Govt theft is a symptom of what we have become 

We always tell ourselves, perhaps in self-consolation, that we are used to government theft scandals now. But government officials continue to act as though they are committed to proving us wrong if we thought that there is a bottom they can
hit.

Every scandal that appears to be too huge will soon find another to supersede it. So much so that, for anything involving money in government, we are only shocked if there is no theft. Anyone who tries not to steal in this house of long fingers is seen to be stupid.

Even people will backbite you in mockery in your neighbourhood, saying ‘he has almost nothing while his/her officemates are building apartments and buying tracts of land’.

Behind all sentimental outbursts about thieves in government, theft is actually glorified by many here. The only bad thief is the one who doesn’t share with us. But for as long as we benefit from one’s theft in one way or the other, the thief is glorified and their theft is quickly explained away with alternative labels.

We call them smart people. We won’t care where their money comes from, for as long as it is spent on us. When our parents are lifelong thieves, we seek to remove their acts from the bracket of what we call theft. We conveniently tell ourselves that a corrupt person is different from a goat thief – notwithstanding the fact that our corrupt father affects much more people with his theft.

We place his thieving at a lower ladder on the hierarchy of immoralities. Little wonder that a pastor perpetually stealing from his followers through offertory will spend an hour’s homily preaching against adultery. His theft is a negligible sin, if at all it is.

Annoying and alarming as government scandals may be, I doubt that those benefiting from the looting feel any remorse. Under Uganda’s moral schema today, if they do not steal, even their own children will condemn them for being foolish.

Journalists are often at the forefront of exposing corruption, but when the Speaker facilitated some of them with money for their Sacco, I doubt they cared to know the source.

They must have conveniently imagined that it is from her clean sources. When religious leaders see ‘big’ people at their prayer services, they often appeal to them for help. It is at such moments that they remind themselves of the proverb: “never look a gift horse in the mouth”.

The scriptures are covered. What should concern us more then is that the theft we are seeing in government is not only revealing how corrupt government officials are, but also how morally broken the wider society is. The truth is that thieves are everywhere now, each pointing at the other’s theft.

This should not in any way trivialise government theft. However, it should deepen our understanding of the problem and search for remedies.

Civil society is riddled with theft, only that the public is not so interested in what is happening there since it is often not their money being stolen, anyway. You will be shocked by the receipt forgeries, inflated expenditures, kickbacks and fake accountabilities in NGOs.

I was recently told about a women rights NGO that fundraised to assist a lady, only to ask her to go to TV to declare more help than she had actually received from them. People’s miseries are a livelihood source for a cartel of corporate pretenders running from one pompous workshop to another in the name of sufferers. Misery entrepreneurs.

Ours is now a society of everyone setting up a scheme or trap to find someone to steal from under all sorts of guises.

Schools need no more mention in Uganda’s league of disguised thieves. Some have now found convenient reasons to prohibit learners from carrying any eats to school, and set up monopoly supermarkets and canteens in their school premises.

Private schools charge ‘development fees’ to build structures that are properties of their proprietors, not far different from pastors collecting money from their ‘sheep’ to build churches on land in the pastors’ names. There is a thief everywhere, only differing in tactics and mode of theft.

The butchery-based thief uses his weighing scale. You do not make an order for a kilo and look the other way. You will get three quarters; sometimes a kilo, with a quarter of fat. You are lucky if the scale itself is not faulty to your disadvantage. At the fuel (gas) station, you have to sternly look at the pump counter until the last drop. Otherwise, you get ‘air’.

Take your car to the garage and leave it there; you only realise later that you lost other parts as you were fixing some. It has even reached hospitals, where you may now be diagnosed with diseases you do not have so that you do not leave without buying drugs. Very quick to report ‘infections’!

Sometimes they will fail to find anything, and they choke you with antibiotics. Pickpockets and burglars get more punished, only because they are more direct in their theft. Many of us are just sophisticated pickpockets. You catch a thief, take them to police; only for police to steal from both of you!

The thieves in police do not blink while at it. Theirs is disguised as facilitation, bond fees, ‘feeding bosses above’, or helping police to help you.

While we run after the iron sheets thieves, let’s not forget to ask ourselves the crucial question: Why is theft so rampant in our society today? Why has honesty crumbled in Uganda?

Focusing on random though persistent reports of theft might make us lose sight of the bigger questions, which I am afraid this government is too conflicted to ask. Obviously, the IGG is wasting time and resources running after thieves in a dirty house they captured and gave her a position in to pretend to be mopping.

jsssentongo@gmail.com

The author is a teacher of philosophy.