BESIGYE AND MUSEVENI NEED A FOOTBALL GAME NOW

Gilbert Arinaitwe 'punishing' Dr.Besigye's car for moving to Kampala

Dear friends,

Now that calm has temporarily returned to Kampala after some body from ‘’above’’ changed his mind to allow Dr.Besigye to go for treatment in Nairobi, let me try to comment on the most beautiful game called football. My team, Chelsea FC, is out of the Champions League but I couldn’t stop smiling this week on Wednesday when I watched Lionel Messi ”teargassing” the Real Madrid defense in the last minutes. It was a real thriller especially his last goal.I had never seen anything like that since Diego Maradona days. It was a beauty which even brought a smile on Jose Mourinho’s face!

Now, the real question on my mind is that ‘can football be used as a weapon to settle political and economic differences in Uganda too as it has happened in Ivory coast before Gbagbo made a mess of things after clearly losing the election?’’. Let us remember that Ivorian, Didier Drogba, did a lot to bring the two opposing sides together some couple of years ago, by organizing a football game that was played in the country’s capital, and it was attended by both Gbagbo and Quatara. Peace came back into the country and both sides agreed to have an election which Quatara won but Gbagbo refused to concede defeat. The rest is history as they say and I even don’t know where Gbagbo is after watching him on TV caught like a chicken thief by the French forces from his presidential bunker.

Kampala riots on 29/04/11

Nonetheless,with the current riots looking not to end soon in Uganda especially with Museveni swearing that Besigye will never be allowed to walk on foot in Kampala city, it is imperative that we all find a way of bringing the two sides together to find a way forward. So, I suggest that we organize a football game at Namboole stadium and invite both of them to attend. I will be happy to referee the game or be the goal keeper if both sides have got no problem with it and as long as they can meet my flight costs from England. Yes, I’m still annoyed with the way the police and army have inhumanly treated Besigye but , I promise, I won’t give a red card to the NRM side if I’m allowed to referee the game.

Back to the Real Madrid Vs Barcelona game in the champions League, It might not have been beautiful but it was sweeter than the contents of the sugar bowl for those who appreciate Messi’s talent. For me, I think the current Barcelona team is the greatest team in the history of football, and the son of a factory worker and a cleaner remains the world’s best player up to now. I don’t care what Alex Ferguston says about Real Madrid’s Ronaldo Christian because whoever watched that game now knows that Messi is way up there.

Nevertheless, I always ask myself why Uganda have not been able to turn their football into an a big business after years of listening to teams such as Villa FC, Express, KCC and others on our radios. In the UK here, teams such as Aston Villa, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur were floated on stock exchanges in 1990s, and they have been realizing considerable profits for the existing shareholders for a long time.Actually, it is fair to say that football became a business model in England officially in the 1990s when I was still doing my O’levels at Kibuli Secondary school. The media industry played and it still does the biggest part in helping the clubs make money out of football.

Football’s profitability is interlocked with that of the media industry here in Europe and it is greatly associated with football celebrities. So the simple business plan I’m giving to Ugandans back home interested in this kind of business, like my OB Kasule Mujib, is that in order for a club to be successful, one needs: to go into partnership with the media, create a celebrity footballer in the country, allow fans to buy shares into the club if the owner hasn’t got enough money and get good coaches. The stadium should also be located in a populated area to target more customers. The only populated area of any size in England where there are no clubs is Cornwall, which has a strong rugby tradition.

The people running football clubs at community level in Uganda should get serious as well. It is so disappointing to hear that the football club we used to watch as kids at Kangulumira is still in the same ‘ill’ shape. Football is a joint business production that requires a lot of clubs for anybody to make money. Instead of people just concentrating on about 6 big clubs we have got in the country right now, they should also find a way of developing the smaller clubs in the rural areas. For instance, The English Premiership was formed by top clubs in 1992 because they wanted a bigger slice of the available revenue, particularly television revenue (which they were able to increase), and a bigger say in how the game was run. All clubs make money regardless of what position they finish under at the end of the season. For instance, Chelsea may finish 2nd this season but there won’t be a bigger difference with Manchester United in terms of TV money shared at the end of the season.

