Immortalise Julius Nyerere!
SIR— While addressing the crowd that witnessed his promotion and retirement, President Museveni rightly praised Mwalimu Julius Nyerere
SIR— While addressing the crowd that witnessed his promotion and retirement, President Museveni rightly praised Mwalimu Julius Nyerere as a rare breed among African leaders past and present.
As his mentor, Museveni still has the opportunity to immortalise Nyerere by adopting a few of the rare statesman’s methods. Take the case of Tanzania’s Jeshi la Kujenga Taifa —Nation Building Army. This force has done wonders in constructing houses in Tanzania. Right now, their biggest assignment is to build over 200 units in the new capital Dodoma, to stem the current practice of government officials living in Dar es Salaam and claiming the allowances of being in Dodoma.
By June next year, no excuses: all houses will be ready and all will have to live in Dodoma. In its old good days, the NRA had a similar, if not wider scheme under the National Enterprise Corporation (NEC). However, it fell victim to the whims of the Bretton Woods twins and all was lost.
An opportunity was missed at the time of demobilisation: a well focused policy would have been to integrate the demobilised soldiers into a work force, distributed among the various subsidiaries of NEC and the difference would there for all to see! With patriotic management, that is. The huge sums in form of demobilisation packages would make a difference as shareholding capital or some other form of security while the veterans worked.
Perhaps this can be resurrected with a new form of army — the graduates churned out by our universities.
Amon B Mbekiza
Kampala
As his mentor, Museveni still has the opportunity to immortalise Nyerere by adopting a few of the rare statesman’s methods. Take the case of Tanzania’s Jeshi la Kujenga Taifa —Nation Building Army. This force has done wonders in constructing houses in Tanzania. Right now, their biggest assignment is to build over 200 units in the new capital Dodoma, to stem the current practice of government officials living in Dar es Salaam and claiming the allowances of being in Dodoma.
By June next year, no excuses: all houses will be ready and all will have to live in Dodoma. In its old good days, the NRA had a similar, if not wider scheme under the National Enterprise Corporation (NEC). However, it fell victim to the whims of the Bretton Woods twins and all was lost.
An opportunity was missed at the time of demobilisation: a well focused policy would have been to integrate the demobilised soldiers into a work force, distributed among the various subsidiaries of NEC and the difference would there for all to see! With patriotic management, that is. The huge sums in form of demobilisation packages would make a difference as shareholding capital or some other form of security while the veterans worked.
Perhaps this can be resurrected with a new form of army — the graduates churned out by our universities.
Amon B Mbekiza
Kampala