Ezra Suruma: My journey through the turbulent times
IN 1973 when I returned from a seven-year tour of studies in the US to take up a teaching job at Makerere University, General Idi Amin was the president and political parties were banned.
IN 1973 when I returned from a seven-year tour of studies in the US to take up a teaching job at Makerere University, General Idi Amin was the president and political parties were banned. There was no political bus to ride on. The economy was starting to fail and fear was spreading among the population because people were constantly disappearing. In 1975
I was lucky to be allowed to return to the US to complete my doctoral thesis in economics. When I completed my thesis in 1976, I did not return. I took up a teaching job in an American University in Florida until 1979 when Idi Amin was overthrown. Then I returned to Makerere only to find worse chaos than I had left behind in 1975. Economic hardship was much worse. There were huge quantities of shillings but nothing to buy. Murders of innocent people were the order of the day. There were roadblocks everywhere and the armies treated us like dogs. In Kampala, gunshots screamed throughout the night and sometimes during the daytime. It was a real reign of terror.
I had resolved to concentrate on my lectures until Professor Musa Mwene Mushanga quoted Plato to a Makerere audience thus: “If intelligent men refuse to join politics , they must accept to be ruled by foolsâ€. One evening in 1979, a fellow lecturer asked me if I was not going to listen to the political lecture at the lower lecture theatre. I took his tip and went. The place was packed full and a young man whom I later learned was Joshua Mugenyi mesmerised the academic crowd with his talk of the need for “a third force.†He said the political parties of Uganda up to that time were sectarian parties formed around either religion or ethnicity. There was a need for a “third force†that united people rather than dividing them. I was instantly mesmerised by this young political firebrand and, although politics was not my cup of tea, I found myself standing to contribute to the discussion. I recall myself quoting Chairman Mao that: “Power comes out of the barrel of a gun.†This earned me instant applause from the young crowd. Little did I know how true the quotation would become in just a few months from October 1979.
We resolved to form the Uganda Nationalist Movement (UNM) and within a few weeks we launched it. Weeks later, I was surprised when Joshua told me that Museveni, who was then a minister in the ruling coalition, the Uganda National Liberation Front, (UNLF) wanted to meet us. I went with Joshua to his house in Kololo where we found, among others, Bidandi Ssali, Rugunda, Rwakakoko, Kategaya and many other eminent personalities whom I did not know. We agreed to merge with them — after reminding them that they were not as well organised as we were — to form the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM). Our motto was “Clean leadership, Unity and Peaceâ€.
As we launched the party to contest the general elections that were slated for 10 December, 1980, we struggled to persuade prominent personalities in the Uganda Peoples Congress and the Democratic Party to join us. Despite long and hard negotiations mostly at the Kampala City Council Hall, most of them abandoned us and went to their traditional parties.
This hurt us badly and it would take decades before some of them could realise that the third force of unity was much stronger than their sectarian parties of the past and finally join it. Although our performance in the 1980 elections was dismal, only Dr. Kiyonga won a seat to Parliament, the outcome of the elections was openly and publicly rigged.
I will never forget the evening when then chairman of the ruling Military Council, Mr. Muwanga, made a televised speech to the nation to announce that only him would announce the outcome of the election in every constituency and that his announcement of the election results could not be challenged in any court of law. He assumed the powers of the electoral commission and in effect decided who the winner in each constituency was irrespective of what the Electoral Commission decided. The early indications that the Democratic Party was winning were reversed and the Uganda Peoples Congress emerged winner.
A few days after the elections Joshua took me with him to see Museveni at our party offices on Kampala Road. The place was deserted. We talked very little and then left in Joshua’s little green Fiat to return to Makerere. Rumours of detention and murders increased and we stopped sleeping at our houses out of fear of government soldiers. In early February 1981 we heard that war had broken out, that Museveni had attacked Kabamba. UPM had warned throughout the election campaign that we would fight if the elections were rigged. Now Museveni had acted on his word. Joshua and I panicked. On the day the soldiers came for him he had spent the night at my flat in Mitchell Hall where we were both resident tutors. He managed to leave just a few minutes before the soldiers arrived at his flat on the third floor of Mitchell Hall. When they arrived on campus they asked students where Mugenyi was. The students showed them a building called Mugenyi Flats. They went there and started breaking doors there. By the time they realised this was the wrong place, Joshua Mugenyi had the minutes he needed to escape. When they failed to find him, they came to my flat on the ground floor of Mitchell Hall. They banged the door several times. I prepared for death. Then I heard a student in the outside corridor telling them that I was not there that I was at the office. They left for the office where they did not find me either. I waited for the night then went and hid at friend’s house until a UPC stalwart on campus assured me that it was safe to resurface. When I resurfaced and went to conduct examinations, one of the UPC students stared at me with such horror that I knew that I was in trouble. I persevered for some days until a friend and fellow lecturer, James, came at midnight and told me he could not encourage me to stay around any longer.
