WHEN PUBLIC SERVICE BECOMES A LIFETIME CLAIM ON THE TAXPAYER

Former Members of Parliament have apparently discovered that life after Parliament can be a rude awakening.

The phone stops ringing as often. At public functions, nobody is scrambling to find them a front-row seat. They may even have to queue like “mere mortals”, the people whose laws they once passed.

This, according to reports, has become a national emergency.

The Association of Parliamentary Alumni of Uganda is asking for formal identification cards, official recognition and monthly allowances of between sh10m and sh15m. Former MPs argue that they are sometimes disrespected in public and should enjoy benefits comparable to those provided to former presidents, Speakers and judges.

The association says the proposed arrangement would be contributory. It is not asking for houses, vehicles or domestic workers.

How restrained.

To be fair, there may be a legitimate discussion about retirement arrangements for MPs who served before the present parliamentary pension scheme was established. If some legislators served for years under a system that made no provision for their old age, there is room to examine the matter.

"But sh10m to sh15m a month is not a retirement discussion.

It is an entitlement discussion...

Assuming only 500 former MPs qualified, the scheme would cost between sh60b and sh90b every year. If 800 former legislators qualified, the annual bill would rise to between sh96b and sh144b.

That is before administration, medical benefits and the inevitable demand to increase the allowance whenever inflation bites or serving MPs review their own pay.

And we know how these things work. A scheme begins as “contributory,” develops a funding gap and eventually turns up at the Treasury asking for a bailout. What starts as recognition becomes a permanent charge on taxpayers who were never invited to the meeting at which the benefit was designed.

The average Ugandan approaching retirement is told to rely on savings, children, a small garden, a SACCO or whatever remains of the family business. He is reminded that government cannot provide pensions for everybody.

The former MP, however, wants sh15m every month, an identity card and official recognition to protect him from the indignity of being treated like an ordinary citizen.

You cannot make this stuff up.

Ugandans are already carrying a heavy public wage bill, rising debt-service costs, domestic arrears and endless demands from schools, hospitals, roads and local governments. Every department says it is underfunded. Every district has an unfinished health centre. Every ministry has unpaid suppliers.

Into this situation walks the former MP, asking the taxpayer to maintain the lifestyle and status that came with an elective office that has expired.

This column warned in 2019 that Uganda was headed down a slippery slope. The danger begins when leadership stops being understood as temporary public service and starts being treated as membership of a permanent privileged class.

Once elected or appointed to high office, the official begins to believe that the public owes him not only a salary while he serves, but security, medical care, transport, housing and allowances long after he has left.

Public office becomes less of a duty and more of an investment product.

You put in five years and expect a lifetime annuity.

"This is how extractive institutions are built. They do not emerge overnight. They grow allowance by allowance, privilege by privilege and exemption by exemption...

Drawing on the lessons of Why Nations Fail, inclusive institutions distribute opportunity widely and encourage citizens to work, invest and create. Extractive institutions organise the state around transferring resources to those with access to political power.

The elite redesign government around themselves. They receive subsidised vehicles, generous medical insurance, travel allowances, sitting allowances, fuel allowances, retirement packages and special access to public facilities.

The ordinary citizen is given a speech about hard work.

This is why the proposal has attracted so much anger online. Many Ugandans have asked why former MPs cannot live off their savings, investments or businesses. Others suggest that they join the Parish Development Model, Emyooga or the other wealth-creation programmes Parliament has approved for ordinary people.

That sarcasm is not entirely misplaced.

MPs are the best-paid public officials in the country. Their positions provide access to networks, information, influence and business opportunities unavailable to most citizens.

"If, after five or ten years in that privileged position, a former MP cannot secure his financial future, what does that say about the financial advice Parliament has been giving the rest of us?

Perhaps former MPs need an Unco Money seminar.

The case for special recognition is equally shaky.

Respect cannot be legislated. An identity card may get a former MP through a security checkpoint, but it cannot force the public to admire him. Respect is earned by what one did with the opportunity to serve.

Some MPs will be remembered for defending the public interest and speaking when silence would have been safer. Others will be remembered for sleeping through debates, rubber-stamping waste and appearing in their constituencies shortly before elections.

The public is entitled to distinguish between the two.

