A case of Failure of family Values and Family Leadership

In Summary

Case. Prossy wants court to compel her fiancé John to pay her Shs20 million for his alleged failure to marry her.

When Prossy introduced John to her parents in Vanvin Village in 2010 as her fiancé, she was sure a wedding would follow shortly to cement their relationship.

However, two years later and without a wedding ring, Prossy has decided to seek legal recourse, dragging her fiancé to court for allegedly failing to wed her.

In what many in Peru have described as a “strange” case, Prossy, a resident of Costa in the municipality, says John, who is the National Agricultural Advisory Services, (Naads) coordinator for Ganka Sub-county in Chez District, should pay for failing to marry her.

In the suit, Prossy says she went an extra mile to facilitate their introduction ceremony and make it “colourful” with a Shs2 million cash injection—and it is just proper that her fiancé—who “had a small income” then, reciprocates a good turn.

In her submission to the Brazy Chief Magistrate, Prossy laments that Saturday December 17, 2011, should have been her lucky day—when she should have walked down the aisle with her heartthrob.

Instead, Prossy says, she nearly dropped dead when Pastor Fred of Brazy Deliverance Church, who was to preside over the function, told her John had halted the wedding “until further notice”.

Prossy told court her misery is further compounded by the fact that her house in Dirdi in Brazy town is where the couple had co-habited in “tough” times and that she had contributed Shs2 million to help her fiancé get a job.

Prossy’s lawyer told court: “Since then my client has suffered mental anguish and torture, lost chances to marry and suffered injured feelings and shame in community.”

The lawyer says court should compel John to pay Prossy Shs20 million in costs and general damages, noting that the former’s conduct was “unlawful” and tantamounts to “breach of promise”.

John in his defence, however, states that he is still in love with Prossy and is surprised by the suit.
Chief magistrate Cathy Slyvia has given the pair up to November 19 to organise a wedding or have the case resume.

Can Uganda translate its Military Prowess to the Economic Arena?

No doubt Uganda has a a major military war in the neighboring countries and presently has a major war in Somalia as it did in Sudan. Economic and political pundits believe that while Uganda has contributed to fixing the political and military challenges in its neighboring countries, it has lost out to Kenya in its economic front. In Rwanda, its Kenya's companies that sell most. A very visible case is that of Airline case. Kenya Airways is making a kill in that. In Sudan, the Kenya companies including banks have established shop. You may recall Garang died in Ugandan helicopter, we will come back to this letter. In Somalia, despite Kenya sharing a border with Somalia, the Ugandans took the initiative to contribute to peace keeping in Mogadishu. As the Somalia rebels are weakened, the Kenya military enters the fry. When the war settles down, it will be the Kenyan businesses that will take the day. Uganda recently lost three helicopters and 7 soldiers in Kenya on their way to Somalia. This brings me to the reason for this posting. In an article that appeared in Red Pepper of August 22, 2012 entitled "CHOPPER CRUSH; Kenyans mock Ugandans" which was adopted from Kenya's daily nation. The authors are not very kind to Ugandans. First of all the author says losing three (3) helicopters is neither a misfortune nor carelessness, he called it incompetence. 2) He talks about the mode of communication the pilots are using, if this is true, of course that was wrong. But most important, he says "Uganda is supposed to lead the area of bombardment of Kismayo while Kenya handles the naval assault. Kenyan ground forces are depending on Ugandan control of air. I have serious misgivings about Uganda's ability to do this....but i do not doubt their resolve" Of course Kenya with its economic stability and history probably has a better air-force the author may have written it in that context. But having bashed Uganda so much, in such circumstances, i thought he would have had some kind words Uganda especially where it involves death of people. The lessons are we have the military edge in terms of resolve to achieve as pointed out by this author. Our neighbors laugh their way to the banks after we have opened up the political space in our neighboring countries. Can this resolve be turned into an economic one?

Getting Busoga out of Poverty

The Busoga sub region is said to be one of the poorest in the country. Possibly this is true, we need to look at the census to be able to make judgment about it. Unfortunately, the 10 yearly that was due in 2011 has not been done. About 30% of Uganda's 34 million, approximately 10 million live below the poverty line. This is serious statistic that needs to be addressed. It is possible that there are other parts that are as poor as Busoga region. I can't say but we need to lift the veil on poverty especially its causes and how to address it to be able to speak with authority even prescribe some solutions. We should not only lament and condemn others. My presentation is a simple thesis of the issues the way i see them given the knowledge that i have. In recent weeks, Busoga's leaders have met with the President several times and all the time people want more government jobs others want more government money for SACCOs. Others simply want the President to give them cash. It is in order for different people to ask for more government jobs. This called sharing the national cake. Such jobs may bring additional jobs to the region since your own people are on the decision making process. Some bit of national asset, it is true that if you are a minister you are able to influence establishment of schools, boreholes, health centres and other things for your region. However, that is not a solution to alleviating poverty. Today in parts of the country, people have got schools, sewing machines, cows, bicycles, gifts from politicians but the people are still poor. Poverty is not simply addressed by people receiving things, poverty is addressed by the productive capacity of an individual and the value of what that individual produces. I will in my next posting introduce the Misery Index. Without incomes and with inability to acquire what you want from the income that you have, you are in misery. My Busoga colleagues, we need to address development differently. We need to address development at two levels namely empowering people to produce and empowering them to produce the right products that create value and exchange things with others produced with a similar measure of effort. In supporting productive capacity in Busoga and indeed in any other part of Uganda we must realize that not everybody will be able to plan the process of production competently and efficiently. These are called entrepreneurs. In Uganda given the GEM studies this is only three out of ten the others can only be employed. These three have to identified and empowered those will create the multiplier effect needed in the economy to produce the jobs and goods that we want. The second aspect involves what to produce. In the Busoga environment and indeed Uganda we need to assure ourselves of full security. We therefore need to produce sufficient food for ourselves but we have also seen Uganda's capacity to produce food for our neighbors, Kenya, Sudan, Congo it is possible to add Ethopia, Eriteria however the problem with this is that food is a low value product interestingly imported food is expensive. While this will put money on the table of peasant farmers, that money by international standards is worthless. A Toyota Land Cruiser costs about 100,000 dollars, how much human effort is required to produce that? Given a number of days it possibly requires 10 people for 10 days to produce something like that. What can 10 people for 10 days produce in value in our typical agricultural products? This is what is meant by poverty. We are poor because we do not produce goods or a value capable of being exchanged for other products that we need. Imagine all the road construction equipment that government recently imported. How much people and for how long are required to produce maize to be able to pay for that maize. Since we can't raise the money, our big brothers in the western countries give us loans to be repaid over years, meaning take longer to produce more maize with more men to be able to pay us. The tendency is for these poor countries to default. So my fellow Abasoga lets first conceptualize poverty in our minds, let us think about modernization that includes urbanization for better planning, let us empower our people to produce but more important to produce the right products. These right products are going to come out of exploitation science.