“Don’t panicâ€, he said, “but accelerate your plans to get out. You were a member of Museveni’s Cabinet, and Museveni has declared war on this Government. So how can you stay?†I shook to the marrow and prayed for rescue.
Claver Matovu, now Bishop of the Orthodox Church, was staying with me while processing a car for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees station in Fort Portal where he was stationed and where my late brother, Dr. Byarugaba was offering him temporary accommodation. He managed to get the Land Rover that night and arrived shortly after James told me I should find a way to go. Very early in the morning he drove me from Kampala to Mbarara and then to Kabale. We went through nine roadblocks and at each roadblock my heart was in my mouth. I will never forget his courage. At Mbarara Simba barracks roadblock where we arrived at dusk, the UNLA soldier wanted us to offload all our properties to the roadside. Claver refused. The soldier threatened to shoot us. A Tanzanian officer intervened. Claver told him he was a UNHCR officer. He said we could go. Another brush with death was averted.
Once in Kabale I walked to my village and then to Rwanda where I reported to the UNHCR. They put me up in a covent until I was able to process a one way ticket to Nairobi. The authorities in Rwanda refused to stamp my passport. “You have not been here,†the officer told me. “So you cannot come back here. If the authorities in Kenya refuse you, you cannot come back here.†I arrived at Nairobi Airport expecting anything to happen. What would I do if the Kenyan authorities refused to allow me into their country? Would they deport me back to Uganda since I had no exit stamp in my passport? When I handed my passport to the immigration officer, he glanced at me, stamped the passport and I was free to enter. I moved cautiously from him, not sure of my freedom. Only when I arrived in the room at a hotel did I burst into tears as I sang the Negro spiritual:
“Oh freedom, oh freedom over me,
And before I’ll be a slave,
I will be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord and be free.â€
I very soon discovered that most of my UPM colleagues were already in Nairobi and especially Joshua, Dr. Rugunda, Dr. Kiyonga and many others.
By the end of March 1981, I was able to travel to Europe and then on July 4, 1981 to the US. On arrival at Dulles Airport near Washington D.C , I was very visibly tense that the immigration officer said loudly: “Relax!â€
In August 1981, I landed a job as an associate professor and head of the Management Science Department at Coppin State College, being one of many colleges of the Maryland State University System. In addition to teaching economics courses, I found myself saddled with a course called Management and the Computer. Although I was knowledgeable in computer programming, this course was about how computers were used in management rather than teaching a programming language. I suffered and nearly lost my job when students complained that I was teaching them programming when it was not required. I managed to hang on despite severe criticism from some colleagues who resented my assumption of headship of the department.
I was saved by the dean of academic affairs who had hired me and stood by me to the point of firing one of the professors who was making life impossible for me. After that firing the rest of the staff quieted down and in 1984, I was able to rise to the position of full professor with tenure.
Despite this job security, I was very lonely. When I came to teach in Makerere in 1973, my American wife divorced me on the grounds that I had deserted her. I had invited her to come with me to Uganda but she was smart enough to know that all was not well in Uganda. While for me even Idi Amin could not stop me from coming home, she was less biased for Uganda.
So when I found out that she had divorced me, I resolved not to marry again. I stayed single from 1973 to 1992.
Meanwhile, I kept writing home asking if I could return. Every time I wrote, my elder brother Balaba would write back and say: “Don’t come home.†By July 1985, the pressure of loneliness and homesickness became so much that I stood in the middle of Broadway in New York City and wept. For the first time in life, I felt that my shoulders had became too heavy for me to carry. I resolved then that I should return and join those fighting so that I could either die or be home.