Former MPs argue that their experience remains valuable. That may be true. They can advise political parties, mentor younger leaders, teach, write, join corporate boards, work in civil society or conduct civic education.

If their knowledge is useful, society will find a place for it. A former title is not proof of continuing usefulness...

There is also a dangerous assumption that retirement must preserve the lifestyle of office. It does not. Retirement requires adjustment. Income falls. Consumption must follow. The suit may remain, but the constituency allowance goes.

A sensible solution would be a properly funded contributory pension scheme for serving MPs. Members should set aside a meaningful portion of their generous earnings while in office. Those who served before the current pension arrangements may receive modest, targeted support, particularly for healthcare and genuine hardship.

But Uganda should resist another open-ended welfare scheme for the political class.

The country does not suffer from a shortage of former leaders. It suffers from poor public services, low household incomes and insufficient investment in the things that would make ordinary citizens more productive.

Public service should be honoured.

But it should not become a lifetime invoice sent to the public.

SOUTH AFRICA’S XENOPHOBIA IS THE BILL FOR A BROKEN PROMISE

South Africa’s latest xenophobia—they call it Afrophobia now, flare-up appears, at first glance, to be about foreigners.

It is not.

Foreigners are simply the easiest target. They run the spaza shop. They sell on the pavement. They compete in the informal economy. They are visible in communities where unemployment, poverty and frustration have become daily realities.

But the anger is not really about them. It is about a promise made in 1994 that remains largely unfulfilled.

Political freedom arrived. Economic freedom did not.

"When apartheid ended, South Africa faced a historic challenge: how to dismantle centuries of economic exclusion that doomed the black majority to serfdom and give them a genuine chance at climbing the social ladder...

Apartheid had not only denied people the vote. It had denied them land, quality education, capital, networks, decent housing and the ability to accumulate wealth across generations.

The new democratic state therefore needed urgency.

It needed to build schools that worked and boost job creation by expanding infrastructure, support entrepreneurs and ensure that millions who had been deliberately excluded could participate meaningfully in the economy.

Because political freedom without economic progress was always going to create disappointment.

Black Economic Empowerment was part of that response. It was necessary. A country that had excluded black people from ownership and leadership could not simply pretend the past did not exist.

But BEE was never going to solve everything.

A few people entering boardrooms could not compensate for millions of children receiving poor education. A handful of black billionaires could not transform communities where unemployment remained high, electricity unreliable and small businesses struggled to survive.

The problem was not that some black South Africans became wealthy. Every functioning economy creates winners. The problem was that too many people saw no realistic path to becoming one of them.

That is where resentment grows. Inequality becomes dangerous when people believe the ladder has been removed...

And South Africa is not merely unequal. It is almost in a category of its own.

The World Bank has ranked it as the most unequal country in the world, while the World Inequality Database shows that the richest 10 percent take roughly two-thirds of national income, leaving the bottom half with only a tiny share. In Sweden, by contrast, the bottom half takes about a quarter of national income.

That comparison matters.

It shows that South Africa’s problem is not just poverty. It is the architecture of opportunity. In a more normal society, inequality can be softened by the belief that the system is open, schools work, capital is accessible and effort can still move a family from the bottom to the middle. In South Africa, too many people do not see that path.

The legacy of apartheid did not end with apartheid.

It compounded.

It compounded through land ownership. It compounded through education. It compounded through access to capital. It compounded through where people lived, which schools they attended, what networks they could enter and what assets their parents could pass on.

That is why South Africa’s Gini coefficient remains among the highest ever recorded for a major economy. This is not accidental inequality. It is inherited inequality, reinforced over time.

A poor person can accept that someone else has a bigger house or a better car if they believe their own child has a fair chance of achieving the same. But when opportunity appears reserved for those with political connections, wealth begins to look less like success and more like privilege.

This is the uncomfortable reality of post-apartheid South Africa.

The country moved from a system where race determined economic opportunity to one where political access often became a powerful advantage. The rise of a connected black elite was an important correction to apartheid exclusion, but it also created a new frustration among ordinary citizens who feel they were left behind....

Many fought for liberation together. Yet decades later, some live in first-world luxury while others continue to  grovel under sub-human conditions.

