrir, but to foil something worse — an Armageddon. Think Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, 1989.  

Tahrir collected a million anti-Mubarak protestors over three weeks, leading to the dictator’s fall in February this year. In Beijing, however, Tiananmen was the scene of a massacre by a military whose mindset is that of anarchy, akin to that of Uganda’s armed forces, according to political analyst Mwambutsya Ndebesa, professor of history at Makerere University.  

Led by students and intellectuals, the Tiananmen uprising, started on April 15, 1989. In four weeks, then Chinese premier Li Peng had declared martial law. On June 4, tanks and troops descended on the Square and slaughtered the protestors in their thousands. 

In Egypt, it was a pro-people army that could not shoot at the protestors. The same cannot be said of Uganda’s armed forces, going by number of casualties in one month of protests — so far nine shot dead, and some of them were not even rioting.  

Constitution Square touches the busy Kampala Road at the bottom, the High Court Building on the opposite side, hugging both the East African Development Bank building and Central Police Station on either side. 

Further down is Kampala’s busiest section of the CBD: Trade activity, matatus, human traffic, mobile salesmen, vendors perched on shop fronts, pickpockets, are all here. It is frightening to imagine what would happen if security were to let protestors into Constitution Square and open fire.  

The Square has become a no-go area, barricaded by blue Mamba APCs, tear gas trucks and anti-riot police. To dare to go there is to court arrest, unlimited doses of teargas, gunshot wounds, and possibly, death.  

On May 10, former presidential candidates Norbert Mao, Olara Otunnu, Sam Lubega and Mohammad Kibirige Mayanja attempted to access Constitution Square and stage a rally there. Somewhat Mao and Mayanja sneaked through the first line of police cordon but could not go past the next.  

“We want to hold a rally in the Square that is named after our (1995) Constitution. It is our right,” Mao yelled at the police as they pushed him back.  

But Otunnu, Lubega and others were not lucky. A police truck spewing pink liquid pushed them 200 metres away, bathing them in a deluge of crimson — police’s latest anti-riot innovation.  

That is the norm in Kampala these days — people wake up to a menu of live bullets and teargas. Access to some roads is blocked, as boda boda cyclists, unemployed youths and Kisekka Market traders engage the military and police in running battles. Occasionally, a military chopper eerily monitors the action. Files of military men, with guns held combat style, patrol the streets; APCs are at entry points into the city.  

How long before tanks come out?  

Police spokeswoman Judith Nabakoba denies that deployment of military, police and heavy weaponry at Constitution Square and other strategic points in the city is not to crush opposition protests.

“We have terrorism threats. This (deployment) should not be looked at as targeting only protestors and the opposition,” she told The EastAfrican.  

Fair enough, indeed Uganda is a terrorist target — the ghastly images of 7/11 twin bombings in Kampala still torment the survivors.  

Nonetheless, the manner of deployment still raises questions. The mambas and troops, for instance, are not only stationed at Constitution Square, Uganda’s equivalent of Tahrir, but they are a permanent feature at the Kibuye roundabout and several points along Entebbe Road, and Kalerwe roundabout on Gayaza Road.  

These roads lead to opposition leader Kizza Besigye’s work place and home respectively. Besigye is the face of resistance in the ongoing showdown between government and opposition.  

Besides this, in Masaka, Mukono, Luwero, Jinja, Mbale, Gulu and a few other towns in the north, the presence of the military is equally pronounced. These towns hold the highest concentration of anti-government sentiment. Towns in western Uganda — the stronghold of the ruling party — have no such deployment.  

Since the February 18 elections, opposition leaders have questioned the legitimacy of president Museveni’s 68 per cent win. They claim this “victory” is courtesy of two things: Money to buy votes, and an arsenal brought out onto the streets to intimidate voters.  

After arresting Besigye on April 11, police chief Kale Kayihura fluffed his lines big time but gave pointers why Constitution Square is restricted. He told journalists that the non-violent protests must be crushed. Yet he confessed that the police arrested the walking politicians but “quite frankly we did not know where they were going... along the way they wanted to find masses...they thought they would create a Tahrir Square somewhere in the city centre.”  

Thus Constitution Square is no longer ‘the people’s space’ where they can go to drown the misery of today’s economic hardships or to escape the depression caused by it.  

But lately, the Square gives a disconcerting sense of Tiananmen. You would think Kampala was a combat zone, or that the president has declared martial law. 

It’s a siege that will hurt Uganda’s economy, political sanity and rule of law, argues FDC Secretary for Security Major John Kazoora. 

“That’s what they want. Let’s remain a police, besieged state,” he said. “Let our children grow up in a culture of being surrounded by guns and mambas because that’s the culture we have built. In the end we are hurting ourselves and scaring away tourists and investors. Is that what we want for our country?  

Asked whether the uprising will climax in a mass demo at Constitution Square as claimed by security, he replies, “I am a founder member of A4C (Activists for Change); our campaign is about high prices, not to go to Constitution Square; why do they put words in our mouth?”  

