Evolution and Modernization of Society
2002-02-09

This small booklet, The Movement’s Long Struggle for the Liberation of Uganda, was made out of an address I gave some time back. I was dealing with the sort of subject that you may be interested in; I was talking about the development of human society. How has the human society developed? People do not spend time to know society, and how it developed. They do not know much about this subject – you hear different theories about it.

In Runyankore, which is a very rich language, there are different descriptions for a child as he is growing. If the child is just born, a few days say to two months, the child is called omwereere. Also between the first day and about five months, when the child develops the first tooth, the child will be called ekibumbe, which means a child who has no teeth; naateekwa ahansi – here they do not have one word, they describe. This is used when the child begins to sit by itself. If the child is crawling, when he is beginning to stand, when he is walking, all these stages are described. When he is a young child, he is called omwaana, when he is out of those initial stages. He is omwaana, until the stage of puberty, which we call okushogoya. At puberty, a boy is called omutsigazi, and a girl empangare; when the boy grows into a man he is called omushaija, an old man omugurusi, and, at the senile stage, empwitsi.

Likewise, society undergoes stages of development. You must be able to describe the development of society like the Banyankore learnt how to describe the development of a human being. The problem with African leaders, however, is that they do not seem to know that society goes through stages. That is why they are not able to provide solutions.

MODERNISATION

For today, however, in order not to tire you, I will start with the stage of the mature man (omushaija) – how should he be? I will, therefore, start with the subject of modernization, a mature stage of society. What are the fundamental elements or characteristics of modernization? There are basically six major elements.

Full Employment of Factors of Production

The first one is full employment, or near full employment, of the factors of production – land, labour, capital, and entrepreneurship. We near full employment of the factors of production through industrialization and modernizing services – transport, banks, insurance, hotels, tourism etc. This is the first element. We mean utilization when we talk of employment in this case.

Capitalism describes the factors of production as four. Land in economics does not mean only the udongo; it also means all natural resources – minerals, forests, water, etc. Therefore, when I say land, I am referring to natural resources. Labour refers to the human beings.

Capital means stored value. For instance, if I worked in the past and I bought a bicycle, that bicycle is a capital item, because I use it to do other things. I earned a salary and used it to buy a bicycle; now I am using the bicycle to carry matooke to the market.

Capital can be physical (e.g. bicycle) or cash. If I also keep money in the bank instead of buying a bicycle, and that money is earning interest for me, that is also capital. When it is cash, we call it liquid. You hear people talking of liquidity; when the liquidity is high, that means that you have got a lot of cash.

Income (Y), minus Consumption (C), is equal to Savings (S).
Y – C = S. Ugandans do not know that when you have got income, and you consume a bit of it, what remains is the savings. Savings (S), times the number of years for which you have saved money, e.g. 2001, 2002, 2003, (X), is equal to Investment (I). S x X = I. This is what Ugandans do not seem to know. Consumption in economics means immediate use on yourself, not for production. This includes food, clothing, leisure, etc. When you have got your income, minus what you consume in those various ways, what remains is savings. If you save for a number of years, then you are able to invest.

Capital is past savings which are invested; my past earnings are now in this bicycle. I save my money and I buy a bicycle which is now an investment. It is a capital item as a result of investment. I can now use this bicycle to carry matooke to the market and earn more money. If I use the bicycle in that way, we call it kushubura (doing business) in Runyankore. On the other hand, if I use it to bring milk from the farm for family consumption (kugyemura), it will be an item of consumption.

I was trying to describe for you the major factors in a modern society. When I say full employment of factors of production, it means all these factors should be working and not be idle. If you take the case of Karamoja, for instance, is it fully employed or utilized? If you go to Karamoja you can see that everybody is asleep. The land, the forests, the human beings, and the cows are all asleep! A fully grown and well fed indigenous cow should weigh 250 Kg, but because it has got worms, it is underemployed. Even the dogs are underemployed! Nothing has its full potential taken advantage of.