So may be, we should follow this formula too in Uganda and increase the number of clubs involved in the top national league. This system can, in the long run, also help the clubs to identify talent at community or village level. I’m sure there are a lot of boys in villages who are capable of becoming the next ‘Messi if given a chance to develop their talents.

Our government should do everything in its power to help people who intend to invest in football business. I don’t know what the Ministry of Sport and Culture does about this but I have a few suggestions of my own. They could subsidize the costs of stadium construction and maintenance. They could invest money in community led projects especially sports at village level.

Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba

United Kingdom

Uganda Government Should Stop Fighting Facebook,Twitter and other Social Networks

Engineer Mutabazi,chairman of UBC

Dear friends,

I was reluctant to join Facebook and Twitter because i love my privacy so much till when some friends of mine at work convinced me otherwise, and I think I made the right decision. Facebook is hot and all especially if one likes networking. The first few months saw me connecting with my many cousins in USA whom we had never met physically, considering that my grandfather has got more than 16 children.

Facebook has more than 600 million users and was founded by a Harvard graduate, Mark Zuckerberg, with the help of his fellow computer science students. I’m even older than him as he was born in 1984 but he is richer than even the self confessed rich president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, with an estimated wealth of 13.5 billion dollars. I found one of the facebook co-founders, Sean Parker; to have an interesting history in social networking that stretches way back when he was 19 years old at a time he founded the music-sharing site Napster. Sean later became the first facebook president in 2004 but he has since left the company, though he remains a shareholder there.

Both facebook and Twitter started when I had already moved to Britain. Jack Dorsey who started Twitter is also a fine young man who is just 35 years old.My funny analysis of Twitter is that it obviates the need for discussion, analysis and debate. In short it requires little mental activity for people with short attention spans. It makes one think they’re part of something, without ever having to think about what it is they’re part of.

Unlike African leaders who have started fighting social networks, the guys in the west have found facebook and Twitter to be good political tools. Barack Obama got more than 1.5 million users during the US presidential elections and this played a crucial role to his election as president of US. Sarah Pallin and other Republicans have got accounts on both Twitter and facebook.

Here in the UK, the government is driving an IT dominated policy from the NHS, police to community led projects. More than 100 MPs are facebooking; Parliament and 10 Downing Street have channels on YouTube.com, and the Conservative party host ‘webcameron’.

Businesses have found social networks to be a real revelation which has increased things such as direct marketing, consumer profiling and the targeting of services. The data collected on facebook, for instance, is better than that collected through market research surveys or telephone polls.

Social networks are basically dangerous to the very people using them as there is a lot of disclosure of personal information that can be misused by bad people out there. I wish there is a way social networks would minimise personal information disclosure. This is where I have got a problem with facebook because they can easily pass on personal information to a third party without your authority. Their Privacy policy explicitly states that the company is willing to pass on the data posted by users on to third parties. Through selling information and advertisements, facebook was valued at US$15 billion when Microsoft invested $240 million for a 2 per cent share in October 2007.

Yes,I am for freedom of information but do believe in some control of the internet by the administrators[ not the government] to safeguard children. Parents should also take it upon themselves to safeguard their kids against looking at big hairy pink twats on the web (God forbid!). Because i value freedom and information sharing, we started a Google forum called Ugandans At Heart (UAH) but we do not ask members to disclose their true identities to us if they don’t want to – as we don’t want to be responsible for anybody’s security online. What we clearly do is to encourage better debates and interaction, and ask a lot of Ugandans to join us. We believe in ‘Metcalf’s Law’ that states that the utility of a network is equal to the square of the number of users. What it means is that the more users that a network has, the more useful it is. We are not driven by profit motives as we draw no money from anybody. We only ask for online financial support from our members when we need to buy more space on our blog though this has also been a big mile stone to climb as only about 2-3 people contribute whenever there is any financial necessity.

UAH is still mainly Google based and it is for only a few Ugandans that can access the internet. We have not been as lucky as Mark Zuckerberg to get big funders to enable us expand this network into something bigger. We hoped that since few people can access the internet in Uganda, we could start up a radio station, TV or print newspaper to reach out to the biggest part of the population, but our dreams have remained just dreams because nobody is willing to invest in it. Mark and his buddies formed facebook for the benefit of other Harvard students but it later expanded into a bigger network because some rich Americans were willing to put money into it. Among the first facebook investors was a guy named Peter Thiel who also happens to be the founder of PayPal. He was an early investor in Facebook and LinkedIn, another popular social-networking site, and is a board of directors in both companies. Surprisingly, he majored only in philosophy rather than IT at Stanford University unlike Mark Zuckerberg who studied both psychology and computer science. May be this is something to give psychology students something to smile about.