Tour operators warned recently that Uganda will lose $100 million worth of tourism revenue monthly if the riots persist. But it is not tourists alone that are put off by the military hardware on display. In five months, Kampalans have seen more mambas than they have ever cared to.
“I am from the north but I had never seen so many mambas before,” says legislator Odonga Otto.

As the theatre of war for two decades, Northern Uganda endured this. Now the south, which enjoyed uninterrupted stability all this time, is being treated to real images of war, without actually being in one. It is the perfect irony of a country that is at peace. 

The see-saw events between opposition and government in the post February 18 election period pose some serious questions. Why does a man who was given such a bad beating at the polls attract so many crowds, some ready to die for him? What would happen if government let him get to Constitution Square? He scored only 26 per cent, after all. So, he would attract only a few thousand.

Not really. Besigye has built a magnetism that his tormentors cannot undo.  

The events of Thursday May 12, sum up as the spectacular climax of the tensions that had built up since the Walk-to-Work campaign started a month earlier to protest soaring fuel, food and commodity prices.  

It culminated into a clash of two forces — Besigye’s ‘army’ of boda boda cyclists and unemployed youth, armed with only twigs and their v-signs, overwhelming state police and military. Yes, some rode their motorcycles acrobatically enough to kill themselves, but they generally went about it peacefully, and the police were ready to take this humbling lesson, but not the military.  

“From the airport to Katabi, the crowds were non-violent because [Assistant Inspector General of Police, Francis] Rwego was in charge. Then the military took over and Rwego was annoyed because unprovoked, the military started beating and tear gassing people,” Maj Kazoora says.  

For his troubles, Rwego was suspended on May 17 and his sin is to have allowed a snail pace convoy. In the end, a 45-minute drive took nine hours with Besigye’s supporters and Museveni’s swearing-in entourage scrambling for space on the small Entebbe road.

Initially, the agreement was to allow three vehicles with police lead and escort cars in his convoy. But the numbers kept swelling, and police chose to accommodate them, provided that the crowds remained non-violent.

Diplomatic embarrassment  

Police and military descending on the crowds with live bullets, tear gas and chemicals was the ultimate diplomatic embarrassment, particularly when Besigye’s crowd responded by throwing stones at motorcades of presidents that attended Museveni’s inauguration. 

Angered by this episode, Museveni’s military might react in radical style. It is the best way to deal with an unrelenting opposition that has braved violence, but built up some momentum to resist since April 11. This might trigger a Tiananmen-like response.  

The increased presence of military hardware in the middle of the capital is twofold: To drive fear, and it is also a statement of intent, political actors argue.  

“We know the NRM intends to unleash the army in civilian clothes. This is a ploy that is so transparent we can see through it. We want to demystify the fear Museveni has instilled in the public; thereafter this campaign will evolve into a social movement,” says Otunnu.  

Yet there is more to come. In the next financial year, police has just put in a budget request for Ush29 billion ($12.4 million) for tear gas and anti-riot gear alone. And they need new supplies too, because some of the current stock of tear gas being used actually expired in 2004.  

So, will opposition foot soldiers cower from the mambas and tanks? Apparently not. Those that have not been shot dead (Human Rights Watch recently documented nine people, but that was before five other deaths reported in the May 12 fiasco), have been tear gassed and beaten, but they have marched on, buoyed by Besigye’s famous “you should not be intimidated” line. 

In a recent interview with the Monitor, IGP Kayihura stated that a police officer who escorted protestors to their place of work was ‘guilty’ while the one who used the butt of his gun to vandalise Besigye’s car, was hailed as ‘doing his job’. 

In short, when the order to unleash violence comes, the executing man will not waver. In the meantime, politicians and protestors can get close to Constitution Square if they are looking for a repeat of Tiananmen.

Rwanda officials would have to be really foolish to organise hyped UK murder plot

By Frederick Golooba-Mutebi  (email the author)

Posted  Sunday, May 29 2011 at 14:17

As the attention of East Africans was firmly fixed on Uganda’s perennially fractious politics and the latest battle of wills between President Yoweri Museveni and his tough-as-nails nemesis, Dr Kiiza Besigye, Britain’s Metropolitan police kicked up a storm that has engulfed the Government of Rwanda and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the past week or so.

Armed with “credible intelligence” from the FCO, the force had dispatched officers to go find two men. One is a Rwandan national in exile, the other, a UK national of Rwandan extraction. The officers went bearing grim news: The government of Rwanda was plotting against the two men and their lives were at risk.

If my memory serves me right, news bulletins suggested that the officers even insinuated that assassins might already be on the way to the UK to bump them off. And then they dropped another proverbial bombshell: the Met could not guarantee their security, so they had better be creative about how to do it themselves. They may even consider leaving their current addresses for some time.

As with all titillating stories, the media picked this up and ran off with it. And as with all bad, sensational, or ‘exciting’ news about Rwanda, it hit the newspapers, radio bulletins and TV broadcasts with a bang! I was half-listening to news on radio, half reading newspapers when I heard it on the BBC one early morning.

I was intrigued. It came in the wake of President Kagame’s robust and widely-publicised online exchange with a cocky British journalist who, while tweeting, had allowed himself to dispense wisdom on what is and is not good in and for Rwanda and Rwandans, without ever setting foot there.