That very evening I got the news from a Kenyan student at Columbia University where I was also studying for Masters degree in computer science during the summer holidays, that President Obote may have been overthrown. I took it as a cruel joke. The following day was a Sunday and as was my custom I went for the huge New York Times Sunday paper to peruse during brunch. To my amazement it was true. Obote had been overthrown but not by Museveni! I did not really know what to make of it. But it offered some easing of the pressure of exile.
In December 1985, I was able to come to Kabale through Rwanda. I was travelling on an expired passport and nearly got in trouble in London even though I was in transit.
From Kabale I travelled with late Dr. Kisseka and Dr. Rugunda to Masaka which was now in the hands of the Museveni forces. At Masaka I saw a tall, thin, serious gentleman who asked Dr. Rugunda who I was. It was much later that I learned that this was Salim Saleh.
Another gentleman I was introduced to was Otafire whom I found frightening. I waited outside while they had their meeting and then we drove back to Kabale. I never met Museveni on that trip.
From Kabale, I returned to my duties in the US only to learn that Museveni’s forces had entered Kampala. Apparently the meeting at Masaka had been to plan the assault on Kampala. I wished I had stayed on! In June, I returned and this time I was able to meet Museveni for the first time since 1980. He remembered me. I met many other people and again I returned to my job in the US.
In November 1986, there was a Cabinet reshuffle in which Kiyonga was made minister of finance. He telephoned me to ask if I could come back and join Bank of Uganda as either director of exchange control or director of research with Dr. Suleiman Kiggundu as the new governor. I told him I was willing to return. When I informed the university administration of my appointment back home, they said I could return if I could first recruit a suitable replacement in the Management Science Department. I did and then left in February 1987 to became director of research at the Bank of Uganda. In 1990, I was promoted to deputy governor while the late Charles Kikonyogo became the new governor.
I soon discovered that the Bank of Uganda was the main battleground for the control of the financial sector. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were the major forces on that battleground. Having studied Finance as my undergraduate specialisation at Fordham University in New York City, I had been exposed to money and banking in the US. In the 1960s, banking in the US was overwhelmingly American. Operations by foreign banks were extremely limited. Even banks within the US were largely restricted to their state of origin. Banks that operated in more than one state were the exception rather than the rule.
My studies convinced me that banking was a special industry whose operation was jealously guarded by both federal and state laws. For example, directors of a national bank in the USA at that time had to be citizens of the United States (see for example, Edward W. Reed, Commercial Bank Management,1963.pp.36).
In the Uganda financial landscape I found that only Uganda Commercial Bank which was formed in 1965 by the post independence government was a major commercial bank. And it was under severe attack.
The diagnostic studies that were made by the World Bank were made only on the indigenous banks. These were Cooperative Bank, Uganda Development Bank, Uganda Commercial Bank and Bank of Uganda itself.
The outcomes of the diagnostic studies were alarming. They proposed that these indigenous banks should be taken over or closed. I was shocked. I resolved to fight and I did. The biggest battle was for Uganda Commercial Bank. I applied to move from my job of deputy governor to become chairman managing director of Uganda Commercial Bank.
Then Minister of Finance, Hon. Mayanja Nkangi advised me to stay on at the Central Bank. I said no. Later on when I was fired from UCB I looked back and thought that I should probably have taken his advice. Anyhow, I moved right into the battleground at the UCB. The World Bank director in charge of the WB’s financial sector program in Uganda at the time, called to congratulate me on assuming what he termed “the most important job in Ugandaâ€. I told him the most important job in Uganda was that of the President. He accepted my amendment.
But I was on a warpath with the multilateral agencies namely the IMF and the WB. They wanted the UCB privatised. I said no. I said it could be made profitable and if it had to be sold it should be sold to Ugandans. I closed branches, stopped branch managers from lending, retrenched thousands of staff; all in a bid to cut costs and restore profitability and save the bank. What most Ugandans did not know and probably still do not know is that UCB was a profitable bank throughout most of its life. It lost money only in the Tanzanian war of 1979 when its building in Masaka was destroyed and had to be written off. That write-off of a major asset reduced its profits and made it lose money. Until that time and since 1965 it was a profitable operation. So the view that the bank could not make profit because it was a state owned bank was completely false.
