Schopf: 58 years of navigating Uganda’s political turbulence to become citizen

On February 3, after living in Uganda for 58 years, 86-year-old Rolland Schopf, a German national, became a citizen of Uganda.

Schopf spent his earlier years working as a mechanical engineer around this country but is now a businessman dealing in German machinery and tools under his company, Stahlco. This is the epic story of how he came, what he saw and how he conquered the country’s troubled political environment and survived.

Mr Schopf arrived in Uganda on a warm February afternoon by car. He drove from Germany to Jinja District, all alone in a car; an American Jeep. He was 28 years of age. He had signed a one-year contract with the Madhvani family to come and set up industrial machines at Kakira in Jinja, after which he’d go back home where he owned a fuel station and metal workshop. Fifty-eight years later, Mr Schopf is still here.

The one-year contract metamorphosed into a half-century romantic relationship between man and country. But first things first: 

The intercontinental road trip
In October 1964, armed with a map, a compass, a toolbox, a large water container and as many tanks of diesel and engine oil as he could fit in the car, Schopf set off for Uganda. The first leg of the journey would be a 2,300km journey from Frankfurt, Germany, to Piraeus harbour, Athens, Greece.

He would arrive in Piraeus harbour some two weeks after departure and board a ship for a three-day journey to Alexandria, Egypt. From Egypt, he drove southwards towards Uganda. Alone. 
Schopf’s car was a metallic blue American Jeep. Young Schopf had personally made a few modifications to the car and fitted it with a Mercedes Benz diesel engine. He had been through technical school and engineering school and he had a fierce passion for machinery. So to him, modifying a car was akin to a chef sharpening a knife.

Having arrived in Egypt from Greece, Schopf started on a 6,000km journey from Alexandria to Jinja. It was a pendulum that swung from one extreme to another.

From desert storms in Egypt to civil wars in Eritrea. From being arrested and jailed by a militia, to running into Ethiopian primitive tribes that ran away from him thinking he had evil powers, Schopf went through it all.

He tells of how he once had to spend a day digging a road through the desert in Egypt and how he had to drive through a bush for a distance that lasted him four weeks, somewhere between Addis Ababa and northern Kenya.

“One time while driving through Sudan, I ran out of fuel. I was nowhere near a town so I went around the villages buying paraffin in bottles; as much as I could find. I mixed the paraffin with engine oil to create some sort of diesel and I was lucky to travel on that fuel until I reached a town big enough to have a fuel station,” Schopf reminisces.

In northern Kenya, Schopf was arrested by the district commissioner (DC). His crime: he didn’t have a permit to tour the Turkana province. That was the law at the time. Schopf told the commissioner that he was travelling through and didn’t know that he needed a permit.

“I showed him a visa allowing me to be in Kenya, but he still wasn’t willing to let me go. As a punishment, he took me to the regional hospital and told me to fix the hospital’s only power generator that had broken down a few months ago,” Schopf retells the story.

“I spent two days on it and finally managed to fix it and that’s how I earned my freedom.”

In February 1965, after five months of driving and more than 12,000km of distance, Schopf finally made it to Uganda.

Working at Kakira
Upon arrival, Schopf had some weeks to spare before the commencement of his contract at Kakira. So he decided to spend some time driving through the country, visiting parks and getting to know the country he would be spending a whole year in.

“The rivers and the lakes were pristine,” he says. “The country was covered in beautiful forests everywhere. When one drove, one passed through avenues of trees for miles on end. But most of all, the weather was amazing and I fell in love immediately.”

When the trip around the country ended after three weeks, Schopf settled at Kakira. His job was setting up and running a steel factory for the Madhvani family. The work went on smoothly until May 1966 when then prime minister Milton Obote attacked the Lubiri, or the Kabaka’s palace in Mengo, and set in motion political instability that wouldn’t end until the mid-1980s. But Schopf lived through it all and survived.

“The day Obote attacked the king’s palace I was in Hoima,” he says. “I had gone there to do repairs of the sugarcane press in the factory there. I was to return to Jinja after only a few days but that never happened. Obote’s attack on the king’s palace had destabilised the peace in the country and I got stuck in Hoima for five weeks.” 

Uganda as a developed country
Soon after he returned to Jinja from Hoima, his contract ended. However, Schopf never returned to Germany like he had originally planned.

“Living here was quite something,” he says. “Uganda was somehow a developed country at the time. There were more than six hundred working factories in Uganda. There were busy industrial parks in Jinja, Mbale, Kampala, Tororo, and Kasese. It was a vibrant economy! In comparison, Kenya was a mere agricultural economy. They came here for all their shopping.”

Instead of going back home, Schopf took up other contracts of setting up and running two wolfram mines in the Kigezi area. He ended up loving Kigezi even more because of its even cooler weather and ended up staying there between 1966 and 1970. 

The troublesome 70s under Amin
“On the morning that we woke up and found that Idi Amin Dada had taken power sometime in January 1972,” Schopf narrates, “Uganda was in complete excitement. People drove around hooting and showing all manner of joy. All across Kampala, there was cerebration.”
Indians, especially, were very happy that Obote was out of office. A few years back, president Obote had signed what was called the Common Man’s Charter. He had placed 51 percent of all the big companies in the hands of indigenous Ugandans. These were companies that had been built by foreigners, mostly Indians.

