Part 2

You know I am always in conflict with fools. Sometimes you wonder, “Why does Museveni quarrel with everybody?” It is because they are fools and I cannot accept fools to be in charge of state affairs. Why don’t you ask if you do not know? Why don’t you ask, for instance, the following question: “How did Britain develop?” Countries which have developed are there! Those who are not sure should ask them how they did it; but instead of this, they go to learn from fools.

In Cabinet, in 1986, members were advocating for rent control, and, indeed, there was even a Rent Control Board. You build your houses and the army sets up a board to fix rent rates for them!! Museveni, with my cows, I take them to the market, and there is a price control board to tell me that I should not sell my bull at UShs 300,000!! I cannot accept! This is my bull! I reared it myself and I will sell it according to how I bargain with the buyer. What role does the government have in this transaction? I, therefore, said, I would not accept the Rent Control Board. 

The Kampala people lamented over being overcharged by the Indians. “Well, these are their houses, you go and build your own houses if you do not want to be overcharged!” I told them. What happened then? People invested in building houses. They built left and right. Houses became so many that the rent rates went down. This is what we call appropriate macro-economic stimuli. That is how the economy has developed.

The third major element is the developing of the human resource through education and health for all. What do we mean by ‘developing the human resource?’ You have these wonderful people, the Ugandans: the Banyankore, Baganda, Langi and Karamajong. They are human beings – but have they developed their potential? For instance, Mr. Kaguta is now 86 years old. That man has been looking after cows since the age of ten, everyday, for seventy-six years now. The man should be a millionaire!

When Mehta’s father came to Uganda, he did not have a single shilling; he came as a coolie, as a ‘mupakasi’ on the railway. The ‘bapakasi’ were the ones who were building the railway. At that time, my grandfather, the father of Kaguta, had a lot of cows. My great grandfather was also still alive. You therefore had two people in this situation: on the one hand, Kaguta’s father and grandfather with capital – they had cows and land. Mehta’s father, on the other hand, comes with nothing. 

Now Kaguta’s son is working for Mehta’s son, who is a millionaire. What happened? Mr. Kaguta, you had land, you had cows, but you are stuck; what is your problem? This fellow who came with nothing is now a billionaire. The problem is that Kaguta is not developed as a human resource. He is Mzee Kaguta, that is where it stops!

In order to modernize, it is not enough to be Kaguta. I am Kaguta, of the Basiita clan, of Kyamukanga Kyamugurwa; but that is not enough. It is too late for Kaguta to go to school, but all his children must go to school and learn so that they can compete with Mehta’s grandchildren. Otherwise, they will remain Kaguta until they perish because people who are backward perish.

You must have heard that there were some people called Red Indians in America; they were the owners of that land. Where are they now? When we say Americans, we do not mean Red Indians. We mean people who came and pushed away the former who were running around naked. They were very courageous in a primitive way – with feathers and painted faces. The gun, which is a product of the head, was used to chase them away. When the human resource is not developed, it will be stuck; but in the end it may mean slavery, or worse, extermination. There is no parking slot for fools in the world. No one is going to say, “This one is a fool, let us allot him his slot until 200 years from now.”

One requirement of modernization, therefore, is education for all. People must all go to school and stay there long enough to learn new skills and new attitudes. And, of course, they need to be healthy. Otherwise, if they are infested with worms, for instance, how will they perform? You cannot educate them sustainably without linking all the above factors.

When you consider a country like Japan, it has no oil. When you look at these Saudis with oil, with their turbans on their heads, compare it with Japan who have neither oil nor minerals, nor agricultural land; and yet they are the second most powerful economy in the world after the United States of America. Why? It is because they developed their human resource through education. That is why they produce all machines for you: radios, computers, televisions, bicycles and cars. That is the product of a developed human resource. What have the Arabs done, to take advantage of liquids in the ground, which were put there by somebody else! Are the Arabs the ones who put the oil in the ground?  

I laugh when I hear that Congo is a rich country. Rich? How? That God put some minerals in the ground. But the people are eating frogs, and they cannot even produce lumonde (sweet potatoes)! Where is the wealth of Congo? The Wazungu just treat us as if we were fools! Rich country means skilled people; if you do not have skilled people, there are no riches.

On 2nd February 2002, I was in Mbarara graduating some children. I was told by the Vice Chancellor that these days, the university admits only 10 per cent of those who qualify to enter the Medical School, owing to limited space. I said, “But this is not a problem; this is an opportunity! If you have children qualify to join the Medical School, all of them should be admitted. That is when these wonderful so-called politicians will wake up because they will have to look for jobs for one million children. They have now been asleep, all the ‘Honourable this’ and ‘Permanent that’. The fourth major point is developing infrastructure – roads, power, water works and telephones. Industry needs all these components of infrastructure.

Once you have produced something, where will you sell it, who will buy it from you? These are the issues Africans do not address. Where is the market? If you go to the AU, they are busy observing protocol; when shall we talk about the market? We should be discussing matters of market. Where shall we sell what we produce?

In 1986, people in Kampala were buying milk from Denmark. They would buy powdered milk, add water from Lake Victoria, and label it ‘Uganda Dairy Corporation’. The only Ugandan component in the milk was the water. I stopped that. I said, “But we have cows!” You know these Europeans treat Africans as if they were children. When a child is disturbing you, you give him something small and say, “Baby, you be playing with this”. This is how they treat Africans.  

The Danish had written a 20 year Dairy Master Plan. In the first year, the African was to be taught about the cow: it has two eyes, two ears, and four legs. In the second year the African was to learn how to milk the cow a little. Within 20 years, the African will be learning all about the cow – meanwhile we should be importing powdered milk from Denmark and adding water. I dismissed their Master Plan and asked them to bring coolers here, so that we could take milk to Kampala. Milk production soared from 200 hundred million litres to seven hundred million litres. Now we have nowhere to sell the milk, because there is so much production.

