Last week we looked at the several stages of corruption through which Uganda has
passed since 1986 and it was obvious, from such scandals as the 2005 Global
Fund theft, the 2007 Chogm swindle and the Office of the Prime Minister
scandal, we are now at the final stage of corruption.
This is the systemic stage. The stage at which corruption is now an
ecosystem, a fully-fledged, pervasive way of governance, way of life and
structure of society itself. Everyone, the honest and the dishonest, is caught
up in it and depends on it for their livelihood. Before we get into a discussion
on how an honest person can survive in this corrupt environment, we need to
have a look at exactly how widespread this corruption has become.
Today, unfortunately, everyone in Uganda has been dragged directly or
indirectly into this corrupt ecosystem. Our very existence depends on it. The
economic structure of Ugandan society --- seen in such things as the very high
commercial bank interest rates and the higher interest rates charged by the
“loan sharks”, the lack of financial security among the civil service that
controls much of the day-to-day decision-making and administrative activity
most Ugandans have to deal with, and the breakdown of the free or low-cost
society services like healthcare and education we once enjoyed --- means that
the only way one can survive for more than a year in Uganda is to become part
of the corrupt system.
If, say, Susan starts a health club in Bugolobi or Ntinda, she will have got a
bank loan or invested her savings to get it going. Susan is an upright,
professional person. She pays her taxes and does everything within the law. But
because of the difficult economic conditions in the country, the majority of
her clients at the health club, the ones who can afford her membership fee (if
she is to break even and repay her bank loan) will be the very civil servants,
businessmen, politicians, military officers and corporate types who spend all
week looting the National Treasury, evading taxes or using their offices to
unfairly gain contracts and tenders.
Susan, in other words, has no choice but depend on the very people that she
privately abhors for their corrupt ways, if her own business is to survive.
Honest architectural firms, land dealers, high end private schools, forex
bureaus and others like these, find themselves, like Susan, forced to accept as
clients the very same corrupt people who are destroying Uganda.
This same sad state of affairs is to been seen everywhere, especially in the
smaller towns and rural villages. Fundraising events at churches are attended
by area politicians and civil servants who are always in the news for stealing
public money, but the church now finds itself depending on their “generosity”
to raise the money to complete the roof or altar simply because the church’s own
humble village parishioners are too poor to afford it.
Many very honest Ugandans still find themselves working for private
companies or in government ministries and agencies that are rotten with
corruption. The media has done much to expose and report on the looting of Uganda’s public
assets and money. But even then, it has to go about it in a certain way.
Newspapers, television and radio stations need advertisement in order to cover
their operating costs.
Many of these adverts are placed by companies involved in the same tax
evasion and bribery of government, immigration and tax officials that the media
spends its time reporting on and condemning. And since the government, in
recent years, has become increasingly intolerant of criticism, the media speaks
out boldly and in general vague terms against corruption but I notice it is
always careful never to mention President Museveni by name.
That is, directly pointing an accusing finger at him as a possible
grandmaster in this massive and unprecedented corruption in Uganda. Editors, reporters,
columnists and radio talk show hosts know all that is going on but in public
and in their pages, choose to condemn corruption in passionate but careful
terms not to mention the President directly. Like the rest of Ugandan society,
the media has been caught up in this ecosystem of corruption by which it is
impossible to survive if one is too principled, too outspoken, and too honest.
Civil society groups and NGOs themselves have played a key role alongside
the media in crying out against corruption, but like the media they too exist
in this system. They cannot risk chopping the tree at its trunk and so, like
most of us, beat about the bush or prune off only the dead branches and leaves
of the tree.
When principled politicians opposed to the widespread corruption fall seriously
sick and require specialised medical attention, usually outside the country
(since Uganda’s public healthcare system has collapsed), they find themselves
forced to accept an offer by the President to foot their hospital bills, the
very President who has sat back and watched the government hospitals sink into
rot.
And on and on the story goes: many genuinely honest Ugandans or foreigners
working and living in Uganda
are being forced into the humiliating and disturbing position of having to
co-exist with the thieves or have the thieves as their main clients if their
businesses are to survive.