This is the characteristic of backward countries: the under utilization of the factors of production:– labour, natural resources. People are just sitting at home. For instance, when you meet a Muganda, “Mmhh, Osiibye otya nno? Maamu, Nyooge? …..” The whole day is spent on greeting. Why? It is because time management is not a priority. However, if you are rushing to work, “Jambo” is just adequate as a greeting. Where the whole society is operating at a very low tempo, everything is relaxed. In order to modernize, therefore, you must fully, or near fully, utilize land, labour, capital, and entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship means the ability to detect economic opportunities and take advantage of them. That is one of the problems of backward countries. They have no eyes or ‘spectacles’ to see the available opportunities, let alone take advantage of them. In some of my documents I gave the example of one investment which was made at Katebo landing site. Some time ago, some Whites from Zimbabwe, with a few Ugandans, came and started a ranch of crocodiles. They are being slaughtered; they export both the skins and the meat.

This was a very good example because the crocodiles have been here with you and they have been eating you all these years. No one ever considered, “Can’t we use this crocodile which is eating us?” You hear cries, “The crocodile has taken a child, it has mauled a person.” Until a Muzungu comes and says there is a lot of money in this crocodile. Indeed, you know that handbags, shoes, are made out of the strong crocodile skin! None of our people had seen this opportunity; these Whites from Zimbabwe, therefore, come and make money out of an opportunity which 20 million people of Uganda have not been seeing. Their level of entrepreneurship is very low because of their pre-capitalist culture and low education.

How can you get full employment? You get it through industrialization: the more industries you build, the more people you will be able to employ. Backward agriculture cannot employ many people. How many people do you need to dig half an acre using a hoe? Not many – two or three.

Recently, I launched a programme to build an industrial village – they call it Industrial Park, at Namanve. This Namanve, where Amin used to kill people and dump dead bodies, is now going to be an industrial village. Park means village in this sense. The whole of that area will be a small industrial town. There is 830 hectares of UIA land there. They are going to develop the first 200 hectares, which is about 400 acres. According to the estimates, those 400 acres will have industries that will employ 45,000 people.

This is an area less than a medium sized farm; but a factory will, for instance, occupy only 5 acres, a big one like the one of Coca Cola on the way to Jinja. Therefore, 400 acres, divided by five, is already 80 factories in that small area! And each one will be employing, some up to, 1,000 people. That is why that small village will employ as many people as the people who are in the civil service of the whole of Uganda today.

This explains why there is a problem of employment in the backward countries; because the nature of the activities which we are doing now, such as backward agriculture, cannot give enough jobs. Only industries can give enough jobs.

You get a small countries like Rwanda (which is about 27,000 Sq. Kms.), Burundi (about the same); you can, therefore, say that Rwanda and Burundi are about 50,000 Sq. Kms. They have got a population of 14 million people; and you hear them crying that they are overcrowded! Holland, however, which has got a land area of 40,000 Sq. Km., is smaller than Rwanda and Burundi combined, but with a population of 16 million people.

When you go to Holland, however, you do not even see the people! You find that in the countryside there are no people – there are just farms. The people live in flats and are working in the factories. For instance, if you take NYTIL, when it was fully operational, it would be employing about 2,000 people. In that small space in Holland they are doing high value work – producing computers, textiles, etc. However, in backward agriculture you need big space.

Therefore, when you hear that Rwanda and Burundi are overpopulated, it is not true at all! They are simply underdeveloped, and their human potential underdeveloped. The land output is very low because people are using poor seeds, and no fertilizers; one acre, therefore, instead of yielding 8 tonnes of maize, will yield only 800 Kgs. In order to create full employment, therefore, we must ensure industrialization, and modernization of services.

Widening the Tax Base

The second element, which is a result of the first one, is widening the tax base, so that you can collect taxes, support education, support health, build roads, and pay better salaries to public servants. The more industries you have, the more products they produce, the more tax you collect. If you tax many things you will collect more money than when you tax only two crates of beer.

That is why you hear now that there are two types of countries: donor countries, which collect more tax than they need for themselves; and countries which receive aid because they do not collect enough tax and can only survive on getting donations from other people, as they do not have a wide enough tax base. The more factories you have, the more hotels you have, the more tax you will collect.

