When honest men become thieves overnight

In the last few days Ugandan news has been inundated by videos and sadistic stories of extortion at Entebbe International Airport.

What makes them even more horrifying is that the victims who cry out the most are the wretched of the earth.

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These are the people who when times are desperate, act like the clan tramp card. The family hunters and gatherers. The type who borrow at a high interest or whose families pool all resources, sell their property in order to invest in them. Their destination is the Middle East. 

The trade is mainly menial jobs to earn enough for upkeep, payment of debts, investment in a house for themselves, school fees and medical bills for siblings and parents respectively.

The airport serves as the narrow door to heaven or hell. Any mistake and you suffer a major setback. This means loss of millions for the passport, the air ticket, the fees paid to facilitate job placement and other expenses.  Many are first time travellers and so it is very easy to take advantage of them.

With that background the news caused a lot of outrage at how low human beings can sink to be callous just for money.

That is what it is on the surface. The reality is that this is ‘normal’ in autocratic environments where everything is on a downward trajectory. Administrative management and control loses out to give way to cheap fraudulent behavior which now becomes public corporate culture.  Entebbe is not an island, it is right in Uganda.

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We could even start from the physical setting of these crimes of extortion. 

The Airport has been under renovation just like Mulago National Referral Hospital, from the 80s under the UPC government to date. Yet it does not seem to change much in appearance, amenities and services provided. Some would say that the more the talk of modernization the decadent the air becomes. 

Where the money goes, your guess is as good as mine. Be that as it may, it raises questions of accountability to the public which is the bane of autocratic societies. That is why it should not surprise you that such places have the sort of outcry in the news.

In such spaces conditions are in place to ensure that public services are very difficult to access. If they are easily accessible, instead of a clear cut system layers and a myriad of ‘important people’ and desks are put in the structure in the guise of simplifying and bringing services closer to the people. Many times these act as an added burden and obstacle to the people supposed to be served.

These people wear out and burden the one seeking the service and tempt them to go  for a short cut. The short cut becomes the easier route where money oils the wheels. 

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During the Covid-19 pandemic some officials had their own way of with the mandatory test results. They would disregard results as forged from labs in which they did not have ‘confidence.’ 

They would ask a traveler who was about to board to take another test at a facility in which they had ‘confidence.’

The desperate traveler would then be whispered to by other people who were presumably there to help, to part with some money after which the results would change, just in time to catch their flight.

In other instances information is poorly communicated to create gaps and desperate people in need of help even where it is not necessary. 

For instance, not very many people know how to use the rather simplified online passport application system. So there are agents and hacks who need money before they guide the applicant. They are known to make mistakes which may require the applicant to pay them to correct them.

Also not many people can confidently say that they know what a genuine passport looks like. Equally you will be surprised by the number of people who can confidently stand their ground in case they are challenged by an extortionist, behind a counter.

These are not challenges only associated with the airport and travel. It is a nationwide problem. Almost everyone thrives by law breaking of sorts in a system that has been grossly ‘informalized.’ One in which it is better to know the people than the established system. 

You get on the job through a back channel as opposed to the straight and narrow that starts with responding to an advert, applying and sitting for an interview. Everyone knows you are there on shaky grounds and so you have no moral authority to  reprimand others. You quietly join in and things move on ‘normally,’ in their crookedness.

Almost everything is done to ensure that there are no clear rules and guidelines to be  followed. It is only people; which people need to be facilitated.

That is how law breaking becomes the most profitable undertaking in society with almost no risk to the breaker. As the number of people benefitting from by-passing the law increases, it becomes risky to keep within the law because you upset a life line of survival.

That is why in most organizations even the well intentioned men will become thieves overnight. They are crowded out by the ones eating from the shortfalls graciously provided by the distraction and vulgarization of the system. It now becomes a way of life. You swim against the tide, you drown or get kicked out.

What helps this culture to grow is what is  noticeable that one can rarely get a person to report to in most of these organizations. This is because almost all the officers are now peers and are part of a cartel. 

They all ‘understand’ when one of them is caught with their hands in the cookie jar. That this is their way of doing things.

Seemingly, the victims are from the lowest strata of life because they are the ones who may have the least information about process and availability of remedies in case one is aggrieved. Knowledge is power so they say. 

And they are the ones who cry out loudest on social  media because to them a shilling lost is a fortune, whereas to those with a lot of money the pain may not be felt that much and can be absorbed.

Although we must accept some may be law breakers themselves who find the crooked system useful to help them achieve their goals and they have no qualms paying their way.

Twitter: @nsengoba