We turned the bank around. We were able to cover operating costs. We were on the way to full profitability. The World Bank increased the pressure for my head. In June 1996 I received the letter of dismissal. I left and went to my residence in Kabale and started to operate my businesses.
The bank went through a series of aborted privatisations and it was finally sold following bitter controversies in Parliament, in the Ministry of Finance, in the Central Bank and in the country. I had lost round one.
I came to learn, from my seven-year attendance at the Bible Study Fellowship International (BSF) at the Nakulabye Baptist Church that: “God’s sovereignty positions you where you are.â€
I have continued to hold this view and I advise my fellow countrymen and women to respect where God has put them even as they pray for an improvement in their condition. It is expected that we are working for God Himself and therefore we must be excellent.
For when we appear before Him on judgment day, He will demand to know from us what we did with the gifts he gave us: our brain, our eyes, our tongue and voice, our strength and our position, whatever it may be.
About Ezra Suruma
Date of Birth: 1939
-1969 — Bsc in Finance –Fordham University
-1972 — MA in Economics- Fordham University
-1976 — PhD. in economics-University of Connecticut
-1987-1990 — Director of Research, Bank of Uganda
-1990-1993 — Deputy Governor, Bank of Uganda
-1991-1997 — Chairman Board of Directors, Uganda Airlines Corporation
-1993-1996 — Chairman and Managing Director, Uganda Commercial Bank
-1997-2004 — Deputy Secretary to the Treasury Bank of Uganda, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development
-1997-2004—Deputy Governor
Uganda Commercial Bank, Managing Director
-1998-2005 — Director for Economic Affairs, National Resistance Movement
-2005 — Governor – Uganda,
IMF Board of Governors
-2005 — Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development
-2006 — Ex-Officio Representative, Parliament of Uganda
-2008 — Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development
Going into private business
In the private sector I joined my brothers in running buses from Kampala to Kigali. I also operated a sawmill in Mafuga Forest and managed White Horse Inn in Kabale district.
After nearly two years I was appointed Director of Economic Affairs at the NRM secretariat. This gave me an opportunity to visit all parts and districts of Uganda and to know the country for the first time.
I wrote numerous economic papers and taught throughout the country to all kinds of audiences great and small. I enjoyed the work although many people felt sorry for me and thought that the Secretariat was a dumping ground, a view I never shared.
I was lucky to be allowed to return to the US to complete my doctoral thesis in economics. When I completed my thesis in 1976, I did not return. I took up a teaching job in an American University in Florida until 1979 when Idi Amin was overthrown. Then I returned to Makerere only to find worse chaos than I had left behind in 1975. Economic hardship was much worse. There were huge quantities of shillings but nothing to buy. Murders of innocent people were the order of the day. There were roadblocks everywhere and the armies treated us like dogs. In Kampala, gunshots screamed throughout the night and sometimes during the daytime. It was a real reign of terror.
I had resolved to concentrate on my lectures until Professor Musa Mwene Mushanga quoted Plato to a Makerere audience thus: “If intelligent men refuse to join politics , they must accept to be ruled by foolsâ€. One evening in 1979, a fellow lecturer asked me if I was not going to listen to the political lecture at the lower lecture theatre. I took his tip and went. The place was packed full and a young man whom I later learned was Joshua Mugenyi mesmerised the academic crowd with his talk of the need for “a third force.†He said the political parties of Uganda up to that time were sectarian parties formed around either religion or ethnicity. There was a need for a “third force†that united people rather than dividing them. I was instantly mesmerised by this young political firebrand and, although politics was not my cup of tea, I found myself standing to contribute to the discussion. I recall myself quoting Chairman Mao that: “Power comes out of the barrel of a gun.†This earned me instant applause from the young crowd. Little did I know how true the quotation would become in just a few months from October 1979.
We resolved to form the Uganda Nationalist Movement (UNM) and within a few weeks we launched it. Weeks later, I was surprised when Joshua told me that Museveni, who was then a minister in the ruling coalition, the Uganda National Liberation Front, (UNLF) wanted to meet us. I went with Joshua to his house in Kololo where we found, among others, Bidandi Ssali, Rugunda, Rwakakoko, Kategaya and many other eminent personalities whom I did not know. We agreed to merge with them — after reminding them that they were not as well organised as we were — to form the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM). Our motto was “Clean leadership, Unity and Peaceâ€.
