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Why it was easy to ban airtime cards yet kaveera and boda-bodas won’t get sorted
Author, Benjamin Rukwengye. PHOTO/FILE.
What you need to know:
- Kaveera, despite its disastrous environmental impact – including contributing to the occasional flooding – is not a direct threat to the throne.
In 2018, the government announced an abrupt ban on airtime scratch cards. They had been a fixture in the telecom industry from its nascent stage in the mid-90s. Interestingly, the government was unconvincing in its argument to support the ban. Apparently, the cards were linked to cybercrime, and banning them would make it easy to nail criminals who were purchasing airtime and sim cards.
Members of Parliament and the public opposed the move, and the government backtracked for a bit, but the ban was eventually enforced. Now, everybody buys airtime electronically. Telecom companies don’t have to spend on printing and distribution fees. The taxpayer doesn’t have to pay for cleaning, collection, and disposal of the cards.
There are two reasons why that ban was successful. The first is self-interest. The ban came on the heels of the heinous kidnapping and gruesome murder of Susan Magara, and several public assassinations of prominent leaders. Ergo, the government was interested in the implementation of the ban because it would be a major step in bringing to a halt a vice that had the realistic potential to consume the high and mighty. No amount of protestation was going to stop the wheels from turning, especially on an issue that posed a direct threat to those in power.
The second is that telecom companies are foreign-owned entities whose shareholders are not Ugandan voters, politicians, or members of the ruling/business elite – who are usually culpable for policy implementation failures. Foreign companies on the other hand have to play by the book – when they aren’t bribing politicians and powerbrokers – or they will be tossed around and, in some cases, their executives shown the exit, unceremoniously.
The long and short of this is that there are two key reasons why things fail around here – and none of those is a shortage of competence. When things fail in Uganda, it is either because there is no direct threat to the power centre or one or two of the three groups – voters, politicians, and friends/relatives of that power centre – are interested in an alternative. After all, it serves their interest.
I would like to use the example of the heist that is the digital number plates deal but let us save it for when it inevitably becomes the scandal that it waiting to be. Instead, let us pick from two classic examples out of the myriad. In 2009, the government announced a ban on the importation and use of kaveera (plastic bags). That ban got extended because one group after another always found an excuse for why the ban couldn’t work. Today there is more kaveera on the market than there was when the ban was announced about 14 years ago. You would have to go back to the reasons advanced above, to understand why that ban hasn’t been effect. Kaveera, despite its disastrous environmental impact – including contributing to the occasional flooding – is not a direct threat to the throne. But also, those with interests in the business have enough to pay off whoever matters to ignore the noise of climate change and environmental activists.
In case the kaveera issue isn’t serious enough to illustrate the point, let us try something that poses an immediate existential threat. Boda bodas. According to the 2022 Police Crime Report, four people die in boda boda accidents every day. Those who get (permanently) injured are innumerable. But also, that boda bodas were involved in 43 percent of all the reported road accidents. We can only expect that that number will have gone higher when the next report is released because nothing – except for the increase in impunity and the number of boda bodas – has changed since the last report.
When have boda bodas received any attention? Only as scapegoats for lapses in high-profile crime prevention and not for the road safety hazards that they so obviously are for millions of ordinary Ugandans who have no recourse because of a nonexistent public transport system. They aren’t the primary means of transport for those who make and enforce laws, they are a strong voting, (counter) mobilisation, and spying apparatus though – so their evident excesses can be ignored even if they result in daily deaths. They are also owned, their thousands, by politicians and very connected business types.
Benjamin Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds. @Rukwengye
