When I wrote about my father about two years ago, I sought to comment on several items, but specifically, the differed dreams of independence – the promise of modernity – and the ruinous staggerings of the 1986 group onwards.
I noted that my father’s story – of retrenchment from Nyanza Textile Industries (Nytil) in the early 1990s – echoes many others across Buganda, Busoga and most parts of Eastern Uganda.
Titled “When the World Bank visited my father,” I stressed that for all these Ugandans that had quickly cosmopolitanised – specifically those that had left tilling the land for labour in factories and the service industry concentrated mostly in Jinja and some parts of Kampala – their story was one of disappointment when the World Bank and IMF insisted on privatising parastatals.
I will say one more time, Ugandans are neither lazy nor unlucky. Not at all. It is not true either that they are lacking in business acumen or entrepreneur skills. But privatisation/ structural adjustment –– whose ruins we are yet to fully appreciate –– visited Uganda riding on the insecurities and inferiority complex of the NRA/NRM, and has turned natives into paupers and beggars, who are now running en masse into slave relations in the Middle East.
Wherever IMF and World Bank found insecure, non-ideologically grounded folks in government – like it happened in Uganda – they ran riot. Remember many countries, especially in North Africa, Ethiopia under Meles Zenawi, and all of Asia refused to implement these clearly selfish and stupid policies.
Confident leaders in other parts of Africa (such as Tanzania, Kenya to a small extent) found ways of remodelling those policies, making sure to create room for native businessfolk and industries. And with change of leaderships, came even more recovery. For Uganda, as their friend, Prof Mahmood Mamdani has noted, these former NRA rebels only recently arrived from the bush simply saw a chance to eat, and wantonly auctioned the country – to this day.
THE PAINS OF RETRENCHMENT
In telling my father’s story, I noted that my old man fell on bad times after the privatisation of Nyanza Textile Industries He was among the ‘retrenched,’ as they euphemised sacking labourers en masse. Like all other retrenched, these bad times affected his immediate and extended family relations – and have continued down the years.
Comrade Hassan Byekwaso Tibamanya, so was my father’s name, before leaving the ruins of Jinja for the countryside after retrenchment, had tried sketching an existence as a seller of cut and peeled sugarcane and, sometimes, boiled maize. But this was a man who, after 22 years in Nytil, had grown to the rank of a senior weaver. Earlier, after a five-year stint with Printpack, he had been trained in industrial paper-manufacture.
Now, he had to learn hustling the street at 50 years of age. It was difficult. Having left the countryside around Lake Kyoga in 1964 – two years after independence – after almost 30 years in urbanised and industrialised Jinja, neither tilling the land nor fishing was attractive anymore.
Amidst the confusion, he determined to soldier on with life in the city. Yes, as the World Bank and IMF were harassing these peasant-led economies – without a single middle-class – to cheaply hand over their resources, industries and service sector to their corporations from the Western world. They destroyed all local dreams.
As Jinja was losing its glow, my father, who had acquired a great deal of sophistication and taste – he was very dandy and chic – also started losing all his flair. From an evening hanging out with co-workers with whom they had worked for the last two decades, he was now spending it alone after a long working day around Jinja town.
It was tough. We started moving houses, ending up in the slummy wetlands of Mafubira, a small town along Jinja-Kamuli road. I will never forget the image of this man returning from his vending routines, hungry and tired, and as soon as he slumped his tired bones on a chair, and leaned backwards, he would be snoring just a few moments later.
There was more pain coming: a year after retrenchment, the Indian- built, then fairly posh Main Street primary school, where three of his children studied, including myself, became unaffordable. If he managed the school fees, buying or repairing uniforms was slow.
I still recall the day, during class assembly, when a teacher called me by the side and ran his finger through a small hole – which was growing – through my pair of shorts and touched my butt and then calmly advised that I tell my parents to stitch it up.
Indeed, for years after retrenchment, in 1996, he moved to the villages of Mukono, closer to Kampala. About that time, he had turned to frying pancakes and vending them on a bike. Then, I had developed some wits, and watched him lose his smile and elegancy, but soldiered on.
My father’s story is true of many retrenched factory workers, folks in the service industry, early urbanites and other cosmopolitans. They could not return to the land – if there was any land to return to – but also didn’t know what to do with lands after decades of a different lifestyle and different ethic in the city.
So, they passed this lethargy, trauma and frustration to their offspring. We are the children of these men and women, and are trying to refashion our lives afresh.
THE HUSTLER SLEEPS
Dear reader, this man, my father, passed away last week. He was 80 years old – and the joke he often told was that he was as old as Yoweri Museveni, but did not want to live too long and become a burden to people’s lives. It is difficult to say with certainty what my old man died from. I have decided to chasten myself with “old age.”
He, too, would agree with me. But a short history of his health locates the beginning of his troubles during the Covid-19 pandemic. Not the flu, but the vaccine. Yes, I am vaccinated myself. Comrade Hassan Byekwaso was very athletically built and spent most of his last 15 years on his bike vending vegetables in a radius of 10km – everyday, to the time of his death. (Even during the month of Ramadhan, which he insisted on never missing despite clear-cut exceptions).
I had never seen this man in hospital except for dental and hearing complications. But months after fully recovering from the Covid-19 flu, following intense publicity, the man went for the vaccine. Yes, I was vaccinated, too. But this man, 77 then, became sicker than had been during the flu.
His coughs became intense and chronic. There was no tuberculosis. More complications then emerged relating to his heart – it had become “musical” as one doctor put it.
A couple of weeks to his passing, he suffered a stroke, which put him in a wheelchair for some days. He then suddenly passed on in his bed. Indeed, at 80, many things are possible – and our Creator knows best. And as we say in the Islamic tradition, Inna Lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un. (Indeed, we belong to Allah, and indeed, to Him, we return).
Dear reader, I tell my father’s story not to simply celebrate his life. We made many memories together. (I also mourn him –– and I am hiding in writing to not feel the depth of the void). But I want to remind ourselves of the frustrations and pains our parents, our generations and successful generations have to contend with.
My father never stopped talking about never being compensated for this wrongful retrenchment. But above that, the IMF and World Bank are still here – sticking to the same old policies – as is their ruinous co-conspirator, Yoweri Museveni. This man, whom we feed with our tax money, is endlessly insulting us as lazy people.
To my old man, we say: Qaddara Allahu wa ma sha’a fa’ala (Allah has decreed and whatever He wills, He does).
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.