The truth is, Ugandans want change

“The truth is Ugandans want change,” said Francis, who drove me home from my meeting today. Francis is one of the two taxi drivers I’ve driving with during the last 24 hours. The election in Uganda is still two months away, but it’s a topic on everyone’s mind – or at least on Francis’ and John’s.

John, my taxi driver from Entebbe airport to my hotel, was eager to talk to me about the elections – both the upcoming election and what he called the rigged election in 2006. Knowing nothing about the political landscape or election history here, I listen as John vented his frustrations about the rigged results, the pointless presence of election observer mission if they can’t do anything other than write reports. I listen as he told me that western countries should do something, anything – even if it means withdrawing ALL aid from African countries whose leaders who fix elections misuse fund and disregard their people.

“The Nile starts here and runs all the way into Egypt. We have fertile land and a good climate, yet we are starving,” said John.

“Twenty-four years later and we still cannot feed ourselves – look at our roads – we need a government who will do something.

“It’s only when we have and election that things start to happen,” said Francis, adding that any progress end soon after the elections. They want us to think they are doing something for this country, to vote for them.”

Driving through the narrow, dilapidated roads, Francis had a point. Potholes sometimes took up entire lanes forcing us either on the red dirt shoulder with pedestrians on into oncoming traffic. The streets were often barely wide enough to accommodate the two lanes of traffic, especially when cares share the hilly and windy roads with swarms of motorcycles (a startling minority of use helmets – I didn’t see a single helmet on any motorcyclist today) and big trucks. The use of helmets is another failure of the government John tells me. When the police started stopping and ticketing the hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists around the city, they were apparently ordered by the president to leave the motorcyclists alone. With the shear numbers, they are a large potential demographic of voters.

“It’s a sign that something is rotten at the top and we want it to change.”
Francis and John both told me they are worried what could happen if Museveni doesn’t win (like last time, they say) but refuses to give up his power. They’re worried about the violence that might happen. They’re worried that they’re in for another stretch of the same thing. They’re worried that if they do vote, it won’t make a difference. And most of all, they’re worried what will happen if change doesn’t start to happen in Uganda.

Uganda ranks 143 on the most recent human development index, according to 2010 estimates. Uganda’s GDP ranks around 100th in the world according to the World Bank but is also ranked by the World Bank has having the 12th fasted real GDP growth rate in the world and the third fastest on the African continent, after Ethiopia and the Republic of Congo. The per capita GDP is USD 1,200 annually or just over USD 3.30 a day.