New -media-savvy Kagame, not one to take lectures from self-appointed Rwanda experts, shot back, punch for punch and more, leaving the journalist taken aback. Surely that had come and gone, and couldn’t possibly be the background to the new story.

I then recalled that two political groups seeking to unseat the Rwanda Patriotic Front led government, Victoire Ingabire’s FDU-Inkingi, and Lt. General Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa’s Rwanda National Congress, had recently held a meeting in the United Kingdom.

I wondered if the two were not connected. It seems they are, as one of the two men, one Jonathan Musonera, had been a key organiser of the meeting. He is also known to have got into a brief but heated exchange with President Kagame on the BBC’s Africa Have Your Say programme in the recent past.

It did not take long before it became the subject of intense online and verbal discussion among Rwandans and outsiders, some of whom have more than passing interest in the country.

Those prone to arriving at easy conclusions saw an immediate connection between this particular story and that of the attempted murder of Kayumba Nyamwasa in South Africa last year, which some firmly believe was the handiwork of “the Rwandans,” although the South African judiciary is yet to come up with a definitive verdict.

A friend with whom I discussed the issue believed Musonera had “made a mistake” by “arguing with Kagame” on radio. For him that was reason enough for the Rwanda government to invest energy and resources in a plot to kill him. It goes to show how lightly Kagame is taken by some of his critics.

Predictably, reactions from Rwandan officials and commentators on public affairs have been livid and dismissive of the story as “pure fiction” and “completely without foundation.”

And now the Rwanda government has challenged the metropolitan police to produce firm evidence of their claims and insisted on a retraction should they not have it.

How the Met responds to that will go a long way towards shedding light on a rather extraordinary story. Should the Met refuse to come clean, it will only strengthen the view that the FCO’s “credible intelligence” is based on a bogus story. Rwandans and Rwandaphiles wait with bated breath.

For me, though, the question is whether, given Britain’s well-established reputation in Rwanda as one of the country’s key donors and the RPF government’s important and trusted ally in an otherwise judgmental and easily hostile, “international community,” Rwandan officials would be so daft as to risk ruining the relationship by killing two dissidents living thousands of miles outside the country.

The North America Rwandan Community brings Rwanda Day to the City of Chicago.

The Diaspora will be honored by the presence of His Excellency the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame.

Banks, real-estate developers, insurance companies, employment agencies and many other organizations will be showcasing various products and services offered in Rwanda.

Rwanda: The Sinister Offensive of a Regime in Decline

Rwanda: The Sinister Offensive of a Regime in Decline

Emmanuel Hakizimana, Ph.D.

President of the Rwandan Congress of Canada

On May 13, 2011, BBC Radio broadcast information according to which two Rwandan nationals living in London had just been warned by British police that their lives were in danger. In a warning notice sent to each of them, police wrote: “Reliable intelligence states that the Rwandan Government poses an imminent threat to your life. The threat could come in any form.” Two weeks earlier, the London newspaper The Independent published an article stating that the British intelligence service MI5 had issued an advisory notice to the Ambassador of Rwanda to the United Kingdom, Ernest Rwamucyo, warning him that British aid to Rwanda would be cut if he did not cease to threaten and intimidate Rwandan nationals living in Great Britain. That aid amounts to more than CAN$130 million.

The reports have caused considerable concern among members of the Rwandan community living in the West and more particularly those residing in Commonwealth countries including Canada. Indeed, they never imagined that the Kigali regime would dare to export insecurity to countries that are its biggest supporters. It will be remembered that those countries disregarded the recommendations put forward in a report by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and agreed to allow Rwanda to join the Commonwealth a little over a year ago.

The campaign of terror further illustrated by the events in London seems to be part of a strategy that was initiated by General Paul Kagame a few months before the presidential elections of August 2010 and was escalated following the release in October 2010 of the United Nations mapping report on crimes committed in Congo between 1993 and 2003. According to the report, the army of President General Paul Kagame committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly crimes of genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo and Congolese citizens.

The strategy basically has two concomitant areas of focus. The first is a vast diplomatic campaign in Western countries primarily intended to demonize opponents of the current Rwandan regime and denounce the UN mapping report. The second is the assassination of opponents, real or imagined, as well as independent journalists who reveal the criminal activities of the Kigali regime.

As part of the diplomatic offensive, a large Rwandan delegation led by Senator Aloysie Inyumba (recently appointed Minister of Gender and Family) toured Europe in November 2010. Another arrived in Canada in the second half of May 2011 for a series of conferences organized in conjunction with the Embassy of Rwanda in Ottawa. At the same time, Paul Kagame is scheduled to personally visit Chicago in the United States from June 10 to 12, 2011.

The recent events in Great Britain fall within the political assassinations component of the strategy, which was revived a few months before the presidential elections of August 2010 and continues to this day. It began with the decapitation of Green Party Vice-President André Kagwa Rwisereka, the assassination of independent journalist Léonard Rugambage and the assassination attempt in South Africa on General Kayumba Nyamwasa. It has now spread to Western countries.

