"I can't import honest Ugandans" - President Yoweri Museveni
by Charles Onyango Obbo AllAfrica.com
Appearing before the inquiry into the swindling of Global Fund money last week, Health minister Maj. Gen. Jim Muhwezi all but told Justice James Ogoola that Movement leaders were entitled to be corrupt because they "fought".
While most sensible people wouldn't freely choose to live in a country governed by people who think like Muhwezi, the general shouldn't be held responsible for this political line. For those who have forgotten, Maj. Gen. David Tinyefuza said the same thing when he appeared on the Tonight on Andrew Mwenda show at the height of the election campaigns in January.
He said the judges had no business criticising the Black Mamba's armed invasion of the High Court, because their bewigged lordships were hiding under their beds when Tinye & Co. were fighting in the bush. This is a line Ugandans have heard since the NRM came to power in 1986, and Muhwezi and Tinye are not its authors. They are just the messengers.
After the NRM took power, within a year it became clear that it wouldn't deal with corruption. When asked why there was no action on what Kenyans call "old corruption", President Yoweri Museveni would answer that it was better to leave the thieves to continue their business, as it was cheaper for the country than cracking down on them and in the process force them to go to the bush and fund rebellion with their ill-gotten wealth.
In reality, the old corrupt class had wormed its way into the NRM, and they were the closest of friends with the new big men.
When it became clear that NRM leaders were involved in corrupt deals too, the answer from President Museveni was that; "even Movement cadres are from this same corrupt Ugandan society." In one of his more famous comments on this matter, Museveni was to say; "I can't import honest Ugandans".
However, as the economic liberalisation that started in 1988 showed, many Ugandans were growing rich through honest work. It was no longer tenable for even the most blinkered politician to argue that Ugandan society can also thrive through stealing.
So the argument changed, and Mr Museveni would argue that "at least the thieves were investing their money at home, not taking it abroad like they used to do in the old primitive regimes."
In short order, that too became an insufferably ridiculous story. First, if corruption was excusable if the money was invested locally, then everyone in a position of responsibility could steal public funds, as long as they spent it domestically.
Secondly, by the beginning of the 1990s big time embezzlers in the NRM were not investing their money home, but stashing it abroad. And thirdly, and more crucially, why should taxpayers be diligent in paying their taxes if the purpose was so people in government could steal it? Taxpayers would be better off investing the money themselves.
In limbo
At this point, the NRM was sliding in both ideological and moral limbo. So to reclaim the moral high ground, the government threw itself into refurbishing its anti-corruption credentials with the creation of bodies like the Inspector General of Government, and during the making of the 1995 constitution supported giving Parliament committees more authority than they had ever had to probe government expenditure.
However, from 1998 everything went into reversal, and last year's amendment of the constitution effectively stripped Parliament of its clout, and took a few more teeth of out the IGG's mouth.
The practice of invoking the bush war to justify white collar robbery by government leaders and state functionaries and its agents, is now happening as part of the wider movement to reclaim the ground for impunity that the crooks had lost.
Fallout
But there's a difference today from the situation in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For starters, the NRM has grown, and most of its rank and file were people who weren't in the bush. There have also been two major fall-outs in the Movement (in 2001 when Dr Kizza Besigye first challenged Museveni, and last year over the presidency for life project).
The number of people in government who can claim to have fought is easily today less than one-third what it was in 1986. For this reason, while 15 years ago the argument of "we fought" was made to rationalise the exclusion of Ugandans who weren't with the NRM in the bush from the high table, today it's made to establish the "eating pecking order" within the wider NRM. That is why Minister of State Mike Mukula, accused of similar transgressions by Justice Ogoola can't fall back on the "we fought" argument, but Muhwezi can do so comfortably.
Once that order has been established, it means the next people in line (the heirs) to eat both the groceries and politics are not NRM party members, but the relatives of the remaining "fighters" - i.e. their wives, and children. The implications of this for political succession inside the NRM are written on the wall for all those with eyes to see.
© 2006 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com)
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