Other Ugandans who are not corrupt, work hard at their jobs and businesses
without directly coming into contact with the thieves or the corrupt State,
maintain their high ethical standards. But they too make a major compromise:
they essentially take a vow of silence. In order for their law firms, florist
and bookshops, restaurants, dental clinics, FM radio stations, import business
and accounting firms to survive in Uganda, they choose to avoid anything
political, especially making sure they are not seen to be close to opposition
parties and keep their political views to themselves.
They basically decide to keep quiet in exchange for the State not bothering
them. To keep quiet, to never speak out at all when one’s own country is being
destroyed by flat-out mass looting of the national treasury --- is in itself
another form of taking part in the corruption or at least being guilty by
association or guilty by some kind of inexcusable silence.
In the Biblical New Testament the founder of Christianity, Jesus Christ,
brought a demanding new dimension to public and private morality, arguing often
that the one who does nothing when a crime is being committed or who looks the
other way in the face of major injustices is as guilty in the Eternal Divine’s
eyes as the one who actually and actively commits the crime.
Or to paraphrase the titles of two 1990s Kevin Costner films, the “Silence of
the Lambs” is as much a danger to society as the “Dances with Wolves”.
The main reason is that as President Yoweri Museveni has gotten more insecure
in power and in his mind, a whole movement has developed to reassure him that
he is still loved by his people and his stay in power is not something that
should worry him.
To demonstrate this (and, no doubt, to secure their jobs and gain favours),
Resident District Commissioners and NRM party officials a few days before
Independence Day made it their primary assignment to mobilise as many crowds,
businesses, NGOs, government ministries, hospitals, schools, and paramilitary
groups as possible to take part in the parade at Kololo Airstrip.
On October 9, 2010, this entered a new phase: for the first time in
Uganda’s
history, nursery school infants were drafted into the march-past parade at
Kololo.
Like the rest of society, these marching groups at Kololo have grasped the
essential nature of Museveni’s regime in its latter stages.
It is essentially the Feudal Republic of Uganda that is now in place. Under
this
Feudal Republic, there is no law, no order, no
standard, there is no defining national ethos except that which flows from the
person of Museveni.
If this feudal lord, who governs Uganda, decrees that your bank loan be
forgiven or that you get millions of dollars from Bank of Uganda, you be
appointed ambassador, your goods come in tax-free, you be given land to build a
factory in a wetland or national park, or that your company is given the budget
to promote Uganda’s image abroad, then that is it. His word becomes legal writ
and law.
If Museveni looks favourably upon you today, your life can be instantaneously
transformed like in the children’s fairly tales: today you are in rags;
tomorrow you are a minister. Today you are selling maize at a street corner;
tomorrow you are the Chief Mobiliser for the NRM in eastern
Uganda.
The question, then, is how do you get Museveni’s attention? You can send your
school to march at Kololo, or you can publicly declare your undying support for
him.
As a struggling Ugandan singer, you can compose a song titled “Amelia” whose
lyrics sound curiously like an anthem in praise of the former Principal Private
Secretary to the President, Amelia Kyambadde or you can write a song in praise
of Museveni.
Either way, you will be guaranteed, not sales, but that one of these two will
buy your master copy for 5,000 dollars, or that small radio stations in the
countryside will be forced by RDCs to play these songs, as a way to justify
their jobs, or when you the singer gets into trouble next time after fighting
in a bar, the police will let you go scot-free or the president will pay your
medical bills.
The Ugandan singer Bobi Wine captured this new order of things best in his 2006
song Kiwani, in which he had the lyrics “Buli omu asiba kiwani” (“Everybody
engages in fraud”).
A good illustration of how deep this state of national kiwani has penetrated
every corner and area of life, came in the Miss Uganda beauty contest in
September. Apparently, there were three leading contenders: the contestant who
was favoured by the audience, the one who was the choice of the judges, and the
one preferred by the organisers.