Rwandan nationals who fled General Paul Kagame’s regime and settled in Canada take the recent events in London very seriously. They now know that the Rwandan regime can also carry out a campaign of terror in Canada and elements abound to indicate that their fear is not unfounded. First, there are precedents on Canadian soil. In 1998, a former Red Cross employee was the victim of an attempted murder because he had witnessed massacres perpetrated against Rwandan Hutu refugees by Paul Kagame's army. The incident was made public in an article published in La Presse on January 29, 1998. Next, the fact that Canada is the only Western country not to take legal action against the killers of Canadian citizens living in Rwanda (including Father Claude Simard and Father Guy Pinard) is not likely to deter Paul Kagame from sowing terror on Canadian soil. Finally, the initiative by Rwandan authorities to carry out a campaign of terror in Great Britain when that country ranks first among providers of aid to Rwanda shows that no country, not even Canada, can delude itself into believing that the Kigali regime will not dare to carry out terrorist attacks on its territory.

Many members of the Rwandan community in Canada fled Paul Kagame’s regime for different reasons. Some are survivors of his crimes against humanity, as revealed by the UN mapping report referred to above. Others, including journalists, jurists and human rights activists, were singled out because they denounced human rights violations and other abuses. All arrived broken-hearted and wanted nothing more than to live in peace and thrive in their host countries. The campaign of terror waged today by the Kigali regime is plunging them back into the world of terror they fled. Canada should take action immediately and warn Rwandan authorities against organizing terrorist activities on Canadian territory. At stake are the safety and security of all Canadians.

Rwandan Government Program to End Thatched Housing Leaves Pygmies Homeless

A Rwandan government program to stop people living in thatched houses as part of a plan to alleviate poverty left hundreds of Batwa Pygmy families homeless, according to advocacy groups including Survival International.
The eradication of the dwellings, which began in 2008, stepped up this year after the federal budget for the project more than doubled to 4 billion Rwandan francs ($6.7 million), said Augustin Kampayana, chairman of the Rural Resettlement Taskforce. Since 2009, the state eliminated 116,000 thatched houses and will remove the remaining 8,000 by July, he said.
“The biggest problem is that the Batwa were not told their houses would be destroyed,” said Kalimba Zephyrin, director of Communaute des Potiers du Rwanda, an advocacy group that works to protect the interests of Batwa Pygmies. “It was done without preparation or communication.”
Pygmy peoples, whose average height is less than 5 feet, have lived as hunters and gatherers in forests across central Africa for thousands of years, according to Survival International, the London-based advocacy group. The traditional habitats of pygmies, who number about 500,000, are being destroyed by logging, war and famine, displacing their communities, the group says.
“Rwanda’s Batwa continue to face racism and discrimination on a daily basis,” Survival said in a May 25 e-mailed statement. “Most eke out a meager living as wage laborers or potters after their communities were forced from their forest homes to create national parks free from human habitation.”

Snake Bites

The program being carried out by the Rwandan government aims to alleviate poverty by moving people into organized villages, allowing farmers to increase production on consolidated, fertilized lands and improve the health and safety of communities, Kampayana said. Thatched houses, he said, are prone to fires and leaks and residents are vulnerable to bites from insects and snakes.
“There is a lot people gain by living in villages rather than scattered around in those houses that are not decent,” he said in a May 27 interview in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital.
Of the 8,000 Batwa families in fixed homes in Rwanda, as many as 80 percent were living in thatched houses last year, according to Zephyrin. Most of those people have been given replacement homes or news roofs, he said in a May 25 interview. Many others were forced to evacuate their homes without the resources to find a new place to live, he said.
“At first, they refused, but then they were forced by police, army and local security forces,” he said. “The Batwa are all poor, so they had nowhere to go.”

‘Cramped’ Housing

Most moved into “cramped” government housing or temporary residences provided by international organizations, Zephyrin said. About 450 families continue to camp in the open, waiting for new government homes, he said.
In Bidudu, a small cluster of houses occupied by Batwa people in the countryside outside of Kigali, residents including Cecilia Nyiranteziryayo, a 29-year-old mother of five, said most of their houses were destroyed or damaged when local authorities removed the thatched roofs off their mud and stone homes in February. And while the structures still standing were given sheet metal roofs, those that fell remain piles of rubble.
When asked if the Batwa people were being treated differently than the majority of people who are either ethnic Hutu or Tutsi, Kampayana said that the Rwandan government neither recognizes ethnicities, nor discriminates against them.
Since Rwanda’s genocide in 1994, when 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in a 100-day slaughter by extremist Hutus, the government has instituted a justice and reconciliation program that includes eliminating the formal acknowledgement of ethnicity. The Batwa Pygmies are known as a “historically marginalized people” in the country.
“For us, as a government, we are all one person,” he said. “We are all Rwandese.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Heather Murdock in Kigali via Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.

Report Finds Mixed Record for Rwanda’s Genocide Courts

As the work of Rwanda’s Gacaca court system nears its end, Human Rights Watch has issued a report that finds mixed results for the community-based courts in dealing with the genocide.

