The Monitor (Kampala)
4 November 2009
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Evelyn Lirri's report; "Corruption floods water, sanitation sector" (Saturday Monitor, October 31), seemed to be the least likely candidate for most important article in an issue of the paper that led with Kabaka Mutebi's protests at President Museveni's appointment of royals to political office, and opposition leader being "up in arms" over new Mchaka Mchaka courses. However, it was.
According to Lirri's report, between 2002/3 and 2008/9 up to Sh51 billion could have been swallowed by crooks in donor-funded projects to extend water and sanitation services to Ugandans, and that bribes are galore in the sector.
This story was important because it reveals a blind spot in our tracking of corruption. We tend to focus a lot on areas where corruption is now "expected"; defence, in the Ministry of Health on medicines and related supplies; Chogm tenders; government procurements; award of tenders; civil service payrolls; concessions on logging; the allocation of prime land to developers in the cities; and state support for things like the ill-fated Tristar Apparel company.
We expect a headmaster to inflate the price of beans and maize he buys to feed school kids, and to steal some of the mabati given to the school. But we get horrified when he steals examination fees. This is because, however much corruption there is, we still have a sense of no go areas. We think that even the worst thief will not, for example, steal from his elderly mother.
When reports of ghost soldiers first emerged; and in the early period when stories started breaking about troops being fed on rotten rations and their medicines being diverted by corrupt officers and sold to private clinics and pharmacies, it was tough to believe. How can a government led by President Museveni, a man whose god is the Army, rob the soldiers on whom its power so depended? It was stupid and did extreme damage to the regime's selfish power interest. But it happened.
So it seems like water is also an area where, while we might expect "some" corruption, we don't think it can run in the billions. The same thing happened with UPE. UPE is a rich pot, and inevitably we expected some leakage. However, because it was a high political priority, and Ugandans tend to value education, the idea that MOST UPE money is stolen is a realisation that didn't come easily to many.
So when President Museveni said during the budget presentation this year that he had learnt that UPE was being stolen, and that he would go after the thieves, you could feel the tremors from as far away as Nairobi where many Ugandans received news that their friends and relatives were terrified. That, it turns out, is the one statement from Museveni in recent years, that has caused the most shock.
The reason is that UPE money is actually not for education. It is a national looters' fund. It is embezzled very democratically, because it is the one fund that is stolen from the small corner of Kisoro, to the far north in Koboko. UPE is, technically, a social security fund for the bureaucrats and their friends. And, as some sources told me after the Museveni statement, UPE is the single largest source of the funds that have driven economic growth in the last 10 years.
A friend, who is clued on how deep the rot goes, told me that the day Museveni tries to crack down seriously on the theft of UPE funds, is the day he will be overthrown or assassinated. This is the one pot into which very many of the Uganda elite have their fingers.
To understand the new face of corruption in Uganda, more attention needs to be paid to what happens in "sacred" areas. In a story I still remember very well, some years ago The Monitor reported that corruption had eaten into State House and President's Office so much that the "official" back-up cars in Museveni's convoy had long disappeared into thin air and officials had replaced them with their own private vehicles that they were hiring to the State at exorbitant prices.
It was the equivalent of conniving to put the presidential out of service, and then getting the government to hire their private jets to carry him to a trip abroad. But perhaps we have spoken too soon. One of these days, that might just happen.So, if nothing is off-limits for the corrupt, what might the future hold? Some wags have joked about how very soon Mulago Hospital, and even Parliament House, will be sold corruptly. We saw the Source of the Nile sold off to someone to develop a hotel. Relief food is routinely stolen.
We never expected priests and pastors to steal God's collection. But they do. We never thought lecturers and teachers would ask for sex in return for marks. But they do. We have seen money for soldiers' boots and uniforms eaten, and the boys sent to battle half-naked and barefoot. What Lirri's water story helped do, is to teach us a lesson we needed to have learned a long time ago: There is nothing left that the corrupt fear.
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