Living honestly in highly corrupted pearl of Africa

Behind the curtains. If Ugandans knew what many in the news media know about these greedy people who on the outside appear much happier than us because of their greed, they would quickly abandon the illusion that the more one steals, the more one owns or embezzles, the happier one becomes.

One of the biggest mistakes that many Ugandans make, when they first read or hear of a major financial scandal involving the swindling of hundreds of millions or billions of shillings, is to instinctively feel envy at the corrupt official in question.

Envy, not disgust, is the initial reaction that most of us feel (if we will admit it).

We look at our lives, filled with daily struggle, where money is always insufficient to meet our needs and urgent problems, think of the billions and our gut reaction (even though on the outside sounding angry at this abuse of office and theft of taxpayers’ money) is to feel this is not fair.

Not that this is evil or disgusting or criminal, but this is not fair. We feel we are competing on a field that is uneven. Many Ugandans even feel foolish at putting in a regular nine hours of work daily while “smarter” colleagues and other public officials, at the stroke of a pen, are pulling in Shs250 million in a single act of forgery, kickback or diversion of money from its intended use.

We see the opulent mansions, the latest cars and the “arcades” sprouting all over Kampala and it seems, from the way we see it, that these corrupt people are living much happier lives than us.

Beat them or just join them
It is this reaction that has got many people into the “If you can’t beat them…” state of mind and eventually they joined the ranks of the corrupt.

What most of us don’t grasp is the psychology of the corrupt. Most of us don’t know what it means to have the kind of mind that would steal billions intended for hospitals or for orphans.

So many sociological studies have been conducted over the last 40 years all over the world among all sorts of economic and social groups and income levels to find out how happy various people are and what constitutes happiness.

We hear of and read these studies quite regularly and what they have consistently shown is that happiness is not dependent on money or wealth. Of course adages about a hungry man being an angry man are true and certainly every person with only Shs5,000 on him or her would welcome a sudden windfall of Shs500,000.

The greatest difference that money makes is from zero shillings to about Shs100,000. Here is where money’s most important value is, for it can and often make the difference between life and death, starvation and survival, total destitution and basic decency.

Beyond that, though, once the very basic needs, such as immediate hunger, cold and other physical discomfort have been dealt with, as far as happiness and state of contentment are concerned, there is no significant difference between earning Shs400,000 a month and Shs4 million.

It really does not make much difference whether one wears a shirt that costs Shs15,000 and one that goes for Shs180,000. A woman’s handbag that costs Shs30,000 probably does everything that a “brand” handbag of $750 does.

I have been observing the material that millions of people from all over the world post on the “social media” websites like Facebook and Twitter and the same pattern appears --- at the deepest level of personal expression, feeling and experience, there is barely a difference in the state of mind and happiness between a person living in Moscow, Russia and one living in Jinja, Uganda, Washington DC, United States or Dodoma, Tanzania.

In organised societies in Asia, Europe and North America with modern public transport systems and roads, a train or bus is all that one requires to commute to and from work and shopping daily and it does not matter that some Hollywood film star (or Ugandan president) owns a stretch limousine price-tagged at $1.2 million.

If anything, this insatiable greed for more and more money and more and more property that we see in Uganda today among top public officials betrays a serious psychological imbalance and need for counseling.

It is no different from an addition to cocaine or gambling. Anyone who simply can’t control the urge to loot his office funds or whole government ministry resources most probably is too mentally and emotionally unwell to enjoy that wealth even when they finally get it.
So it is an error on our part to envy or wish to join the corrupt.

Inside stories
Many of us know insider stories on the well-known corrupt people of Uganda: how they live, the state of their marriages, the conduct of their children, their personal outlook, their plans and dreams and all that sort of thing.

If Ugandans knew what many in the news media know about these greedy Ugandans who on the outside appear much happier than us because of their greed, they would quickly abandon the illusion that the more one steals, the more one owns or embezzles, the more political power one wields, the happier one becomes.

In 1995, I sat in President Museveni’s personal office at the International Conference Centre with his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba for a series of interviews for a book I was working on.

Fine, Museveni’s office looks nice with its large mahogany desk and black leather chair, with the Uganda flag behind it. But I did not feel any different from being in any other office I have been to.

I have not felt a significant surge of happiness from the two occasions I stayed in five-star hotels in Kigali, Rwanda and Johannesburg, South Africa and I doubt if my life would be five times more content now than it is if my simple bedroom at home resembled those five-star hotel rooms in which I stayed.

But, most of us are burdened with many family and personal responsibilities that could be solved if we had just a little more cash on us.

Several companies and government ministries have organised office cooperatives from which their members can borrow modest loans. We need more of these and churches should introduce them.

The one solution open to those who strive to live by their consciences in a society as rotten as Uganda, where corruption as we discussed last week, has now become a well-organised, well-structured system, is not to make the futile effort to try and “do as the Romans do”, but to create an alternative system.

Many groups, such as the Jews living in hostile Christian Europe in the Middle Ages, were forced, for their very survival, to organise themselves into “ghettoes”, small, secluded communities-within-communities and in the long run ended up becoming more wealthy than the wider society that persecuted them.

The few honest people left in Uganda should emulate these examples and create societies and associations. Within these associations they can borrow money, shop at each others’ supermarkets and support each others’ private clinics, audit and legal firms and so on.

Just a little more organisation and association and just a little less waste of our resources vainly buying $30,000 cars and we can create an eco system that shields us from the extremes of despair without having to resort to corruption and taking bribes.

timothy_kalyegira@yahoo.com