Nonetheless, i dream of a pro-democracy media outlet for Ugandans or Africans in general- something that can replicate more of what Aljazeera is doing in the Middle East and North Africa. Individuals have come to learn that they can be sources of information and this kind of information is more believed by the population than something reported on some state TV or newspaper.

In Uganda, investors neither support young people with brilliant ideas nor do anything they think may not be in line with government interests. Our government has started looking at social networks as a threat to their politics of oppressing the masses. Freedom is something most Ugandans have never experienced since independence such that having an independent media will open their eyes to what real freedom is, not the phony freedom the politicians talk about. FaceBook and other social networks are proving to be a more effective weapon than guns against repressive regimes. Some people have acted a film out of appreciation for facebook called ‘’The Social Network’’. It went on market in 2010. May be one day, we can get someone to act a film or drama and call it ‘Ugandans At Heart’, who knows?

All I know is that we should continue to fight for freedom of information laws in Uganda because they are the key to assuring it that government business is transparent; and they offer citizens a chance to find out what their government is doing. But what the Uganda Communications Commission boss, Godfrey Mutabazi, is doing in regards to ordering the shutdown of facebook and twitter during demonstrations, is so wrong at so many levels. Unfortunately, the same Mutabazi is the boss of Uganda Broadcasting Council (UBC), and he has again shown his muscles this month by warning the media on ‘’ walk-to-work coverage’’. He is the same man who was officially responsible for the closure of four radio stations in 2009 during the Buganda riots.

Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba
UK

HIJAB DOES NOT MEAN OPPRESSION OF WOMEN

Dear friends,

I have come to notice that a lot of people are ignorant about the meaning of the veil or Hijab in Islam especially considering that our neighbours in Britain, the French, have started arresting women dressed in Burqa in public. I don’t wish to turn this into a quranic based debate because even if there was evidence in the Quran that things like polygamy or wearing hijab or Burqa are supported by certain verses, there are people with power in this world who are determined not to listen. They see Islam as walking anachronism, as something against liberty, freedom, and progress. When somebody is seeing Islam in this sense, it leads to ‘islamphobia’. However, for the sake of this debate, I wish to say that there is a body of evidence in the Quran that supports Hijab. For example, in the following Qur’anic verses addressing women’s clothing, it is stated:

And say to the believing women that they should avert their gaze and guard their modesty, and they should not display their adornment except what is apparent thereof, and they should throw their veils over their bosoms, and not display their adornment except to their husbands or fathers. (Holy Qur’an 24:31)

O Prophet, tell your wives and the women of the believers that they should bring some of their cloaks closer/nearer to themselves, that is a minimum [measure] so that they would be recognized as such and hence not molested.(Holy Qur’an 33:59)

Before these verses were revealed, Arab women used to wear something called Khimar(a long headscarf that flowed loosely around their shoulders) but the breasts were a bit exposed. As far as I know, there are no sanctions in the Quran for not covering but obviously this is based on different interpretation of different scholars. There is lack of consensus among the scholars on whether the whole face should be covered or not, but my personal view is that we should encourage and respect those women who at least take the initiative to cover up or dress decently.

When a Muslim woman puts on a hijab, head scarf, or whatever, people tend to look at them in the west as ‘oppressed’, ‘backward’ and ‘uneducated’, something I find so absurd. Actually, what some people don’t know is that historically, the veil or Hijab was the marker of a free woman versus a slave or concubine and set certain social and sexual parameters for the engagement of men with these different social and class based categories of women. But as a result of this ignorance of cultural and religious values in the west, Muslim women have been discriminated against especially in terms of jobs or what we call ‘ being picked upon’ here in the UK. For instance, Muslim girls in schools in France, Turkey and Quebec have been exiled from public schools because of their Hijabs. It even makes it worse when some states such as France, Belgium and Netherlands come out with laws that are targeting the minority of women that are putting on ‘Burqa’ . This has only increased further discrimination of Muslim women in the society; something I believe should not be engineered by any responsible state.

