Skip to main content

THE MUKWANO I KNEW


We have lost the greatest Ugandan entrepreneur of our time, Mr Amirali Karmali, more popularly known as Mzee Mukwano.

I have known Mzee Mukwano for more than 40 years and most of what I am today is due to him. And I am not alone.

"He has helped countless people through school – as he did me. Helped countless more in business – as he did me. And he has been a steadfast friend and source of support to countless more – as he was to me....

I first met Mukwano around about 1977. My mother was the secretary for the chief of operations at Uganda Airlines, a man I knew only as Hamid. Mukwano had come to charter the Uganda Airlines’ Hercules plane and I happened to be around the office then.

He was a short man, an unassuming man, but clearly a serious businessman who would charter the plane to bring in goods that were in high demand here.

He run a popular whole sale shop in Nakasero – Egesa Commercial Agencies, a beehive of activity and the go-to place for anything and everything at the time.

I was just out of O-Level at that time. He encouraged me to study hard and that he would pay my fees in the UK when I passed my A-level.

Meanwhile I was hustling the best I could to put food on the table for my family, having lost my father a few years before. Between school and trying to make a living I bumped into Mzee Mukwano often and saw how he run his business at close quarters. We had numerous conversations about business and life.

Before he went into trade he was a truck driver, ferrying cargo from Mombasa to Uganda and on to Congo, Rwanda and Sudan. I think he knew every road and had many stories to tell about his adventures driving up and down the region.

When Amin expelled the Asians he stayed around, not only survived but thrived as trader. He spoke fluent Rutooro, Luganda and Swahili, that was the edge that set him apart in business, and probably kept him safe during those hairy days, where it was not advisable to be a success. An Asian success at that.

He had a red Mitsubishi for a long time, which he drove himself around in.

I eventually completed my A-Level and was admitted to Makerere University to do B.Com. I reminded Mzee Mukwano about his promise and he gave me the greenlight to apply to a university of my choice. With the postal service then, correspondence between the universities of my choice and myself took forever. It was not until a year into my course at Makerere that Mukwano gave me £10,000 in cash as my tuition to go and study.

That was barely enough for a year at the London School of Economics where I wanted to go, but was more than enough to see me though a two year course at the London School of Accountancy.
When I returned, I went to visit him with what I thought were good gifts to express my gratitude for what he had done for me. Right before my eyes he distributed the gifts among his workers. He said I owed him nothing and that he was glad I was able to make my way in the UK.

He was at the time about to open his factory. I asked whether I could be of assistance. He put me in charge of cash collections with the warning that I should not get involved in any corrupt dealings. 

There was a shortage of soap and cooking oil at the time and some people would get allocation chits sell them at a premium and make money that way. As a result the grateful buyers would often live sizable tips which we would log as part of the sales.

I reported a surplus one day – that we had earned more than we had sold and Mzee Mukwano was not amused, he insisted that the books must balance. That was the end of the tips.

After four months Mzee Mukwanao decided I was wasted in the cash office, that I should break out on my own. A cigarette smoker all the time I knew him, he got the silver foil from a cigarette packet and on the back of it, instructed a business partner in Dubai to give me $20,000 and sent me on my way.

This was 1988. I had wangled a deal with DHL to supply them with calculators, the 14-digit ones because of our currency issues. I made my way to Dubai and found the business partner, a textiles merchant. He refused to give me cash and forced $20,000 worth of textiles on me.

I called Mzee Mukwano to complain, his advice, “If you want calculators and the man gives you textiles, sell the textiles and buy the calculators.” With my brand new accountancy credentials this had not occurred to me.

"Never in a hurry. He was rarely, if ever fazed. External appearances meant nothing to him. His humility grew the wealthier he became...

Since 1995 he ceded control of the flagship Mukwano Industries to his son and went off to build another fortune as a tea exporter, with tea estates in the west and unrivalled trucking operation. He monitored this from Kampala, though the urban legend was that he had relocated to Fort Portal.
He was my model for his humility, his wisdom, his steadfastness and his compassion.

Mzee Mukwano was 80 and I – he referred to me as Mutabani, shared in only a small part of his life. His visible wealth is only a fraction of his numerous achievements as mentor and sponsor of the many out there like myself.

Two days ago Mzee Mukwano summoned Attorney General William Byaruhanga and I to see him. He sensed the end was near. We bid him farewell.

Rest in Peace Mzee.





