How Uganda has fallen apart

The collapse of governance and the consequences for our country because of an aging president

THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | Uganda is in deep trouble. The center is no longer holding. The country is literally falling apart. And there is no rescue on the horizon. The NRM government lost its moral purpose. There is no longer a collective vision for the country. Instead, we have a cash-and-carry government. Most public officials, elected politicians and civil servants alike, are in it for personal gain. Elites have resigned themselves to complaining on traditional and social media.

President Yoweri Museveni has retained effective personal control over the core elements of the state, most especially the security apparatus. However, as he has aged, he has become increasingly unable to retain effective control over the smoldering edifice of the other elements of the state. Hence, many of things he has built are breaking apart – roads, dams, bridges, schools, hospitals – name it. While the economy has continued to grow and with it, government revenues, the ability of the state to perform many of its core functions is characterized by apathy, laziness, indifference, foot dragging, false and malicious compliance, and fraud.

Kampala, the capital city of Uganda stands as an example of the crisis that our country is entangled in. Its road infrastructure has broken down completely. Even expensive neighborhoods like Kololo, Nakasero and Bugolobi, where an acre of land goes for anything between $1.5m to $4m are in a disastrous state. The roads are filled with potholes and  giant craters. Right in front of the residence of the deputy British High Commission along Price Charles Drive, is a massive lake whenever it rains. Foreign diplomats and Uganda’s richest elites are therefore not spared this crisis.

Here is the paradox: Museveni has presided over a rapidly growing economy by historic and contemporary measures. As a result, private individuals have made good fortunes. Consequently, they have bought fancy cars and built luxurious mansions. But because the state is unable to provide decent roads, even exclusive neighborhoods are a rich man’s slum. Nothing is sacred in our country anymore. Even Lower Kololo Terrace, the road right below Kololo Ceremonial Grounds where we host all important dignitaries, is in a sorry state. Until recently, it had huge potholes and craters, and whenever it rained the road would turn into a lake.

No one is spared this crisis of governance. Museveni’s greatest success had been national trunk roads. But these ones are now falling apart like the roads in Kampala. The road from Mityana to Mubende and from Kyegegwa to Kyenjojo, is gone. It takes five hours to navigate it instead of one hour and 30 minutes. The road from Karuma to Arua is gone too as it the one from Masaka to Mutukula. Government had contractors on all these roads who have since abandoned the sites because they are not being paid. In the first quarter of this financial year, the ministry of finance released one billion shillings to UNRA for road development, not enough to fill a pothole.

As I write this article, government of Uganda has Shs 1.2 trillion worth of completion certificates from road contractors that it has not paid. Of these, Shs 750 billion are interest-bearing certificates the cost of which is Shs 350m per day, Shs 117 billion a year – enough to build a new 50km road. Unable to enforce driving rules, government has built thousands of speed bumps across all roads that it has made driving cumbersome. Meanwhile, contractors on many roads are not properly supervised – if at all. The result is that road accidents have increased alongside fatalities.

Two people can make a difference: his brother Gen Salim Saleh, and his son, the CDF, Gen Muhoozi Keinerugaba. However, Saleh is too philosophical to make immediate and visible interventions to save the situation. Muhoozi is too focused on the military and security that he pays no attention to things like infrastructure, the environment, the capital city etc. He is the person I know, who if he decided to focus on other areas of the state, can make a real difference.

The resulting power vacuum has caused near anarchy. Indeed, outside of the military and security apparatus, public officials, business and other powerful elites, and even ordinary citizens alike, do as they wish.

Everyone can now encroach protected areas like wetlands, swamps, lakes, game parks, forests and forest reserves, etc. for their personal use. The benefits go to the individual or group that takes over a national asset, but the costs are incurred by everyone in the country. Public officials loot public resources without fear of punishment. Ordinary citizens, sensing the vacuum, also take the law into their own hands. Hence, boda boda riders drive through red lights or on the right side of the road. Taxi drivers stop in the middle of the road to pick passengers. And the masses squat on government land and other protected areas knowing no one will evict them.

How did Uganda get to this?

It is difficult to establish causes of such political developments. Many Ugandans would, and I think correctly so, attribute our apparent national crisis to the decision of Museveni personally, and many other political elites, to remove term and age limits on the presidency. But longevity of a president does not automatically make a country enter the kind of governance crisis Uganda is in right now. Some of the most successful countries of the 20^th century such as Singapore and Taiwan had leaders who ruled for four decades yet built powerful institutions and systems.

More than Museveni and his advanced age, Uganda’s governance crisis can be traced to the specific way democracy has evolved in our country. The competition for public office through votes of people who are poor, less educated and culturally diverse has undermined the public spirit in public service. To win elections, politicians need money. To raise it, they either deplete their savings or borrow from lenders or solicit from rich people. The outcome is that our elected officials, like those of the USA, are indebted to funders or lenders whom they must repay. This has progressively forced many public-spirited individuals seeking to serve the good of the country out of politics, leaving it to crooks, seeking private gain to dominate.

It is this context that explains how Museveni’s age contributes to the crisis. If he was young and able to multitask, he could have reigned in many negative forces that have captured his government. Sadly, he is held hostage. More than Museveni’s personal desire to cling to power, it is the desire of powerful interests profiting from his continued leadership that keep him there – because they now can use him better.

****

amwenda@ugindependent.co.ug