Like so many such events, from elections to Uganda’s football administration,
to the Pearl of Africa Music Awards, to the Miss Makerere beauty contest, to
simple things like the choice of a cover subject for a newspaper or news
magazine, the Miss Uganda contest resulted in the kind of controversy that
flows from corruption, bribery of judges and officials that is now the Ugandan
national character.
There are fraudsters in
Kampala
nicknamed “Cubans” and also termed “mercenaries”. These are the young men and
women who perform an important role in the economy. Their work is to sit exams
or write academic theses on behalf of busy civil servants and corporate
executives.
These ghost writers are the real brains behind most of the Bachelors, MBAs, and
PhDs in
Uganda that Uganda’s
middle class boasts today.
At another level, there is a whole group of professionals who have also
developed and flourished around this fraudulent society.
Gynecologists and other personal doctors, lawyers, auditors, accountants,
personal physical fitness trainers, and others who are contracted by
Uganda’s
corrupt class are doing brisk business.
Whole industries, from airlines, travel agents, property brokers, chartered
surveyors, architects, private schools, banks, hotels, telecom companies etc,
have all risen to meet the needs and ride on the purchasing power of this
wealthy, corrupt, embezzling class.
A world of NGOs to fight or report on corruption has become a permanent feature
of Ugandan life. So too have the NGOs, local and foreign, that have come to
fill in the gap in the provision of basic social services and relief aid that
has been created by the erosion of the state under Museveni.
Newspapers and radio stations that champion or claim to champion the fight against
corruption have done well with audiences and publishing adverts and tenders by
NGOs claiming or actually fighting corruption.
The media in general has also gained much by way of advertising from the many
companies, investors, and individuals who either should never have been allowed
to enter
Uganda,
or should have been expelled by now, or who should be in jail.
Journalists who have reported on corruption have become national stars. Those
who take bribes in order to suppress damaging stories on corruption have also
done well, judging by the flashy cars and expensive property they own.
Certain Pentecostal churches whose pastors are close to State House or which
are generally sympathetic to the NRM government have gained much in prestige,
contributions by their parishioners and occasional moral support or political
and legal cover from the state.
On average, the salaries of most people in the civil service, the corporate and
NGO community is only about one third of their monthly incomes. The other two
thirds is topped up in this climate of hustling, bribes, tax evasion, raising
vouchers and allowance claim forms, inflating invoices and tenders and outright
theft.
Last month, David Mukholi, the editor of the Sunday Vision newspaper, said on a
Wednesday journalists’ show on Vision Voice that news and investigation stories
on corruption no longer sell.
This might be partly because the public has grown weary of reports on
corruption, since they know nothing will be done about them anyway; but also it
might suggest that corruption is now a majority culture, in the same way
Christianity is the majority religion in
Uganda, and so few are interested
in having it exposed.
The state of lawlessness that characterises
Uganda
today has been amazingly beneficial to hundreds of thousands of Ugandans,
especially in Kampala.
This is because, like all systems once entrenched, it has taken on a formal,
organised, routine, checks and balances character of its own.
And like all systems, to disrupt it is destabilising and can be a source of
national instability as disrupting a system founded on merit and the observance
of law and order.
When UPC party president Olara Otunnu called for a boycott of the 2011 general
election unless the current Electoral Commission is reformed or changed, his
call was opposed by the main opposition party the FDC and by a surprising
number of UPC members.
This was odd, since the FDC has been a victim of rigged elections for a decade
and should know better than to have faith that the 2011 election will be
different. Once again, what normally defies logic in
Uganda is, surprisingly, logical in
its own way.
Most Ugandans know that the forthcoming election will be rigged. The NRM party
primaries alone were a foreshadow of what is to come. However, there is more
than meets the eye. Whenever elections loom, with them comes a whole industry
from which many thousands of Ugandans gain and it trickles down to the ordinary
people.
It is not just the impoverished villagers who the media usually portrays as
receiving a pathetic bribe of sugar and soap.
