By Our Reporter
Parents who run businesses should think very hard and teach their children through every thin and thick of the business. The story of Godfrey Mabarizi is another one that brings me tears.
The one of Zzimwe of course brings me tears too. All these families failed to achieve continuity of the wealth that the fathers had created.
Life can be very unpredictable, unpredictable beyond measure. Most rich men never tell their children about the debts they have or about some taxes they evade in order to make all those high profits. So, when they die, the children step into the business only to be shocked.
Most rich Ugandan men haven’t built systems in their businesses. The moment they die, their businesses follow them to their graves. It’s saddening to see that wealth for most Ugandan families never makes it past the first generation.
We also have the famous regime tycoons, the people who are rich simply because of the regime, when that regime ends, their wealth also ends.
Yet, we could also learn something from the Indian businessmen and how they are able to induct their children into business at an early age and teach their children the value of each coin. They hide no secret from their children about how they are able to run the business, and in most cases, Indian businessmen pull out and hand-over to their children years before their death. Indigenous Ugandan businessmen never pull out, death pulls them out.
So, a year ago, the Mabirizzi family had everything going very well. They were leading comfortable lives, almost every child had whatever he/she desired to have as far as luxury is concerned. They were certain, their dad was superbly rich and that their wealth had no end.
Few of them ever knew the harsh realities that dad actually had a 33 billion debt that he was servicing. When the older kids took over the businesses after the dad’s death, they continued to pull out money and spent as much as they willed, they forgot that actually, cash-flow doesn’t imply profitability. They pulled out money of the business and never re-invested it.
Today, the story is very much different somewhere in Bugolobi. The house keeps suffering from on and off electricity as they struggle to pay electricity bills. The family that once paid for the highest DSTV package has now done away with DSTV. One of the girls even had to sell off her car, another kid is suffering with school fees. And the situation is not one you would wish to see yourself in, especially if you’ve ever been super rich before.
I really can’t tell, but the same cycle gets repeated for most Indigenous Ugandan businessmen. Is it because they never get to run a business in the professional way?
For example most of the Kampala arcades never serve receipts, if they do, they give you a receipt of a lesser price than you paid so as to attract less taxes from KCCA.
The biggest evaders of taxes are actually the rich men of Kampala. It’s no surprise that when they die, these ghosts come back to haunt their families.
The best thing parents who are businessmen can do for their children is to reveal every secret about their business to the children so that they know why dad is really rich, and what he does to maintain that status etc.