That gap is politically explosive.

The statistics explain the anger.

South Africa’s unemployment rate remains among the highest in the world, with young people carrying the heaviest burden. Millions of young South Africans have grown up after apartheid, hearing that freedom had arrived, only to discover that economic opportunity remains painfully limited.

They see politicians and businesspeople with access and influence moving ahead while they struggle to find work.

Then someone tells them the problem is the foreigner.

And the match is lit.

"This is why xenophobia keeps returning. It is not because migrants suddenly become the cause of South Africa’s problems. It is because they become a convenient explanation for problems that are much deeper...

The foreign shopkeeper becomes a symbol of economic frustration.

The reality is more complicated. Migrants are a small share of South Africa’s population, and there is little evidence that they are responsible for unemployment, crime or failing public services. Many migrants are simply doing what South Africa has struggled to encourage enough of its own citizens to do: start small businesses, take risks and compete in difficult conditions.

The tragedy is that their success often becomes a source of anger rather than a lesson.

A society with millions of unemployed young people cannot survive on blame. It needs opportunity.

When leaders fail to provide answers, scapegoats become attractive.

This is where politics enters.

The African National Congress (ANC), once the unquestioned symbol of liberation, has lost much of its dominance. Its loss of a parliamentary majority in the 2024 election reflected growing public frustration with unemployment, corruption and poor service delivery.

A weakened liberation movement faces a difficult temptation: to explain failure or to distract from it.

"foreigner becomes useful because he shifts attention away from the broken municipality, the failed school, the corrupt tender and the political insider who became wealthy without creating broad prosperity...

But South Africa cannot build a future by attacking people who are also trying to survive.

The real challenge remains the same one that existed in 1994: turning political freedom into economic mobility.

And like every unpaid bill, the longer it is ignored, the more painful the final payment becomes.

UGANDA'S HARD RESET: THE POLITICS WE WANTED, BUT MAY NOT LIKE

Recent events in Uganda should give every Ugandan pause for thought.

Veteran opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye has now spent more than a year in custody on treason charges. The government has indefinitely suspended more than a dozen NGOs accused of pursuing a regime-change agenda. Senior politicians including Erias Lukwago, Muwanga Kivumbi and Miria Matembe have been arrested and later arraigned on charges ranging from computer misuse to misprision of treason. Meanwhile, opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, remains in self-imposed exile.

Taken individually, each case has its own legal and political context. Taken together, however, they suggest Uganda is entering a different political era.

Many analysts see these developments as part of General Muhoozi Kainerugaba's efforts to consolidate authority ahead of an eventual succession from President Yoweri Museveni. Whether or not that proves correct, the direction of travel is becoming difficult to ignore. Uganda appears to be moving away from the relatively laissez-faire politics that has characterised much of the last three decades towards a far more disciplined—and less permissive—political order.

Museveni's Contradiction

Ironically, that shift may be the inevitable consequence of President Museveni's greatest political achievement.

For nearly four decades, Museveni has successfully managed a chaotic political elite. Rather than eliminate competing centres of power, he balanced them. Patronage, accommodation and political flexibility became instruments of survival.

It worked.

Uganda has enjoyed political continuity unmatched in its post-independence history. The economy has expanded several-fold. Exports have grown from less than US$1 billion in the mid-1990s to over US$13 billion today. Electricity generation, roads, telecommunications and financial inclusion have all improved dramatically.

But flexibility came at a cost.

A system held together by personalities rather than institutions inevitably breeds patronage. Patronage breeds impunity. Impunity breeds corruption.

Many of Uganda's frustrations—from delayed infrastructure and procurement scandals to ballooning domestic arrears—reflect a political order where maintaining coalitions often mattered more than enforcing discipline.

Museveni mastered managing disorder. His successor may conclude that governing Uganda now requires creating order.

The Political Elite's Biggest Mistake

It would be a mistake to see the current moment simply as an assault on the opposition.

The bigger story is that Uganda's entire political elite has reached the limits of its usefulness.

Across both government and opposition, politics has increasingly become personality-driven rather than programme-driven. Politicians have become experts at attracting headlines but remarkably poor at building durable institutions capable of mobilising citizens around coherent agendas.

