By Timothy Kalyegira
Few things frustrate Ugandans more than corruption. An outcry across the country has been heard over the last 35 years, with little action taken by the government. Several analysts such as Charles Onyango-Obbo and Andrew Mwenda have consistently argued over the past 20 years that corruption is not how the NRM government fails; corruption is the way it runs. In a Daily Monitor in 2004, Onyango-Obbo explained that if President Yoweri Museveni were to ever get serious about clamping down on corruption, this would finally be the time that a military coup is staged against his government.
Museveni himself in a crudely pragmatic way has argued over the same, three past decades that at least today, the corrupt invest their ill-gotten money in Uganda, a tacit admission that corruption is beyond his ability to fight. A few years ago when the Inspector-General of Government, Beti Kamya, announced plans to investigate the source of wealth of military officers and other public servants, President Museveni intervened and told Kamya to “go slow” lest she scared away investors.
Corruption, then, is the glue that holds together NRM Uganda, sustaining the economy and creating jobs and earning the government part of its tax revenue. Over the last three months, however, there have been signs of an increasing focus on the need to crack down on corruption in Uganda. First, the United Kingdom government issued travel bans and asset freezes in late April on the Speaker of Parliament Anita Among and former Karamoja ministers; Mary Goretti Kitutu and Agnes Nandutu.
This, London said, was over the theft of thousands of iron sheets from a government housing project for vulnerable and displaced communities in Karamoja in northeast Uganda. “The UK is sending a clear message to those who think benefiting at the expense of others is acceptable. Corruption has consequences and you will be held responsible,” Britain’s deputy Foreign Secretary, Andrew Mitchell said in a statement on 30th April.
A month later on 30th May, the United States followed suit. In a statement, the Department of State, America’s foreign ministry, said: “Speaker of Parliament Anita Among is designated due to involvement in significant corruption tied to her leadership of Uganda’s Parliament. Former Minister of Karamoja Affairs; Mary Goretti Kitutu, former Minister of State for Karamoja Affairs Agnes Nandutu, and Minister of State for Finance, Amos Lugolobi are being designated due to their involvement in significant corruption related to conduct that misused public resources and diverted materials from Uganda’s neediest communities. All four officials abused their public positions for their personal benefit at the expense of Ugandans.”
This seemed like a new development. Just as President Museveni is largely ambiguous about corruption, Western governments have also been ambivalent about corruption, beyond routine, perfunctory criticism of the vice in Ugandan public life. Does this herald a new chapter in which the Western donor nations finally treat corruption as a plague that they are genuinely interested in helping Uganda fight? Alas, not so.
On 4th December 2023, Secretary Blinken had issued the following statement in the wake of Uganda’s parliament passing the anti-homosexuality law: “Today, I am announcing the expansion of the visa restriction policy to include current or former Ugandan officials or others who are believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic process in Uganda or for policies or actions aimed at repressing members of marginalized or vulnerable populations.
These groups include, but are not limited to, environmental activists, human rights defenders, journalists, LGBTQI+ persons, and civil society organizers. The immediate family members of such persons may also be subject to these restrictions.” Mindful to not appear to show interest in Uganda only when anything anti-homosexuality becomes policy, the U.S. in that December 4 statement included a broad range of Ugandans under state pressure and persecution even though it was obvious which group Washington was really most concerned about.
Indeed, on 27th June 2024 in Washington DC, the U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken delivered the following remarks at a Pride Month meeting on Convening U.S. Foreign Policy: “LGBTQI+ rights are human rights. And our government has a responsibility to defend them, to promote them – here and everywhere. But it’s in our national security interest to stand up for LGBTQI+ persons around the world.
Last year – you all know this – Uganda enacted a law further criminalizing consensual same-sex conduct with penalties that included imprisonment, including life imprisonment. People convicted of so-called “aggravated homosexuality” face the death penalty.” At last, the truth was made plain about the real reasons behind the sanctions and travel bans on Speaker Among and the two ministers. The West will condemn political misrule, human rights abuses, corruption, and election rigging in Uganda, but these are seen largely as domestic issues. The only issue over
