Joachim Buwembo
5 October 2008
column
Africans of average and low income now have another reason to hate terrorism.
The guys who blew up the World Trade Centre seven years ago may or may not have intended it, but they have ended up making it impossible for an ordinary person to purchase land in or around African cities.
As we are finally becoming aware, one of the main strategies to combat terrorism is to monitor the movement of funds across countries.
Apparently, the terrorists stopped smuggling weapons into targeted territories ages ago. Instead, they transfer money, which they use to mobilise resources for terror in the targeted territory itself.
The powerful countries have thus been monitoring cash movements intensively, and requiring the weaker ones to do the same.
Some of our countries dragged their feet in passing anti-money laundering laws. But all the same, the central banks and the commercial banks, many of which are foreign-owned anyway, are now fully compliant with the new procedures.
But besides deterring the terrorists, the measures have hit a new class of victims - corrupt leaders and bureaucrats.
The poor fellows had for years been transferring stolen money to banks abroad, where it ended up earning good interest. More recently, South Africa had also become a choice destination.
The increasing anti-terrorism vigilance spoilt the party. Even if you can prove that you are not funding terrorists, you do not want too many questions being asked about the five million dollars you are transferring when your salary is five thousand dollars.
That is how things leak to the press and before you know it, your political rivals are yelling for your blood.
Our poor African thieves are now said to be stuck with millions of dollars that they can no longer comfortably send to Europe, North America or South Africa. So they have discovered a new method of hiding their booty - buy property locally at any cost, and start earning legitimate income from it.
Again, many of us are just waking up to these things and realising why the price of property has been going crazy over the past five years. What happens is that a fellow gets his hands on a couple of million taxpayer dollars in some scam and wants all trace of it to disappear as quickly as possible.
He looks for a choice plot in a Kampala suburb and is told it goes for $300 a square foot. He offers $400 so that the seller does not change his mind.
He then gets an architect and a contractor and asks that a shopping mall or block of apartments be built as a matter of emergency. This is accomplished in record time. Meanwhile, passers-by are busy speculating which big government official owns the project.
Then the ordinary person who has been working hard to buy a plot tries to buy a small one in the same area.
When he started saving, he had projected that it would cost him $5,000. Now the sellers, aware that there are fellows who are itching to offer a hundred thousand dollars, laughs at our hardworking chap and tells him to go to hell with his five grand.
That, in a nutshell is what has been happening to make the town plot prices crazy.
But the story does not stop there. Now, with the new fashion of regional economic groupings, and given that we are on our way to forming a political federation, the cash-rich boys have got more outlets. If the cash stolen in Kampala can't go to Europe, it is welcome in Nairobi. After all, capital is supposed to move freely.
So the property prices in Nairobi are shooting out of the reach of the hardworking Kenyan, thanks to a few robbers from Dar es Salaam and Kampala. We may think that Kigali and Bujumbura are difficult to penetrate, but you can bet some people are already laundering their proceeds there. Terrorism won't deter them.
Long live the East African Community and impending federation.
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