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GIVE OUR TRAFFIC POLICE A CHANCE

Last week during an investor interaction   Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) officials called on police to stop overriding traffic lights while directing traffic. KCCA argues that the traffic lights are large investment and it makes no sense for police to countermand them. In a classic case of “The importance of the river was not known till it dried up” on Friday the traffic police desisted from directing cars at the traffic lights leading to the worst traffic snarl-up in the city’s history. People were stuck in traffic jams around the city for hours and long into the night. Maybe it was the unhappy coincidence of the traditional Friday traffic and pre-Christmas excitement but without the traffic police directing traffic it was a mess. They made their point. It of course points to the bigger issue of a revamping of Kampala’s road network, which has remained   largely the same since independence but with an exponential increase in cars in the last three...
Post a Comment
Read more

HOW TO RECOGNISE A PONZI AND NOT FALL VICTIM

Another Ponzi scheme has come crashing down around the ears of hundreds of “investors”. Unsurprisingly. In its recent reincarnation poor Ugandans were lured into a scheme where they bought computer tablets. This entitled them to a monthly pay off, $100, and a Christmas bonus for their children. In this case the unsuspecting investors -cum -victims were being given a share certificate. Meaning you accept to take the part of the risk in this project. Which was inadvertently reducing their burden of risk and liability for the issuing company. I leave that area to smart lawyers to handle.   As is always the case with these things, it’s not quite clear where the pay-out will come from. A common characteristic of these schemes is that you might get initial payments before you starting missing a few and the stories begin. The promoters of these schemes or scams often use the money from the latest entrants to pay the older “investors” until one of two things happen. Either...
Post a Comment
Read more

DEAL WITH PLASTICS BEFORE ITS TOO LATE

The first rainy season seems to have passed. Not too soon for some of us. It has become standard now that with the rains come the floods and with every season these become not only more and more daunting, but spread all over Kampala. While KCCA has done a lot of work in improving drainage, we are undoing the good work with our bad habits. Everyday we dispose of tons of plastic improperly, these find their way into the existing drainage systems of this city. These cause blockages, which we go about blissfully unaware of until the rainy season begins. The rainwater not only struggles to go past existing blockages but comes along with its own load of plastics to reinforce the existing blockage. The water, which should be finding its way to Lake Victoria, swells out of the drains and finds its way onto the road, into our offices and our homes. That’s the simplified version of events.  This is before we even start examining how we are building in the wetlands ...
Post a Comment
Read more

WELL DONE UGANDA REVENUE AUTHORITY BUT …

Over the weekend President Yoweri Museveni commissioned the new head office of the Uganda Revenue Authority, an imposing structure that is set to dominate the Nakawa skyline for some time to come. Congratulations are in order to URA for the construction of such an aesthetically appealing building, which I hope wills set the pace for other developments not only in the area but in Kampala and even Uganda as a whole. I know the pride that comes with having completed such a massive build for the initiators and implementors. The new 22-story structure has allowed the tax man to fold back all his offices from around the city back to the head office, a move they estimate will save them sh7b annually. Using simple math the sh140b will pay for itself in 20 years. The move is seen as precursor to a government move to build a ministerial compound in Bwebajja, where all ministries will be relocated sometime in the future. I have seen comments that such actions are evidence that...
Post a Comment
Read more

NOT ONLY THE HARDWARE BUT THE SOFTWARE TOO

In the middle of September the United Nations released its annual Human Development Indicator (HDI). This index serves as an indicator of the quality of life of a country’s people by measuring the health, education, inequality, poverty and security standards. Aside from the statistical measures of development like GDP growth, this is obviously a better measure of how people are actually doing. In this year’s HDI report Uganda was ranked 162 out of 189 countries with a HDI score of 0.516. The index goes from zero to one, the nearer you are to one the better. Our score puts us in the low human development category. But as bad as that sounds we have been worse. In 1990, the earliest year that these figures were compiled our score was 0.311 even the UN recognises that we have improved 66 percent in the last three decades. According to the UN figures life expectancy has risen to 60.2 years   from 45.5 in 1990; expected years of schooling has doubled to 11.6 fr...
Post a Comment
Read more

LET US GIVE SMEs A CHANCE

Something is wrong when most of Ugandan business is shut out of the government procurement process. This is happening in Uganda today. Micro-, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) account for 90 percent of the private sector. These account for 65 percent of national output (GDP). On the other hand 75 percent of our now sh32trillion national budget is earmarked for public procurement but the MSMEs’ share of this action is only 15 percent. It does not take a rocket scientist to see that such numbers are behind the huge inequalities in our society and why the majority of us do not have hope of a better and brighter future. Thankfully this is not an insurmountable problem. If MSMEs had access to more opportunities accruing from the national budget the benefits to themselves and to the nation as a whole would be huge. These would include increased production which would lead to job creation, raise incomes at household levels, leading to reduced income ine...
Post a Comment
Read more