As we launched the party to contest the general elections that were slated for 10 December, 1980, we struggled to persuade prominent personalities in the Uganda Peoples Congress and the Democratic Party to join us. Despite long and hard negotiations mostly at the Kampala City Council Hall, most of them abandoned us and went to their traditional parties.
This hurt us badly and it would take decades before some of them could realise that the third force of unity was much stronger than their sectarian parties of the past and finally join it. Although our performance in the 1980 elections was dismal, only Dr. Kiyonga won a seat to Parliament, the outcome of the elections was openly and publicly rigged.
I will never forget the evening when then chairman of the ruling Military Council, Mr. Muwanga, made a televised speech to the nation to announce that only him would announce the outcome of the election in every constituency and that his announcement of the election results could not be challenged in any court of law. He assumed the powers of the electoral commission and in effect decided who the winner in each constituency was irrespective of what the Electoral Commission decided. The early indications that the Democratic Party was winning were reversed and the Uganda Peoples Congress emerged winner.
A few days after the elections Joshua took me with him to see Museveni at our party offices on Kampala Road. The place was deserted. We talked very little and then left in Joshua’s little green Fiat to return to Makerere. Rumours of detention and murders increased and we stopped sleeping at our houses out of fear of government soldiers. In early February 1981 we heard that war had broken out, that Museveni had attacked Kabamba. UPM had warned throughout the election campaign that we would fight if the elections were rigged. Now Museveni had acted on his word. Joshua and I panicked. On the day the soldiers came for him he had spent the night at my flat in Mitchell Hall where we were both resident tutors. He managed to leave just a few minutes before the soldiers arrived at his flat on the third floor of Mitchell Hall. When they arrived on campus they asked students where Mugenyi was. The students showed them a building called Mugenyi Flats. They went there and started breaking doors there. By the time they realised this was the wrong place, Joshua Mugenyi had the minutes he needed to escape. When they failed to find him, they came to my flat on the ground floor of Mitchell Hall. They banged the door several times. I prepared for death. Then I heard a student in the outside corridor telling them that I was not there that I was at the office. They left for the office where they did not find me either. I waited for the night then went and hid at friend’s house until a UPC stalwart on campus assured me that it was safe to resurface. When I resurfaced and went to conduct examinations, one of the UPC students stared at me with such horror that I knew that I was in trouble. I persevered for some days until a friend and fellow lecturer, James, came at midnight and told me he could not encourage me to stay around any longer.
“Don’t panicâ€, he said, “but accelerate your plans to get out. You were a member of Museveni’s Cabinet, and Museveni has declared war on this Government. So how can you stay?†I shook to the marrow and prayed for rescue.
Claver Matovu, now Bishop of the Orthodox Church, was staying with me while processing a car for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees station in Fort Portal where he was stationed and where my late brother, Dr. Byarugaba was offering him temporary accommodation. He managed to get the Land Rover that night and arrived shortly after James told me I should find a way to go. Very early in the morning he drove me from Kampala to Mbarara and then to Kabale. We went through nine roadblocks and at each roadblock my heart was in my mouth. I will never forget his courage. At Mbarara Simba barracks roadblock where we arrived at dusk, the UNLA soldier wanted us to offload all our properties to the roadside. Claver refused. The soldier threatened to shoot us. A Tanzanian officer intervened. Claver told him he was a UNHCR officer. He said we could go. Another brush with death was averted.
Once in Kabale I walked to my village and then to Rwanda where I reported to the UNHCR. They put me up in a covent until I was able to process a one way ticket to Nairobi. The authorities in Rwanda refused to stamp my passport. “You have not been here,†the officer told me. “So you cannot come back here. If the authorities in Kenya refuse you, you cannot come back here.†I arrived at Nairobi Airport expecting anything to happen. What would I do if the Kenyan authorities refused to allow me into their country? Would they deport me back to Uganda since I had no exit stamp in my passport? When I handed my passport to the immigration officer, he glanced at me, stamped the passport and I was free to enter. I moved cautiously from him, not sure of my freedom. Only when I arrived in the room at a hotel did I burst into tears as I sang the Negro spiritual:
“Oh freedom, oh freedom over me,
And before I’ll be a slave,
I will be buried in my grave,
And go home to my Lord and be free.â€
I very soon discovered that most of my UPM colleagues were already in Nairobi and especially Joshua, Dr. Rugunda, Dr. Kiyonga and many others.
