Every election season, it is President Yoweri Museveni’s renowned chorus to threaten the corrupt and promise voters to stamp out corruption once and for all.
Then another five years roll by, and corruption in public offices, takes on new and bolder dimensions. Will we ever have a time when a Ugandan walks into a hospital, public office, ministry and get service without committing a crime and going against all his/her moral beliefs?
We moved from technical know-how in securing jobs and tenders, to technical knowwho and now, technical have-what. And it is this that is driving the anger, frustration and senseless violence among the have-nots of the population.
When a man is hungry and his future shows no glimmer of breakthrough, tough times start calling for unfortunate measures. How did we get here? In a government move to liberalise and privatise in the 1990s and early noughties, civil servants were stripped of basic tools of their trade, such as free housing, subsidized good schools for their children and free healthcare, among others.
All this, without substantially improving their pay. Any Gen X or older Ugandan, knows very well how good primary schools such as Kitante, Buganda Road, Shimoni Demonstration, Nakasero, East Kololo and others were; some institutions such as Makerere University (which was also free) even dropped and picked staff members’ children to and from schools.
Civil servants had planned staff quarters scattered in the best-planned suburbs of Kampala. One knew where the doctors’ quarters were, where KCC (now Kampala Capital City Authority) staff flats were located, which university lecturer stayed where, which houses belonged to ministers or the workers in other government departments.
Such conveniences allowed a government worker to save a portion of his or her meagre earnings and fulfill other dreams. Not anymore. When all that was scrapped without significantly increasing salaries and wages, a Pandora’s Box was opened.
Schools that were affordable and high-performing led, were turned into free, Universal Primary Education institutions – not a bad development had government only maintained their social and academic standards!
The situation in hospitals became worse and top healthcare shifted to the mushrooming private establishments, and poor Ugandans started self-medicating while senior government officials dipped into national coffers for expensive private treatment abroad. The standard was set. Survival became for the boldest thieves.
If one wanted a good education for their child, that money had to be squeezed from a hapless client. If one did not want their landlord throwing them out of the decent rental, that money had to be squeezed from another Ugandan.
For basic survival, savings and day-to-day living, civil servants and other Ugandans have mastered the art of ‘high-level stealing’ and somehow made it look normal. Even accepted.
The president wishing corruption away and setting up multiple committees against the vice is not enough; as long as the root cause is not dealt with, and structures and institutions put back in place, it is all an expensive joke.
About the Author
