Uganda Airlines and NRM games with Uganda

There was Voice of America (VOA), British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC, with Focus on Africa being more ‘trusted’ by some than the Bible), Radio France International (RFI), Deutsche Well (The Voice of Germany), Radio Moscow, Radio (apartheid) South Africa, Voice of Kenya, Radio Tanzania, and Radio Rwanda – with clearest transmission in the region then.

On the same global news item, VOA and BBC would report along the same line, and Radio Moscow would tell you the contradictions. As usual, the apartheid-South African Radio would report along the lines of the masters – then in Washington and Western Europe. 

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The Soweto uprising by school children in 1976 and the subsequent massacres by the Boer police found me just about perfecting the art of understanding global hypocrisy and polity (I was in Nagongera Primary School).

While BBC would always attempt to massage the reporting, VOA was boss. Trust Radio Moscow, they would tell the alternative truth. They outplayed each other. Check the archives at South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) today and you will know how killing African children on African streets by powers sucking Africa through quislings have been in town for a long time, except now an art perfected.

A couple of years later, I went to high school. Joining Makerere University, it got deeper and better with the thirst for these things just building. When former Mozambique leader Samora Machel was killed in an air crash in October 1986, you could tell the crocodile tears of South African foreign minister Pik Botha and their president Pieter W Botha just from listening to SABC.

Possibly bad weather, they claimed, perhaps smiling. Elsewhere, it was almost certain, the African liberator had been assassinated. I was among the student leaders who marched into town from Makerere, demanding that Mr Museveni make a public statement (still puzzled why this delayed then), possibly a manifestation of the foreign policy chess to be played in future.

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Within a year, I had flown Uganda Airlines (the Flying Crane) – by force – out of Africa. Looking back, while Radio Uganda and Uganda Television (UTV), now UBC, were voices for Uganda like VOA, BBC and RFI, Uganda Airlines was the presence on air; at home and abroad – the pride of the country. Kenyans call theirs the ‘pride of Africa’.

To young economists and youth in politics; no nation in the world has developed without a structured railway network. There is no major nation in the world without a national carrier (America boasts several exceptions). British Airways, Air China, Aeroflot (Russian Airlines in English), Air France (Air France-KLM), Ethiopian Airlines, Kenya Airways, Air Tanzania and more. 

Uganda Airlines emerged out of East African Airways when the community split. The national carrier saved my life, yet sadly, I returned from exile in 2005 aboard Kenya Airways. 

What is this killing essential bits which were built by our founding parents for us and your grand-children; Uganda Railways, Uganda Transport Bus Company, Uganda Commercial Bank, and now an attempt to resuscitate Uganda Airlines from its unacceptable collapse takes a foreign profit-driven firm first and then overridden by State House? 

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The mentality that without State House nothing functions in Uganda must stop. Now 36 years on and at a hefty price of Shs100m, an appointment is made two days before the closing date, and someone who had been initially rejected for poor performance and conflict of interest is CEO for the national carrier. 

And for Shs60m a month, she will enjoy while Karamoja starves. If this is not impunity then, what is? Wake up, Ugandans.

The writer, Joseph Ochieno is a pan-Africanist. 

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Twitter: @Ochieno