Government’s legitimacy crisis: The boda boda problem

Raymond Mujuni

What you need to know:

  • Twaweza, a non-governmental organisation recently asked people their perceptions on taxes and three in 10 said, given a chance, they would cheat on paying their taxes – in that number, 42 percent, a majority are from the Greater Kampala Metropolitan area.  

This week, the Uganda Police clenched its normally easy fist around the boda-bodas. A crackdown of immeasurable proportions was visited on an industry that has, for years, acted with concerning impunity. 
In the numbers, we are told some 6,000 motorcycles were impounded for either lack of proper documents or lack of crash helmets and reflector jackets. The motivation for the police crackdown, it was said, was to reduce the number of crashes on Ugandan roads – there are numbers for that but I won’t repeat them here.
 
In the aftermath of the crackdown, some critics said their enforcement was an anti-poor measure, targeting the lowest earning and most powerless members of society, others argued that the crackdown was erratic, poorly designed and incapable of achieving the sole purpose of reducing traffic crashes. 

It helped police, a very little bit, that the crackdown came on the heels of an already ongoing crackdown they conducted on cars, government cars that violate traffic rules and those in dangerous mechanical condition.  It also helped that, this time, the traffic police had cracked down on each road user category with the exception of pedestrians. 
But it brought to the heart of debate a rather interesting question, why does the Ugandan state fear enforcing sets of rules already agreed upon by society? Why should police, for example, engage in a shouting match for doing its job? 
States enforce law and order through their public facing institutions. Institutions like Police, the army, civil service are an important vehicle for delivering the state’s foremost role; protecting people and property – and guaranteeing law and order. 

To succeed, those institutions bank on legitimacy; an acceptance by the public to be ruled over. For the Ugandan state, legitimacy is still a contested idea. Whilst people are more likely to stop when a traffic officer waves them down, they are less likely to believe that the reason for being waved down is a greater public and communal good. Let’s bring numbers to this; take work for example, whilst every working Uganda ought to pay an income tax, only a million of Uganda’s 18 million working population pay taxes [Government figures]. 
Twaweza, a non-governmental organisation recently asked people their perceptions on taxes and three in 10 said, given a chance, they would cheat on paying their taxes – in that number, 42 percent, a majority are from the Greater Kampala Metropolitan area.  

But even if I went away from taxes, to the lowest and most present form of government; the LC1 – few Ugandans are likely to know their LC1 or locate them. It doesn’t help that at that level, there are no offices or established norms and practices that make government predictable, its policies present and it’s form broadly acceptable. 

The herculean task of government to make the state function and be present in every life sometimes meets the more important and real question of; who benefits from a functioning, all present government? 

And that answer is also pretty simple. Ten million people show up to vote in a country where only a million people pay taxes. It’s possible to have a person win a presidential election with voters who’ve never borne the cost of keeping the lights on. 
This legitimacy problem and question confronts the Kampala boda boda operations. The bodas who pay their license fees and buy helmets and jackets are only a fraction – some expect them to also file income returns at the end of the year. But it is the bigger fraction who haven’t done either demanding that the state provide milk and apples for a breakfast they aren’t going into the field for. And that is a problem.