Campaign managers, touts who traverse the villages rallying support, the
printers who get the jobs to produce campaign posters, treasurers of
candidates, candidates themselves, boda boda cyclists who blow their horns and
transport supporters, the bars that sell booze to crowds, those who cook food
to sell at rallies, journalists who take bribes to write in praise of or
interview certain candidates on radio, men who spend all day playing Ludo or
arguing about Manchester United who are suddenly elected councillors or even
MPs--- all these gain in a major way from the elections, even though the
occupant at State House might not change.
This election industry, with it characteristic bribes, unexplained money coming
in from governments in the region trying to influence the outcome of the
election in Uganda or political parties and trade unions in Europe, western
embassies in Kampala, plays a vital role in the Ugandan economy and so there
was no surprise that political parties that know for certain that 2011 will
see, if anything, much more rigging than before, still felt they had to take
part in it.
When Museveni finally leaves power some day, this is the legacy that will last
the longest and take the longest and the greatest effort to uproot.
A generation of Ugandans will have been born that has no understanding
whatsoever of what institutions mean, what merit is, what procedure and method
are, and how to earn a living by the process of systematic, incremental work,
followed by payment and personal savings.
They will not know or have the patience to queue up for anything, to wait for
longer than a week for a tender or results of an interview to be made public.
The only thing they will have known and which works for them is the life of
what in Kampala slang these days is termed “Okuyiya”, a term describing the
gambling, scheming, lying, issuing bouncing cheques, acting the sycophant,
bending or breaking laws and rules and evading taxes or doctoring academic
certificates that is life in Uganda and how most people survive.
To every obstacle in their path, the solution is to call afande so-and-so, call
somebody or State House, call up a cousin in intelligence, a brother in the
army, a contact on the job interview panel, a friend in the Uganda Revenue
Authority, or somebody at border immigration control.
Many Ugandans and foreigners lament the state of affairs in
Uganda today,
from the rundown infrastructure, roads, police stations, to the nepotism on
corruption. In truth, this is largely a moralistic cry, usually characterised
by crocodile tears.
The fact is, for the majority of Ugandans there is no system and way of life
they can enjoy better than what they have grown used to in
Uganda today.
In
Uganda,
you can toss a mineral water bottle out of a car window. You can drive on the
left or the right, depending on what pleases you. You can zoom past pedestrians
at a zebra crossing etc.
You can use three different names to transact business. A newspaper with a circulation
of only 1,200 copies can get the same full-colour, full-page advert as a
newspaper with a circulation of 35,000 copies, depending on who one bribes for
the adverts.
At first one is tempted to feel sorry for doctors who work in government hospitals
or police officers in their shabby offices, until one realises that they don’t
seem to be that bothered.
This is because amid that confusion and broken down infrastructure are hefty
benefits to be enjoyed. Families of arrested suspects and criminals can pay a
CID officer or District Police Commander to release a relative.
Traffic policemen who stand on duty along roadsides are often not exactly
suffering, when it is learnt how much they earn in bribes from offending
drivers.
Teachers in miserable government schools or at
Makerere University
can either be paid to award marks to students for cash or sex.
Foreign businessmen and companies have also discovered this about
Uganda and, while there is much lamentation by
purists that Uganda is too
corrupt to do business in, actually Uganda is just the right
environment in which certain types of crafty companies and entrepreneurs can do
business. It is a gangster’s paradise.
You import expired goods? No problem. Nobody will ask. You bring in unskilled
labour from
India.
Kawa, life will go on. You evade taxes? Who pays taxes, anyway?
In this sense, Uganda has shaken off the last vestiges of the old colonial
system of order, merit, method, standards, bureaucracy and moved on to a
strange state of nature in which the country has one of the highest rates of
social mobility on earth.
Office sweeper today, RDC tomorrow. Failure at school today, MBA holder
tomorrow. Sergeant today, Brigadier tomorrow. Struggling small-time trader
today, property mogul tomorrow. Teacher today, women’s MP tomorrow. Convicted
thief today, presidential advisor tomorrow. Freelance reporter today, Managing
Editor tomorrow. Wanted by police today for fraud, operations director at the
Internal Security Organisation tomorrow.
