In a random chat I eaves dropped at my local coffee shop as I picked my routine morning shot of black coffee, a man was lamenting, to his friend, the ordeal theyhad gone through as they traversed rural Busembatia, in Iganga district.
“The sugarcane trucks have messed almost all roads; and then the one we had used; the local government had dug it up and left it to cars to do the pressing,” he narrated to his colleague.
He continued: “It instead rained heavily, and the mud made the road impassable. All cars on the road got stuck. Busembatia is a mess and that is the story of rural roads in Busoga. The people need help.”
As I passed them on my way out, I let out a provocative, “the rural people deserve exactly that.” The discussion that ensued, thereafter, led to the conclusion that whereas political leaders should carry the biggest load on who to blame when things don’t work, the peasants equally stand accused of the failings in their communities.
A day earlier while in Kibibi, during my community organization engagements, a friend had complained about how the rural people had stopped engaging in Bulungi Bwansi. To him, it was because of that that the rural roads in an impassable state.
“Do you want to turn them into road workers for sugarcane ferrying trucks,” I curtly replied, and the conversation died out.
In Busoga, the state of rural roads is worse than that of the town roads. The fact that there has never been an exhibition about the bad state of these rural roads is because those that are supposed to do the exhibition live in the city and only visit the rural areas to attend burials or on a quick dash to visit a relative.
It started off a couple of years ago with a few trucks ferrying aggregate stones. Town councils would stage makeshift roadblocks to collect road use taxes. The assumption was that those taxes would then be used by the councils to work on the roads.
Then came the mass sugarcane growing across the region. Literally every erstwhile open piece of land behind the façade of the main road, has been eaten up by sugarcane plantations.
Everyone wants good roads and with the highs many claim to pay, they have a right to demand for the good roads. However, the twist with the rural roads is that the people who are supposed to be the first line of demanders for good roads are the culprits.
The roadblocks that used to collect road use local tax from overladen trucks are long gone so local councils are not collecting monies from sugarcane ferrying trucks.
Both the local farmer and the local leadership are in cahoots not to pay the levy because if the trucks are not ferrying cane belonging to a local farmer, they are ferrying cane belonging to a council member or even the district chairperson.
If the local people complain about the cane trucks are messing their roads, it is their sugarcane business they would be jeopardizing. If the local leaders decide to crack the whip and levy local taxes on the trucks, it is their trucks they would be impounding or their business they would be jeopardizing. Yet at the same time, the central government sends close to nothing in terms of funds to work on the rural roads.
Meanwhile, they can no longer participate in Bulungi Bwansi (communal work). Whereas it used to be easy and quick in the past when the roads where largely foot paths serving cyclers and pedestrians and therefore required some slashing and quick slashing, today, it would require tonnes of rocks and soil and advanced engineering knowledge to be able to cover up the damage that is continuously being done by the cane trucks.
I accuse the peasants of reneging their civic duty or holding themselves and those that lead them accountable. I accuse the peasants of selfishly working against the future and actively participating in the breakdown of the rural social services.
With the current state of roads, one prays that it never rains otherwise it is difficult to move from home to the nearest health facility should one need an emergency. An expectant mother in Buyala suffered such a wrath when Boda Boda riders refused to go pick her from her home in the middle of a heavy downpour because the roads had become impassable. She sadly passed on.
One can say Sugar companies like Kakira, GM should be asked to work on the roads, after all, it is they that the cane is grown for. But to what end? Kakira Sugar Limited to work on the rural roads in areas where they had out growers. Today, due to the laissez faire approach to cane growing, now one really owns the out growers as they sale to the highest bidder.
In a well-functioning society, there would be a way of levying a road use fee on each cane ferrying truck irrespective of who owners the cane or the truck. Do the cane farmers pay any tax off the money they get paid on selling the cane? Are they registered taxpayers?
I accuse the peasants for actively for knowingly or unknowingly participating in the breakdown of social services in their areas and then turn around and pass the buck looking for who to blame. Most of the Busoga’s future (the younger generation) are primary school dropouts, crude, products of teenage/adolescent horniness and raised in broken families.
They have no idea what a state his, they lack the simplest knowledge of how government works let alone having simple social decorum. Yet soon, if not already, they will be the lords of all decisions pertaining political and social leadership of their communities.
Civic education should be intensified. It should be intentional and deliberate. The young folk need to learn what government is and what their roles are in the development of their communities etcetera. The peasant is not only important when it comes to providing numbers in social revolutions.
They too can be important in times of peace when they are organized and mobilized to appreciate and carry out their selfless roles in society. They can start with demanding better in terms of the state of rural roads and while at it to lose some personal benefits if it serves the general good.
The writer is community mobilizer, farmer, and publisher of Busoga Today newspaper
