Under NRM the concept of work has died

After January 1986 several changes took place in Uganda. One of the most fundamental of them all was the attitude towards honest labor as a means of earning a living. The brains behind NRM were farsighted in as far as understanding the centrality of the concept of work in a democracy and by extension, an autocracy.

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Work gives a human being not only a source of livelihood which is progress economically but also makes them progress socially as they can advance in acquiring material things like good houses, cars and education; marry and have children. It also helps them to grow and mature mentally as they think of being more productive.

Above all it makes them extremely sensitive to political power, governance and the absence of it. When one works in a formal setting where their pay is taxed, they learn to make a mental connection  with what goes on around them. When the government misuses taxpayers’ money or looks on as its cronies steal it and accumulate wealth primitively, they will eventually develop antipathy towards the government.

That is why the NRM government does not perform well in urban settings and receives a lot of stick from the working class - on social media. This class bears the tax burden the most.

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But because they will not risk going on the streets to get their grievances heard for the obvious reason that they will be sacked, they have devised other means. They simply sit pretty and offer only a small amount of their effort. They spend the rest devising ways and means of cheating their way. They work against whatever system is in place to slow it down and make service delivery as difficult as possible. For one to access a service thereafter; as they would do normally, they have to bribe and oil the system. That is why whatever good system the government has put in place to remove inefficiency, there are still glaring loopholes for the corrupt to exploit and get rich.  

In fact, in this way many earn more than they do with the official salary. So people who are paid very little money end up with serious wealth in this way. They enjoy the whole set up which would not be the case if they were walking the straight and narrow.

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In the end analysis they have a lackadaisical view to bad governance and pray that the status quo remains in place. They may even sponsor some NRM candidates to defeat the opposition competitors who seek to shake the drinks table. In that way the NRM government benefits immensely.

When it comes to the rural folk, Uganda being an agrarian country, the deliberate destruction of cooperatives did the trick for the NRM. The farmer lost the advantages of bargaining as a group in purchase of inputs. In the same way they could not sell their produce in bulk as a group and have a say in pricing.

The middleman made a killing by dealing with individual farmers and squeezed them real hard. This eventually meant that agriculture lost its viability as a business. Some sold their land to the corrupt and sent their children abroad to do all manner of jobs to save the family. Others sent them to school with the hope of getting white collar jobs. Some simply decided to join the transport business as lorry, taxi and boda boda riders.

The white collar worker if they were lucky to become such found the hurdle above. He has no serious voice that threatens the government even under the much pampered foreign investor who fears politics for fear of being deported.

He also has to show gratitude for being given the opportunity to work in a country in a conducive environment where they get away with exploiting the locals.

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Then you have the business class whose success depends on the favours of important people in the government. They are the ‘tenderpreneurs,’ and the people who get lucrative deals to do government work and get contracts.  In many cases they are merely conduits through which money is stolen on the pretext of paying a contractor yet shoddy or no work is done. These ones enjoy swimming in the troubled waters and will fight tooth and nail to perpetuate the regime.

The taxi/truck driver, boda boda rider and market vendor is under the weight of regulation and license. So they have to be in line politically.

The majority who have not found a job have been left to float around in the amorphous world of politics.

In this world that has become so famous under the NRM government, you find so many people doing so many things that lack proper definition. First of course you have the group that holds political office and gets paid. Then there is the group that is always fighting to get into office to also eat from those fruits. They are either supporters, violent hands for hire, or cheap bodies for sale to whoever is the highest bidder; in this case the NRM government.

These will be ever present as the people who have crossed from one group to another having seen the light. etc. The large informal sector accommodates them and this is the group the government loves to deal with. They are given money which is not adequate to go round so they spend a lot of their time and energy diverted -to fighting over it.

The government loves this lot for they are like the Stalinist chicken whose owner painfully plucked off all its feathers. He then kept on dropping little grains of rice in its path and the chicken gratefully swallowed them to survive. In this way the chicken forgot its predicament and the cruelty of the one who plucked its feathers.

As such it was controlled. The working and business class that benefits from corruption without working significantly, added to the informal sector which is encouraged to focus on politics where they get free money as handouts and the political class which earns without really putting in meaningful labor is what today constitutes the majority of the workforce. It is a workforce that is easy to manipulate politically and keep on a tight leash.

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That works well for the NRM which by all indications wants to stay in power forever. It does not mind much about productive citizens being the source of the family silver for there is a donor community, which in a quest to play the piper who calls the tune, funds the bigger part of the budget.

Mr Sengoba is a commentator on political and social issues
Twitter: @nsengoba