Why bazzukulu ridiculed their jjajja over corruption

Even for an experienced canny operator like President Yoweri Museveni, it is difficult to remain on your ‘A’ game for three decades. Our Mzee, however, keeps trying. He is in denial, but I salute his optimism.
And so it was that Mzee President stepped forward, a few days ago, to declare himself an anti-corruption crusader. He launched an anti-corruption hotline and threatened to confiscate property of those convicted of corruption. He made a few more noises on the subject.

He attracted plenty of ridicule on social media, deservedly so. However much he tries to reinvent himself, Mzee President is unconvincing. Everything falls flat. He embarrasses himself before the bazzukulu.
He has denounced corruption for decades. Today, corruption has never been healthier. Having used it effectively as a tool of patronage, he is just not the man to combat the vice however much he tries. The corrupt know it.
The politically exposed commission agents — who are at the centre of procurement-related corruption, which is the largest source of public sector graft — could care less. They know it is all talk from Mzee President.

Even as he was talking, the commission agents were lining up to scam the latest procurement deal. They are always looking out for which sector is attracting big government money so that they can hook up foreign companies for a commission. These are the people who jam the PPDA and IGG phone lines claiming tendering malpractices when their companies do not get the deal. Somehow, PPDA and IGG love to give them a hearing thereby stalling many a project and wasting even more public money.

To show how tired Mzee President is, his messaging on corruption could not have been more awful. As already stated, he is not credible on the subject. He made that worse by talking about corruption when his foreign minister was (is) in a rotten place. Just days earlier, an American court had found a Hong Kong man, Chi Ping Patrick Ho, guilty of, among others, bribing African officials, including Sam Kutesa, in return for business favours for a large Chinese energy company.

Asked about it by the interesting journalist Joseph Sabiti at a news conference, Mr Museveni offered a curious answer. He said that Mr Kutesa, alleged to have been paid $500,000 to oil the entry of CEFC China Energy Company Limited into Uganda, told him the money was for his charity organisation. Mzee President added that he had asked Mr Kutesa to liaise with the Attorney General to establish whether the $500,000 was a donation to charity. Mzee President has said strange things before, but this answer ranks down there with the most bizarre.
That said, for argument’s sakes, let’s ask: what was minister Kutesa thinking by cavorting with shifty characters at the time he was UN General Assembly president? Did he think all those people lining up to shake his hand simply loved his boyish smile? You would think he would know better because of his experience in business, diplomacy, politics, and the law.

Maybe he actually knew better.
In any case, no bribe is ever baptised as such. It always carries other gentler, nobler names. What is certain is that at some point both or all parties will know what exactly the deal is.
Anyways, may Mzee President succeed in his latest crusade against corruption, just like he has succeeded in his many drives to transform agriculture; to take services nearer to the people by creating a gazillion administrative, political and cultural units; to industrialise Uganda; to find jobs for the youth. The list is longer. The results are the same. Dismal.

Away from the musings of septuagenarian leaders, two bazzukulu reminded us in the last seven days that good things do still happen. Why not, we are a country of 40 million people. Surely.
Miss Uganda Quiin Abenakyo emerged Miss World Africa at the 2018 Miss World climax in China. With that she became the first Ugandan to finish in the top 5 on the world stage. Poised, articulate, beautiful. May she go places.

The other is Ms Harriet Anena, my colleague at the African Centre for Media Excellence. Her quiet demeanour (in public at least) may not show it, but she is big-time smart. She was declared at the weekend the co-winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, 2018.