That shows you the idiocy of African governments. Idi Amin, for instance, in 1972, chased away the Indians, in what he termed an economic war. “I am engaged in an economic war. I want the Africans to take control of their economy”, Idi Amin says. How will they? Are they not controlling the economy now? According to Amin, Africans were not controlling the economy in spite of the fact that we were exporting sugar, textiles, beef, etc, merely because some of the players were brown-coloured.

Madhvani is here, you should organise a field trip and visit him. Madhvani is an Indian by colour, but he is more African than 2 million Africans combined because he is doing more value for the Africans. By producing sugar, soap and a number of other products he is paying the government of Uganda 45 billion Shillings in taxes. What is the wage bill of UPDF? UShs 120 billion the whole year. Madhvani alone can pay you for five months! Amin’s was a crime that has no comparison. It is a very big crime, because he does not understand. Many African leaders, apparently, have never understood the meaning of an economic measurement known as GDP (Gross Domestic Product). This is a measurement that captures the value of all the production on our territory, whether by our citizens or foreigners.

Not long ago, people did not know how the human body works. A man called Harvey is the one who first discovered blood circulation. He is the one who discovered that that blood moved from the heart, through the lungs, through the arteries and then back through the veins. Leaders like Amin have not discovered the blood circulation of the economy. Their Excellencies, Commander in Chief, do not know the “blood circulation” of economy – total idiocy. A fool in charge of affairs. This is the tragedy of Africa.

Take the example of Museveni: I say I am a cattle keeper; my neighbours bring cows with a lot of potential for milking; they put them in my farm, then I chase them! I should not chase the cows that give milk; I should milk them for my children! When the Indian comes here, get from him ‘milk’ for your children! The Indian’s ‘cow’ gives much more milk than our weak African ‘cows’, which are not yet able.

When Madhvani’s father came to turn this swamp here into sugar cane, were the Basoga not here? “Munaife, munaife”, but they could not see this opportunity. The Indian Mehta comes and says, “These people are really foolish; not one of them can think of growing sugarcane here!” And he does it for you. After he has done it, you chase him away! What sort of people are these leaders! And people hailed Amin and his economic war; in no time, the whole thing was zero. When we came into government in 1986, there was no sugar, no soap in the shops. Maybe some of you were children and you do not know. Without ensuring industrialization and modernization, you cannot widen the tax base.

BAT pays the government UShs 55 billions as tax; and this is even just because there is still some smuggling of cigarettes from Kenya. If there was no smuggling, they would be paying us UShs 65 billion a year as tax. Add to this the money they pay the peasant farmers who produce tobacco leaves from Arua, Bunyoro, Rukungiri, etc., about UShs 20 billion. Then they are employing a labour force of about 500 people, mostly Ugandans, who are paid wages. They buy electricity, water and other utilities from Ugandan companies. By the end of the day, therefore, BAT has done for you a very big job; but the fools do not see this.

That is why I oppose wajinga ruthlessly in Uganda. When I took over the regime here, I said the Indians must come back. Indians are economic citizens of Uganda by production and they are better than one million Idi Amins.

Our total revenue collection in Uganda now is UShs 1,200= billion per annum. If we stop smuggling, it may go up to UShs 1,600= billion per annum. But if we had 1,000 BATs, we would collect so much money; we would be donors!

For somebody to come and disrupt this, on the pretext that the producers are foreigners who should go away; he is not only a fool, but an enemy as well. That is what Idi Amin did. That is what Obote did, too, as he had started by his Nakivubo announcements in 1980, taking over private companies. That is why our friend Mugabe is making very big mistakes. True, there is a land problem in Zimbabwe; but it should be handled differently. That is why the African countries have not developed. Since independence 40 years ago, not a single black African country has taken off economically, except Mauritius a little bit.

Here in Uganda, people give excuses that we had war; but Kenya did not have a war; why are they backward? Tanzania, Zambia, Senegal, Ivory Coast (which only had problems very recently), have all not developed, in spite of having had no wars. Why have they not developed? It is because they do not apply the right stimulus to their economies. They discourage the private producers, like our BAT here, and they interfere with them. Permanent Secretaries, for instance, are ‘Permanent Nothing’! If you are a permanent Secretary, what have you done to show that you are permanent? Why do we have permanent backwardness in a continent of Permanent Secretaries? They have stifled production because they interfere with the one who can produce, who are the private sector.

