Kenya tax riots surprise Ugandans

How is that even possible?

COVER STORY | THE INDEPENDENT | As thousands of mainly youth have been holding protest across Kenya against new tax proposals made in the annual budget for FY 2024/25, the main question in Uganda has been: How is that even possible?

Many Ugandans took to the X platform to air their disbelief as the Kenyan capital Nairobi and some other major cities have since June 18 witnessed close quarter confrontations between riot police and the protesters.

“How come no stray bullets have killed any protesters,” one person commented.

When CNN International Correspondent Larry Madowo posted a clip of a defiant Kenyan young woman confronting the riot police under the caption “This is the face of courage”, one reaction was: “People are asking if this can happen in Uganda with your police officers trained by North Korean instructors?”

The first person to react on the ensuing thread was one Pru Nyamishana. She wrote: “With Uganda, you just can’t do that. I feared the Uganda police when they arrested Nana when she was pregnant.”

But other scholars such as Travis B. Curtice and Brandon Behlendorf argue that repressive actions taken by the security forces in support of the regime eventually should result in powerful backlash effects, including decreasing support, and triggering political dissent.

Travis B. Curtice is in the Department of Political Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA and Brandon Behlendorf belongs to the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity, University at Albany State University of New York, NY, USA.

Their findings are in a paper entitled, `Street-level Repression: Protest, Policing, and Dissent in Uganda’ that was published in 2021 by SAGE Publishing company in the Journal of Conflict Resolution.

They point at how the arrests, torture, and trial of several opposition leaders, including Robert Kyangulany Ssentamu sparked additional protests and political dissent throughout Uganda.

“Our findings and unfolding political events in Uganda demonstrate the costs of repression to political authorities,” they write, “Excessive police violence decreases support for police, increases public criticism of the police, and lays the foundation for future political dissent.”

Recognising the costs for individuals to engage in political dissent in Uganda and considering the conditioning relationship of bystanding compared to participating in a rally, they also argue that civilians who identify as participating in a rally might be more likely to express their “true preferences” about future political engagement or dissent.

Focusing on the same Kyagulanyi protests, another writer; Evelyn Lirri, said on X: “For those saying Ugandans never protest. Here is your kind reminder of the end result. It’s always #death. Or# torture or long incarcerated without trial if you’re lucky!”

The writer accompanied it with a photo of a January 04, 2021 Daily Monitor story entitled: “November Riots: The lives we lost”.

This question of whether Ugandans can riot is not new. As far back as 2016, one Martha Nangalama posed the question in a blog.

She wrote: “Is it true that Uganda as a nation is full of cowards? I am afraid yes we are cowards. How can one man a 70+ year old something something keep us in one melting pot and he keeps on increasing the fire and we just lament how hot it is?

Uganda has one brave citizen and that is Dr. Kiza Besigye and a handful of others. #Museveni knows that if he arrests Dr. Besigye then he can go to Rwakitura and talk to his cows. Donald Trump summed it up nicely. How can one old man intimidate a whole nation with less than 500 armed soldiers?”

Kenya’s history

Kenya meanwhile has a long history of political protests, stretching as far back as the Mau-Mau fight for freedom during the colonial period through to independence.

Amid police crackdowns, Kenyans protested against political assassinations and autocracy during the tenures of the country’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, and his successor, Daniel Moi.

Through a constitutional amendment, Moi turned Kenya into a one-party state in 1982, which heightened political tensions. Later that year, Kenyans protested in Nairobi in support of an attempted coup against Moi as opposition politicians and civil society sought a return to political pluralism.

Countrywide protests were held in 1990. This agitation, coupled with pressure from civil society, religious groups and western donors, forced Moi to accede to multiparty politics in 1991.

In 1992, mothers of political prisoners held an 11-month hunger strike in Nairobi to demand the release of their sons.

Protests against presidential results in 2007 led to a horrific crackdown. More than 1,100 people were killed, several of them extra-judicially by the police. Odinga had disputed Mwai Kibaki’s win. Protests and summary executions also followed the 2013 and 2017 announcements of presidential election results.

In an April 2023 article in the online journal The Conversation, Westen K Shilaho, a senior researcher on African politics, who has studied the evolution of political protests in Kenya, said they have been hijacked by the elite.

In an interview, he said: Protests are important. They can influence a government or a body of authority to respond to popular interests and injustice. Through protests, a government can be forced to address service delivery concerns, corruption, labour disputes, extrajudicial and summary executions and education matters, and to abandon dictatorial tendencies. In some countries, such as Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, protests collapsed regimes.

As I discuss in my book, Political Power and Tribalism in Kenya, political protests in the country have become insular, sectarian, tribal, unashamedly personality driven and elitist.

The interview is under the title: “Mass protests in Kenya have a long and rich history – but have been hijacked by the elites”.

In it, Shilaho says his research found that the political elite have used protests for self-preservation and to pursue their interests.

“Protests have become about getting opposing political personalities to come to an agreement so that election losers don’t lose all the benefits of being in power – but such agreements stifle healthy debate,” he said.

Death reported

By Friday June 21 there were reports of at least one death of a civilian in the latest Kenya riots. They reportedly died of gun wound although the police have mainly deployed tear-gas canisters and water cannons. Other reports citing Amnesty International figures said at least 200 people were injured and more than 100 arrested by then.

In Nairobi on June 21 the demonstrators attempted to overrun parliament buildings where lawmakers debated and passed the controversial Finance Bill 2024.

When President Ruto travelled to a university event in the southeastern town of Garissa, anti-government protesters lined the street leading to the event venue.

In Eldoret town, the youth told journalists they had been duped into voting for Ruto on a promise that he would lower taxes and the cost of living.

