Students of political economy will tell us that our current contention - still ongoing - over the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) is the age-old struggle between state regulation on the one hand, and claims of free market economics on the other.
There is an interesting tension: as argued before, UCDA ran into trouble when it demonstrated no need for government assistance/control, yet it was established by the government. Like a child who grows up and finds meaning and love elsewhere, it is sometimes difficult for obsessive parents to appreciate that their baby has outgrown their control.
Much more importantly, UCDA understood that for the industry to thrive, it had to commit itself to being regulated and guided by dictates of the crop itself. Not the government. Thus, it learned and perfected coffee's internal logics to the point that it was even willing to forego the Shs 45 billion budget allocation. This has challenged our non-reflective state, especially that it is obsessive about control.
President Museveni's policy on coffee and its farmers - violently displacing a wonderful matchmaker in UCDA - is destined for trouble. Uganda is not only a free market economy, but also the item being traded sets the rules with its suitors. See, free market economics does not only mean 'free selling' and 'free buying' economics.
The idea of a willing seller also means a willing producer, a willing farmer, a free-willing harvester. Thus, a farmer is under no compulsion to engage in farming a particular crop. Notice also here that it is not just the willingness of the farmer, but the item being traded ought to decide to be lucrative in that particular place and time.
It is not just the man to make the move but the village belle has to okay it. Thus, the farmer and the crop enter a uniquely powerful and independent relationship where corrosive external influence is resisted by simply becoming unavailable. If these were a couple, the parent ought to be super smart to appreciate the fact that they might not be invited to the wedding.
Remember, coffee is a peasant-led crop, which then bestows immense power onto the peasant who has to enter a mutually- beneficial love affair with the crop. You cannot displace them with large-scale farming, such as the German farm in Mubende, Kaweri Coffee, which stands on the graves of thousands of victims.
Being peasant-led hits differently. Museveni and co. have ignored a core component of the industry: trust and goodwill. This is not like gold or oil, which are centrally-produced, and controlled. Rather, individual peasant farmers picking themselves up, and volunteering to invest in this line of work, carefully courting their girl, and the girl offering consent.
Notice here that UCDA has only played the role of a wonderful cupid, but the different parties involved have immense power. Thus, with over 12 million people involved - and many more selling their cows to create space on their lands for coffee farms - the dissolution of UCDA portends danger to the entire relationship. The new matchmaker, who also doubles as the parent, seems to be jealous and aggressive.
COFFEE'S LOVE AFFAIR
Indeed, if there are any lessons to learn from the ongoing coffee debate, it is that coffee is a battleground. It is a metaphor. A form of mediation for different relationships. Coffee was a core part of the anti-colonial struggle and remains a core part of our new nationalist imaginary and ordinary lives.
As a leading forex earner, coffee has given many Ugandans a livelihood. Not only has it seen dreams come through, it has also given us culture. It is not just the school fees our parents got from selling coffee, but that we slept atop full or empty sacks of coffee. They were our mattresses, blankets, sometimes, the fabrics for our entire beddings.
We were lashed for forgetting the beans in the rain or for not putting them out in the sun. While Uganda might not be a coffee- consuming country, we have developed a series of performative practices around coffee. The Luganda language - like those in the coffee-growing communities - is filled with proverbs, wise-saying and humour built around coffee.
Saying such as "Gw'osussa emmwanyi, omusanga ku mayanja nga y'awungula" (that is, it is possible to treat an individual as of less value, only to find them later as potential saviours in a difficult situation) or "Emwanyi gyewesiga, y'etabaamu mulamwa" (that which you trust or that individual you trust might turn out to be the most useless) use coffee imagery to discuss the subject of respect, being non-judgmental, and just treatment of all.
They build on an understanding of the place of coffee in our lives. If Buganda kingdom ever considers opening a coffee museum - 'Emwanyi mu Buganda,' that they'll call it. Indeed, there are plenty of displayable coffee-cultural artefacts. Consider the men who hawk roasted coffee beans tied in dried banana fibre?
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Not sure whether it is an aphrodisiac or just like normal coffee. You have heard about the traditional religious festivals involving coffee in baskets. Then the old measuring equipment, eddebe, the bicycle to the growers' union, and the ways in which it was assembled for transport. The old weighing scales.
The point I am making is twofold: being a peasant-led crop, it is possible for coffee farmers to simply lock out intrusive third parties.
Secondly, coffee and its farmers are built for and have enjoyed a longer, older relationship. With markets designed to be free, the farmers and the crop are likely to sit back and relax, watch these unreflective men overwork themselves, and count on time.
Concluding an online conversation with former New Vision CEO, Robert Kabushenga, historian, Prof Lwanga Lunyiigo noted that coffee is perhaps a most patient crop: it could be left in the bush for 30-40 years and when the time allows, the farmer will return to this overgrown bush, clean up the plantation and prepare harvesting the following season and sell.
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.
