If Not Bread, Then Cassava: Another “Let Them Eat Cake”

While Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta declared a 12% increment in the legal minimum wage each point on the May 1st international labour day celebrations, President Museveni advocated for cassava at the expense of bread claiming that he himself does not eat bread. This expression crisply puts it clearly: “If there is no bread, eat cassava: myself I don’t eat bread!” (President Museveni: NTVNews, International labour day at Kololo, 1^st May, 2022.) 

The current enigma and/or stumper over the inflation and scarcity of necessities in Uganda is mind-boggling, disconcerting, and placing us in outright. We are living in a world that demands a lot, ample is necessitated yet it can’t be afforded and attained in a flash or even in the long run. Human needs are never limited; we are just on crave-roads of longing for supplementary. Our gluttony is yearning so relentlessly but is it worth it? Is the world in copiousness to settle our rarity? We are just on the verge of exhausting each and everything God created.

The expression of the President about the bread and cassava mirrors the extravagance and arrogance of Queen Marie-Antoinette during the “French Revolution”. You can find out how she ended! In a word, this reflects either the president’s frivolous disregard for the starving peasants or his poor understanding of their plight. This cannot be a resolution to the ongoing persistent increase in prices of commodities and scarcity of necessities. We have been conditioned that only politicians can solve our problems. But to some point, maybe we will wake up and recognize that it was the politicians who created our problems (Ben Carson). 

In his explanation, Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), discerned three factors that influence evolution. First of all, the accidental variations occur continually in nature. Secondly, the struggle for existence, and thirdly, natural selection. Herein, the struggle for existence takes precedence. In his essay on the principle of population, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) enunciated his view about population stating that “while human population increases geometrically, food supply increases arithmetically.” Under this paradigm, humans would eventually be unable to produce enough food to sustain them (population trap) unless negative checks are used. Food supply is limited but each animal has to fight to get a share.

In Uganda today, the poor do not sleep because they are hungry, and the rich don’t sleep because the poor are awake! It is only the privileged ones eating the bread. This contends to the fact. Natural selection reveals that the slower and weaker ones will be eliminated and the strong and fast will survive (survival for the fittest.) This insinuates the current inflation and limitedness of resources, henceforth; there will always be that momentum to own something in this scarce world by hook or crook. Nevertheless, a perfect state (Uganda) could be attained if human restraints could be removed. My worry is that the on-going inflation and scarcity of resources would destroy perfection and there will be misery in the world. This is caused by a failure in the development of institutional structures, rather progressing in the development of personalities, who turn out to be dictators (Barack Obama).

 I would rather be lenient with the President’s resolution because cassava is a little more, possible and affordable by many Ugandans, nevertheless, we need to know why could there be no bread? The tentative answer to this, points to the pervasive inflation in the country. The anecdote has been cited as an example of the politicians’ obliviousness to the conditions of the daily lives of ordinary people. Herein, cassava would be referred to as a sort of desert that English speakers often imagine. In a tale collected in 16^th century, a noblewoman wonders why the hungry poor don’t eat Krosem (sweet bread).

Essentially, stories of rulers and aristocrats obvious to their privileges are popular and widespread legends. Reserving all the above, the justification he attached to his resolution, “myself I don’t eat bread”, is a defence mechanism by rationalization. That is imposing an individual will into the universal. This is a fish out of water, or on a hiking trail. The expression alludes to the fact that fish cannot survive for long on dry land. This is an indicator that Ugandans cannot have bread and eat it too for they cannot yield satisfaction/ value out of it. 

The expression “let them eat bread” is the famous quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793), the queen of France during the French Revolution. As the story goes, it was the queen’s response upon being told that her starving peasant subjects had no bread (1789). The Cake in question, (brioche: a sweet French breakfast bread), obviously being a more expensive item than an average baguette (bread), the expression with its callous remark became offensive. However, it isn’t exactly the icing-laden, multi-tiered gateaux you might imagine the queen had in mind. Nevertheless, the queen became a hated symbol of the decadent monarchy and fuelled the revolution. Because of her extravagance and arrogance, she was overthrown by revolutionaries and was publicly guillotined following the abolition of the monarchy in France.

In a nutshell, no one would want to eat cassava at the expense of bread, unless dictated by medical attention. In most cases, ‘lack’ is what people create in order to gain power and control. Superpower countries and strategists of situations love creating scarcity such that they create opportunity. In Uganda, the benefits are self-centered which is as ruthless as the sea. In trying times, we ought to make a positive change as we build a world full of availabilities to all those who are in dearth. We are reminded that it is the company that makes the feast; it is here and now that we should lift the hands of those in shortage with an aim of making this biosphere, a world of availability not a world of scarcity. We need our bread!!!

As authored by SSEKANJAKO DERICK
ssekanjakoderick5@gmail.com