This is why many Ugandans don’t seem as bothered by the potholes in
Kampala as the media
expects them to be. Not that they don’t see or suffer through them. It is just
that there are so many benefits that have also come with operating in Uganda,
benefits that more than compensate for the lack or order, accountability,
merit, bureaucracy and the rule of law.
Cabinet ministers do not have any real powers and they know it. However, they
also know something else: what apparently appears like offices without powers
actually do have certain hidden powers.
A prospective investor flies into
Uganda
from China or France and at
some stage he gets to meet the minister in charge of the investor’s area of
interest. To obtain the minister’s signature, the investor pays handsomely in a
bribe.
So in that sense, all of Uganda’s cabinet ministers, ministers of state,
resident district commissioners, members of parliament, permanent secretaries,
commissioners, and a whole host of other public and civil service officials,
while appearing to have no real authority in a system that barely functions,
actually have much greater power than they would have enjoyed had Uganda had
institutions that work.
Because of this, an entire middle class has emerged since 1986 that is built on
dishonesty and fraud. So entrenched is it that any attempt to reform
Uganda
and genuinely root out corruption would destabilise the country.
Museveni found Uganda
a struggling military-dominated, post-colonial republic in 1986. He will leave
it a feudal state similar to an African kingdom of the 19th century.
OPM cash spent on Museveni
election pledge
By YASIIN MUGERWA
Posted Thursday, November 29 2012 at 02:00
In Summary
OPM funds spent on fulfilling presidential
campaign pledges
Kampala
President Museveni has been dragged into the corruption saga rocking the
Office of the Prime Minister.
It was revealed yesterday that billions of shillings were diverted from the
northern Uganda
post-war recovery programme to pay for one of his unfulfilled re-election
campaign promises. The Public Accounts Committee, which is investigatng the
abuse of more than Shs50b meant for the programme heard that more than Shs6.2
billion was used to supplement the procurement of a ferry President Museveni had
promised during his campaigns.
Sources from where the said ferry was supposed to be deployed, however, say
that to date there is no proof it has ever been delivered.
The President is said to have made the pledge during past re-election
campaigns in Teso Sub-region.
The PAC vice chairperson, Mr Paul Mwiru, criticised Permanent Secretary Pius
Bigirimana, who was appearing in the committee for the second consecutive day,
for diverting the money. Mr Mwiru said he was fulfilling a presidential pledge.
Mr Mwiru also pointed out to the OPM top official that the ferry had already
been budgeted for under the Ministry of Works, not the OPM. “There was a
political decision to have a ferry on Lake Kyoga and the political direction
pushed it to start with Lake
Bisina. If you want my
answer on this issue, my response is that there was a political decision,” Mr
Bigirimana said.
The PS did not tell the committee who ordered him to divert the money but
MPs said they had information that PRDP money was diverted to the President
Museveni’s pledge.
No evidence was presented to prove that this ferry was bought, raising fears
that the money might have been spent on a ghost activity. Documents before PAC
show that the OPM sent the money to Ministry of Works in May.
The MPs heard that the accountability documents from Works were not availed to
the Auditor General for review. Another Shs1 billion was also withdrawn on
claims that it was needed to transport the ferry. But Mr Bigirimana yesterday
denied knowledge of this money. This was raised by Mr Shaban Wejula, the former
principal internal auditor, who had detected the scam in OPM but was removed
under unclear circumstances.
Mr Bigirimana apologised to the committee over another Shs150 million
irregularly paid to Nakaseke District and another Shs207.9 million released to
Akamba Ltd. However, details of these payments could not be established as cash
books and vouchers were not availed for audit.
The committee also accused Mr Bigirimana of propagating the fraud at OPM
because as far back as January 2011, he wrote a letter to the Accountant
General asking him to release PRDP money in Bank of Uganda. “… the Accountant
General failed to send the money to the Consolidated Fund and decided to
release money to holding account. I want you to understand the problem was
finance,” Mr Bigirimana said.
Yesterday, Mr Bigirimana threatened to stop answering questions from members
after the committee lead counsel told him that by requesting funds from
Finance, “you were either reckless, or you don’t know what you were doing or
even fraudulent or both.”
