Crime is now the lifeline for the failure of politics

What you need to know:

If citizens become comfortable and complacent ‘something happens’ to remind them that they are not safe, so they should be on the lookout. Their minds are always preoccupied with fear and less with focusing on how they are governed. Here he talked a bit about Uganda and the ‘bold criminals’, who keep dropping letter of intent to commit crime. Now most economies have encountered challenges which the new thinking in a globalised world had not envisaged. The challenge of unemployment, income inequality, climate change and how it has affected food production leading to hunger and starvation.

Last week I had a very humorous and insightful encounter with a retired American journalist. It all started when he wanted to understand all the hullaballoo regarding the SIM card registration using details from the National Identity Card. I took him through from the death of AIGP Felix Kaweesi and the issues regarding crime.

The old man stopped me mid-way with a huge bout of laughter. It was his turn to speak. He said I did not see the bigger picture. He went through American politics and crime leaving me wiser and very humbled. His argument was that the latest issue worldwide of ‘governments against crime,’ is that crime in now a lifeline for the failure of politics to deliver on its lofty promises and ideals. It is the ‘soft landing’ and lame excuse for the challenges neo-liberalism is facing globally.

Whenever you see a government laying a lot of emphasis on fighting crime, you look at the credit or deficit of legitimacy of the government and what it has failed to deliver.

He told me about the US, before and after 911 - when terrorist rammed planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. The fight against terrorism took centre stage ever since.

If citizens become comfortable and complacent ‘something happens’ to remind them that they are not safe, so they should be on the lookout. Their minds are always preoccupied with fear and less with focusing on how they are governed. Here he talked a bit about Uganda and the ‘bold criminals’, who keep dropping letter of intent to commit crime. Now most economies have encountered challenges which the new thinking in a globalised world had not envisaged. The challenge of unemployment, income inequality, climate change and how it has affected food production leading to hunger and starvation.

Then you have the desire to migrate from the rural areas in poor countries to urban area giving rise to a restless huge young army of the urban poor. The global version is what is called immigration to the developed world. The risky journey across the Mediterranean by migrants from Africa sums that up.
So for governments that fail to keep up with the demands to solve social-economic issues, it has been put it in the imagination of the citizens that the greatest threat to their livelihood is ‘increasing rampant crime.’ For the West, it is terrorism.

The 45th American President of the US Donald Trump used that to ascend to power. He put the blame on Muslim migrants, and Mexicans, who were bent on destroying the American dream. What follows is every effort for a regime to survive by using crime as a reference point.

A country can go to war, increase its defense budget and stifle freedoms because it has prepared people to understand these measures in the face of terror and other crimes. In developing countries like Uganda, torture and detention in ungazzeted places without trial, then become popular.

Muzzling the press and taking money from the Consolidated Fund as ‘classified expenditure’ increases.

The government can bypass Parliament to send troops abroad with support of the donors. The Third World government then becomes a valuable ally to the West in the so-called war against terror. It can then act as it wills because the donors, who are usually outspoken against its human rights record, now owe it favours -for sacrificing its own children in these wars in places like Somalia where the US previously suffered a bloody nose.

So the citizen is kept busy with running all over the place for ‘their own security’ trying to acquire this or that document. They must register here and there, have this or the other aspect of their lives and possessions registered or inspected to ‘safe guard’ their lives.

Meanwhile, the government is running high security budgets without question to ‘secure its citizens.’ Notable is that as they keep fighting crime, they never clearly define what the crimes are and how the preferred solutions will curb crime. For instance, the so-called Kifeesi group of criminals, most of whom simply waylay their victims, mug them and hit them with iron bars, how does registering their phones help in this aspect?

What about those who break into houses and vandalise cars? Then those who defile, rape and murder by surprise pouncing on the victims along village paths? Then the policemen who hire out their guns, torture suspects and tamper with exhibits? What about those who embezzle public funds by simply conniving and playing with paper work in offices?

Or is the focus only on crimes that threaten the hold of government, which many times involve a plotting network on the phone and the Internet?Before you know it there are laws being drafted to ensure that the regime in power stays put because it has ‘experience’ in handling the security challenge of the 21st Century, that is posed by ‘rampant crime’ and people who ‘want to erode the gains achieved thus far.’

For starters, I am watching the budgets to see how the numbers changed when the registration exercise went into high gear. Then I will either begin to thank or dismiss the retired American journalist.

Nicholas Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues. [email protected]
Twitter: @nsengoba