Nelson Tugume, PLU and the Putinitication of Uganda’s Oligarchy Yesterday, Mr Nelson Tugume, the much maligned Boss of the Africa Coffee Park in Ntungamo, with his own media entourage in tow, made an appearance at the head offices of PLU and made a very public show of supporting the PLU boss’ Presidential ambitions with what seemed like a poorly rehearsed, hastily delivered meandering speech. In short, he ditched his former godfather Mr Odrek Rwabwogo, figuratively bent the knee and kissed the ring of the CDF, General MK who also happens to be Mr Rwabwogo’s brother-in-law. He came promising jabs or is it jobs? (See video and make your own judgement) He promised to bring investors with potential to invest a trillion dollars. Don’t ask why he never went to them for his own investment but instead raised the coffers of a poor country. He promised to support the Supreme Leader. The only promise he didn’t make was turning water into wine. The desperation was that high that he might have been tempted to throw that into the mix. Anyway, the man can talk a good game! You could easily see why President Museveni and the people who handed him billions to “teach Ugandans how to drink coffee” were charmed. But don’t be fooled by those high-sounding nothings. Mr Tugume wasn’t at PLU to make an investment pitch. He went there for a transaction. He went to buy an insurance policy for his growing, recently acquired state funded wealth. The noises from some PLU insiders had grown too loud for his comfort. A few decibels louder and he would have followed his Godfather’s right hand man, Mr Matthew Bagonza, into the basement, via a very public nude show on Twitter. That is an ignominy he wasn’t willing to suffer. Mr Tugume is anything but a fool. He is, what in modern parlance, we call a “sharp man”. He knows that in a country where the state is not only your biggest funder and protector (he moves around with armed SFC guards) but also your biggest threat, strategic alignment is how you hedge against uncertain winds. Throw in uncertainty about transition and you immediately understand the need to align with the perceived next center of state coercive power. A smart businessman needs not wait for elections when the signals are already screaming “MK Presidency”. It’s a clever hedge; an insurance policy if you’d like. The price? A few banal words, public photographs shared in endless media loops, a signing of the PLU support pledge book (See frame 2). In exchange, he receives a public amnesty via Twitter from the man himself and a pledge to protect “his investments”. As risk management goes, this is a masterclass. But this game wasn’t invented here and it won’t end here. This whole state cash bonanza has the feel of the privatization heist by Oligarchs in the evening years of Boris Yeltsin’s reign in Russia. The only difference with Uganda’s reverse privatization happening today is that unlike here where supposed investors get boatloads of state cash, in Russia, they got state business conglomerates at the price of a song. As transition from Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin happened, they quickly had to adjust. They either faced a jail cell or keep the oil wells, steel conglomerates etc in exchange for recognizing the unchallenged power of the new sheriff in town. It’s all eerily similar to our case. On December 31 1999, an ailing Yeltsin who at the time probably had more vodka in his veins than blood, resigned and chose then Prime Minister and former KGB boss, Vladimir Putin as acting President. Mr Putin went on to win an election in May 2000 and the consolidation of power started in earnest. If you are long in the tooth like me, you might recall that famous July 2000 summit where President Putin made 21 of the most powerful Russian Oligarchs “a DEAL they couldn’t refuse”. These Oligarchs who had amassed so much wealth and had turned the Russian state into their own playground were asked to drop any political ambitions, funding for the opposition and stay out of state decision making in exchange for the right to remain “temporary custodians” of their wealth, gotten through massively corrupt privatization and “loans for shares” schemes. Those who refused like Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky were asset stripped, jailed, exiled or died under mysterious circumstances; a suspiciously strategic high rise window here, a heart attack there serving as the quickest ticket to meetings with their maker. Anyway, back to Uganda, these “loans for shares” schemes have become mainstay. Think DEI Pharma, Atiak Sugar, Africa Coffee Park etc Any “investor” who can oil the system and ride into Mzee’s courtyard comes out with a truckload of state cash. Mr Nelson Tugume did this play just this a few years ago. He rode the coattails of the President’s son-in-law, Mr Odrek Rwabwogo, en-route to a $10 million windfall which then opened the funding floodgates for his coffee contraption or is it public finance soak pit (?) nestled in the Ntungamo hills. He “cleverly” diverted billions off of that $10 million, initially meant to serve as a funding pool for coffee exporters. He paid himself the bulk of the cash, dug up a litany of building foundations in Ntungamo, engaged a fierce media machine, sang the right patriotic songs, repeated Mzee’s favorite investment and development buzz words and he was off to the races. The soup kitchen of a welfare state has now become his personal piggy bank. @PublicSquareEA unearthed a lot of that information. You can find some of it here: nitter.cf/tonynatif/status/17482… Anyway, with the recent political winds starting to blow in the direction of the first son’s presidential ambitions, Mr Tugume found himself in a precarious situation where sails had to be adjusted to align with these winds. What the country witnessed wasn’t really a decision rooted in patriotism and deep love for country. It was a “smart” business decision. Mr Tugume wasn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last to make it. The times, they’re interesting… Signed: #KalebuleHQ #TalkingCoffee