By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
President Tibuhaburwa Museveni of Uganda once called himself Ssabagabe (King of Kings). He had successfully contained the wave of agitation for full-blown Kings just as they were before President Apollo Milton Obote abolished the Kingdoms of Ankole, Buganda, Bunyoro and Toro, the semi-federal State of Busoga.
Instead, he resurrected Buganda, Bunyoro, Toro and Busoga as cultural institutions without political power and authority. He completely abolished the cultural hegemony of the Bahima over the Bairu in Ankole. He refused to refer to Ankole as a cultural institution in the Uganda Constitution 1995 he made and ultimately promulgated in 1997. By substituting Kingdoms with cultural institutions, he effectively de-politicized them and halted the historical conflicts between the Kingdoms, especially Buganda, and the Central Government for supremacy.
President Tibuhaburwa Museveni also once called himself Ssabalwanyi (Warrior of Warriors). That was not surprising. He had successfully waged guerilla warfare against the regimes of Idi Amin, Obote II and Tito Okello, culminating in his capture of the instruments of power and the State of Uganda.
As Commander-in-Chief of the Uganda Peoples Defense Forces (UPDF), he successfully fought proxy wars in South Sudan, Central African Republic (CAR) and Somalia. He had sent his soldiers to keep peace in Liberia. At the time of writing this article, his army is still in Somalia, is securing the decades long politico-military hegemony of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in Equatorial Guinea, and is involved in wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), ostensibly to defeat rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
UPDF, like Rwanda Patriotic Army (Rwanda) was, in the late 1990s, involved in the overthrow of the absolute ruler of Congo (Zaire, now DRC), Joseph Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga) on rhe side of Laurent Desire Kabila’s rebels.
Currently, despite an agreement with DRC’s President, Felix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilomb, to construct a road to Mulenge area and secure Eastern region of the country, UPDF, along with RPA, has been accused by Tshisekedi of militarily supporting Rwandese Tutsi refugees in the Mulenge area (the Banyamulenge) who have taken up arms against the legitimate and sovereign Kinshasa Government.
This is not good: armies of two member countries supporting rebel refugees challenging the authority of a sovereign State of another member country of the East African Community (EAC). It is a big test for East African cooperation.
The King of Kings and Warrior of Warriors is, however, faced with one social and economic evil to fight and conquer: Corruption. The question is: Can President Tibuhaburwa Museveni Conquer Corruption in Uganda?
My Thesis Statement is that President Tibuhaburwa Museveni cannot conquer corruption corruption in Uganda because he is intertwined with and central to it.
There are many Ugandans who think, believe and are convinced that the National Resistance Movement (NRM) cannot survive apart from corruption. However, when they talk about corruption, they do so only in social, economic and financial terms.
They ignore, or are ignorant of, other types of corruption; principally political corruption, ecological corruption, environmental corruption and cultural corruption. They are even unaware that the insurgency against the elected Government of Apollo Milton Obote from 1981 to 1985 was politico-military corruption (i.e. militarized political corruption, which has persisted, and uses the barrel of the gun to gain and retain power illegitimately). Today, political corruption can be traced in Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Presidential and State House processes, separately or intertwinedly.
It is, however, honest to give credit where it is due before discussing whether or not President Tibuhaburwa Museveni will conquer corruption in Uganda. Therefore, this article credits President Tibuhaburwa Museveni with right actions against corruption, but also points out the contradictions undermining the right actions.
Under the guidance of rebel leader Tibuhaburwa Museveni, the NRM/NRA put corruption among its Ten Point Programme, a political programme to rebuild Uganda beyond the ruins of war. However, during the insurgenya political corruption, the NRM/A eliminated some key individuals across the socio-political spectrum to discredit the regime in power.
Economic and financial corruption involved sabotaging the economy by destroying the infrastructure and ransacking the wealth of cooperative unions and societies as well as banks; and looting especially the industries of Jinja. Environmental corruption involved destroying forests and bushes during and after the insurgency.
Cultural corruption involved people from foreign cultures participating in the rebellion against the regime in power in Kampala, and mating with people of indigenous cultures, often forcibly, thereby diluting the genetic integrity of our people and culture. All this together challenged the capacity of the regime in power to govern and protect the properties and lives of our people.
