Wamala hates godfatherism, but here is who loves it: you

From the time he was killed in a shower of bullets to the time he was buried, many words, written and spoken, were used mostly to praise Andrew Felix Kaweesi, a police chief who had become as visible as his boss, Inspector General Kale Kayihura.
It was at the burial in Lwengo on Tuesday that Gen Katumba Wamala, the head of police about the time Kaweesi joined the Force in 2001, spoke of something that is common but is worth reflection given who was saying it and the setting.

It is the small thing of godfathers or godmothers, or simply ‘godfatherism’, or better still cronyism.

Gen Wamala said Kaweesi, who was gunned down just more than a week ago, had risen to the rank of Assistant Inspector General of Police because of his intelligence and diligence at work. He merited his rather rapid rise. Gen Kayihura agreed.

Gen Wamala was castigating those who fail at their jobs and turn around to create scapegoats – that they did not have godfathers, call them patrons.

In saying so, Gen Wamala, now a minister of State responsible for Works, was conceding that godfatherism is widespread in Uganda. In a way, Kaweesi was an exception, rising without having a patron.

It has been recounted that he joined the police partly with the strong encouragement of then Masaka District chairman Vincent Sempijja, for whom he worked as personal assistant.

The narrative is that Kaweesi was a young man of promise you could simply never keep down where merit is a key consideration.

You see, while President Yoweri Museveni runs a large-scale countrywide patronage network so as to stay in power, the rest of us are engaged in micro-level patronage. We are little patrons and little clients seeking little rents.

If I pull strings to get you a job, I expect a share of your salary for six months or a year or some such. Ditto if I influence your promotion. If you refuse to play ball, you get into trouble.

A milder version of what we practice here, what Gen Wamala was speaking of, happens elsewhere. It is called social capital. Your talent matters but who you know, or who your parents know, matters even much more in your success.

When these things happen noticeably in the world that Gen Wamala understands best, the world of national security, bad things can happen.

Godfatherism means if I am a top guy in security agency Z, I will give plum assignments to “my people” because these assignments come with “handsome resource envelops for facilitation”.

Yet my people is rarely the same thing as competent people. But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that “my people” also happens to mean competent people.

In that case it would not be fair that they are the ones favoured most of the time. This creates acrimony at the work place. People start to undermine each other, to leak/sell secrets, to work with criminals to expose the favoured ones.

In most cases, however, godfatherism favours the incompetent, the ill-qualified. It pollutes the system. You are never sure whether an individual’s success is down to sheer hard work and competence or to being merely propped up.

An ill-qualified intelligence officer will do a sloppy job collecting intelligence, another ill-qualified officer will do a lousy job analysing that intelligence, yet another one will have no clue which choices for action to present to the boss derived from the lousy analysis in the first place.

And the key patron covers all this up, lest everything blows up and the eating down the chain stops.

Those who follow public affairs in Uganda have heard about bogus intelligence going all the way to the top and being acted upon. The results can be potentially catastrophic.

Gen Wamala, until recently the head of the military, was most definitely speaking on good authority.

Aside from strictly security matters, Kampala is full of little patrons and little clients doing their best to make it hard to govern the city in a meaningful way.

When Dr Judith Tukahirwa was quitting last October as KCCA deputy executive director, she spoke of “political expediency from certain quarters” hijacking “strategic planning” backed by “persons within the security circles”.

She made clear her frustration in her leaked resignation letter to the President: “It’s disconcerting for any KCCA administrator to deal with decisions made on the premise of rumours and conjecture.”

Rumours and conjecture thrive where godfatherism thrives. And godfatherism thrives where rules apply haphazardly. Why don’t we, shouldn’t we, all play by the same set of rules? I have no idea. Do you?

Mr Tabaire is the co-founder and director of programmes at African Centre for Media Excellence in Kampala.
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Twitter:@btabaire