Graft: Causes could be beyond greed

Lately, sizzling news stories of embezzlement of massive amounts of public money have been as disheartening as they were fascinating, with many interesting twists and shocking revelations. But what I found most intriguing was how some of the stolen money was allegedly spent.

Detailed stories, complete with photographs, described how, over the last couple of years, the alleged embezzlers suddenly bought dozens of properties, including vast lands and tall buildings in Kampala, Tororo, Malaba, Lyantonde, Luweero and other places in Uganda.

I whistled in amazement when I read that someone had built a 101-roomed house for himself, his wife and their four children. And someone peeled off $7m in cash to buy a prime city property.

It boggled my mind to read that people, whose salary packages are well known to the public, went around gambling away hundreds of millions of shillings a night in casinos.

These stories have got me thinking: What if some of the alleged fraudsters, especially the mastermines, were not actually hard-boiled criminals but unwitting sufferers of non-drug addictions such as compulsive stealing, buying, and gambling?

Such behaviours may be a result of deep-seated traumas. No one will contest the fact that Uganda has gone through traumatic epochs, for example, from 1971 to 1986.

What is not clear is whether some of the people who might have been traumatised as children at those particularly tough times may now be controlling hundreds of billions of public funds.

Is our sad past still troubling us? Are troubles manifesting themselves in mental health issues such as obsessive gambling, shoplifting, stealing, and over-spending?

The popular way of explaining the magnitude of corruption in our society is that more and more Ugandans are getting greedier by the day. But we should also remember that acts associated with greed may be linked to strong feelings of anger, loss, invincibility (hence the impunity), etc.

The danger of focusing on symptoms, which lie on the surface, rather than causes of deep-rooted traumas, is that many of us may be inconsiderately rushing to condemn people who probably need our understanding, love, tolerance, sympathy and forgiveness.

Eventually, courts may find some of the accused guilty and commit them to serve long jail terms. Yet it is also arguable that trauma, once diagnosed, requires to be dealt with by professionals.

That brings us to another serious problem in our society. With a population of nearly 34 million people, Uganda has 23 psychiatrists based in Kampala (17), Mbarara (2), Entebbe (1), Jinja (1), Kumi (1) and Gulu (1).

That works out to one psychiatrist for nearly 1.5 million Ugandans! Does this fact make us any luckier than our cousins swinging on tree branches in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest?

A good number of local lawyers appear to have taken keen interest in the potentially lengthy and sensational cases of fraudulent and secret misappropriation of public funds.

It would be interesting to hear someone use the cognitive insanity defence.
Lawyers could argue that at the time their clients committed the criminal offences they (the thieves) were in such a state of mind that they did not know that what they were doing was terribly wrong.

It would be doubly interesting to hear Justice John Bosco Katutsi bang the gavel at the Anti-Corruption Court and pronounce solemnly: “The defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity!”

Then the truck carrying the accused person to Luzira would turn left to Butabika Mental Hospital instead of right to Maximum Security Prison.
That would be the day to behold!

The writer is a lecturer at Kampala International University

[email protected]