Book Description

MESSAGE FROM THE NATIONAL CHAIRMAN Time for the Qualitative Leap Forward I have always recapitulated the history of Uganda's economy and society according to the phases they have gone through.

This time, I will start with 1962, the year of Uganda's independence from the British after their control of 68 years - starting with 1894 when they imposed a "Protectorate" on our ancestors.

By that time, as I have told you many times, Uganda had been partially annexed to the British capitalist system through the creation of the small enclave economy of the 3Cs and 3Ts; the 3Cs being Coffee, Cotton and Copper and the 3Ts being Tea, Tourism and Tobacco.

This small money economy was covering only 9% of the homesteads; this meant that 91% of the homesteads were still outside the money economy - living by the distorted pre-capitalist mode of production of okukoiera ekidda kyonka (working only for the stomach) mainly and some limited barter trade (Okuchurika). In 1971, the ignorant Idi Amin came in and by the time we removed him in 1979, cotton and copper production had collapsed and so had tea and tourism. Only coffee and tobacco were still limping on.

The whole economy had been informalised and people were only getting products and foreign currency through Magendo (smuggling), Kibaanda (forex black market) and Kusamula (speculation, where you buy something scarce and sell it more expensively). It has, therefore, been the task and pleasure of the NRM to take the collapsed money economy of Uganda and the desperate society, through the following five phases:.

Courses