By the end of March 1981, I was able to travel to Europe and then on July 4, 1981 to the US. On arrival at Dulles Airport near Washington D.C , I was very visibly tense that the immigration officer said loudly: “Relax!â€
In August 1981, I landed a job as an associate professor and head of the Management Science Department at Coppin State College, being one of many colleges of the Maryland State University System. In addition to teaching economics courses, I found myself saddled with a course called Management and the Computer. Although I was knowledgeable in computer programming, this course was about how computers were used in management rather than teaching a programming language. I suffered and nearly lost my job when students complained that I was teaching them programming when it was not required. I managed to hang on despite severe criticism from some colleagues who resented my assumption of headship of the department.
I was saved by the dean of academic affairs who had hired me and stood by me to the point of firing one of the professors who was making life impossible for me. After that firing the rest of the staff quieted down and in 1984, I was able to rise to the position of full professor with tenure.
Despite this job security, I was very lonely. When I came to teach in Makerere in 1973, my American wife divorced me on the grounds that I had deserted her. I had invited her to come with me to Uganda but she was smart enough to know that all was not well in Uganda. While for me even Idi Amin could not stop me from coming home, she was less biased for Uganda.
So when I found out that she had divorced me, I resolved not to marry again. I stayed single from 1973 to 1992.
Meanwhile, I kept writing home asking if I could return. Every time I wrote, my elder brother Balaba would write back and say: “Don’t come home.†By July 1985, the pressure of loneliness and homesickness became so much that I stood in the middle of Broadway in New York City and wept. For the first time in life, I felt that my shoulders had became too heavy for me to carry. I resolved then that I should return and join those fighting so that I could either die or be home.
That very evening I got the news from a Kenyan student at Columbia University where I was also studying for Masters degree in computer science during the summer holidays, that President Obote may have been overthrown. I took it as a cruel joke. The following day was a Sunday and as was my custom I went for the huge New York Times Sunday paper to peruse during brunch. To my amazement it was true. Obote had been overthrown but not by Museveni! I did not really know what to make of it. But it offered some easing of the pressure of exile.
In December 1985, I was able to come to Kabale through Rwanda. I was travelling on an expired passport and nearly got in trouble in London even though I was in transit.
From Kabale I travelled with late Dr. Kisseka and Dr. Rugunda to Masaka which was now in the hands of the Museveni forces. At Masaka I saw a tall, thin, serious gentleman who asked Dr. Rugunda who I was. It was much later that I learned that this was Salim Saleh.
Another gentleman I was introduced to was Otafire whom I found frightening. I waited outside while they had their meeting and then we drove back to Kabale. I never met Museveni on that trip.
From Kabale, I returned to my duties in the US only to learn that Museveni’s forces had entered Kampala. Apparently the meeting at Masaka had been to plan the assault on Kampala. I wished I had stayed on! In June, I returned and this time I was able to meet Museveni for the first time since 1980. He remembered me. I met many other people and again I returned to my job in the US.
In November 1986, there was a Cabinet reshuffle in which Kiyonga was made minister of finance. He telephoned me to ask if I could come back and join Bank of Uganda as either director of exchange control or director of research with Dr. Suleiman Kiggundu as the new governor. I told him I was willing to return. When I informed the university administration of my appointment back home, they said I could return if I could first recruit a suitable replacement in the Management Science Department. I did and then left in February 1987 to became director of research at the Bank of Uganda. In 1990, I was promoted to deputy governor while the late Charles Kikonyogo became the new governor.
I soon discovered that the Bank of Uganda was the main battleground for the control of the financial sector. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were the major forces on that battleground. Having studied Finance as my undergraduate specialisation at Fordham University in New York City, I had been exposed to money and banking in the US. In the 1960s, banking in the US was overwhelmingly American. Operations by foreign banks were extremely limited. Even banks within the US were largely restricted to their state of origin. Banks that operated in more than one state were the exception rather than the rule.