Ruto won the August 2022 election on a promise to put more in the pockets of small traders, informal workers, and others living hand to mouth. Once elected, however, he removed subsidies and imposed new taxes. The result has been a hike in prices of goods and services consumed by ordinary Kenyans have exploded amidst bourgeoning national debt and a drop in the value of the Kenya shilling vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar.

Petrol prices increased 22%, electricity by nearly 50%, and household staples like sugar and beans by 61% and 30% respectively, according to some reports.

“I was so happy when he was sworn in… now I am very disappointed,” Wairimu told AFP at the time, saying her daily earnings of roughly 1,000 Kenyan shillings ($6.8) had halved since Ruto took office.

“It’s us, the hustlers, who are suffering most.”

“They lied to the hustlers, they conned the hustlers,” said Robert Kiberenge, a 47-year-old long-term unemployed man.

Compared to Uganda, Kenya’s finance bill that triggered public outrage, appears to be a catch-up effort on the high taxes front.

Initially, the Bill which is part of Kenya’s 2024/25 budget, proposed tax hikes on various goods and services, including a 16% VAT on bread and increased taxes on vegetable oil and fuel.

There was also a 6% VAT on some financial services and foreign exchange transactions, a 2.5% tax on cars, and on mobile money transfers, digital marketplaces and content, and eco-taxes on plastics, tyres, and packaging. There was also a higher health insurance tax and a new 1.5% housing levy on monthly income.

The government says the taxes will help raise an extra KES 346 billion to pay the country’s debt and fund development projects. Those opposing the measures argue that the new taxes will increase cost of basic goods like bread mobile phones, sanitary ware, and even computers. The tax on fuel, they say, will increase the cost of production and lead to increased cost of goods and transport fares as it trickles down to the consumer.

On June 17, as the riots raged, the Parliamentary Finance committee scrapped some taxes, including VAT on bread, excise duty on mobile money and banking fees, motor vehicle tax, and levies on edible oil. But the rioters persisted, demanding that parliament reject the whole bill. It is now not clear to most people what is in the Bill and what is out. This is a point that the government has been hammering down to the protesters.

Initially, the protests blocked major roads in the capital Nairobi but they soon spread to other major towns and cities, including Ruto’s hometown of Eldoret.

According to reports, protesters say the new finance bill will push more Kenyans into poverty, especially coming at a time when many are struggling with high cost of living.

In one such report, Edna Matiri, a 21-year-old tourism and hospitality student in Nairobi was quoted saying they want their MPs to go back to the drawing board and come up with a better bill as a solution.

“I think Ruto is gambling with our future,” she reportedly said, “This bill is meant to collect money for a few people in government to loot, when out here we can barely make ends meet.”

President Ruto’s government appears determined to ride out the protests and on June 20, while the riots raged, Kenya’s parliament voted for the controversial Finance Bill 2024 to enter the committee stage. Up to 204 MPs voted yes to the bill while 115 voted no.

The bill will now move to the committee stage and a third reading. If it passes the third reading, it will be sent to President Ruto for assent.

Ruto has said while the protests were a constitutional right, government institutions also had a mandate to deliver.

“We are a democratic country,” he said on June 19, “Those who want to demonstrate it is their right, no problem. But decisions have to be made by institutions.

“We will make decisions as an executive, take it to the legislature, people of Kenya will speak to it through public participation, others will subject it to court processes and that is how democracy works and I am a great believer in democracy,” he said.

Majority of MPs from the ruling Kenya Kwanza coalition and a few from the opposition Azimio coalition voted for the Bill, approving the tax hikes that the national treasury argues the country badly needs.

Comparing taxes

Comparatively, Uganda’s VAT rate is has been 18% for years. It has also had an excise duty of 15% on some financial services and transactions.

In fact, Kenya does not have the highest comparative tax rates in the region. That distinction belongs to Uganda, at least according to analysis by the international audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

While commenting on the tax proposals in the previous Uganda budget of the 2023/4 FY, Trevor Lukanga; a Senior Manager, Tax, at PwC Uganda published an article entitled “Uganda’s tax regime is still the highest in EAC:.

In the article, Lukanga wrote: “Comparatively across the East African region, the Uganda tax regime appears high. Therefore, government’s decision to expand the tax base using other means other than increased tax rates seems to be a step in the right direction especially when there’s only so much left to tax and the citizenry already feel like they have been taxed to the hilt”.

The 2024/5 budget, however, marks the second year in which the Uganda government has not proposed any major changes in tax rates but has instead introduced new measures to hopefully widen the tax base. The idea is not to increase the tax burden on the same taxpayers.

The only marked tax increase in this FY is excise duty on petrol and diesel by Shs100 per litre and 100% or Shs 10,000 whichever is higher on imported wines per litre. The tax rate last year was 80 percent or Shs 8,000 per litre.

This FY Uganda has proposed a budget of Shs.72 trillion (Approx. US$19 billion) of which total revenue of which domestic revenues will amount to Shs32 trillion, with Shs29 trillion coming from taxes. That is 40% of the budget.

Comparatively, Tanzania plans to spend Tsh44.39 trillion (Approx. US$19 billion) in the next Financial Year, Rwanda Rwf5.0 trillion (Approx. US$4 billion) and Burundi US$1.5 billion.

Kenya’s budget, estimated at Kshs3.68 trillion (Approx. US$26 billion) is the biggest in the region. Its tax revenue is expected to increase by 18.8 percent to Sh2.91 trillion in 2024/25. That is 78% of the budget. Clearly, Kenyans pay more taxes than Ugandans. It’s possibly why they are so angry when they are misused.