On Tuesday, New York-based Human Rights Watch released Justice Compromised, a 144-page report on Rwanda’s genocide courts.

In the aftermath of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide that left an estimated 800,000 dead, the country struggled to come to terms with the extent of the killings and crime that took place in just more than three months. By 1998, less than 1,300 genocide suspects had been tried, with another 130,000 in Rwandan jails designed to hold 12,000 inmates.
According to the report, Rwanda’s jails were so overcrowded prisoners began to die by the thousands.

Human Rights Watch researcher Carina Tertsakian said the unprecedented situation forced Rwanda to find an alternative.

“For these reasons primarily they decided to explore what they call Gacaca, which is a cross between a traditional form of community-based conflict resolution, and on the other hand a more conventional system of punitive justice that has some of the features of a modern criminal system,” said Tertsakian.

The Gacaca system allows the accused to face members of the community and victims to face punishment for their crimes and unearth details about the genocide itself. Through the community courts, family and friends of victims have been able to learn what happened to their loved ones and, in many cases, where they are buried.

Since implementing Gacaca in 2001, more than 12,000 courts have tried 1.2 million genocide cases. The courts have alleviated the massive pressures placed on the Rwandan justice systems. But according to the Human Rights Watch report, many judicial standards were sacrificed in order to implement Gacaca.

The report details many abuses, including intimidation of defense witness, corruption of judges and the use of the courts to settle personal scores. It says many of Gacaca’s judges also are inadequately trained, often leading to unfair proceedings.

In addition to the court’s failures, many of the crimes committed during the genocide have simply been ignored, such as rapes and acts committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front - now Rwanda’s ruling party.

“The law was amended in 2004 and it was amended in such a way that it excluded those crimes," said Tertsakian. "The government, in fact, launched a campaign at that time to ensure that crimes allegedly committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front were not discussed in Gacaca.”

While such crimes were supposed to be dealt with by Rwanda’s regular courts, Tertsakian said very few of those crimes have made it to trial.

On May 20, Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama announced the Gacaca courts would officially close in December, nearly 10 years after they began.

Human Rights Watch is urging the Rwandan government to establish a review board staffed by professional judges to investigate possible abuses or shortcomings in the Gacaca proceedings and to address any failures of justice.

East Africa's growing middle class hits 29 million

Shoppers queue to be served at a till at Nakumatt Westgate in Nairobi. The middle class usually does the bulk of their shopping in supermarkets. Picture: File

By Christine Mungai, Special Correspondent  (email the author)

Posted  Sunday, May 22 2011 at 12:16

Stanslaus Kimani, 27, lives in a two-bedroomed flat in Nairobi’s South C estate, and works at one of the city’s investment banks. He is also a Bachelor of Commerce student at the University of Nairobi, and pays school fees for his younger brother in secondary school.

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His daily expenses total a little over $20 a day. According to a recent report by the African Development Bank (ADB), that puts him in the “high income” or rich class — in the same ranks as Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote, the richest man in Africa with a net worth of about $13.8 billion.

Mr Kimani doesn’t agree with that categorisation. “Twenty dollars a day is not rich. Certainly I’m not poor, but there are people in this city that can comfortably spend more than Ksh 15,000 ($175) a day. Those people could be called rich. I think of myself as somewhere in the middle.”

Africa’s middle class has been growing modestly in the past decade, but ADB admits that it is difficult to define who exactly falls into this group, and even harder still to establish how many middle class people there are in Africa.

The report estimates the size of the middle class — those spending between $2 and $20 a day — at about 313 million people, or 34.3 per cent of the continent’s population — a spike from 111 million two decades ago.

In East Africa, the figure comes to a total of about 29.3 million, representing an average of 22.6 per cent of the population; 44.9 per cent of Kenya’s population, 18.7 per cent in Uganda, 12.1 per cent in Tanzania, 7.7 per cent in Rwanda, and 5.3 per cent in Burundi.

The report notes that a well established middle class is catalytic to the growth of democratic space. It is certainly no coincidence that two of the countries with the largest percentage of middle class citizens in Africa —Tunisia (89.5 per cent) and Egypt (79.7 per cent) — reached a tipping point and overturned their corrupt, repressive regimes.

Experts assert that long term economic growth in the region is inexorably linked to the rise of the middle class consumer. Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company reports that from 2005 to 2008, consumer spending across the continent increased at a compound annual rate of 16 per cent, more than twice the GDP growth rate.

In 2008, nearly 85 million households in Africa, like Kimani’s, had an income of above $5,000 a year, the level at which households begin to spend more than half of their income on items other than food. McKinsey projects that the number of households with discretionary income could rise by 50 per cent in the next decade, reaching 128 million households. By 2030, the continent’s top 18 cities are expected to have a combined spending power of $1.3 trillion.

In Nigeria, for example, the collective buying power of households earning $1,000 to $5,000 a year doubled from 2000 to 2007, reaching $20 billion: Nearly seven million additional households have enough discretionary income to take their place as consumers.

Nairobi economist Ignatius Gabriel says the ability to do the bulk of household shopping in a supermarket is one of the filters that separates the poor and the middle class.