For a long time, once in power, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni did not immediately confront corruption, especially in social, economic, financial, political and environmental terms. Political ethnisation and ethnic politicisation enhanced the domination of the country and its peoples by a small ethnic group socially, economically, financially, politically and environmentally.
Meaningful social, economic, financial, political and environmental empowerment has purposely benefited members of the small ethnic group dominating power, with other Ugandans just servicing its prosperity. According to people from Western Uganda, the dominant ethnic group not Bahima but immigrant Tutsi from Rwanda and Mulenge in DRC.
Environmental corruption is proceeding supersonically as the members of the small ethnic group in power grab forests and land of almost every indigenous cultural group in Uganda as well as the country’s mineral wealth. The Uganda Constitution 1995 strategically makes all land below ground Government land, thereby making it easy for members of small ethnic group to access and exploit the resources legally and constitutionally. The indigenous owners of the resources are completely disempowered.
It is unlikely that under these socioeconomic and sociopolitical conditions, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni will be able, at the apical end of his reign, to undo the effects of the totality of selective empowerment in terms of its corruption of the entire society of Uganda. The major contraint the President faces is that he is intricately intertwined in every type of corruption. It will be difficult for him to extricate himself and lead the crusade again corruption effectively.
Despite all this, however, President Museveni has, in very recent times, done a number notable things to demonstrate that he means business against economic and financial corruption. I credit him for that. Although some mean people may say what he has done and continues to do are a cover-up of his centrality in the web of corruption in the country, in this article I want to give credit where it is due, while recognizing the complexity of the issue, and the major obstacle he has to overcome towards meaningfully and effectively managing corruption: himself.
One truism in the last 36 years is that, in Uganda, everything starts with President Tibuhaburwa Museveni and ends with President Tibuhaburwa Museveni. In another article, I have called this Presidentialism. However, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni has established institutions and maintained others to confront the vice of corruption; particularly economic and financial corruption. He has also seen to it that pertinent laws are in place to contain this type of corruption. These are given elsewhere in the article.
The President innovated the concept of Zero Tolerance to Corruption (ZTCP) and oversaw the emergence of the Zero Tolerance to Corruption Policy, 2019, which was unleashed on July 2019 and he subsequently launched it on 4th December 2019, preceded by a march against corruption through the streets of Kampala. However, former IGG, Irene Mulyagonja, said at the end of the march, that some top Government officials hide behind the President but maintained the President was sincere in tackling corruption.
She assured her listeners that the President is ready to give up the corrupt in his Government. She did not hold her job for long there after. For the former Speaker of Parliament, the late Jacob Oulanyah, there was nothing to celebrate. He did not believe the President put corruption on top of his agenda. He said of the March,
“It is a public show, but deep down I know we are going right back to practice the same damn corruption that we claim to fight”. He did not only contradict what the IGG said about the President’s commitment to fight corruption, but he also contradicted the President who gave the impression that he was a struggler against corruption. It is not easy to see how that would have amused the President.
In his State of the Nation Address in March 2019, the President had reiterated that corruption is Public Enemy Number One. In the Forward to the Zero Tolerance to Corruption Policy 2019, his State Minister for Ethics and Integrity, which is under the Office of the President, the late Rev Fr. Simon Lokodo, said the policy does not only address the key bottlenecks affecting the Anti-Corruption Agenda, but also sets priorities and key results areas on which to focus investments.
He was also convinced the implementation of the policy would go a long way in improving accountability systems in the country. The policy was indeed an important milestone in the President’s political determination to fight and conquer corruption. Every one was expected to celebrate that.
Besides, since colonial times, cases of corruption were handled by the Police, Directorate of Public Prosecutions and Office of Auditor General. However, in a show of political will to combat corruption, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni, very early in his reign, established the Institution of Inspector General of Government (IGG). Those who have headed the institution have been NRM functionaries, some of whom have ended up being appointed judges.
The current IGG, Bettie Kamya, is a former Minister in the NRM Government, and succeeded a High Court Judge. Unfortunately, locating the Institution in mainstream NRM politics has obscured professionalism therein and undermined its independence, integrity and effectiveness.