The opposition, in particular, has fallen victim to a dangerous illusion.

It has mistaken popularity for power.

Large crowds, social media engagement and favourable public sentiment create the impression of overwhelming support. But political power is built much like wealth—it compounds slowly through years of disciplined investment.

Successful political movements recruit village by village. They organise polling agents. They raise money continuously. They train leaders, build local structures and remain active between elections. Above all, they require enormous sacrifice—of time, comfort, careers and resources.

Too much of Uganda's political class has assumed that public frustration would somehow translate into political change without making those long-term investments.

The consequence has been predictable.

Instead of building organisations capable of compelling government to respond to national priorities—or ultimately convincing it to step aside—they have relied on momentum, emotion and hope. Hope is not a political strategy any more than wishing is an investment strategy.

Meanwhile, those within the ruling establishment have devoted increasing energy to succession politics and patronage instead of confronting Uganda's structural challenges.

The conversation should be about improving schools, raising agricultural productivity, eliminating domestic arrears, industrialising exports and preparing Uganda for a post-oil economy. Instead, politics has become consumed by personalities, arrests and intrigue.

A fragmented political elite that cannot marshal disciplined constituencies around ideas is far easier to control than one rooted in strong institutions.

We Want Rwanda's Results Without Rwanda's Discipline

Ugandans frequently admire Rwanda's clean cities, efficient public institutions and ability to implement policy.

What we rarely acknowledge is that discipline did not emerge accidentally.

Whether one agrees with Rwanda's methods or not, its achievements rest upon an uncompromising insistence that rules matter.

Yet many Ugandans want the outcomes without paying the price.

We condemn corruption but resist enforcement. We demand efficient institutions while opposing tighter regulation. We admire Singapore and Rwanda but forget that order always requires discipline.

There are no free lunches in economics.

There are none in governance either.

The Foreign Guardrails Are Fading

There is another reason this moment feels different.

For years Uganda's political freedoms existed partly because foreign donors possessed considerable leverage. Aid dependence gave Western governments influence whenever governance concerns arose.

That leverage is weakening.

Domestic revenues have grown substantially. Oil revenues are approaching. Alternative geopolitical partners have reduced Kampala's dependence on traditional donors.

The uncomfortable truth is that some of the freedoms we assumed were permanently guaranteed rested less on strong domestic institutions than on external pressure. As those pressures diminish, governments inevitably become more willing to define political boundaries on their own terms.

The Hard Reset

Uganda is approaching a hard reset.

Many citizens have long demanded a more effective state—one that implements projects on time, punishes corruption and delivers better services. Achieving those goals will almost certainly require a more disciplined political system than the one Museveni spent four decades managing.

The risk is that discipline imposed from above can easily become coercion if it is not restrained by strong institutions and the rule of law.

The opportunity is that Uganda finally addresses the disorder that has allowed corruption, inefficiency and weak accountability to flourish.

Whether this transition ultimately strengthens or weakens the country will depend not simply on who holds power, but on whether order is used to build institutions instead of merely consolidating authority.

One thing, however, seems increasingly clear.

The Uganda of the next decade is unlikely to resemble the Uganda of the last four.

A hard reset is coming.

Many of us have spent years demanding a more disciplined state. We may soon discover that history has answered that demand.

The only question is whether we will like the answer.

 

UGANDA NEEDS TO STOP PRETENDING ITS DEVELOPING

When Kenyan President William Ruto observed recently that Kenya’s paved road network exceeds the combined total of its regional neighbours. That stung.

Not because Uganda has no roads. We do.

But because the remark exposed an uncomfortable truth. For all the money we have poured into infrastructure over the last two decades, we are still playing catch-up.

"Uganda’s paved road network, at just over 6,100km, is not small because we lack ambition. It is small because too many good plans are suffocated by delayed implementation, procurement games, bureaucratic inertia and land acquisition disputes. In the public eye, all euphemisms for corruption...

In infrastructure, lost time is lost wealth.

Which is why the recent arraignment of Works ministry officials, as part of the probe into the delayed completion of the Busega–Mpigi Expressway, should concern us beyond whether the accused are guilty or innocent.

That is for the courts.

The larger issue is economic.

