In the famous story, told so many times now that it has become clichéd without actually losing its resonance, Jim Muhwezi appears before a commission of inquiry investigating the mismanagement of public resources secured from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The commission’s principal, Justice James Ogoola, has raised the ante by asking Muhwezi to apologize to Ugandans for his alleged role in the scandal that is gripping the nation. Muhwezi is having none of it, and he fights back by asking the gray-haired judge what he has ever done for his country, why he was probably “eating sausages” abroad while Muhwezi was fighting in the bush. Muhwezi, a general officer of the Ugandan military, is a decorated hero of the war that brought the National Resistance Movement to power, the same government that has set up the commission grilling him. But Ogoola fumbles his rebuttal, seemingly surprised by the verbal authority of the witness before him.
The story remains fascinating because Muhwezi, who was not criminally charged in that scam, believed that, as a self-described patriot, he could not be accused of corruption. It was a dirty word and it was an insult, and he was as earnest in asserting his innocence as Ogoola was determined to undress him. The session ended on a disagreeable note, with Ogoola attempting to stand his ground and Muhwezi expressing a deep sense of injustice.
Nearly two decades later, I still find myself thinking of that scene and trying to make sense of it. What did it say about us that we missed, especially in light of all the scandals that have since surfaced, some with more consequences for the social contract if not with quite similar drama?
Corruption is as old as the Ugandan state, of course, as old as anything. It is the mechanics, the forms and manifestations, of it that have evolved so significantly over time that we may need another word to interpret the stories of personal venality repeatedly coming up in the press: self-entitlement, in all its guises.
By the mid-60s there were reports of Ugandans smuggling gold from Congo. One scandal, the suggestion by a lawmaker in 1965 that Prime Minister Milton Obote and army officer Col. Idi Amin were engaged in corrupt activities in the Congo, helped create the toxic environment that altered political dynamics at the time and would culminate in the overthrow in 1971 of the first
Obote administration. Uganda had enacted the Prevention of Corruption Act by 1970, to respond to this emerging problem.
But the corruption we see in Uganda today is of a much different order than that which Daudi Ocheng and others grappled with in the early days of nationhood. The Congo gold scam was a big scandal for a pre-internet era, but one struggles to find other examples of similar magnitude from that time. Obote, after he won a second shot at the presidency, seemed to want to do things differently. In addition to being head of state, Obote also held the finance and foreign affairs dockets, and it was said by many who served under him that he wanted to protect diminished government coffers at a time when the economy was struggling. Yona Kanyomozi, the former cooperatives minister who died last year, once recalled being rebuked by Obote for failing to account for all the per diem allowances he had received after a trip to Cuba.
Major swindling of public funds and the use of public office for personal aggrandisement started in the early 90s. Uganda then was in the middle of the economic transformation prescribed and then engineered by the Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The structural adjustment programs resulted in the retrenchment of tens of thousands of workers in several public sectors of Uganda’s economy. Most government corporations were killed in the ensuing privatization drive. In the anarchy of the times, Ugandans departing government service schemed for opportunities to leave with something. Others after them perfected those schemes, as if – knowing how those who left before them had suffered – they were in the fight of their lives. Indeed, the metamorphosis of corruption as we see and experience it in Uganda can be explained in this shameful light: graft as a tool of existence, as one of the keys to life, and, for some people, perhaps as life itself. And I do not say this, as others might, to give the corrupt a reason to stay that way. I say this as someone who has documented the extreme impact of corruption on the lives of ordinary people.
As the leader of an anti-corruption watchdog in Uganda, I am no longer surprised by what I discover in the course of my work. Corruption is everywhere, whether it is powered by need or by greed. The traffic officer who uses his uniform to extract some money from errant motorists instead of issuing tickets. The motorists who know that they will be required to pay a policeman for offenses they are yet to commit, and thus keep pocket change nearby, to be slipped into the conniving officer’s hand without being prompted. The office assistant who will ask for a bribe in order for a long-delayed suit to be prioritized or allocated to a desirable judicial officer.
Similarly, demigods reign in the lands office. I recently met a man who still waits to get the land title for which he applied in 1999, one of probably hundreds of victims of such injustice. I happen to be one of them. Since 2021, when I decided to venture into farming amid the doom and gloom of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been trying to transfer a piece of property into my name. It has been a struggle, to say the least. From the local council chairperson to the land officer, everyone is looking for an opportunity to eat. After my initial purchase of land, the local council chairperson tried to convince me that he could add more acreage to what I had bought in the bush of central Uganda, of course in exchange for something. When I started pursuing the title deed, the land office proved a headache. For one year I didn’t get any response, and when I tried to inquire the response was that my file was still in the queue. The secretary to the district’s land board, expressing kindness to me in her own way, told me in no uncertain terms
that my documents would be processed only after I had paid a bribe. What’s more, she suggested, I could offer to facilitate a session of the cash-strapped land committee. Later, when I was having this conversation with a friend who had encouraged me to buy untitled land in this area, he suggested that I was unreasonable for expecting to be served without “smoothening” the process. He spent close to two hours explaining how the process works and how I needed to pay some money not just to smoothen the process but perhaps even to quicken it. I still hang onto faith that one day my file will be considered, but hopefully not in a decade.
Recently, in the course of my duties as an anti-corruption campaigner, I received a report from a district that was hiring a health officer, a post for which only qualified physicians could apply. District service commissions are tasked with recruiting such officers. These commissions are appointed by district councils made up mostly of natives who are keen on rewarding supporters and buttressing their own patronage networks. Thus most districts prefer to recruit ‘sons of the soil’ even in instances where recruiting them is illegal or injurious to good order. So, there being no qualified physician who also happened to be from the district, the recruiting commission gave the job to a vet who is a son of the soil, trashing the applications of qualified physicians who were not from that district.
