Bribes are ‘good’, bullets are ‘better’, greed is insatiable, and fear is bottomless

The most amazing thing about the 2016 and 2011 elections wasn’t that President Museveni was announced winner, but that it happened after he campaigned against himself and his government.

It wasn’t uncommon for him to turn up at a campaign rally, call out some local functionary, say the agriculture officer or education officer, then publicly harangue them for not doing their job.

The incumbent would then run off numbers of how much was allocated to the sector in the national Budget, threaten to fire the official if they didn’t pull up their socks, then move the circus onto the next town. 

In some cases, local officials were indeed indolent, corrupt, and incompetent. But the handicaps to good service delivery were more entrenched and complicated. They included small budgetary allocations to key sectors like health, education and agriculture, byzantine bureaucracy that slowed or stymied the execution of projects, as well as institutionalised corruption in public projects and procurements.

As soon as a road project was announced, for instance, there would be a scramble by technocrats, civil servants and their political godfathers to acquire land in the road route, then claim hefty compensation.

These rent-seeking protagonists were and are well known and they got away with it because of an unwritten and unspoken contract; they could make money corruptly as long as they did not use it to mobilise politically or militarily against the regime, and as long as a significant chunk went back to maintain the regime and its different “stakeholders”.

So, as argued last week, after the violence of 2001 and 2006, the last two elections were then fought with bribes, not bullets. This entrenched corruption allowed a small middle class to emerge and kept it sufficiently distracted not to meddle too much in politics. The political class was similarly extended, most visibly in the expansion of Parliament, and the retention of losers from the House in a growing number of parastatal boards, diplomatic postings and the like.

It was a political Ponzi scheme and, like all such schemes, it had one fatal flaw: The bottom of the pyramid can only support the top for so long before it begins to demand for a share of the spoils. The best way to reward the bottom of the pyramid is by providing effective and efficient services: Clean water, good schools, affordable food, working hospitals, and the like. But these things require time and money, and they can be taken for granted – which isn’t ideal in a political set up with just one fountain.

It is easier to run a patrimonial network on patronage where loyalty and support is the meal ticket to the trough. The bottom, on top of being hungry and angry, has now become restless. While corruption raises some boats, it leaves the majority drowning.  There have been at least three tactical responses. The first has been to paper over the ghetto cracks by rushing through services but, as noted, this is slow in bearing results and political outcomes are hard to control.

The second, informed by the ‘bribes are better than bullets’ strategy of the last decade, has been to throw money at the problem, by luring and offering cash and other handouts to the most vocal noisemakers in the ghetto or clustering small self-help groups.

But this has not been without complications. As soon as one noisemaker has their greedy mouth stuffed full of national cake, others step up to whip up the crowds, mouth open in expectation. Those who receive do not necessarily share with or win over others, yet those who do not receive are left even more embittered than before.

The have-nots see the political elite and middle class as little more than armed bank robbers in getaway cars. The handouts we give to Empty Letter, Vegetable Boy and others are the equivalent to throwing cash out of the window of the getaway car to distract and put off the chasing mob.

Because of the sheer size of the mob, which grows every minute, and the absence of enough road for the getaway car to disappear off into the sunset – the ghettos lie cheek by jowl to the leafy suburbs – there is only one thing left to do: open fire into the on-rushing mob. 

One can’t campaign against oneself for too long without the masses cottoning on, and although the bribes were better than bullets while they lasted, they were never sustainable. Greed is insatiable but fear is bottomless. The violence is logical and instrumental.

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and poor man’s freedom fighter

[email protected] @Kalinaki