Whether they are foreign or Ugandan, it does not matter as long as he invests in your country; he is your citizen, because he is producing for you! Look at the anatomy of the flow of money. Normally, after paying for raw materials, labour, utilities, taxes, etc, companies remain with 15 per cent as profit. Suppose somebody is a foreigner – Muzungu, Muyindi, Chinese, etc – and he generates UShs 100 million; my Ugandans, through these different headings, take from him UShs 85 million and he remains with UShs 15 million which he takes out. Is that bad? How is this bad for the country, especially if you know that if he had not come, that UShs 100 million would never have been produced!

You know I am always in conflict with fools. Sometimes you wonder, “Why does Museveni quarrel with everybody?” It is because they are fools and I cannot accept fools to be in charge of state affairs. Why don’t you ask if you do not know? Why don’t you ask, for instance, the following question: “How did Britain develop?” Countries which have developed are there! Those who are not sure should ask them how they did it; but instead of this, they go to learn from fools.

In Cabinet, in 1986, members were advocating for rent control, and, indeed, there was even a Rent Control Board. You build your houses and the army sets up a board to fix rent rates for them!! Museveni, with my cows, I take them to the market, and there is a price control board to tell me that I should not sell my bull at UShs 300,000=!! I cannot accept; this is my bull, I reared it myself and I will sell it according to how I bargain with the buyer. What role does the government have in this transaction? I, therefore, said I would not accept the Rent Control Board.

The Kampala people lamented over being overcharged by the Indians. “Well, these are their houses, you go and build your own houses if you do not want to be overcharged!”, I told them. What happened then? People then invested a lot of money in building houses, they built left and right; then the houses became so many and the rent rates went down. This is what we call appropriate macro-economic stimuli. That is how the economy has developed. We have got other problems, otherwise, the economy would have developed much more. Those we shall discuss another time.

You cannot widen the tax base unless you attract industries and modern services. Unless you encourage local investors and attract foreign investors, you will not widen the tax base and the government will not have enough money to provide services for the people.

Developing The Human Resource

The third major element is the developing of the human resource through education for all, and health for all. What do we mean by ‘developing the human resource’ ? You have got these wonderful people, the Ugandans: the Banyankore, Baganda, Langi, Karamajong, etc. They are human beings – but have they developed their potential? For instance, Mr. Kaguta is now 86 years old; that man has been looking after cows since the age of ten, everyday, for seventy six years now. The man should be a millionaire!

When Mehta’s father came to Uganda, he did not have a single shilling; he came as a coolie, as a ‘mupakasi’ on the railway. The ‘bapakasi’ were the ones who were building the railway. At that time my grandfather, the father of Kaguta, had a lot of cows. My great grandfather was also still alive. You therefore had two people in this situation: on the one hand, Kaguta’s father and grandfather with capital – they had cows and land. Mehta’s father, on the other hand, comes with nothing.

Now Kaguta’s son is working for Mehta’s son, who is a millionaire. What happened? Mr. Kaguta, you had land, you had cows, but you are stuck; what is your problem? This fellow who came with nothing is now a billionaire. The problem is that Kaguta is not developed as a human resource. He is Mzee Kaguta, that is where it stops! Mambo yake.

In order to modernise, it is not enough to be Kaguta. I am Kaguta, of the Basiita clan, of Kyamukanga Kyamugurwa; but that is not enough. It is too late for Kaguta to go to school, but all his children must go to school and learn knowledge so that they are able to compete with Mehta’s grandchildren. Otherwise, they will remain Kaguta until time comes and, in the end, they may perish because people who are backward perish.

You must have heard that there were some people called Red Indians in America; they were the owners of that land. Where are they now? When we say Americans, we do not mean Red Indians. We mean other people who came and pushed away those fools who were running around naked. They were very courageous in a primitive way – with feathers and painted faces. The gun, which is a product of the head, was used to chase the fools away. When the human resource is not developed, it will be stuck; but in the end it may mean slavery, or worse, extermination. There is no parking slot for fools in the world. No one is going to say, “This one is a fool, let us allot him his slot until 200 years from now.”