“Resentment against Obote was widespread. By 1972, investors were being cautious. They feared that they’d lose their investments through the new arrangement. Therefore, when Obote was overthrown, very many people welcomed the change; Indians and Ugandans a like.

“However, there was one man who was not cerebrating with the rest. He had a bad feeling about this. His name was Godfrey Lukongwa Binaisa. He was my landlord at the time, and we had since become personal friends. He told me, ‘I know Amin.’ (Binaisa was the Attorney General at the time). ‘This isn’t going to go well. He will not manage to run this country’. Having said that, he left for exile in London.”

And indeed a few months later, Amin proved Binaisa right. He collapsed the booming economy by sending all the Asians out of the country. All the other foreigners didn’t wait to be told to leave. The Jews were the first to leave. There was a big Jewish community in Uganda building roads and running commercial farms. They packed their things, put them in lorries, escorted them with machine guns and left, through Kenya. All other foreigners followed. But Schopf didn’t.

“I was going to leave,” he says. “I had sold my car and packed my things; prepared to leave the country. But then a Muganda friend of mine came knocking at my door. He owned a piece of prime property in Kabalagala [suburb in Kampala] and he desperately wanted me to buy it. Amin’s men were after him for some reason and he knew that if he didn’t sell his property as soon as possible, they’d eventually kill him and take it. He came to me with a very enticing offer but I wasn’t sure it was worth the risk, because you see, Amin’s men were after me too.” 

State Research Bureau
The State Research Bureau arrested Schopf a few times. Once, he was whisked off to State House Entebbe. For most people who found themselves in that situation at the time, this meant the end. But Schopf was fortunate enough to be handled by an intelligent investigator. He was cleared of his “crimes”. Schopf was not involved in anything political, or anything that pissed off the president. He was only building lorry parts at the time of his arrest. He was released soon after.

Having cleared his name and feeling that the risk on his life had diminished substantially, Schopf finally decided to stay in the country. That’s when he bought his friend’s property in Kabalagala and set out to build a steel business. He registered Stahlco Limited in 1974. “Stahl” is German for “steel”.

The importance of technical schools 
Schopf’s company, Stahlco, was the only source of lorry parts in the 1970s. In a short while the company had 600 employees, and built a considerable amount of lorry parts, not without major challenges. 

There were not enough trained people to employ, so Schopf had to train them on the job. There were no technical schools in Uganda where people could learn how to make things, something that seems to have stayed that way till today. 

“Technical schools have always been treated like a stepchild in Uganda. During Obote I, many missionaries like the White Fathers had established technical schools at their missions. Obote out of nowhere made a decree that all these missionaries should shut down these technical schools. He said they were taking advantage of Ugandans and using them for slave labour,” Schopf says. 

And by that decree, the only hope for Uganda’s manufacturing future had been nipped in the bud. Fifty years later, technical schools are still treated like a stepchild. 

Working for minister Museveni
After the 1979 war that dethroned president Amin, Schopf having done work for the government before, was hired to rehabilitate the army workshops. It was during this time that he first met Yoweri Museveni who was at the time the minister of Defence in Binaisa’s government. Schopf directly reported to Museveni.

“I had to make weekly face-to-face reports to him without fail. He was a very intelligent man who understood a lot of things very quickly. We got along very well, and talked freely on many occasions. We became friends. But it was a short-lived friendship, close to one year, because he soon went to the bush,” Schopf remembers.

Meeting Museveni
Schopf met President Museveni again after the latter had taken power in 1986.

“There is a German proverb that says, ‘Gehe nicht zu deinem Furst wenn du nicht gerufen wirst’ meaning, ‘Do not go to the king unless he calls you.’ When Museveni became President, I never tried to meet him. Not that I didn’t wish him well. I just never went to him simply because he was now king,” says Schopf. 

Then one day, the king called. A helicopter was sent to pick him. It landed near his home in Rubaga in Kampala and off went Schopf to meet Uganda’s new President. He had been in Uganda for 21 years and had seen too much political chaos. His hope was that this would mark the end of the chaos. 

The meeting took place in the Hoima State Lodge and went on for the whole day. 
“He told me that, ‘Mr Schopf, small workshops like yours are okay, but big companies should be run by the State.’ At the time Museveni strongly subscribed to the Socialist ideology. He soon gave up on it and subscribed to Capitalism and allowed all sorts of investors to enter the country. It was a good move,” he says. 

Becoming Ugandan
Fast-forward to the present, Schopf at 86, decided to become a citizen of the country that has been his home for 58 years about two years ago. For him, it was all about making things official with Uganda because of his undying love for the country. The longer he stayed, the more interests he amassed that require protecting and he could only do so as a citizen.

“I also wish to die a Ugandan,” he says.

Schopf is still as adventurous as he was when he first drove a car for 12,000km to Uganda in 1965. He rides a large cruiser motorcycle; a beautiful white Honda Shadow, more powerful than your regular saloon car.