A colleague of mine, whose father heads one such commission in western Uganda, recently told me that there is no recruitment in these commissions, that “they just share the jobs amongst themselves.” Sharing literally means that each commissioner is allotted a certain number of positions into which they can recruit friends and relatives.
Years ago, a friend was employed in public service as an auditor after spending years looking for a job. One day, barely a year after being recruited into public service, I escorted him to a Kampala suburb where he wanted to buy a plot of land. As he drove he was being distracted by one incessant caller he did not seem eager to talk to.
“What aren’t you picking his calls?” I asked.
“He is bothering me with some issues,” he replied.
Later he said, “I discovered fifteen ghost workers on the payroll and this human resource officer is trying to convince me to take half of them for my silence.”
I have never bothered to ask him how the case was resolved, for I think I know how such a story ends. Any sense of integrity is always lost in the first few months of joining the public service. The old hands assess the new recruits, looking for which ones they will be able to do business with and trying to break the backs of those who might resist. In the words of a young civil servant I spoke with recently, “integrity is like virginity,” and those who enter public service with it are bound to be debauched sooner or later.
Recently, after the inauguration of President Yoweri Museveni’s current Cabinet, accounting officers found themselves in great difficulty managing expectations of the rookies. These freshly minted ministers were demanding brand-new vehicles and fully furnished offices. One of them complained that the car assigned to her, and left over from her predecessor, had been used to ferry charcoal and hence was no longer suitable. Others wanted office overhauls, ostensibly for fear of possible witchcraft.
It did not take long before some of these ministers became engulfed in the biggest scandal of the year: the theft of iron sheets meant for reformed cattle rustlers in Karamoja. What was shocking this time was not the magnitude of the sums involved but the items stolen and the calibre of leaders accused of taking part in the crime. Previously, and even now, top government officials have been known to steal billions of shillings, grab public property, and engage in shoddy business deals. Did the idea that a minister could divert iron sheets possibly signify the beginning of a new trend in Uganda’s lucrative corruption industry? In this case, as in many others in recent history, the suspects saw things differently. They said they had not stolen, that the items had been peacefully brought to them. If this was not corruption, if this was not theft of public property, what was it?
As the mabati scandal developed, I met one of the legislators who had benefitted, and he told me that it was common for ministers and lawmakers to receive iron sheets and other items from the Office of the Prime Minister. “Probably someone was not happy and decided to make this information public,” he said. But he also noted, considering the unwieldy range of the suspects named, that it was possible a perpetrator who “didn’t want to eat and get caught alone” had wilfully compromised others. Corruption here is always a game of numbers – because there is safety in numbers. In fact, as one official once told me, “it is risky to eat alone.”
Ordinary citizens look at what is going on and they pray for their own opportunities to steal. A mechanic I know, and who sometimes is invited to my office to fix the car, one day saw a large poster announcing our work and was intrigued by it. “What do you do exactly?” he asked. He was disbelieving when I told him that “we fight corruption.” According to him, mine is a futile job, for this country will not be rid of corruption.
Social pressure is playing its part in the mad rush to accumulate wealth. A parent or relative will ask what you have done since you graduated, because a son of someone else has managed to organize an expensive wedding and put up a mansion so soon after finding employment. I have been told that in some other countries it is your parents who will be the first to ask you to explain your source of wealth, if they perceive that your riches are not commensurate to your known earnings.
Voices seemingly in support of corruption have been increasing among Ugandans, especially the urban elite. I read an article in one of the dailies in which the author argued that corruption was good for the economy. The host of a radio show I attended recently asked me to explain why corruption was bad when countries in Asia had taken off despite posting high levels of corruption. Wealth is celebrated irrespective of how it is acquired in Uganda. Corrupt politicians are given front seats at events and in worship centres. School owners charge exorbitant fees without sanction, in a sector that is poorly regulated. I recently questioned the administrator of a private school where parents are forced to pay development fees for building new infrastructure.
Even in civil society, whose vocal members purport to check government excesses, corruption is so formalised that those who oppose it will be ostracized. After I got the opportunity to lead the Anti-Corruption Coalition Uganda, which has existed for many years, I set out to develop systems and processes that would minimise leakage of resources. Top on the agenda was eliminating all cash transactions. Soon after we started implementing this policy, I realized how unpopular it was: staff morale waned and the list of activities still to be done grew long. A hitherto agile workforce quickly changed into a docile crowd. And others became innovative, finding ways to bypass the new system. Seeing what was at stake, I quickly learnt my lesson: it is impossible to eliminate corruption without eliminating the intention, without understanding the inner turmoil that makes people, even those who may be honorable in other respects, behave the way they do.
With time, I have realized that corruption has become part of us and we have to live with it for the foreseeable future. If anything, it may be extremely hard to live a life of complete integrity in a society as corrupt as ours. A friend of mine recently asked me what I considered to be the moral compass of this country. I pondered the question for some time, drawing a blank.
My situation was a bit like that of an accountability expert I know who sees rotten faces everywhere. I went to her after being assigned to identify integrity champions in Uganda. At the start, judges, civic activists, social workers and some security personnel had been identified as champions. Yet this accountability expert, when asked who she considered a true anti-corruption champion, was hesitant to cite a name. “Even the people you see in public pretending to fight corruption, they have a dark side,” she said.