After 60+ years of self-rule, it’s a shame we still resort to begging
Six decades after independence, is it fathomable that we should still be asking people with less natural endowments to help us feed, clothe, house and educate our people?
If you have a son, would you like him to grow into a man who begs from the neighbours to feed his family? Hopefully not.
If as an adult you seek material support from friends and even enemies, there could be an explanation for your economic or attitudinal challenges. Maybe you are physically disabled, or you think your stepmother bewitched you. But whatever you attribute your wretchedness to, your son shouldn’t end up in such indignity of begging to feed his children and clothe his wife.
Imagine what our States’ founding parents would say or feel seeing us six decades after independence pathetically begging former colonialists for basics that our natural environment can provide! If our first leaders begged for anything, that can be understood. But today after six decades of determining our destiny!
Let us confine our focus on the original East Africa. Kenya, the “youngest”, first got its own prime minister in 1963. Now 61 years later, it has a president who was born a full three years after independence as a full citizen of a sovereign state. He was never a subject of foreign rulers. His predecessor who reigned a full 10 years before retiring peacefully was two years old at independence.
Tanzania turns 63 in a month. Its president was less than two years at independence, she too didn’t grow up in a country run by foreigners.
At 62, Uganda has had numerous occasions to shape its destiny. It has had between seven-and-a-half and ten Ugandan leaders. The reason why we can’t say exactly how many is that the first was elected and led an impactful government for less than a year before the flag was handed over, then he got removed in some political gymnastics, while another ruled twice, with a decade in between his two terms as soldiers or their appointees ran the show.
To all that experience in how to run or not to run countries, add readily available technology that tells exactly what resources are where under the soil and in what quantities, plus free computing capability in our palms to calculate and provide knowledge and options to plan for our economies.
Is it fathomable then that we should still be asking people with less natural endowments to help us feed, clothe, house and educate our people? How many more PhDs, masters and bachelors do we need to be able to harness what we have, to accord a decent, dignified living for all, or even for half of our people?
Are we like the eaglet from an egg incubated and hatched by a hen that grew up not knowing that it was able to fly high in the sky, and on being lifted and thrown up in the air, just fell to the ground like a stone?
A fortnight ago, Tanzania designed and built a plane which was successfully flown. Many Tanzanians who took note yawned and turned back to their hassles and fun.
In Uganda the other day, the European Union Delegation on their annual retreat used a locally designed and built electric bus to move about for three days. They checked out the plant where the buses are made and marveled at the advancement. News followed of the EU’s interest to explore ways of helping the Ugandan company learn more from European auto makers, but some Ugandans were heard wondering why the EU “doesn’t help us with our more immediate needs instead”.
It may be alright for “an independent sovereign state” to beg for help with its basics like budget support loans to pay workers’ salaries and politicians’ perks. But is it fine to sing our gratitude on the rooftops, bragging how our government is loved more by the donors than our neighbours?
Doesn’t that breed an attitude of beggarliness and a feeling of entitlement to the savings of donor countries which planned carefully and worked hard?
Why should the 90 percent plus of our people who were never ruled by colonialists be taught how to hate independence and prefer dependence at this mature (st)age of our nations?