One requirement of modernization, therefore, is education for all Ugandans. They must all go to school and stay there long enough to learn new skills and new attitudes. And, of course, they need to be healthy. Otherwise, if they are infested with worms, for instance, how will they perform? And yet you cannot educate them sustainably without linking all the above factors.

When you consider a country like Japan, it has no oil. When you look at these Saudis with oil, with their turbans on their heads, compare it with Japan who have neither oil nor minerals, nor agricultural land; and yet they are the second most powerful economy in the world after the United States of America. Why? It is because they developed their human resource through education. That is why they produce all machines for you: radios, computers, televisions, bicycles, cars, etc. That is the product of a developed human resource. What have the Arabs done, to take advantage of liquids in the ground, which were put there by somebody else! Are the Arabs the ones who put the oil in the ground? That is not good enough.

That is why I laugh when I hear that Congo is a rich country. Rich? How? That God put some minerals in the ground; but the people are eating frogs, and they cannot even produce lumonde (sweet potatoes)! Where is the wealth of Congo? The Wazungu just treat us as if we were fools! Rich country means skilled people; if you do not have skilled people, there is no richness. These Ugandans must, therefore, go to school and stay there and they must be healthy. That is why we introduced UPE and why we are going to expand science education.

On 2nd February 2002, I was in Mbarara graduating some children there and I was told by the Vice Chancellor that these days the university admits only 10 per cent of those who are qualified to enter the Medical School, owing to limited space. I said, “But this is not a problem; this is an opportunity! If you have got children who have qualified to join the Medical School, all of them should be admitted. We could put aside all the other courses – Social Work and Social Administration, etc.”

Before UPE (Universal Primary Education), there were only 2.5 million children in the Primary Schools; there are now 7 million children in the Primary school. This year, for instance, 300,000 children sat for PLE; but in 2003, one million children will sit for PLE. That is when these wonderful so-called politicians will wake up because they will have to look for jobs for one million children. They have now been asleep, all the ‘Honourable this’ and ‘Permanent that’.

Once upon a time, a woman was catching locusts in the swamp (some of our people eat locusts) and she was carrying a baby on her back. A reed cut the neck of the child and the woman felt the blood oozing from the child; because she was busy with the locusts, she thought it was sweat. She did not know that the child was bleeding. After she rested, she put her hand on her back and realized it was blood. She was taken aback, “I thought it was sweat, but it has turned out to be blood!” So those who thought it was michezo, you will see. And my job is to create crises for your systems. Your system will have to look for jobs for one million children because they will enter senior one, Teacher Training colleges, etc; so you have to wake up.

Infrastructure

The fourth major point is developing infrastructure – roads, power, water works, telephones, etc. Industry needs all these components of infrastructure.

Market

Once you have produced something, where will you sell it, who will buy it from you? These are the issues the wonderful Africans do not address. Where is the market? If you go to the OAU, they are busy observing protocol; when shall we talk about the market? We should be discussing matters of market. Where shall we sell what we produce? Uganda’s 23 million poor people are under-consuming.

For instance, as you know, I am a cattle keeper; I have a lot of cows, but I have no market for them. There is no one to buy meat, no one to buy milk; so how will I become a millionaire! I am a potential millionaire, because I have these cows, my great grandfather’s cows.

When we came in 1986, these wonderful people in Kampala were buying milk from Denmark. They would buy powdered milk, add water from Lake Victoria, and label it ‘Uganda Dairy Corporation’. The only Ugandan component in the milk was the water. I stopped that. I said, “But we have got cows!” You know these Europeans treat Africans as if they were children. You know when a child is disturbing you, you give him something small and say, “Baby, you be playing with this”. This is how they treat Africans.

The Danish had written a 20 year Dairy Master Plan. In the first year, the African was to be taught about the cow: it has two eyes, two ears, four legs. In the second year the African was to learn how to milk the cow a little. Within 20 years, the African will be learning all about the cow – meanwhile we should be importing powdered milk from Denmark and adding water. I dismissed their Master Plan and asked them to bring coolers here, so that we could take milk to Kampala. Milk production soared from 200 hundred million litres to seven hundred million litres. Now we have nowhere to sell the milk, because there is so much production.

