A few acres of Rwanda’s land and Uganda’s airline

The September 2 Sunday Monitor published a flashback on the 6th Parliament debate querying the 1990s sale of Uganda Airlines; and, on September 9, a story on the recent Rwanda/Uganda border demarcation protests.

The two stories are not connected at all, except that one of the actors in the airline shenanigans also features in the 2018 border dispute.

From Parliament’s records, there were two companies; Caleb International and Efforte owned by Gen Salim Saleh, and a third company, minister Sam Kutesa’s Global Airlinks. When Uganda Airlines was dying, Works, Transport and Communication minister Kirunda Kivejinja appointed the managing director of Caleb International to head Uganda Airlines.

Then Saleh’s Efforte took control of in-flight catering services at Entebbe airport. Later, the same Efforte, in partnership with Sam Kutesa’s Global Airlinks, took over the airline’s ground handling operations.

To complete the surgery, minister Kivejinja sold all Uganda Airlines’ routes.

If I recall, many watchers at the time called it ‘stripping,’ ‘plunder’, and so on.

To keep Uganda Airlines flying – and, I assume, paying the caterers and handlers – a pump-and-siphon arrangement was extracting Shs33 million from the taxpayer every day.

If he dared, Mr Manzi Tumubweine, the then minister for Privatisation, could have stopped this cunning financial engineering. He did not dare. The vampire state was already working.

Now, three of the four implicated NRM big men are even bigger. But the fourth man, Mr Tumubweine, has a rather unusual problem.

Recently, Tumubweine woke up in the morning – or returned home in the evening – to find part of his land in Rwanda. No landslide, no spectacular geological shift, but a new arrangement of ordinary cast concrete border pillars. He was not amused.

Several other Ugandans were equally alarmed to find all or part of their land in Rwanda. Some Rwandans also found their property partly or completely in Uganda.

The mapping surveyors were a Ugandan/Rwandan joint team. The exercise is funded by the African Union.
So, what do the ‘victims’ do?

Well, I suppose one could parrot all those idealistic pan-regional and pan-African speeches and wonder where the problem was. Rwandans or Ugandans; you are still East Africans and Africans. Has anyone eaten your bits of land or stopped you from growing your cabbages and selling them any side of the border?

But I also see some comic possibilities. Tumubweine et al can build a second mansion or hut on their divided plots, with one house on either side of the border. If graduated tax was ever reinstated, you scamper to your other house when Uganda’s tax-collectors come, and you run back when Rwanda’s collectors are sighted.

You can even conceivably vote in both lands. And if one day a mischievous administration digs up the files of old vampire tales, you can settle permanently on the less troublesome side of the border.

Then you can even bark and taunt your pursuers: “You used to call us unpatriotic marauders from a foreign land. Just dare cross that border, and your days on this planet will rapidly run out.”

According to the Sunday Monitor report, the colonial border pillars were demolished by people who thought they contained mercury and other valuable minerals!

Suddenly, the vandalism of petty mineral speculators, empty pan-East/Africanism and the interests of vampire state operators appear linked in one comic frame.

Instead of joining petitioners seeking compensation for the border-related personal ‘losses’, Mr Tumubweine, who did not halt the airline national losses, should lead them to celebrate their new greyish dual status.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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