Prime
Our democracy is a boda-cracy
Author: Phillip Matogo. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- Bodas are akin to the govt: given to impunity while riding roughshod over our laws.
As the sun bathes the concrete jungle that is Kampala, you decide that it is a good time for a walk.
So you throw on your dancing shoes as you shuffle along a pavement on, say, Jinja Road.
It is surely a good time for a good day.
However, as you savour the spoils of a seized day, you notice that the traffic has slowed to gridlock. Bumper to bumper, vehicles are the opposite of unstuck.
As you mentally question how the jam will be sluiced to a slow but steady flow, a boda boda bursts out of the blue like an angry hornet. It almost knocks you off the pavement!
If it were not for some fancy footwork, you would have been dispatched to an afterlife devoid of such recklessness.
It was a good thing you brought your dancing shoes.
Still, as you congratulate yourself for surviving death; another boda explodes onto your path. Then another and another…the pavement is soon the dominion of bodas.
At this time, you are dancing this way and that. You go left when the boda comes from the right and you go right when a boda speeds at you from the left.
Nobody is there to save you.
Meantime, each boda that darts at the bullseye of your discomfiture is carrying a passenger or more.
Looking at these passengers, you see a gallery of persons dressed up in a parade of outfits ranging from the office-ready to the glad rags of middle class merry Andrews.
In between, lower classes colour a grey area that reminds us that we are each a heartbeat from switching from prince to pauper and vice versa.
All the faces of the passengers are the same: resigned, distracted, apathetic, and sullen.
To them, this could only be a joy ride if the boda rider was called Joy. Otherwise, their ride to nowhere is part of the routinised madness.
All told, the bodas have expanded the roads to include the pavements, thereby adding two more lanes that are twin routes to chaos.
Indeed, bodas are akin to the government: given to impunity while riding roughshod over our nation’s laws. All the while, they ensure that Ugandans come along for the ride.
This not only makes us complicit in the mess that we survey. It also reminds us that we are powerless to stop it.
To be sure, you either let your boda ride on the pavements or you will be interminably stuck in traffic.
Similarly, you either let your political leader cut deals (in the same way boda’s cut corners) or you will be stuck in a neo-patrimonial system oiled by our collective ills.
Is there a way out?
Records from Kampala Capital City Authority reveal that there are more than 100,000 boda bodas in Kampala. This number should be reduced in the same manner government should be trimmed of its bureaucratic fat.
Indeed, the government is too big and its size matters very little to our wellbeing.
If it could be reduced by two thirds and the bodas by the same, our country would be run more efficiently and our pavements would no longer be (mis)taken for roads.
We must know that the size of government is not representative of our interests, but reflective of the ruling elite’s desire to squash our interests under the deadweight of a government we must pay for.
I know the corruption helps us to get around the system the same way the recklessness of a boda helps us get around the city.
But both are ultimately stop signs on the road to development.
Phillip Matogo is a professional copywriter
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