France has banned the Burqa but it looks like they are also not tolerant with ‘Hijab’. For instance, in 1989 three Muslim adolescent girls were denied access to public school because they wore the hijab or headscarf, an act that defies a 1937 French law prohibiting the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in government run schools.

I sometimes wonder why the Catholic Church does not come out to support Muslims on this because the Catholic churches used to require women to wear scarves. Why they abandoned it, I don’t know yet. During the 1900s, the head covering gradually disappeared from many Protestant churches, which dropped their requirement that women cover their heads during the church service. The Roman Catholic Church omitted it in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. But, all the same, it becomes an infringement on individual human rights when we start supporting laws in schools and public life that are targeting women who dress according to their religious norms. Here in the UK, People shave their heads, wear rings through their noses, and private parts and dye their hair, but society is not bothered with them because it’s their right but why would it be necessary to target a woman who decide to cover almost all her body when outside her house?.

Different styles of Hijab at http://www.hijabstyle.co.uk/

In any case, a lot of Muslims are immigrating to the west, and some are individually abandoning their religious and cultural norms for western way of living. This is something that is happening without any law in place necessitating them to change for western life. While it takes two, three, or four generations, it has shown that 99.9% of immigrants fully adapt to the Western lifestyle no matter where they are from. New immigrants settle in their own little towns, continue to speak their own language, and practice their own culture, but history has shown that after a few generations their children, grand children, great-grand children, and great-great-grand children and each following generation finds it easier to fully adapt to the country as they slowly lose the old cultural practices. They become English only speakers and they fully or most fully adapt to western values. You will always find some exceptions to this, but this what history has proven.

I think women should be allowed to put on anything they want as long as they are not bothering anyone. Obviously, factors such as decency, culture and religion should always be put into consideration.

Byebyo ebyange
Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba
UK

How Africa Will Remember Gaddafi When He Goes

Dear friends,

Though I’m still hurt by lack of luck that keeps befalling my team, Chelsea FC, in the champion league as we have been witnessing for the last four seasons, I cannot say the same for Libya leader, Muamar Gaddafi. He brought all this on himself by denying political freedom to his people.

Gaddafi survived sanctions through UN resolutions: 731, 748, and 883 imposed on him in 1992, but I don’t see him surviving this one. There is a lot at stake here and I believe he knows it. People just want him out for good this time. The rebels have started selling their oil but he cannot because of sanctions. He cannot maintain this situation forever and I think it is just a matter of time before his government falls.

Sanctions created more problems for him than even Reagan’s military campaign of 1986, and he (Gaddafi) did a lot to get them lifted. So he knows that he cannot survive for longer despite US withdraw from Libya. NATO and sanctions will cripple him more whether US planes are flying in the air or not. That’s why Obama is not so worried because he knows that in the long run, Gaddafi will fail to hold on to power. His worry may lie elsewhere in the home politics as it seems the President of USA does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation, but Obama may argue that he was fulfilling the UN mandate.

Libya is not having problems winning its war against the rebels because of the less numbers in the army or its small population. If anything; the Libyan army is about 90,000 in size which is ok if well equipped with modern weapons. Remember, some people keep telling us that Yoweri Museveni started his war with 27 men, a figure I always find hard to believe, because FRONASA had built itself to a size of about 5000 soldiers before it was integrated in the UNLA army. So where were the rest of the FRONASA guys when their leader declared war on Obote after the disputed 1980 elections?

That aside,the Benghazi rebels have not quickly made any successful attempts to drive Gaddafi out of power because they are ill-trained, lack modern weapons and NATO is not yet ready to directly fight the ground war for them. Gaddafi too is not going to win this war because his weapons are no better than those of coalition forces. Libya posses a lot of Russian made military equipment that needs repair or servicing and they could not do this properly during the period of sanctions. Actually, Russia made more money in selling arms to Libya more than any other country. It is thought that the Russian deals to Libya amounted to over $19billion between 1970 and 1991. Russians were the one that constructed all military and industrial sites that have recently been destroyed by USA and British air forces, and these sites alone cost Libya more than $2billion to be constructed.

