INSIDE SOURCE: Me too, I want my fair share of that yummy national cake

What is good for my President is good for me too. Maybe for you as well. Look, Mr Museveni wants the well-maintained murram road from Lyantonde to his country home in Rwakitura tarred. “I have been working on different roads in the country,” President Museveni said, according to Daily Monitor, at the Women’s Day national celebrations in Bushenyi District. “I am now tired of dust and will work on my own small road going home. I want also to share the national cake.” Very well put, especially the choice of the little phrase: national cake.

Broadly speaking, there are three sets of Ugandans when it comes to talking about the national cake. The first, and obvious, set has the vast majority of Ugandans. These are the truly poor. These ones do not even pay direct taxes like pay as you earn because they do not qualify. They are so poor that some amongst them are willing to marry off (or even sell) their 12-year-old daughters in return for a few goodies – a scrawny cow here, a bony goat there, and a jerry can of paraffin, plus a few baskets of tomatoes and onions. Within weeks, the tomatoes and salt and cooking oil will be gone. And in a matter of months, the man of the home will have sold off the cow, and then the goat and spent the money on alcohol and/or the woman or two on the village he had been eyeing for a while. Pretty soon the home will be back to where it was before the underage daughter was carted off into a potentially abusive marriage in the neighbouring village. And life, if you call it that, goes on (unless, of course, it is buried by a mudslide or a flush flood). It must if a person’s conscience, especially a parent’s conscience, has been deadened.

National cake? What national cake?
The second set has those Ugandans who work mostly in the private sector. They do their honest day’s bit and they pay their taxes or just some of the taxes but at least they pay them. As much as they go to bars and pay even more taxes in VAT, they also go to churches and mosques and shrines and other such places for supplication. They are the usual folks. Most of these people live in urban centres like Kampala. Those at the lower end of the tree have to contend with an inefficient and dilapidated public health care system, and UPE schools that do more to kill their children’s creative intellect than anything yet invented. Those high above the ground on our tree choose to fend for themselves, having decided that the state is non-existent (despite the taxes they pay). They hire private trash collectors, private guards, and take their children to private schools and health centres. Because they have no control over the city streets, they contend with driving through potholes as they take in the beautiful scenery of rubbish and refuse.

National cake? What national cake?
Set three are what we could call the CHOGM mafia. These are Ugandans – they actually are, surprising as it may seem – occupying the very top of the tree. Most are in government but some are in the private sector but are very politically connected. They enjoy an incestuous relationship, sometimes quite literally. These ones play by their own clannish rules. For them any state activity or business involving more than a couple of billion shillings is fair game. It is for looting as they see fit. Some amongst them have oceanfront property in swanky places like Cape Town and Melbourne. We shall not even include flats in the central part of that very expensive city called London. They never lose sleep over ripping the system off. And life goes on happily. Their conscience is deadened. But not for the same reasons as those in the first set, which even has no place on the tree.
We could, however, add a fourth set – the presidential set. Now, this one is as exclusive as they get. It has to be if only one person belongs to it for a good twenty-something years with no change in sight as yet. The trappings here are to die for. A sleek jet, armoured limos, grand residences, and lots of power. If a man like that demands his fair share of the hot national cake, so must I. So should you, especially if you live somewhere along Busabala Road in Makindye-Sabagabo in Wakiso District.

Mr Tabaire is a media trainer and consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence
bentab@hotmail.com