What next after the anti-corruption walk?
On Wednesday, President Museveni led a walk against corruption which started at Constitution Square before gathering up to the Independence Grounds in Kololo. And, not to be left out, Dr. Kizza Besigye and his unsmiling supporters attempted to walk from Katonga Road to Constitution Square.
Dr. Besigye’s walk was, ironically, aimed at calling out a government seemingly steeped in corruption down to its yellow underwear. So, it is true, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
As is so often the case, when a politician walks for anything he or she is preparing to run for something. And so, whatever race they run, it would do every citizen well to peer closely at the fine print in the unwritten social contract politicians seem to have with walking. What we shall then see will tell us something about the road they are travelling.
Whether it is a Mao Zedong Long March, Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom, Martin Luther King Jr March on Washington or worse, Benito Mussolini-like March on Rome; we must know, since the road to hell is often paved by good intentions.
Sarojini Naidu, a poet and then president of the Indian National Congress, famously remarked about Mahatma Gandhi that “it costs a lot of money to keep this man in poverty.” Gandhi was a leader who used walking as a powerful political weapon. And this quote applies to Museveni’s Gandhian walk in the sense that the officials who planned this walk probably made a logistical killing by procuring what was needed for the President to walk.
T-shirts, paraphernalia, adverts, security deployments and every specie of expenditure was probably not spared to ensure this walk didn’t run aground. So, the inflated costs of the walk will probably be levied upon Ugandans in the form of taxes, deficit financing and other ways to raise money to construct the coop for when the chickens come home to roost.
Since, like Gandhi, it takes a considerable amount of money to keep us poor.
Although walking improves the blood’s circulation physically, it is not necessarily a good thing for the anatomy of our politics.
For the fight against corruption is a marathon run, not a stroll in the park. Besides, in view of Corruption being a subsystem of rule in our spoils politics, the system is fed on a diet of negatives which itemize the politics of the belly. Hence it is all about who ‘eats’ what and for how long.
In accordance to this, the officials who inflate the said procurement costs to pregnancy use ‘the difference’ they make on this money to buy property to house Ugandans in their popcorn rentals.
These benevolent kleptocrats also use stolen funds to start businesses which employ and pay Ugandans starvation wages and generally re-inject that heisted money into the economy through their conspicuous consumption. Thereby building up an illusion of Patriotism and Power: the fraternal twins which serve them well when they run for office by using the same ill-gotten loot to buy votes for a song.
Certainly, school fees are paid, funerals paid for and other ceremonies or rites of passage underwritten in the bargain. The voter is hereby bribed and the politician re-elected to do it all again. It’s a virtuous cycle that happens to be vicious.
Our leaders know the importance of turning the government into a cash cow in recognition of the first syllable of the president’s surname being pronounced as a ‘Moo.’ You see, the whole system subsists on making money as a means of acquiring, using and keeping power.
In the process, a reverse Robin Hood syndrome (robbing from the poor to give to the rich) is fostered and thus the fight against corruption becomes more apparent than real.
Yes, politicians must appear to be reducing the fat in government as a sleight of hand deflecting the public’s eye away from the leadership’s ever expanding waistlines. And so, the more they appear to fight corruption, the more they eat. And the more they eat, the more their appetites grow.
In the flawed worldview of the politician, it doesn’t make sense to walk and grow thinner when you can run things into the ground and grow fatter by atomizing the nation through the creation of innumerable districts. Again, by duplicating government services via the birthing of scores of stillborn institutions which are ostensibly there to fight corruption but instead create jobs for cronies of the regime.
Indeed, it was the president who once talked about “cadre identification, cadre development and cadre placement”; cadre being a byword for the ‘unquestioning supporter.’
And thus cronyism is a huge stumbling block placed in the way of fighting and defeating corruption. So walking against corruption will create the necessary ceremony and pomp attached to much ado about nothing. While the by-product of this will lead to a talking of the walk instead of a walking of the talk in the fight against graft.
Mr Matogo is content editor and writer with KQ Hub Africa
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