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On The Mark:
With Alan Tacca |
Humour of African �donors�
June 06, 2004
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One of the wonderful things about being a chief must be the ease with which one makes people laugh. If, like me, you are a nonentity but your ultimate ambition is to be a famous clown, you have to deliver one-ton jokes. But a big chief only has to crack a half joke � or even a quarter joke � to bring down the entire house. The quarter joke will be quoted everywhere in the media, and the chief will be universally acclaimed as possessing an exceptional sense of humour. As you can see, the ground is not level. A nonentity has to work very seriously at his jokes, and to be extremely alert regarding his audience. Is the audience riveted to him, or is it getting bored? Exactly how many times can he repeat or recycle the same joke before they start pelting him off the stage? So the applause he gets is usually genuine and therefore deserving. On the other hand, a big chief who � in a manner of speaking � draws laughter on a silver platter can be carried away. A kind of laziness may set in. Why make a special endeavour when near-zero effort is sufficient? That is why a serious chief will sometimes hire a professional clown to plan, compose and help him integrate his jokes in the more important stuff that the chief is supposed to be always churning out. The clown would also instruct the chief to desist from repeating a joke that has become stale. Now, Uganda, which has forty, fifty or sixty special presidential advisers, almost certainly has (or at least should have) such a figure in the State House ranks. If we don�t hear anything about the primate, like we don�t hear much about the president�s speechwriters, it is because the president�s speeches and his jokes are supposed to be Kaguta Museveni�s originals. The above notwithstanding, the president takes responsibility for every joke he delivers. This brings me to his current favourite thesis that Africans are the donors to the developed countries not the other way round. I first read about the president presenting this thesis several months ago. Since that time, the president must have repeated the argument several times, including recently in Shanghai, while addressing over 80 ministers and officials from the IMF, World Bank and other development agencies. (See �Museveni lauds donors� The Monitor, May 28.) The president goes about his thesis by comparing the very low prices of unprocessed things like coffee and cotton in producer countries like Uganda with the very high prices of finished items in supermarkets in London or Paris. I immediately took this thesis to be a joke, because the counters to the president�s argument are so obvious. First of all, it is not fair for the president to have bought, hook, line and sinker, the theories and practices of his Western �development partners� (not donors please!), and then turn around and renounce the tough reality that comes with those practices. You have signed to economic liberalisation and free markets; you have agreed to play in the global market where a thousand Goliaths are playing; and you refuse to use the wit of David. Give your �development partners� a good reason why your country should not be crushed. Everybody knows that when a consignment of coffee leaves its Ugandan warehouse, it will pass through the hands of agents, shippers, auctioneers, more shippers, sorters, roasters, grinders, blenders, tasters and packaging experts. Plus distribution and massive advertising. These events are taking place in parts of the globe where no phoney �investors� are openly given state protection to perpetuate near-slave wages in their work forces. They are also taking place where the people who �make machines that make machines� (once upon a time Museveni�s vision for Uganda) are investing in pushing further the frontier of industrial processes while Museveni himself is investing in what looks like life presidency shenanigans. But the West of course also has its tax collectors. If Africans need guns to fight off rebels like Joseph Kony, the West also needs missiles to fight in the Gulf. Where African rulers will spend billions to twist laws and entrench themselves in power, the West also spends billions to maintain its democratic institutions and to finance its public services and infrastructure. These things mean layers of tax. Together with the costs and profits in industrial processing, the difference between the coffee farmer�s half-dollar and so and the supermarket price tag is not a magic number. Moreover, a packet of fairly good finished coffee from a Ugandan factory is not much cheaper than a packet of similar quality, grown in Africa, but processed in Europe. Locally made cloth and clothes can be even more expensive than new imported ones of similar quality and local sugar manufacturers have always protested against cheaper imports. So, why does the president repeat before erudite international audiences an argument that can only be sold to illiterate peasants? But in Shanghai, when he pointed at rich countries and attacked �some people (who) are living a profligate life and even an extravagant life, while others are living in poverty�, it is clear that he wants us to glance at his own backyard and laugh loud and long. He wants us to take these international gatherings for the circuses they are. So maybe, just like the Wapakhabulos and Ayumes (now departed) could not successfully advise the president on more weighty matters, the humorists and speechwriters in State House just dare not tell him that the joke about African �donors� has run its course. |
� 2004 The Monitor Publications
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