Of course, UEDCL will thrive under the next governments

A senior business reporter in Kampala set the Umeme-UEDCL puzzle for me like this: the truth is that Umeme were thieves.

Thanks to their benefactor, Yoweri Museveni, they made a killing off Ugandans but ensured a steady and constant power supply.

“It is good Uganda Electricity Distribution Company Ltd (UEDCL) is taking back this service and power prices are going to drop,” my friend continued.

“But do you trust them on efficiency and steady power supply, considering how Museveni’s government has performed elsewhere where when the service provider is publicly owned?” he concluded as we went over some examples: UTL, PostBank, NWSC, KCCA, public schools – all of which are run like stone age institutions.

This is the puzzle that has many Ugandans scratching their heads. While we all love the return of our things that Museveni had sold off or simply given away, we have almost zero confidence that Museveni can run anything efficiently.

If this were true 30 years ago, it is surely worse 40 years on. We ought to begin by appreciating life’s little ironies – or life’s interesting sense of humour: who knew that Museveni would be president for so long and actually even start reclaiming and returning to Ugandans – however expensively – the things that he had handed over to our new colonial companies?

Notice that while the buy-back looks expensive, if we became serious as a country, what Umeme took out or would be taking out in future is simply a hundred times more. The Umeme-Museveni long-stay affair is reminiscent of a story we learned from Joseph Bossa on the repossession of the so-called Indian properties.

Years ago, the late UPC strongman and former Bank of Uganda legal officer told us how they advised Yoweri Museveni not to incinerate records where President Idi Amin had compensated the departing Asians during the 1972 economic war.

Incinerating these records had been Britain’s condition to loan him some small monies. Desperate Museveni had agreed, only for the Bank of Uganda legal team to warn him that he might still be president when the British turn around and laugh at him for lack of evidence that a previous government had fully compensated the departing Indians.

They advised him to simply hide those documents – and they are believed to be still surviving somewhere. Umeme is among the first to be reclaimed from the dangerous ruins of privatisations.

Indeed, if there are any lessons to take from the Umeme takeover, it is that all those things we sold off to private individuals – despite their apparent efficiency – Ugandans have been and continue to be extorted. Umeme has been feeding off Uganda Electricity Board (UEB), but there are more than 135 of these institutions that were sold off or simply ruined. Will Museveni buy them back or reclaim them back?

Uganda Commercial Bank dolled to Stanbic bank; Uganda Telecom ruined for MTN and Celtel. Uganda Coffee Marketing Board (UCMB) ruined for ten foreign players. This list is long and painful. Will this man, reclaim the space of these entities, especially that he is still president?

BEYOND MUSEVENI

While I understand the fears of many nationals that the Umeme takeover – and potential others – will end in absolute painful inefficiency, we ought to look beyond Museveni. On the one hand, nationals have to be given the chance to make mistakes and learn along the way.

This is how the late Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi managed to cultivate a critical mass of professionals that were able to run big money and big institutions. So, nationals ought to be patient and ready some inconveniences. This is what Yoweri Museveni denied Ugandans when he embraced neoliberalism like a man bewitched.

On the other hand, we ought to look to the future beyond this man: inefficiency, selfishness, nepotism and corruption have defined his long reign. But this ought not be seen as a defining feature of nationally owned projects and parastatals.

This is uniquely definitive of Yoweri Museveni. To this end, I am confident that while UEDCL will struggle in the initial period – especially under bwana Museveni – the future is bright.

Yes, under a different more serious regime (more preferably, an autocrat), all these reclaimed things will thrive. Dear reader, the argument that public servants never have the same motivation as workers in the private sector is absolute nonsense. This public worker disenchantment is specific to individual governments – but not a theoretical position.

If this were true, then public institutions across Europe and North America would never be more efficient and entirely trusted more than the private players. In fact, one of the core arguments I advance in my new book, Surrounded, is that a more successful decolonial project ought to be rooted in nationalisation and protectionism of local entrepreneurs.

Free markets doctrines are a lie, a trap to steal from poor African countries. The full title to my book is Surrounded: Democracy, Free Markets and Other Entrapments of New Colonialism. It is available at mahiribooks.com, and at Makerere University Institute of Social Research (MISR).

yusufkajura@gmail.com

The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.