Gen. Museveni presides over kleptocracy in Uganda in the same manner that the late Mobutu once operated the Congo. Photo: Facebook.
Gen. Museveni’s “Lifestyle Audit” is a sham
The Office of Inspector General of Government (IGG) plans to adopt a lifestyle audit to catch corrupt public officials in the next five years.
Presumably, when the five years are over, the Fr-audit will end.
IGG Beti Kamya said her vision is to quickly reverse the massive theft in public offices by making citizens aware that the government loses Shs20 trillion per year to corruption and thereby reveal who is responsible for this shortfall. “We want to exhibit the faces of corruption in every classroom, living room place of worship, entertainment and every bedroom so that everybody can recognize it,” she said, citing the case of multi-billion shilling property confiscated by the court from Geoffrey Kazinda and forfeited to government.
Certainly we know that lifestyle audits are accountability tools that can be used to detect and prevent corruption, when the visible lifestyle or standard of living of a leader appears to exceed their known income level.
That is what happens in a well-functioning society, but not Uganda’s.
Firstly, because this whole Fr-audit is mere populism: a means of pandering to the risibilities of those who know better. This Fr-audit is thus directed at internal dissenters in the system in the manner that Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge was rolled out in the form of widely publicized show trials during the late 1930s.
After these “trials”, many prominent Bolsheviks were found guilty of treason and executed or imprisoned. Stalin’s “trials” eliminated real and potential political rivals of his regime and sent millions of alleged “enemies of the people” to death camps in the 1930s.
So we have been to Kamya’s rodeo before and so we are not convinced. Chiefly because Kamya has no clue what constitutes corruption. Illegitimate private gain is just the tip of the iceberg, for corruption is hydra-headed monster with many forms.
Cronyism , nepotism, parochialism, patronage and the misuse of government power for repression of political opponents and general police brutality are some of these forms. To compound matters, all these forms of corruption define the politics of Uganda.
Let us look at Patronage, which refers to favoring supporters, for example with government employment. It was Gen. Museveni who openly said he would use “cadre identification, cadre development and cadre placement” to fill out government positions, which is simply shorthand for patronage.
Another form of corruption is favoring relatives (nepotism) or the personal friends (cronyism). Again, we see another smoking gun in this crime. “I’m not working for other people, I’m working for my grandchildren, for my children,” said Gen. Museveni, which is an open confession of nepotism.
To name just a few of the beneficiaries of his nepotism, we have the President’s wife Janet as Minister of Education, his brother as in-charge of the money-spinning Operation Wealth Creation, his son-in-law Odrek Rwabwogo as a Presidential Advisor, his son Gen. Kainerugaba as Commander Land Forces of the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces and “Madame Deficit” and the First Lady’s cousin Alice Kaboyo as minister in-charge of the Luweero Triangle and Rwenzori Regional Affairs in spite of her past record of corruption.
Finally, there is parochialism which relates to placing vanity projects ahead of the national interest.
Here, Gen. Museveni has excelled, possibly like no other leader in the lamentable catalogue of human dishonesty and corruption.
“I am a freedom fighter, that is what I do. I don’t do it because I am your servant; I’m not your servant. I am just a freedom fighter, I am fighting for myself or my beliefs,” concludes Gen. Museveni, as if to remind Beti Olive Namisango Kamya (BONK) that she has been screwed; just like the rest of us.
The columnist Matogo can be reached via [email protected]
