On October 29 - 30, the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Finance and the World Bank had a workshop discussing the new Joint Budget Support that is being given to the Uganda government. What 'Joint Budget Support' means in simple terms is that a few donors have come together and decided to support Uganda by putting money in the national budget and then it is spent based on the priorities of government.

As part of the process, donors and government have developed a tool that monitors if the government is 'performing' well. A noble cause indeed, but what caught my eye when reviewing this matrix were two interesting performance indicators on corruption. One indicator is - 'an institutional framework to fight corruption is in place' and the other that there is 'follow up and action on special audits of grand corruption cases' specifically the Chogm audit.

In my comments at the workshop on behalf of civil society, I asked and still ask: What were the conditions that made it possible for what my donor friend called 'the biggest corruption scandal in the history of Uganda' to happen? Have those conditions disappeared so that we can now trust that audit outcome to lead to recovery of the stolen billions?

I contend that unless we work towards eliminating the root causes that fuel grand corruption, we shall be dealing mostly with symptoms. Like a good doctor we should treat the symptoms but eliminate the cause. Here I am reminded of a renowned political theorist, Peter Ekeh from Nigeria who wrote a paper in the early 1970s entitled The Two Publics in Africa. He made important arguments that I think go to the core of the problem of corruption in many African societies.

He argues that colonialism in Africa left two kinds of publics - the civic (modern) and the primordial (kinship/ethnic/informal) one. Individuals uphold the virtues of the civic public yet they also remain loyal to their primordial public. This clash of norms and interests according to Ekeh, generates notions of tribalism and corruption.

Ekeh argued that because there is no proper formulation of the notion of the 'individual' as a worthy citizen in Africa (because of the ways in which foreign intrusions of slave trade and colonialism alienated the African state from its citizens), this left the individual to define themselves as one that does not go beyond the narrower concepts of immediate kinship. The colonial individual, who Prof. Mahmood Mamdani calls the 'subject' (in his book Citizen and Subject) was ruled as tribal, native and other such categories. The individual therefore did not have powers to interact directly with the state.

We now have individuals who dip their hands in the public purse and transfer these resources to their ethnic and local enclaves where they are praised as very hardworking 'sons of the soil'. These individuals drive at the wee hours of the night to go and attend burial ceremonies, kwanjula, kuhingira, fundraising for churches, schools e.t.c. and at those functions they 'give cows', offer hefty amounts of money.

What this individual gains back is not material. He gains back intangible, immaterial benefits in the form of identity, patrimony or psychological security.

What we now call corruption is a direct result of this tension between the two publics. Corruption arises directly from the amorality of the civic public and the looting of the civic public to finance the primordial public. The two contemporary forms of corruption that are associated with this tension is embezzlement of funds - like the Chogm scandal.

The second is the solicitation and acceptance of bribes. This includes all those who believe that no Ugandan can give you a service without a kick-back as well as those who offer kick-backs. Both these kinds of corruption which are the most rampant and they carry little or no moral sanction. On the contrary these forms of corruption are all absent in the primordial public. For example, one never finds 'commissions of inquiry into the stealing of 'mabugo' after a burial however much money is collected and no one runs off with the money after a burial and boasts about it. Strange that sometimes those who are known as grand corruption culprits end up being the best 'treasurers', 'chairmen of wedding meetings' e.t.c for their village associations, weddings and community investment projects.

The fight against corruption is therefore not a just a 'budget support' and audit investigation issue, it is one that will be fought by raising a generation that appreciates that we belong to one public that is both primordial and civic and indeed the same morality that rules our private lives as individuals should also rule our public lives. Mr Ssewakiryanga is executive director, Uganda National NGO Forum.

Regular columnist, Austin Ejiet, is unwell but will return the moment he is fit enough.