My studies convinced me that banking was a special industry whose operation was jealously guarded by both federal and state laws. For example, directors of a national bank in the USA at that time had to be citizens of the United States (see for example, Edward W. Reed, Commercial Bank Management,1963.pp.36).
In the Uganda financial landscape I found that only Uganda Commercial Bank which was formed in 1965 by the post independence government was a major commercial bank. And it was under severe attack.
The diagnostic studies that were made by the World Bank were made only on the indigenous banks. These were Cooperative Bank, Uganda Development Bank, Uganda Commercial Bank and Bank of Uganda itself.
The outcomes of the diagnostic studies were alarming. They proposed that these indigenous banks should be taken over or closed. I was shocked. I resolved to fight and I did. The biggest battle was for Uganda Commercial Bank. I applied to move from my job of deputy governor to become chairman managing director of Uganda Commercial Bank.
Then Minister of Finance, Hon. Mayanja Nkangi advised me to stay on at the Central Bank. I said no. Later on when I was fired from UCB I looked back and thought that I should probably have taken his advice. Anyhow, I moved right into the battleground at the UCB. The World Bank director in charge of the WB’s financial sector program in Uganda at the time, called to congratulate me on assuming what he termed “the most important job in Ugandaâ€. I told him the most important job in Uganda was that of the President. He accepted my amendment.
But I was on a warpath with the multilateral agencies namely the IMF and the WB. They wanted the UCB privatised. I said no. I said it could be made profitable and if it had to be sold it should be sold to Ugandans. I closed branches, stopped branch managers from lending, retrenched thousands of staff; all in a bid to cut costs and restore profitability and save the bank. What most Ugandans did not know and probably still do not know is that UCB was a profitable bank throughout most of its life. It lost money only in the Tanzanian war of 1979 when its building in Masaka was destroyed and had to be written off. That write-off of a major asset reduced its profits and made it lose money. Until that time and since 1965 it was a profitable operation. So the view that the bank could not make profit because it was a state owned bank was completely false.
We turned the bank around. We were able to cover operating costs. We were on the way to full profitability. The World Bank increased the pressure for my head. In June 1996 I received the letter of dismissal. I left and went to my residence in Kabale and started to operate my businesses.
The bank went through a series of aborted privatisations and it was finally sold following bitter controversies in Parliament, in the Ministry of Finance, in the Central Bank and in the country. I had lost round one.
I came to learn, from my seven-year attendance at the Bible Study Fellowship International (BSF) at the Nakulabye Baptist Church that: “God’s sovereignty positions you where you are.â€
I have continued to hold this view and I advise my fellow countrymen and women to respect where God has put them even as they pray for an improvement in their condition. It is expected that we are working for God Himself and therefore we must be excellent.
For when we appear before Him on judgment day, He will demand to know from us what we did with the gifts he gave us: our brain, our eyes, our tongue and voice, our strength and our position, whatever it may be.
About Ezra Suruma
Date of Birth: 1939
-1969 — Bsc in Finance –Fordham University
-1972 — MA in Economics- Fordham University
-1976 — PhD. in economics-University of Connecticut
-1987-1990 — Director of Research, Bank of Uganda
-1990-1993 — Deputy Governor, Bank of Uganda
-1991-1997 — Chairman Board of Directors, Uganda Airlines Corporation
-1993-1996 — Chairman and Managing Director, Uganda Commercial Bank
-1997-2004 — Deputy Secretary to the Treasury Bank of Uganda, Ministry of Finance and Economic Development
-1997-2004—Deputy Governor
Uganda Commercial Bank, Managing Director
-1998-2005 — Director for Economic Affairs, National Resistance Movement
-2005 — Governor – Uganda,
IMF Board of Governors
-2005 — Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development
-2006 — Ex-Officio Representative, Parliament of Uganda
-2008 — Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development
Going into private business
In the private sector I joined my brothers in running buses from Kampala to Kigali. I also operated a sawmill in Mafuga Forest and managed White Horse Inn in Kabale district.
After nearly two years I was appointed Director of Economic Affairs at the NRM secretariat. This gave me an opportunity to visit all parts and districts of Uganda and to know the country for the first time.
I wrote numerous economic papers and taught throughout the country to all kinds of audiences great and small. I enjoyed the work although many people felt sorry for me and thought that the Secretariat was a dumping ground, a view I never shared.