Ghetto President Bobi Wine

Kampala votes comedians

Kampala voted resoundingly against President Museveni and for candidates who campaigned on the pro-poor ticket. Even Lord Mayor Elias Lukwago, who despite winning court battles against the government had been blocked from his office City Hall was returned. On top of voting him again, voters also made sure over 80 percent of the councilors at KCCA, legislators, belong to opposition parties like the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and Democratic Party (DP).

In Kampala district, constituencies like Lugaba South, voters threw up comedian Kato Lubwama, who belongs to the Lukwago’s pressure group called SOLIDA. Lubwama, who has also risen from a charcoal seller to a star comedian, campaigned on a mission of working for the poor. He said his first major project would be to push the government to work on a blocked drainage channel that has been leaving Lubaga homes under water during floods. Lukwago’s SOLIDA team focused their campaign on fighting for the poor and trounced ruling party candidates.

Bobi says the problem of worsening poverty and income inequality has a lot to do with this resistance against Museveni’s government among the urban poor.

Asked whether the result of the recently concluded elections was a reflection of the will of the people, Bobi answers with a jibe.

“It is inaccurate to say Kampala voted because many people didn’t vote,” he says, “but for those who voted, it showed their voice.”

Many have focused on the fact that Ugandans wanted change and less on what is driving that demand for change and who exactly wants it. Economist Lawrence Bategeka also sees a strong linkage between income inequality in urban centres and voting patterns in the previous elections.

He says that while in rural areas, people are already poor and not informed, in urban areas, people are more informed and are aware they are not benefiting from the economic growth.  He says the government must plan better for urbanization. He says that government has done well with development strategies that target the poor in the rural areas and needs to also seriously think about the urban poor especially what jobs to get for the youths there.

“If it doesn’t,” he says, “It will end up with a big slum and the challenges we are currently facing.

“The youths in slums might be fewer than those in rural areas but can cause problems because they have capacity, they are right at the centre and can easily be mobilized; we have seen one university paralysing the city.”

Uganda has the second youngest population in the world. In this election alone, some 6.4 million youths qualified to vote and were Museveni’s biggest nightmare. Unemployment affects them most with youth unemployment standing at 83%.

A close look at the election results reveals that the people in most need of change of change of government are poor and mid-income earners dwelling in urban centres.

And their demand for change has largely to do with Uganda’s increasingly widening gap between the rich and the poor, observers say.

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) shows that the Gini coefficient, which is the measure of income inequality, is highest in urban centres. The higher the Gini coefficient, the worse the income disparity is. The only upcountry area with a high Gini coefficient is north east Uganda.

Overall income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient stood at 32% in 1990, 43% in 2010, and 48% in 2012. It dropped to 40% in 2013. When the last survey was carried out in 2013, the massive evictions and operations in the capital had not taken place. Muhumuza says the evictions pushed so many into poverty and future surveys will show an even bigger gap between the rich and the poor in Kampala.

But the statistics also reveal another startling fact, especially in Kampala.

The gap between the rich and poor in Uganda is not the worst in the region. In 2013, Uganda Gini-coeffecient was better than Kenya, Rwanda and South Sudan. Only Tanzania, which pursues aggressive wealth-spreading policies, had a smaller the smallest Gini-coefficient.

But in Uganda, the survey found, there has been considerable reduction in real income per person from Shs627, 000 in the 2009/10 Financial Year to Shs489, 000 in 2012/13. The problem could, therefore, be more about increasing widespread poverty among the urban poor.

Up to 19.7% of Ugandans are officially categorised as poor, corresponding to nearly 6.7 million persons. The incidence of poverty remains higher in rural areas than in urban areas with the rural areas poor being 22.8% of the population compared to only 9.3 percent in the urban areas. “Inequality was largely driven by urban areas,” the survey noted.

Elitist policies bite

Economist Fred Muhumuza told The Independent that the high income inequality in urban areas is mainly due to the cost of living, which tends to be higher there.

“If you don’t have what to do in an urban centre,” he said, “you are completely poor, which is not the case in rural, where people sleep in free houses, do not buy food.”

He agreed with Bobi Wine that the gap between the rich and the poor is getting worse in urban centres because the government has not provided well for the urban dwellers.  “Urban dwellers are the ones feeling the pinch,” he said, “they are more aggrieved and the opportunities for them here are less yielding.”  He said Kampala has become an elitist city, where hawkers hounded off the streets because the rich see them as a lot that dirties the city and makes driving around stressful. This ill-treatment of the poor who are the majority has major bearings on the politics.

To tackle income inequality, Bategeka says, the government needs a comprehensive development framework that puts people’s participation in the economic growth process at the centre.

“People must be viewed as agents of economic growth and transformation and not passive recipients of social services and handouts,” he says.  Critics say that while President Museveni has introduced several poverty eradication programmes with one hand, the other has tended to push policies that do not favour the poor.

Although in 2005, Museveni had proposed a national budget under the theme of “Pro-poor, pro-production and pro-exports” by the 2014/2015 budget he was removing tax exemptions in the agriculture sector. Hoes, seeds, fertiliser, pesticides, machinery, and cereals that are grown and milled in Uganda, started attracting VAT.  Taxes on kerosene, fuel, and sugar went up. These hit small peasant farmers hard and came to haunt Museveni when they begged him for hoes.

But Bategaka says the government should not fear taking a tough line.

“Ordinary Ugandans must work and contribute to the tax revenue purse if the government is to provide them services,” he says, “that are the only way the government can raise sufficient resources necessary for service delivery.”

The problem, he says, leaders fear to push such policies because as Kampala has shown, they are politically expensive. Part of the problem is that some policies tend to entrench income inequality. But Bategeka says that this only in the short term, especially when there is proper planning.

Meanwhile, after sensing trouble when the campaigning started, KCCA iron lady Jennifer Musisi and her enforcement officers were asked to take a holiday. Vegetable markets, use-shoe stalls, and makeshift boutiques sprung up everywhere as vendors were left free to spread their wares on streets which were not cleaned and taxes uncollected.

After the elections, President Museveni spoke out against Musisi firm-handedness. He said she needed to involve people more in her decisions. It was lofty politicking.

Musisi’s enforcers are back on the streets. They are not hustling the vendors yet but they eventually will – when traders of the Kampala City Traders Association (KACITA) whose shops are now inaccessible refuse to pay taxes.

Bategeka defends Musisi. He sees these evictions as part of cost of development.  But Muhumuza says development is for the people.

“Government should always try to mitigate that cost of development by planning and relocating people instead of evicting them.”  To survive policially among the urban poor, President Museveni must walk somewhere between these two lines.