“Once you are able to do your household shopping in a supermarket, then you have begun to move away from the ‘kadogo’ economy that characterises poor households, especially in urban areas. You can’t bargain or pay on credit in a supermarket, and the tiny sizes of goods are usually not available. It means you are no longer living hand-to-mouth.”

Companies targeting the middle class consumer have experienced a boom in recent years, particularly in consumer goods, retail banking, telecom and housing.

In 2010, the turnover of Kenyan supermarket chain Nakumatt increased by 15 per cent, and 11 new stores were opened, nine in Kenya and two in Uganda, bringing the total number of stores in the region to 32. This year, expansion into Tanzania is in the offing. In Rwanda, Nakumatt has signed up to a new location in Kigali and is looking at more locations in the country.

But other analysts believe that this apparent growth of purchasing power should be tempered with caution, as it could actually be a sign of widening inequality.

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In this March 8, 2011 photo, Tomas Esmael greets a villager outside his shop in Nhampaza, Mozambique, where seeds and fertilizer vie for space with cookies, soap, candles and cooking oil. The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa gave $1.5 million to train small merchants like Esmael to run better businesses, develop relationships with hybrid seed suppliers and learn tips to pass on to farmers. In Mozambique which tried and failed to run its economy on Marxist lines, it's now the turn of small-time businessmen to form part of a chain linking scientists and farmers that experts hope will help the country and the rest of Africa solve it's chronic food crises. (AP Photo/Donna Bryson)

Would Uganda's Museveni recognise his former self?

Concerned about the future of his 25-year rule, Uganda's once-popular President Yoweri Museveni is taking drastic measures to prevent an opposition uprising like that witnessed in the Arab World.
Kampala's largest bookstore is impressive.

Museveni has started using violence against his people

Just next to the motivational publications that tell you how to think like a millionaire even if you are broke, there is a Ugandan section.
State of Blood is sadly not a novel, it is the inside story of Idi Amin.
The Dungeons of Nakasero is another tough read.
I was looking for a copy of the book, What Is Africa's Problem?
In it, the author says, back in 1986: "The problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power."
And who wrote it? The current president, Yoweri Museveni, who has been in the job for 25 years.

I know what it is like to live under Idi Amin, to have roadblocks, to hear gunshots Diana Nkesiga

The government will not admit it, but all is not well in Uganda right now.
Food and fuel prices have gone through the roof and seizing an opportunity to hurt the government, the opposition called walk-to-work protests, a cunning way of getting around the ban on demonstrations, as President Museveni has seen enough evidence of their impact in the Arab world.
But when politicians started strolling to work they were arrested.
Walking, it seemed, had become a crime.
Each time the main opposition politician Doctor Kizza Besigye resisted arrest, there were ever more violent clashes.
Ugandans watched the evening news and were horrified.
The sight of plainclothes policemen smashing the politician's car windows and spraying him with chemicals before dumping him on the back of a truck was the tipping point.
Angered by what people condemned as police brutality, riots erupted.
Out came the army and the tear gas and the bullets.
Former allies
The service at Kampala's All Saints Cathedral started with an unusual announcement.

Images of the arrest of Kizza Besigye sparked riots

"We will be praying for the president and we will also be praying for Doctor Besigye," said the vicar, Diana Nkesiga.
The president and opposition leader used to be allies but have not spoken to each other in more than 10 years.
During the 1980s bush war that saw Yoweri Museveni shoot his way into power, Kizza Besigye was his personal doctor.
But after serious disagreements they have since stood against each other in successive disputed elections.
The white-robed Diana Nkesiga knows a thing or two about reconciliation, having spent years trying to heal wounds across the colour divide in South Africa under apartheid.
She told me now was the time for talking not fighting.
"I grew up in Kampala in the 1970s. I know what it is like to live under Idi Amin, to have roadblocks, to hear gunshots," she said.

If the Yoweri Museveni of 1986 were to meet the Museveni of today they would fight on sight - they would shoot each other George Kanyeihamba

"For me as a child those were our deepest nightmares, we don't want to go there."
Sharing this view, different religious leaders popped up on television calling for dialogue.
The president's response?
He told them to keep their noses out and stick to their religious work.
"Do you see me baptising people?" he asked.
Outside the gates of Makerere University there was a bizarre sight.
A mosquito net under a tree, a mattress on the ground and a jacket and tie swinging on a coat hanger.
There was also a sign: "Hunger Strike. End Police Brutality Now!"
The one-man protest had only been going a couple of days, when the young student collapsed and was taken to hospital to recover.
At the High Court, there was a bigger show of dismay.

