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On the morning of July 1, Ugandans woke up to find that they could not read their WhatsApp messages, scroll through Facebook and Twitter chats, or post a photo of their Sunday lunch on Snapchat.
the social media tax took effect. To access one of the more than 60 online platforms listed as "Over The Top (OTT)" – chosen by the government because they offer voice and messaging services – they had to pay a tax of 200 Ugandan shillings (4p) per day. That equates to around £ 1.20 a month, or £ 14.60 a year, in a country where nearly a quarter of the population lives on less than £ 1 a day.
President Yoweri Museveni, who has been leading Uganda for 32 years, says the tax is needed to generate income to turn the impoverished country into a middle-income country by 2020. He explains that social media is simply a place of idle gossip. What it really means, is that the millions of people who use social media in Uganda – many of whom are young, unemployed and unhappy with a government that offers no real prospect for their future – make it difficult for him to display a demonstration of democracy.
After all, African children are supposed to listen to their elders and no decent African can allow children – especially not millennia strayers who seem to have their own opinion – to dishonor them in public. Museveni, 73, like many other African presidents, decided that it was better to silence his critics rather than addressing their problems. From Tanzania (where it now costs £ 700 to blog, higher than the average annual income of £ 660) and from Kenya to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon (where the internet was closed during the elections), many governments on the continent are struggling to control the network.
In Uganda too, the government shut down the Internet during the 2016 elections amid allegations of election fraud. The government also closed critical media and arrested a university professor for calling the president a "pair of buttocks" because he had not kept his election promise to provide sanitary napkins. free to schoolgirls. Museveni and his ilk are so engrossed in attempts to muzzle critics that they ignore the ubiquitous nature of the internet and the fact that trying to silence people can instead make them stronger.
Most Ugandans have vowed not to pay the Virtual Private Networks (VPN) tax on their smartphones, allowing them to return to Twitter and Facebook and taunt the government – from Canada, the United Kingdom, Croatia or elsewhere – with hashtags such as #ThisTaxMustGo and #NoToSocialMediaTax. [19659007AfricanStatesquitetocloseInternetsmoreimpactingarmarms
Activists also sued the government for imposing a tax that they claim violates their right to freedom of expression and access to information.
Panicked, the Ugandan parliament came back at the beginning of the break to discuss the tax, with another tax on mobile money users that also attracted attention. Police, which a week earlier had authorized a march against the killings of women in the suburbs of Kampala, used tear gas to disperse people who were coming out on the streets to protest the tax on social media.
The continuing development and unreserved disregard for human rights and democracy are a disturbing echo of the Chinese approach of placing development before human rights. People are being evicted from their land without compensation to make room for government-sponsored projects and private investors backed by the government in preparation for Uganda's long-awaited oil boom. Large companies, including those in China, benefit from tax holidays and exemptions while local small businesses are taxed. The World Bank says that Uganda should collect double its current taxes and the Uganda Tax Justice Alliance estimates that between 1970 and 2010, the country lost 6.4 billion pounds in illegal leakage of capital.
Ugandans are angry because they feel that their taxes are already too high and have not translated into a better life. How would they feel otherwise when they would go to the hospital and be sent back because there are no mattresses or medications? Or when public education is of dubious quality and that parents are forced to pay for private schools with their meager incomes. Or when the road is full of potholes, the fuel is too expensive, and the public transport system does not exist. Or when having an education is not a guarantee that you will get a job. And now they have to pay even to vent their woes online.
African states trying to shut down the Internet are also among the most corrupt. In many of these countries, it is risky to speak out against the government. In Uganda, five or more people can only gather with the permission of the police. The Internet remains the only safe space to express dissent and demand accountability – something that many African leaders do not have the habit of giving to their citizens.
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