Why don’t we have where to sell the milk? There are two reasons. First of all, according to World Health Organisation, a normal adult person should drink 200 hundred litres of milk per year; but poor Ugandans are now drinking 30 litres per annum. Milk is good for your teeth and bones – that is why you find people without teeth! Their teeth have fallen out because they do not have enough calcium intake. There is under consumption of milk first of all.

Secondly, however, the population is also small. 23 million people are not many, and only 15 per cent of these stay in town, the other 85 per cent in the village. The one who is in the village will not buy from his neighbour, because most likely he has got similar products. There is, therefore, no internal market, because more people stay in the rural areas than those who stay in urban areas. There is complementarity with the people in the rural areas.

This is different from other countries in Europe, where the majority of the people stay in the towns, and the minority in the villages. When I was in exile I used to teach Economics at the Cooperative College in Moshi, and one of the topics I used to teach was Characteristics of Backwardness. How do you know backwardness? One characteristic of backwardness is to have more people staying in the villages than in the towns.

When you come to town, you hear our leaders saying, “You go back to the village”. Go back to the village to do what? There is nothing! Kyagala Mwesibe bbiri. (You need to tighten your belts, work hard). Even if I kwesiba bbiri what will I do if there is nothing to do in the village? The main problem is that the villager has no market. I, for instance, nesibye bbiri; in fact satu, oba nnya! I have produced milk, but there is nobody to buy it! How do I kwesiba taano now? How much harder can I work? There is no market for my milk because of the structure of the society. First of all, more people are in the villages than those who stay in the towns. The ones who stay in the towns are the ones who go to the market to buy. The villagers survive by subsistence, and they buy very little; they produce their own food and buy only textiles, paraffin, soap, salt etc.

That is why Europeans first of all colonized us and made us their market. That is how they solved the question of market. They came and colonized us, they colonized India, and got market. When the international situation could not allow the keeping of colonies any more, they formed the European Union, the European market. That European Union market is US$ 8 trillion. The American market is US$ 11 trillion. The whole African market, if it was United, would be half a trillion.

When you try to go and sell something in Rwanda, or Tanzania, they tell you it is another country, a sovereign country. You insist you want to do some business there, but you are barred because it is another country. Africa is rich in Republics, but also rich in poverty. It is rich in Republics, Presidents and Ministers, MPs and Generals, but poor in development. The market is a big problem that must be resolved.

The other crucial element in modernization is trying to integrate our own African market, as we transform our own societies. These Ugandans could consume more if they were developed. If they were educated people with skills, they would be drinking more milk, eating more meat, wearing more clothes. As of now, if you go to the peasant homes, at night you hear children fighting over the bed sheet, because two or more children are sharing the same bed and beddings. If our people were using more textiles, building houses – which means we need more steel bars, etc; then the market would be much bigger.

We need three movements on the question of markets. One, we integrate the African market. Secondly we transform our societies, so that Ugandans become people who use (consume) more things than they are doing now.

Thirdly, we should gain access to the rich European and American markets and others like the Chinese market etc. These, therefore, are the five major elements in modernization.

EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

As I told you, I started the topic at the end because I did not want to tire you. I started the subject at modernization, but it is important to know where societies came from because they did not start by being modern. In this booklet (The Movement’s Long Struggle for the Liberation of Uganda) I gave a substantial speech on how the universe came about. The globe, it is estimated, was created 30 billion years ago. The first human like animals started emerging about 4½ million years ago. They were called hominids, which means animals that were like human beings: the early human beings. Science has proved that we came from primates and went on evolving until we started walking on two legs: bi-pedal. Initially, we were quadri-pedal, four legged like chimpanzees. Some time ago we started walking on two legs.

In my essay, because I had done some research, I point put that a certain creature known as a homo erectus evolved about 60,000 years ago. This homo erectus, the ones who could stand straight as the word erectus suggests, are the ones who started using fire. The invention of fire was very important because they could cook, they could roast things. These were just groups of animals; human-like animals who were not living in highly organised societies. There was no hierarchy of administration.