Uganda Law Society on strike over the breakdown in the rule of law

Uganda's lawyers had agreed to go on strike.
In their black gowns they thronged the court grounds to hand over a petition to the chief justice.
"We are mourning the death of rule of law in Uganda," the law society president, Bruce Kyerere, told me.
A lot of lawyers did not join in perhaps fearing the possibility of tear gas.
"The lawyers like money too much. It won't last long," a Ugandan journalist said with a smile.
Changed man
Whilst most Ugandans are disgusted by the way police have handled protests, the government has appeared out of touch, stubbornly defending the use of force.
President Museveni used to be seen as very much in touch with the people and almost everyone agrees he did a fantastic job for the country for part of his time in office.
But now with increased reliance on the military, the signs are not good.
In a Kampala restaurant I met George Kanyeihamba. He was a minister and attorney general when President Museveni came to power in 1986.
He retired from life as a Supreme Court judge last year and is extremely worried about where Uganda is headed.
He suggested the very issues of injustice that led to Yoweri Museveni taking up arms were coming back.
I asked him to compare the Museveni he knew then and the man now.
"They are two different people," he said.
"Some Ugandans have said that if the Yoweri Museveni of 1986 were to meet the Museveni of today they would fight on sight - they would shoot each other."

The Worst of the Worst: Bad Dude Dictators and General Coconut Heads on this planet

By Bernard Tabaire

Our man, call him President Museveni, makes a respectable showing. He comes in at number 19 out of 23. At number 20 is President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. The Top 5– in order – are Kim JongII of North Korea, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Senior General Than Shwe of Burma, Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov (just bite your tongue) of Turkmenistan. These guys are the meanest dudes sitting in State House on the planet today. That is the opinion of an acerbic Ghanaian political economist based at the American University in the United States.

Dr George Ayittey’s list appears in the July/August 2010 issue of Foreign Policy magazine, an American publication I hitherto thought had better things to do than publish fatuous stuff. The same magazine named the Ghanaian one of its Top 100 Public Intellectuals in 2008. No matter, the list is out there and may as well be given a second look. It is titled, “The Worst of the Worst: Bad Dude Dictators and General Coconut Heads.” Not easy to beat that. Apparently, a coconut head is “someone who is zany, silly, kooky”. Ouch!

He writes of President Museveni: “After leading a rebel insurgency that took over Uganda in 1986, Museveni declared: “No African head of state should be in power for more than 10 years.” But 24 years later, he is still here, winning one “coconut election” after another in which other political parties are technically legal but a political rally of more than a handful of people is not.” He argues that Mr Kagame “practices the same ethnic apartheid he sought to end”. That is tame because President Mugabe is described as a “murderous despot”.

It appears from the list that staying in power for more than 10 years is less of a crime than what you do while wielding that power. The list has leaders such as Raul Castro who has been at the top in Cuba for only two years, and Mahmould Ahamadinejad who has presided over Iran for the last five years.

In Uganda, it has always been difficult for the opposition to hold rallies and keep them together because the police or Kalangala Action Plan or lately, the Kiboko Squad, will break them up. The other day the Kiboko Men, whom the police incredibly claim they know nothing about, casually and publicly whipped Dr Kizza Besigye, the main opposition leader in the country. The aim was to humiliate him. While pro-government supporters can demonstrate against, and denounce, the courts, the same right and privilege cannot be extended to the opposition whose target is the Electoral Commission.

Political transgression, it would appear, can be forgiven. That becomes difficult, however, when corruption engulfs almost the entire state bureaucracy. Because of corruption and incompetence, Uganda’s public services are a complete shambles. After 24 years of enlightened NRM rule, horror stories still come out of our hospitals every day. UPE is doing its best to damage children’s minds.

But nothing exemplifies Uganda’s public services catastrophe as the City of Kampala. It is the undisputed Trash City of the World. And to say that its leaders are guilty of first-degree incompetence is to be generous to them. Things are so bad we residents of Kampala are numbed. Otherwise, we would be in the streets everyday demanding better. We are not. We are happy to run around in muck and filth as though we were obeying God’s commandment.

Speaking of which, if the churches organised a little differently, they could contribute immensely to change in the delivery of services shared by many. Church leaders, dubious as some of them maybe, command the attention of a lot of people. Instead of organising hate campaigns against gay Ugandans, the churches could, for a change, mobilise congregants to demand better schools, better hospitals and clinics, better roads, and better cities from their elected government. That is what makes the vote count.

President Museveni recognises the potential political power the churches and other religious groups have and therefore actively discourages them from engaging in politics. He erects boundaries that should not exist. When not planting barriers, he is keeping bishops happy with car gifts. His co-optation of church leaders is nearly complete.

Yet lack of organisation by citizens in various trades and faiths will ensure the continuation of the hell we are in. There is, however, some hope. The market owners in Kampala organised so effectively and kept their markets. That could be because losing their stalls meant losing money directly and it therefore became a mater of urgency. Regardless, there is something to learn from the people in Kisekka, Shauri Yako and Nakasero markets. If not, we will from now henceforth have a President who makes all the dodgy lists of the world. That is kinda embarrassing, even if I do not think highly of lists.

Mr Tabaire is a media trainer and consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence
bentab@hotmail.com

Rwanda: 10 THINGS TO READ FROM KAGAME'S LATEST RESHUFFLE: SHUFFLING CHAIRS ON A SINKING TITANIC!

BY: Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa

1. Kagame is in a deep crisis and would like to give the impression to Rwandans and the international community that things are changing.

