The most maligned person in Uganda #MustRead

I think the most maligned human being in this country is the working class man (I will call him Paul). For the sake of clarity, I hope the definition of ‘middle-class’ is not myopically limited to the remarkably annoying Ugandan understanding of it, i.e., ‘corporate’. Also, our ‘middle class’ isn’t even comfortable enough to think about the future and thus can barely be described as such. I shall, therefore, merge the working class and the middle class and call it the ‘working class man’ (not very innovative).

There is nothing Paul can do that will please the world even though he is the glue that holds the economy of a country together. Yes, Paul is that somber-faced individual you see queued up in unrelenting traffic every morning and evening in the taxis, on the boda-bodas, second-hand Japanese vehicles, and what-not. He is the wholesale trader in Kikuubo and the malls, the banker that counts your money and approves your loans, the doctor that saves your lives in emergencies, the engineer that grades your village roads (well, the Chinese took over in the city and highways). Paul is the factory worker at the Coca-Cola plant in Namanve working the production line, the driver at Uganda Cancer Institute, putting in his honest eight hours daily, five days a week. Paul is the tired-to-the-bone nurse who, on the way home, buys the produce harvested by your grandmother back in Kiboga at exorbitant prices from Kalerwe Market.

For all his faults, Paul is indispensable. Economics and the set-up of society have made it so (try Christmas in Ibanda without Paul, the son from Kampala).
History, local and global politics have placed so many expectations and burdens on Paul’s shoulders, but he stays sturdy and gracefully embraces his perilous place in society. Paul is the cushion between the two ends of the societal spectrum, the extremely poor and the abundantly rich. On the left side of the spectrum, he soaks up and acts as a shock absorber for all the agitations and failure to carry their weight in the effort to move the country forward. On the right, for all the taxes that the super-rich collude not to pay, Paul bridges the gap through forced increased taxes, direct and indirect. Paul cannot catch a breath. The taxes are solely out to take Paul’s hard earned money because it is impossible to organize the informal sector.

The common thieves are out to get his laptop full of reports and excel spreadsheets while the gun and iron bar-wielding thugs wait at his gate or in the wee hours of the morning to pounce as he sleeps. The relatives back home don’t understand why he will not send money for a nephew’s school fees. The wife calls at lunch hour to remind him of the electricity bill, but his phone fell as he rushed to the office and the screen blacked out. It is imperative that he replaces it or he will not be able to communicate with clients. His 12-year old son, Aaron, does not understand why his friend Brandon comes to school in a big car while he has to use Ssalongo, the boda-boda man.
And yet a series of social commentaries in national dailies and social network platforms incessantly harangue him for faults that are usually not of his making. Society lambasts him for buying a car before building a house yet they do not provide alternatives as regards feasible transport systems to and from work. He is criticized for being aloof and not voting in elections, and yet they don’t go deep to understand why he would instead go and open his hardware shop and make some money that day instead of waiting in the sun to legitimize fraud.

The same people that criticize his aloofness don’t realize how much he sacrifices for the few amenities we see around, like the few paved roads around town. Paul, the trader in Kikuubo, pays insane taxes to the city council to keep his shop open, which taxes are used to clean up the city that every one of us litters as we please but we are the first to call them unpatriotic for not voting. The accountant in KPMG religiously remits (it is not even up to him. It is automatically deducted) his monthly PAYE which money is used by police to buy tear gas and monster trucks to ‘keep calm’ in the country even though innocents continue to die from the most gruesome of murders. Yet when he decides to spend a little of what he has earned at his favorite watering hole, the social commentators come out in droves to castigate his spending habits. All he wants is to ease his sorrows with a beer, a shot of whiskey or a vacation trip, but he gets stares for ‘over-spending’.

No life gets analyzed more than that of Paul, the Ugandan ‘working class man’. But maybe, just maybe, we should try to walk a meter in his shoes before we judge him. Perhaps, our perception of him will change. Perhaps, we shall learn to refrain from the harsh criticism and instead advise where deemed fit in a manner that portrays an understanding of the circumstances that inform his actions.

But all the shit above aside, I am consoled by the fact that Museveni's public holiday (liberatiy day) "26th January" is tomorrow.

I wish you another merry Christmas in advance.