It was not until about 10,000 years ago that we started having the civilizations of Babylon, Mesopotamia, etc. They started domesticating crops and animals like 7,000 years ago; that is when the human being started living in a civilized way. What does a civilized way mean? It means when you start living by cooperation among yourselves, rather than confrontation and competition. That is an element of civilization. When you are able to divide jobs – you do this, I will do that – that is part of civilization.

Technology was the Primer

You can read this in the speech which I gave. However, the most important thing in reading through this long journey of the human race is to answer the question: “What is the primer of society’s evolution?”

The Example of the Gun

Primer is, for instance, in a rifle, the needle which is hit by the hammer and then the needle pierces the bottom of the bullet and then bullet explodes. That one is called a primer; it is something which starts a reaction. The generals should be able to understand a primer. It would be funny to get generals who do not know – they would be like Idi Amin’s men! Captain No parking, Captain kill me quick, etc. The firing pin is the primer in the gun.

You must master the gun – there are two powders here:
detonating powder, and the main powder in the cartridge, which we call propellant. Normally these ones we use these days are using nitrocellulose, a powder which comes from cotton. You apply nitric acid to a certain part of cotton, then you get nitrocellulose, which is the main propellant. Normally the detonator is more unstable than the propellant; the propellant is normally more stable, but with a yield of gas – when making a bullet we use the physical quality of gases.
Gases expand in volume by nature – you must have studied that in physics. When they expand that is how they expel the bullet.

This is not what I wanted to tell you, but it is good that we master the gun. If the commander does not know the gun very well, he cannot insist on the soldiers knowing it well either. That is when he starts giving them lectures to fight hard – but how? What I was telling you was the primer: the firing pin, which causes a chain reaction.

Invention of Fire

What I was trying to tell you was that in social evolution terms, the primer is the change in science and technology. When there is change in science and technology, that is the primer that causes changes in society. For instance, when these early human beings invented fire, there were a lot of changes. Before fire was invented, they were living in trees. They were tree dwellers because they feared to go into caves, as they could not even see what was inside the caves! They were moving around the trees using their arms, so they had strong arms. Animals which move with their arms are called brachiaters, for instance, monkeys.

When they invented fire however, which meant they could go into the caves and light fire, they would expel the darkness and warm the interior of the otherwise very damp caves, thereby chasing snakes from there. They now stopped being tree dwellers and became cave dwellers. You can see that the invention of fire was the primer for big change in society. Instead of people being tree dwellers, they became cave dwellers.

Instead of eating raw food, they started roasting food. This means that their digestive systems changed, so did their physiology. If you no longer have to gnaw, maybe you no longer need strong jaws, so you can afford to be a bit more shaped because you are eating softer food. The change arose out of the invention of fire.

Invention of Gunpowder

Invention of gunpowder, too, brought changes. We were here: Baganda under Ssabasajja Magulu Nyondo, Banyankore under Rubambansi, (the Banyankole thought he was ruler of the whole world); under Rukirabasajja of Bunyoro etc. We were here drumming for the kings, not knowing someone would come with a gun! Within 10 years, Uganda was conquered. That is why you find that Yoweri Museveni, son of Kaguta, is speaking English; I have even got a Jewish name ‘Yoweri’. How did it happen? What caused all these changes? Kaguta’s son of the Basiita clan, is now almost a Negro, speaking English!

The primer was the bullet, the gunpowder – it is the one that enabled the Europeans to conquer the foolish Africans. That is why you hear Africans with names like: John, James, Flower; some of the names do not even have meaning! It is because we were conquered by the Europeans, who invented gunpowder, when we did not have it.

That invention of gunpowder caused big changes in the world. It transformed free people into slaves, and transformed ordinary people into masters of others. The primer in all these changes in the social evolution was science and technology. If you are technologically backward, you are likely to be a slave in future. There is no group that has lagged behind in technology and remained free.

Recently there was a war in the Afghanistan. This was not a war; it was a hunting expedition by the Americans. There was no war, because the other wajinga (fools) were not firing back! It was like hunting guinea fowls because the technology of the Americans is so advanced and those fools were helpless there with their turbans.

This is my message for today.

Thank you very much.
Jinja
9th February 2002
..End.