allAfrica.com: Uganda: Who Needs a Mafia Cabinet? the Next President Shouldn't (Page 1 of 2)

Until recently the question of who would succeed President Yoweri Museveni was a fashionable subject in newsrooms.

Some of the top contenders would call journalists with their latest survival strategy in what should perhaps one day occupy the book shelves as "the art of not losing a Cabinet appointment".

It will be the third anniversary this month of one such conversation that introduced the colourful phrase "the mafia are fighting me" into the strategic options of those politicians who want to hang on to their expensive perks.

In the dying days of May 2005, then managing director of Monitor Publications Conrad Nkutu was asked to the home of Vice President Gilbert Bukenya for a candid conversation.

The arrangement was done by Mr Simon Kaheru, the VP media strategist and adviser.

On arrival at the Kakiri country home, Mr Nkutu was ushered into the VP's sitting room where a restless Bukenya, a onetime head of the NRM parliamentary caucus, told him political vultures were circling for him and his job.

"They went to my house in Kakiri, photographing my cows and pigs! I hope they are photographing animals of other leaders.

Otherwise it is not fair," Prof. Bukenya said, adding that he had only 10 cows while others have "thousands" [cows were a particularly effective symbolism since Prof. Bukenya, a Muganda, comes from a cultivating background while most senior government members including President Yoweri Museveni are from a cattle keeping tradition and were therefore perceived to be the objects of his enraged complaint].

The "mafia are after me" strategy proved to be a political lifesaver for the VP. Prof. Bukenya was in effect demanding "fairness" in the general muddle of governance, Uganda style.

The crude logic of this proposition has now wide application.

Even pastors caught fleecing their flock claim the mafia (and not the devil) are after them.

VP Bukenya apparently became a target not for his cows and swine but because as the constitutional successor to President Museveni he was the natural successor to the President in an election year when anything could happen.

The VP kept his job much to the chagrin of the so-called mafia. This separation of the rules of politics and that of governance is a crisis of management that if uncorrected can never guarantee that a government in power optimises its performance.

The separate rules of politics and governance also lead to separate benefits one private and the other public.

The Cabinet, the work horse of the state, is ideally a public servant but which cabinet minister serves Mr Museveni just for the official salary and conviction? Probably none.

Like Prof. Bukenya it is the cows, pigs and pawpaws that attract their service which ultimately uses public office for unmoderated private gain.

When the laws of "eating" are applied the way Prof. Bukenya sought to do, it corrupts the ethic of public service (service above self) gradually tipping the balance in favour of acceptable private practice.

Nowadays corruption is seen as a legitimate response to the breakdown of these common rules.

In August 2003, Ms Natasha Karugire, the President's eldest daughter flew the official Gulf Stream to deliver the President's grandchild in Europe, a decision which Mr Museveni publicly remained unapologetic for and instead justified on grounds of the poor hospitals in Uganda [ and the security risks involved for him and his family]- another mafia?

If the President can send his expensive jet on a private errand, how about the minister who sends his office car to deliver matooke and ghee to his young mistress in Kitovu?

What about the permanent secretary? Should he not ask the office driver to take his sick mother to a hospital?

After all he too loves his mother as much as the President loves his daughter and grandchild and the minister his nubile mistress.

And what about the office driver? Must he not make false claims on mileage so that he can pocket some of the petrol money to pay his cousin's school fees?

In the public domain there may exist laws and institutions of good governance and the political rhetoric that extols their prowess but in the private domain including in the Cabinet- the rules of eating powerfully justify that a man or woman must feed where he worketh.

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