Heard of man whose wife was security for a loan? Could be us
Sunday November 12 2023
A cartoon illustration. PHOTO | NMG
Some years back, a story circulated of a woman in one of our rural slums who was woken up in the middle of the night and ordered to pack her clothes to start the journey to her new home. On asking what and why, the angry man who had accompanied her husband informed her that she now belonged to him. Her husband confirmed the new development, explaining that he had staked her as security for a loan he took to buy his friends rounds of drinks, and he had failed to pay. So the creditor was now taking her over.
Most decent people who heard the story frowned in disgust and moved on to mind their own business. We didn’t get to hear the intervention, if any, by the authorities. It is even possible that the woman got to prefer her new ‘owner’ if he had more reliable means to feed and clothe her than the drunk who mortgaged her.
One of these bad days, we could similarly wake up to news of an African country being taken over by some company or individual tycoon in a commercial transaction that the citizens knew nothing about. Only last week, a Chinese businessman was laying claim to Uganda National Oil Company, which is wholly government owned and is a key player in the petroleum industry that would otherwise be dominated by only foreign companies. The Chinese insisted he had struck the acquisition deal with an official in the Ministry of Energy.
Read: NGUGI: Get down to work and give us results
Around the same time, it was reported by government officials that Uganda was incurring an annual expenditure of $1.3 billion, most of it borrowed, to look after refugees. In this double-edged transaction, a big chunk of the money goes to intentional destruction of the environment through cutting down trees for firewood. Each one of the over 1.5 million refugees in Uganda officially uses a dollar and a half worth of wood to cook every day.
Needless to add, burning firewood pollutes the air, yet the trees that would have absorbed the carbon are cut down to produce the carbon. The main thing Uganda gets in return is a growing debt burden.
Thus, we incur debts to destroy even our capacity to pay them, and future capacity to feed ourselves. So, we shouldn’t be surprised one day when some foreign lender comes and kicks us out after we fail to pay debts, we weren’t aware that we were party to and sends us to hell-knows-where.
Maybe to the Middle East to work as unpaid house girls and houseboys? Those of us over the age for it might be left behind to become manure in the soil under new ownership. As to why the debts are not recorded against South Sudan, and to a lesser extent DR Congo which send most of the 1.6 million refugees for which the destructive money is being borrowed, is above our lay understanding.
When you consider that Uganda is one of the more stable and predictably well-run countries on the continent with an effective government, also currently having one of the strongest currencies around, you just wonder how many African countries are at an even higher risk of having impatient creditors coming calling to collect their pound of flesh.
The call for the pound of flesh may not be so obvious, but its execution can be very ruthless. Even the unsophisticated man on the street now knows that the many conflicts raging around the world are about money, whatever other causes the belligerents claim to be the justification for the wastage of human lives. The demand notes will not come on paper with a courier asking for a signature in his delivery book; they will be in form of conflicts flaring up by ‘revolutionaries’ citing noble, democratic causes.
Read: BUWEMBO: We aren’t disciplined enough to take on anyone
If the other drunko whose wife was taken away over beer debts had had some valuable asset, the creditor would have taken that instead. But taking the wife most probably accelerated the man’s deterioration and demise.
African countries have immeasurable resources in the form of strategic minerals. The other day South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa was making an impassioned plea to foreign entities to help process the strategic minerals for green energy transition in Africa rather than taking away raw materials to the great loss of Africans. When you consider that it is South Africa with good technology that is now spearheading the plea, you realise how serious the threat to Africa is.
Anyway, when the lenders start calling in the debts, the wives – read some citizens – may choose to cross to their side. We have seen it before when regimes change, ‘loyal’ followers of the loser become staunch supporters of the winner overnight.