The Observer (Kampala)
Martyn Drakard
17 December 2008
opinion
The IGG survey report carried out in 12,200 households countrywide perhaps registered few surprises.
An analysis of the findings shows that, in summary, the average Ugandan is getting a raw deal. Among the most "dishonest" institutions, the people interviewed cited traffic and general Police, the Lands office, city and town councils, and courts of law.
This means in effect that justice is not being administered in almost all the aspects of our lives that matter; and where we simply need a paper, document, stamp or signature before we can claim what we have a right to: transport and law enforcement, land distribution and tenure, services in government offices and fair court rulings.
The most "honest" institutions, such as water, agriculture and environment affect most people less. Water is widely available; few need go without food, and for most people clean air and surroundings are not an issue.
What is interesting too from this survey is that NGOs rank high in honesty, many of which are managed by non-Ugandans.
It is worth asking, to what extent is Uganda a just country?
Wisdom from the ancients can serve as a guide. Among the Greek philosophers, Thales said that if there is neither excessive wealth nor immoderate poverty in a nation, then justice may be said to prevail. The converse suggests injustice, such as the extremes of wealth and poverty within Kampala itself, and the urban-rural divide, particularly northern Uganda.
Cheilon remarked that a just state is one where a citizen habitually pays more attention to the laws, and least to the orators - the speech- and promise-makers of his day. And Pittacus, that justice is a reality where it is not possible for the wicked to rule in a polis (city-state), and likewise that it is not possible for the good to be excluded from ruling.
The "good" were understood as wise, well-informed, incorruptible, hard-working and humble.
How well is commutative justice lived and applied? Commutative justice regulates exchanges between persons, and between institutions in accordance with strict respect for their rights. Without it, no other form of justice is possible, such as what the citizen owes the community, and the community the citizen in proportion to their contributions and needs.
The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy prescribed all kinds of measures to lighten the burden of the poor and treat them justly, such as, prohibiting loans at interest, the jubilee year of forgiving debts, the daily payment of the day-labourer. Christian thinkers, such as John Chrysostom, said that to not enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are ours, not theirs.
And Augustine went further. He argued that there was no difference between the conqueror and the robber, except the scale of their operations, and quotes the reply of the pirate to Alexander the Great: "Because I do it with a little boat, I am called a robber, and you, because you do it with a great fleet of ships, are called an emperor."
In his travel book on the Congo, 'Blood River', Telegraph correspondent, Tim Butcher, records a conversation with a mining expert who explained why the inefficient system of cobalt mining and processing is of no economic benefit to the people of Katanga. The cobalt-rich rock is bagged and driven out of the country. Local miners benefit only from their daily pay. If the local authorities were interested in boosting the local economy, they would invest in a plant that converted the rock into concentrated cobalt salts. It's not a complex procedure, but multiplies the value of the cobalt 50 times, maybe a hundred, and it's more efficient to transport, and the profit margin much greater. But with the present system, some plant in South Africa or China makes the profit.
Why this? Because the authorities in the Congo are not interested in how cobalt mining benefits the local economy. They are only interested in what they can take in bribes. It's easier to count sacks of rock at the border and work out how many dollars you can cream off per bag. Until that fundamental attitude changes, the cobalt boom driven by China will not benefit more than a few members of the Congo elite.
The solution to Africa's problems, in words of a Zimbabwean dealer in minerals and from the same book, is "by creating a system of justice that actually works and by making the leaders accountable for their actions."
This -making leaders accountable for their actions- is the crisis some of Kenya's present rulers are faced with, threatened as they are with action by the International Criminal Court. It is only when the guilty are regularly brought to justice and harassment of the innocent ended that we can begin to consider ourselves a just and honest society.
Martyn Drakard, The author is a Kenyan journalist.
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