2. Kagame is responding to pressure f from pro-democracy voices, notably Rwanda National Congress (RNC), FDU-Inkingi and other pro-democracy voices.

3. Aloysea Inyumba is being retrieved from a long period of marginalization, as a reward for her recent redeployment to counter RNC and lure Hutu into Kagame's RPF fold. Her European trip has paid her handsomely. She is on her way to the United States to pay more dues to Kagame's reward.

4. Dr. Charles Murigande, now to be posted to Japan as ambassador, begins his final journey to complete retrenchment after a long period of marginalisation. The Burundi factor in RPF politics that has saved Murigande before no longer matters to Kagame, who now must punish those who are not "adequately" loyal even among the Tutsi.

5. Claver Gatete, formerly ambassador to UK ( during which tenure he oversaw Kagame"s financial misdemeanors in that country) and Vice Governor at Central Bank, now elevated to Governor Central Bank. With the Finance Minister John Rwangombwa, the two are Kagame's most obedient servants who will help in continuing to siphon off public resources into Kagame's pockets.

6. Vincent Karega, now posted to South Africa as ambassador, has been chosen to specifically deal with Gen. Kayumba and Col. Karegeya ( read this as a mission to complete a previously abortive operation to assassinate both). He has no diplomatic skills to mend diplomatic relations between SA and Rwanda, now at their lowest. The most important credential he has is that he will execute orders unquestioningly.

7. Solina Nyirahabimana, now posted to Switzerland as Ambassador, is being deployed to sweet-talk Hutu into RPF, and to deal with the growing opposition to the Kigali regime in Europe, notably from RNC and FDU-Inkingi and other pro-democracy voices.

8. It does not matter that Kagame has included Hutu and women to put on a facade of an ethnically balanced and gender sensitive government. Rwanda remains a police secretive state, firmly in the hands of a violent and corrupt dictator who marginalises mainly the Hutu, as well as Tutsi and Twa. The structure of power remains intact.

9. Ideas are a very powerful force, just as the power of organised and mobilized citizens are a potent force whose time has come. It has been a few months since Rwanda Briefing was written, and RNC was born. Clearly, ideas about a shared future among Rwandans ( Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa), anchored on truth telling, justice for all, the rule of law, freedom, democracy and sustainable prosperity for all has thrown Kagame and the state he has criminalised into panic. Now resources ( money, time, talent..) are being squandered left and right to stop the unstoppable---Rwanda's match to freedom!

10. Finally, the Prime Minister Bernard Makuza has been handed a sweet formality to sign the statement on the cabinet reshuffle, that he rarely, if ever, has anything to do with! Kagame is trying to deceive Rwandans that the formal government works. The truth is that his informal network of a few Tutsi military officers and RPF civilian cadres run the secret state behind the scene. Still, Makuza must be grateful that this small token has finally been extended to him thanks to the efforts of pro-democracy voices.

What is needed in Rwanda is not shuffling chairs on the sinking Kagame-RPF ship. Rwandans need to work together to prevent their motherland from sinking into more civil war and bloodshed, and chat a new direction in durable peace and freedom. Kagame can deceive some people, for some time. But he cannot deceive us all for all the time.

Taskforce to spearhead the East African Monetary Union

A taskforce to spearhead negotiations for the East African Monetary Union (Eamu) was finally launched in Arusha on Monday this week. EAC secretary-general Juma Mwapachu told delegates from the five member states to show commitment to the talks. The taskforce, made up of senior officials from the member countries, will lay ground for the methodology under which the road map to the Eamu protocol would be negotiated. Mr Mwapachu said the monetary union must fall on the lines of the one which existed in East Africa in the 1960s and 1970s before the collapse of the EA Community in 1977. “During the late 1960s and early 1970s no region in the world had a properly functional and constituted monetary union than the EAC”, he said. He noted that heads of State of the EAC member countries were “unequivocal” on their desire to have a regional monetary union in place. At a summit in 2007, the presidents of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda decided to fast- track the process to have a single currency by 2012. “One of the symbols of our economic integration is a common currency. The common currency will provide us with a much more solid link,” Mr Mwapachu explained. The taskforce will comprise senior officials from member countries, principally those from the ministries responsible for finance, planning, economic development and EAC affairs. Others will come from key institutions such as the central banks, capital markets authorities, insurance and pensions regulatory agencies and national statistics offices.

Commencement of the East Africa Community

July 1^st, 2010 marks the commencement of the East African Community (EAC) Common Market that was signed November 2009. This will see all the member countries moving into a certain direction as per the terms that were agreed upon on signing.

Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi are the countries that form part of the East African Bloc with a population of 130mn people. Rwanda and Kenya are flexible when it comes to work permits but for the rest of the countries in the bloc, work permits are still required.

This should not be a problem though because anyway even before the bloc, East African Countries have been having a clear policy on Investment. One is free to go and Invest in any country of their choice. For example in Uganda, Kenya is among the top investors in the country as far as investments by countries are concerned.

However, certain issues need to be looked at in the early stages of the common market and resolved as quickly as possible like the air space, regional security, work permits and most importantly the issue of traveling within the member states.