After the sanctions were lifted in 1998, Libya got in touch with Russians to see to it that some repairs were done on their military equipment but Gaddafi did not order a lot of new equipment because he still owed the Russians about £3b. Nevertheless, a joint commission on military and technical cooperation was established in 1999 after a visit to Tripoli by Russian Vice premier,Iliya Klebanov. So i believe some repairs were done but Libya’s equipment cannot easily match those of USA, France, Britain and other countries bombing it now.

So, winning a war in this modern era is all about military technology, better tactics and organization but not necessarily numbers.For instance, about 300 US well armed soldiers can easily destroy Uganda’s army of 50,000 basically because of better weapons and organization. However, Libya’s military technology was much weakened during the period of the sanctions. According to the World Bank, the sanctions cost Libya $18 Billion worth of oil revenue. The UN-imposed asset freeze also placed off-limits several billions of dollars in assets, especially the funds Libya held in dollar denominations.

Africa and Gaddafi

All indications are that Gaddafi is going to lose this war and there are a lot of angry faces among African leaders especially those who have been benefitting from the generosity of Tripoli and those who have been in power for a long time. For example, Gaddafi gave Niger a grant of $2m in March 1996 and his relationship with Niger has been strong since. He donated 200,000 dollars to Mali for development and defense in the same year. He has been allegedly financing presidential campaigns of several African presidents including president Museveni. He has been a rock for most African cultural and Muslim leaders for the last three years.He has been financing a lot of cultural and religious projects including our mosque at Old Kampala. He has invested millions of dollars in more than 19 African countries.

He has been the biggest financier of both OAU/AU meetings and so many people will miss his money when he goes. He donated 2 million dollars to the president of Burkinafaso, Blais campaore, as his contribution to organizing the OAU meeting in the early 1990s. He donated 4.5 million dollars to OAU to boost its treasury in 1999. He financed the OAU summit in Togo in 2000 where he called for a United States of Africa (USA) and African Union (AU).His dream of USA has brought him into serious misunderstandings with leaders such, president Museveni, who are against the idea.

Gaddafi’s journey of building relationship with the African leaders started before even the sanctions were lifted. He sponsored a lot of rebellions in Africa including Museveni’s NRA in Luwero and Mandella’s anti-Apartheid war in South Africa. Both leaders have been in his good books for such a long time. For instance, on 17th October, Museveni put on his shoes and jetted to Libya to show comradeship to Gadaffi. He visited Libya again in autumn of 1998 before Congo’s Kabila Laurent-desire. Let us remember that it was Gaddafi who financed the over 1000 Chad troops during the Congo crisis. Nelson Mandela also joined the Tripoli bandwagon in the same year (1997) before going back again in November. Just like Nigeria’s former president, Abacha, Mandella also awarded Gadaffi with South Africa’s highest medal when Gaddafi visited him in South Africa at some point.

Gaddafi is the brain behind the formation of COMESA. Gaddafi convened a meeting of Sahel and Saharan states in 1998 which was attended by presidents of Niger, Malie, chad and Sudan. This summit resulted into the formation of COMESA (Community of the Sahel and Saharan States).

Africans may not have helped Gadaffi much in the current crisis but they surely played a crucial role to get sanctions lifted off Libya in 1998. In June 1998, all African states at the OAU summit in Burkinafaso announced that they would cease complying with the UN sanctions against Libya. UN later agreed to hold a debate on Libya’s sanctions on March 1998 after pressure from Gadafi’s friends in Africa. In the same month, Libya defied the UN air sanctions by flying100 of its pilgrims to Mecca for Hajji. Because of Africa’s solidarity with Gadaffi, his wish for the Lockerbie dispute with US and Britain gave him a breather as the International criminal court of justice ruled that the trial is held in a third state with a Scottish judge presiding.

Overall, Gaddafi will be remembered by most Africans as a ”great” leader but who denied political freedom to his own people. He supported a lot of revolutions on the continent, but his zeal to turn Libya into a family property, like most African leaders, has let him down. With majority of Libyans on his side, he would have survived this situation regardless of whether the big nations are after his country’s oil or not.But as it so happens with most dictators, he has stepped on a lot of toes over time and people are vying for his blood. As a Muslim, i dont wish for him to be killed but it seems he is ready for it as the rebels close in on the Libya’s capital city.

Sorry, Brother Gaddy! You gonna lose,mate.

Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba

United Kingdom