He does not fit into this league of hitherto thriving businesspersons but now where their businesses once stood, are ruins. Bitature, they would say, is simply a privileged dealer at best and does not deserve any pity for his ongoing trials and tribulations. With a trial for personal liability sanctioned by the High Court recently, the end of the Bitature “empire” looks nigh.
While I do not disagree with the characterisation, it is my position that bwana Bitature deserves our sympathies. Seen through a proper context – of a national condition for the last 35 years, Bitature is a victim of this extractive environment. But for his closeness to this system, he is guilty of a great deal of naivety, but mostly, a choiceless victim.
There is an even bigger question: Why has Museveni’s government produced masquerades and middlemen and not really rich natives? For example, why did Museveni’s government find comfort in collapsing and replacing Ssembule Investments with second-hand items or low-quality products from Japan and China? Why collapse Greenland Bank, Crane Bank, Teefe, NBC – without minutes – and replace them with foreign exploiters?
It is my contention, therefore, that Patrick Bitature is the latest in a long list of victims of Museveni’s insecurities and ideological meekness: This has been dangerous, not just to perceived enemies but even folks considered his friends and associates. Unbeknownst to them, clanmates, friends, and family were sold a raw deal.
Because beyond the lucrative tenders, jobs, printed money, and bailouts in bad times, Museveni associates have no businesses indispensable after Museveni is out of office – which will actually render them easier to uproot.
LIE OF FREE MARKETS
All governments protect their businesspersons. Even when the goods and services they provide are poor, they are given a chance to grow.
The United States is rabidly protecting Apple and its car manufacturers from superior and cheaper products from China, and Germany. Kenya is endlessly protecting its track owners from SGR; and protecting its maize farmers from Ugandan maize. There are no foreign-owned banks in Ethiopia; all bankers are local.
While we tend to blame Structural Adjustment Programmes for the ruins of African economies — and I am proudly guilty of this — some African governments’ embrace of these policies, especially Uganda, was so rabid and inexplicable.
In his book on the implementation of these policies at Makerere University, Scholars in the Marketplace, Mahmood Mamdani has noted that even when World Bank and the International Monetary Fund started tracking backwards, embarrassed of the ruins, Museveni and co. simply scaled up.
Consider that elsewhere, some governments in East Asia, and Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopia on the African continent actually rejected these policies. Museveni was so bought in – and remains bought it – that he even signed and is still signing monopoly contracts with foreign businesses. (Consider MTN and Airtel have monopoly contracts for data and airtime, and more recently, tried with Pinetti on coffee).
See, since free markets were a colonial imposition and many governments acquiesced to this western tyranny, many governments also managed to find ways of supporting and privileging their own to compete in this so-called free market space. Ethiopia delayed the rollout. Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, Nigeria have done well as all have thriving locally-owned banks, telecom companies.
In Uganda, everyone is not only welcome, but also foreign businesses are endlessly supported to outcompete local businesses. Consider the so-called tax breaks available to foreign businesses, or no-tax regimes for things classified as “agricultural equipment,” which effectively killed local agricultural equipment manufacturers.
IF BITATURE LIVED UNDER A DIFFERENT REGIME
For many Ugandans, beyond Simba Telecom, Sky Hotel and Electromaxx, not much is known about Bitature’s Simba Properties or Simba Group. And in all fairness, neither of these things can be argued to create real wealth in the true Adam Smithian sense of wealth creation.
Simba Telecom is a dealership, just as is Electromaxx. All of these eats the crumbs off the ruins of structural adjustment. They don’t dominate the sectors in which they operate. Despite the smallness of his enterprises, Bitature showed a great deal of promise and ingenuity. And the gods seemed aligned: Unlike Ssembuya or Kiggundu, he comes from the same villages as the men in power.
If they were afraid of Baganda businessmen becoming too big to control, one would have expected them to grow their own. His street smartness, and dandy look are core attributes of capitalist investors under this age of neoliberalism. He seemed to have mastered the game.
It is my contention that under an ideologically empowered regime, Bitature would not simply own a shop selling phones, but ‘Simba Telecom’ would be an actual telecommunication company selling airtime and data services. Bitature would not be dealing in generators called Electromaxx, but the main man behind the defunct Uganda Electricity Board (UEB).
Instead, Museveni is busy signing monopoly agreements with foreigners and helping kindred to printed paper, and dealerships! Absolute ideological bankruptcy. Look, if Greenland Bank, Crane Bank, or Housing Finance were thriving and dominated the banking sector in the country, there would be no reason for Bitature to fly to South Africa for loans.
To this end, I am sympathetic to brother Bitature. He is a victim of the arrogant bankruptcy of his friends. Sadly, in failing to harness his street smartness, they have instead exposed it, and is likely to go down in history as a fraudster.
The point I am making is that the badness of an ideologically bankrupt government is indiscriminate, it eats even those closest to it – including family and clanmates.
yusufkajura@gmail.com
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University
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