My wish for the New Year is that we declare corruption
public enemy #1 and we go after it in all its variations with unbridled
enthusiasm.
Don’t hold back your laughter. Let it rip!
Corruption is bad for society, concentrating resources in a
few hands, making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
"So instead of 1,000 inpatients being treated at Mulago, one man buys himself a Toyota Land Cruiser VX or sends his four children to a top international school locally for a year or organises a week long holiday for his five-member family plus nanny to the Maldives or Seychelles...
What this does, is prevents the upward mobility of the lesser
privileged since the ladders of public education, health and working infrastructure
have been kicked out from under them.
It is not a difficult logic to follow.
Even if these corrupt officials were using this money for
productive endeavour and not conspicuous consumption, the net effect may still
be the same.
In fact maybe it’s a good thing that corrupt officials are
eating their money alone and not trying to get into production.
If these corrupt individuals got into production they would
distort the sectors in which they operate to the point that even honest
businessmen would be unable to operate.
In trying to get into productive sectors like agriculture
and manufacturing these corrupt officials are trying to launder their money,
make it legitimate.
So the grubby fingered official goes off into the country side
and starts making peasants offers they cannot refuse for their small land holdings.
He accumulates great chunks of land and decides to rear cattle or plant maize
or dig fish ponds or whatever is the flavour of the month, at the cocktails
they frequent in Kampala.
But as with all poor people who think money solves all
problems and that by throwing money at any problem it will be resolved they
soon find out otherwise.
The “farm” becomes a financial black hole requiring ever
increasing amounts to keep it afloat.
Because these corrupt ladies and
gentlemen have no sense of costing they undercut the genuine businessmen, put
them out of business, causing irreparable damage.
Then either they decide the project is not worth it and jump
onto the next business fad or, more likely than not, they get dropped from their
juicy position and reality hits them: Their prized farm is just a drain on
financial resources. They do away with it all together blaming lack of
government support for agriculture as the reason for their demise.
Similarly for real estate or any other business they lay
their hands on.
For those officials who have been around longer and gone
through the full boom-and-bust cycle they stop pretending and just hoarde money
under their mattresses, in their garages and in foreign accounts.
They accepted they were incapable of showing a return on
investment and stopped trying.
So there really is little to no benefit to the wider society
from these stolen billions.
In a world without corruption or more realistically with
corruption minimised to bare minimum rather than at the endemic levels it is at
now, more people would benefit and maybe, just maybe, we would stop wondering
where all this economic growth they talk about is.
First of all these corrupt officials would transfer their
ingenuity to the private sector where the pay is more commensurate with their
talents. Hopefully they would be sanitised by proper systems and good
governance protocols and turn their brains to creating value and wealth rather
than pilfering it.
We might even collect more taxes, which increased monies
would be directed to better social services and infrastructure. We would have
better educated and healthy children and a more vibrant economy where the cost
of doing business would be far reduced.
That is a utopian logic that would find it hard to exist in
our world.
"Our tolerance of corruption comes from the wrong analysis that all wealth has its basis in crude accumulation by the elite...
So we look the other way because we are keen to build this
wealthy middle class, which will serve as the bedrock of future productivity
and stability. After 50 years of independence not a single public servant has
broken through to be a serious industrialist or capitalist or build a business
empire of any reckoning.
So clearly there is something wrong with that model of
development.
Let us revert to the colonial model. We facilitate the
education of our children, the treatment of our mothers and smooth out the
kinks in our economy for our businessmen. At the bare minimum we will swell the
numbers of the middle class and provide a more viable market for our
businessmen who can then use this as a launch pad for national, regional and
even international ambitions.
It is a bit naïve to believe this shift in thinking is
within the realm of reality, but as they say when you have eliminated all the
possibilities and are left with the most improbable solution then that is the
right one.
Have a Happy New year!