How many development dreams have we postponed, inflated or quietly killed because we cannot implement projects on time and on budget?

The Busega–Mpigi Expressway was not a bad idea. In fact, it is exactly the kind of project Uganda needs. It was conceived as a strategic road link out of Kampala towards Masaka, western Uganda, Rwanda, DR Congo and Tanzania. It was meant to decongest the Kampala–Masaka corridor, one of the most important trade and passenger routes in the country.

Depending on the section being discussed, the project has been described as a 23.7km to 27.3km four-lane expressway from Busega to Mpigi, with interchanges, bridges, drainage works, service lanes, tolling facilities and links into the wider road network.

Construction started in 2020. The promise was simple enough: cut travel time between Busega and Mpigi from as much as two hours to under 45 minutes.

That is not a small saving.

Multiply that by thousands of vehicles, traders, workers, buses, trucks and farm produce movements over a year and you begin to see why infrastructure matters.

"This is a point Shillings & Cents has made before. The heavy spending on roads, rail and energy is not the problem. In fact, it is the right thing to do. No country has transformed itself by balancing neat little budgets while its people sit in traffic, its farmers cannot reach markets, and its factories cannot get reliable power.

Infrastructure is not consumption. It is economic oxygen....

Roads reduce the cost of moving goods. Rail lowers freight costs. Power allows industry to run. Urban infrastructure saves working people from spending their lives in traffic jams. A tarmac road is not just a strip of bitumen. It is a market access tool.

The farmer in Masaka who gets pineapples to Kampala before they rot, the exporter who can predict delivery times, the manufacturer who can plan logistics, the bus operator who can do more trips in a day — these are the real beneficiaries of infrastructure.

So let us be clear. Uganda is right to bet big on infrastructure.

The problem is that big bets require big discipline.

The Busega–Mpigi Expressway has now become a case study in how good intentions are subverted. The cost has reportedly risen from the original hundreds of billions of shillings to more than a trillion shillings, while completion dates have kept shifting.

A project that began in 2020 and should by now be unlocking one of Uganda’s busiest corridors has instead become another reminder that we are very good at launching projects and much less good at finishing them.

This is not merely an administrative inconvenience.

It is an economic loss.

As Africans, we often behave as if time is elastic. A year lost here. Another year lost there. A project pushed from 2023 to 2026, then to 2027, maybe even beyond. We shrug and move on.

But time works whether we value it or not.

Interest accumulates. Costs rise. Contractors submit variation claims. Land values change. Equipment sits idle. Investors move on. Children grow older.

The lost savings are not theoretical. They are the money a trader never saves on transport. They are the expansion an entrepreneur postpones. They are the taxes government never collects because growth that should have happened did not happen.

And because taxes are not collected, one child — or thousands of children — does not get the classroom, textbook, desk or teacher that should have been provided as their right as Ugandans.

This is where the real scandal lies.

"A delayed road is not just a delayed road. It is delayed growth. Delayed taxes. Delayed services. Delayed dignity...

Infrastructure generates its return only when it is completed and put to work. A road earns its keep when vehicles move faster on it. A dam earns its keep when power reaches homes and factories. A railway earns its keep when cargo shifts from expensive road haulage to cheaper rail.

Until then, the country is carrying debt, paying interest and waiting for benefits that remain theoretical. For example we started repaying the Karuma dam debt long before it had produced a watt of electricity.

This is why project delays are so dangerous. They attack the economics of infrastructure from both sides. First, they raise the cost. Second, they postpone the benefit.

If a road is supposed to save transporters money for 20 years but is delivered seven years late, the country has lost seven years of savings. If the cost doubles along the way, the return on investment falls further. If corruption, poor supervision or needless redesigns are involved, then the public is robbed twice — once through inflated costs and again through delayed development.

The Busega–Mpigi case also points to a deeper institutional weakness.

We need fewer launch ceremonies and more project dashboards.

There must be penalties for contractors, consultants and officials who cause avoidable delays. Independent technical audits should precede major scope changes. Land acquisition should be substantially resolved before works begin.

Uganda cannot afford to abandon infrastructure spending. That would be foolish.

We are still far behind what our ambitions require. But infrastructure without execution discipline is a very expensive way of pretending to develop.