Secondly, however, the population is also small with only a small proportion staying in town, and the larger per cent in the village. The one who is in the village will not buy from his neighbour, because most likely he has similar products. There is, therefore, no internal market, because more people stay in the rural areas than those who stay in urban areas. There is complementarity with the people in the rural areas. This is different from other countries in Europe, where the majority of the people stay in towns, and the minority in the villages.

When I was in exile I used to teach Economics at the Cooperative College in Moshi, and one of the topics I used to teach was Characteristics of Backwardness. How do you know backwardness? One characteristic of backwardness is to have more people staying in the villages than in the towns. When you come to town, you hear our leaders saying, “You go back to the village”. Go back to the village to do what? There is nothing! Kyagala Mwesibe bbiri. (You need to tighten your belts, work hard). Even if I kwesiba bbiri what will I do if there is nothing to do in the village?

The main problem is that the villager has no market. I, for instance, tighten my belt and work extremely hard. I have produced milk, but there is nobody to buy it! How much harder can I work? There is no market for my milk because of the structure of the society. First of all, more people are in the villages than those who stay in the towns. The ones who stay in the towns are the ones who go to the market to buy. The villagers survive by subsistence, and they buy very little; they produce their own food and buy only textiles, paraffin, soap and salt.

That is why Europeans first of all colonized us and made us their market. That is how they solved the question of market. They colonized India, and got market. When the international situation could not allow the keeping of colonies any more, they formed the European Union, the European market. That European Union market is US$ 8 trillion. The American market is US$ 11 trillion. The whole African market, if it was united, would be half a trillion.

When you try to go and sell something in Rwanda, or Tanzania, they tell you it is another country, a sovereign country. You insist you want to do some business there, but you are barred because it is another country. Africa is rich in Republics, but also rich in poverty. It is rich in Republics, Presidents and Ministers, MPs and Generals, but poor in development. The market is a big problem that must be resolved.

The other crucial element in modernization is trying to integrate our own African market, as we transform our own societies. Ugandans could consume more if they were developed. If they were educated people with skills, they would be drinking more milk, eating more meat, wearing more clothes. As of now, if you go to the peasant homes, at night you hear children fighting over the bed sheet, because two or more children are sharing the same bed and beddings. If our people were using more textiles, building houses – which means we need more steel bars, then the market would be much bigger.

We need three movements on the question of markets. One, we must integrate the African market. Secondly we must transform our societies, to become consumers. Thirdly, we should gain access to the rich European and American markets and others like the Chinese market.

The globe, it is estimated, was created 30 billion years ago. The first human like animals started emerging about 4½ million years ago. They were called hominids, which means animals that were like human beings: the early human beings. It was not until about 10,000 years ago that we started having the civilizations of Babylon, Mesopotamia, etc. They started domesticating crops and animals like 7,000 years ago; that is when the human being started living in a civilized way. What does a civilized way mean? It means living by cooperation among yourselves, rather than confrontation and competition. That is an element of civilization. When you are able to divide jobs – you do this; I will do that – that is part of civilization.

In a rifle, primer is the needle which is hit by the hammer and pierces the bottom of the bullet causing the bullet to explode. It is something which starts a reaction. The firing pin is the primer in the gun. You must master the gun – there are two powders here: detonating powder, and the main powder in the cartridge, which we call propellant. Normally the detonator is more unstable than the propellant; the propellant is normally more stable, but with a yield of gas – when making a bullet we use the physical quality of gases. Gases expand in volume by nature. When they expand that is how they expel the bullet.

It is good that we master the gun. If the commander does not know the gun very well, he cannot insist on the soldiers knowing it well either. That is when he starts giving them lectures to fight hard – but how? What I was telling you was the primer: the firing pin, which causes a chain reaction.

In social evolution terms, the primer is the change in science and technology. When there is change in science and technology that is the primer that causes changes in society. For instance, when early human beings invented fire, there were a lot of changes. Before fire was invented, they were living in trees. They feared to go into caves, as they could not even see what was inside them! They would move around the trees using their arms.

When they invented fire however, they could go into the caves and light fire, they would expel the darkness and warm the interior of the otherwise very damp caves, thereby chasing away snakes. They stopped being tree dwellers and became cave dwellers. The invention of fire was the primer for big change in society. Instead of eating raw food, they started roasting food. This means that their digestive systems changed, so did their physiology. If you no longer have to gnaw, maybe you no longer need strong jaws, so you can afford to be a bit more shaped because you are eating softer food. The change arose out of the invention of fire.

Invention of gunpowder, too, brought changes. We were here: Baganda under Ssabasajja Magulu Nyondo, Banyankore under Rubambansi, (the Banyankole thought he was ruler of the whole world); under Rukirabasajja of Bunyoro. We were here drumming for the kings, not knowing someone would come with a gun! Within 10 years, Uganda was conquered. That is why you find that Yoweri Museveni, son of Kaguta, is speaking English; I have even got a Jewish name ‘Yoweri’. How did it happen? What caused all these changes? Kaguta’s son of the Basiita clan, is now almost a Negro, speaking English!

The primer was the bullet, the gunpowder – it is the one that enabled the Europeans to conquer the foolish Africans. That is why you hear Africans with names like: John, James, Flower; some of the names do not even have meaning! It is because we were conquered by the Europeans, who invented gunpowder, when we did not have it.

That invention of gunpowder caused big changes in the world. It transformed free people into slaves, and transformed ordinary people into masters of others. The primer in all these changes in the social evolution was science and technology. If you are technologically backward, you are likely to be a slave in future. There is no group that has lagged behind in technology and remained free.