The President established what is called State House Anti-Corruption Unit to gather information on the preponderance of corruption, particularly in Government. However, I don’t know to what extent it cooperates with the IGG. Otherwise, the Unit is run by military personnel. Also, to the credit of the President, the Judiciary administratively established, in 2008, an anti-corruption, Division in the High Court of Uganda, under which is now the Anti-Corruption Court.
Despite all the institutionalization of the anti-corruption effort in the country, corruption is not going down. In fact, on 9th December, 2021 the President led the Anti-Corruption march on the streets of Kampala. That was on the Global Anti-Corruption Day, which is 9th December every year.
The IGG had wanted to use the day to launch the Lifestyle Audit, which had successfully been used in Singapore to conquer corruption, to catch the big fish who drain the economy with their stealing of public funds, thereby hurting Ugandans, especially the poor.
The corrupt deny quality social services, quality food and a quality future. However, when it was expected that the President would give undiluted support to the IGG to advance his anti-corruption effort, he chose to exault the corrupt.
He said: “We are lucky our corrupt people are corrupt here, and put their money here. You see a five star hotel from corruption. Now, if you only concentrate on the lifestyle, then they will take the money out and you will have no evidence here”.
Some years back the media published the President’s more or less similar remark that corruption builds the economy.
The President is thus contradicting himself on corruption and giving credence to the view of the late Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Oulanyah’s perception, that, in reality, he does not put corruption on his agenda, and Irene Mulyagonja’s discovery that the corrupt top Government officials use the President’s name to steal public funds; implying that since he does not touch them he probably is aware of some of them.
Indeed, one time a former State Minister in the Ministry of Health, Mike Mukula, who is also a big shot in the NRM, was sent to Luzira to serve for stealing Shs 210m of Gavi funds (GAVI stands for Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation). He claimed he gave Shs. 54m to President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s wife, Janet Kataha who was Minister of Health. The President intervened with Shs. 100m to his legal team, according to The Observer, to gain Mike Mukula’s freedom.
The Minister of Health was not arrested. Mike Mukula was subsequently released from Luzira. Mukula’s case revealed that the occupiers of State House are involved in some of the corruption. Here, according to Mike Mukula, the State Minister gave some of the misappropriated money to the First Lady, and the President raised money to get Mukula out of Luzira. However, as we have seen elsewhere in this article, there is a State House Anti-Corruption Unit. One may ask, “How does it handle cases in which the President and his wife are involved?”.
There is thus No, doubt, Transparency International is right to tell us that Uganda’s performance in the anti-corruption struggle has been declining with the passage of time. During the launch of the Lifestyle Audit on the Global Corruption Day on 9th December 2021, the IGG told us that Uganda loses Shs. 10 trillion every year to corruption (National Integrity Study), while 6 out of 10 Ugandans have experienced bribery.
In his functionality as the Presidency and State House, however, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni has tended to undermine the institutions and laws erected to combat economic and financial corruption. State House in particular has become a clearing house for many ill-fated investments and deals, which have led to enomous loss of public money.
Many examples exist. The blame, however, should primarily go to the designers of the Uganda Constitution 1995, which concentrates all power and authority in the President and put him above the law. This means that even if the investments and deals State House is involved in are more or less of criminal nature, the President cannot face the law. Investments and deals become criminal if the anti-corruption laws are violated.
These include the Constitution itself; Inspectorate of Government Act 2002; Public Finance and Public Accountability Act, 2003;:The Public Procurement and and Disposal of Public Assets Act, 2003; The Access to Information Act, 2005; The Audit Act, 2008; Anti-Corruption Act, 2009; Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2010; The Public Finance Management Act, 2013.
They never existed before President Tibuhaburwa Museveni captured the instruments of power and the State, but in his zeal for foreign investments they have singly or collectively been violated by the President himself via the deals he personally initiated and uses Parliament to endorse. The reader may easily remember some of them.
In summary, the President has demonstrated a lot of political commitment to combat corruption through institutionalization and legal engineering against corruption his Government has seen emerge from Parliament.
However, he has undermined them, especially through his State House maneuverings of the national budget and deals. Therefore, he cannot meaningfully and effectively manage corruption and, ultimately, conquer it. He is intricately intertwined with and central to it by omission or commission.
For God and My Country.
The Writer Is a Ugandan Scientist And Environmentalist.
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