Mark Zuckerberg. Could Uganda’s corrupt dictator know more than him about social media? One is a creator; the other a destroyer. Photo–Facebook.
It is not surprising that the Global communication giants, Facebook, Google and MTN have joined Uganda’s own Central Bank, the Bank of Uganda, in opposing dictator Yoweri Museveni’s damaging and burdensome mobile money and social media tax.
Gen. Museveni is a confused and wholly irrational man, who never thought deeply about the implications of imposing that ominous tax on the people of Uganda in the first place.
He wanted to suppress free speech while raising money to pay the armed forces for brutalizing Ugandans. Given the levels of regime corruption who knows what happens to the $1 billion the U.S. provides each year.
In a statement Facebook warned that “…it will hold back infrastructure investments worth millions of dollars it was planning in the country,” according to The East African newspaper. Facebook “had planned to partner with Airtel Uganda and Bandwidth and Cloud Services to extend the 770km fiber backhaul network to northern Uganda.”
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Facebook-joins-Uganda-social-media-tax-affray/2560-4698148-11ux62ez/index.html
Now this investment may be heading to a different African country. These global giants don’t have time for a corrupt dictator. Facebook is all about free speech, thoughts and ideas –not tyranny.
If dictator Museveni thought that his trickster maneuvering around the issues of the much-hated mobile money and social media tax had succeeded in stemming the unrelenting public anger and quelling the spontaneous local and international revulsion against the tax, he, surely must be the world’s most amazing day-dreamer.
Ugandans won’t fall for Museveni’s meaningless gimmicks of revising the tax down to 0.5% from 1%. The entire sinister and anti-people tax must go and will go.
The Ugandan people are only just beginning the fully-fledged battle to dismantle and quash Museveni’s misadvised tax policy. They will not relent until this stupid decision of punishing citizens for merely transferring much needed financial support to their relatives, or using evolving new communication tools, like WhatsApp and Facebook, is totally abandoned.
The Bank of Uganda recently warned dictator Museveni that the introduction of the social media and mobile money tax was destroying business in the financial money-transfer sector and hurting Ugandan people in a business segment that is critical to the well-being and livelihood of millions of citizens. The Bank had noticed a rapid slump in the money-transfer sector as Ugandans rushed to find other non-taxable ways of transferring their money or to use Virtual Private Network (VPN) internet communication pathways to bypass Musevenis illogical taxation roadblocks.
Shocking statistics announced by the Bank of Uganda statistical office showed that Museveni has blown a mammoth hole in what was a flourishing mobile transfer business sector, where transactions dropped by a whopping $182 million in just two weeks of the mad Museveni tax being introduced.
https://theinsider.ug/index.php/2018/08/03/bank-of-uganda-report-mobile-money-registers-shs672bn-loss-after-new-tax/
It is against this background that Free Uganda (FU) is now calling on all Ugandan freedom activists inside and outside the country to intensify the revolt against Museveni’s mobile money and social media tax in its totality.
Ugandans are saying “enough is enough” to dictator Museveni. The people are calling the charlatan’s bluff.
The campaign against mobile money tax is of course part of a larger war on Musevenism and for recovering Uganda’s Constitution.
This battle to reverse the Museveni tax is a battle that should be executed as part of the wider struggle to rid Uganda of the 32- year-long corrupt, repressive and undemocratic rule. The fight against the ridiculous tax must be one of the flanking maneuvers in the larger war on the stale and outmoded ideology of Musevenism in all its forms.
To put it simply, this is the time when all the citizens of Uganda must lay aside their ethnic, cultural, religious and political identities, and put the Ugandan nation first.
This country of Uganda is for all of us to save. Remember that whether you belong to the NRM, FDC, UPC, JEEMA, Conservative or any other political grouping, you are first and foremost a Ugandan citizen.
Remember also that once we remove Museveni and end Musevenism the backward policies will no longer torment any of us.
Musevenism does not discriminate. Unless you are part of the inner circle you suffer. Even those who believe they are close to the dictator can fall overnight. Ask Gen. Kale Kayihura the former right hand man and enforcer. Ironically, the constitution which Kayihura helped Museveni destroy can help him too. The former police chief can sue to be released. The constitution prohibits indefinite detention without charges.
Museveni means mobile taxes, rampant insecurity, poverty, and lack of medicines–it harms all, whether NRM, FDC, DP, UPC or JEEMA supporters.
We must all join in the battle to completely dismantle the mobile money and social media tax—and ultimately Musevenism.
The Struggle Continues.
Dr. Vincent Magombe, Secretary
Free Uganda Leadership Committee
Press Secretary (FU)
