I read with a sigh of relief the front page of  Sunday Vision (9th March, 2008) story that government of Uganda wants 14 years in jail for corrupt officials in a new law it is proposing. I am however skeptical that the present government will actually implement it given the level of corruption in the very government officials. Today the corrupt are glorified and hailed as smart and hardworking.

But also, assuming for argument’s sake that the anti-corruption law is passed, who would be the very first victims? I hope there would not be selective application of the law since all Ugandans are supposed to be equal before the law.

Unless we separate form from substance, the anti-corruption bill will never see the light of the day. Even if it is passed, it will never be enforced. I have taught political science in a university and the subject I enjoy most is constitutionalism and political stability.I have always told my students that a constitution and constitutionalism are related but the former is useless if it doesn’t lead to the latter. At best it remains a paper document merely for window dressing purposes. I strongly feel that law enforcement has eluded our country Uganda.

My emphasis is on political corruption which by definition is abuse of office by public officials, not because I condone corruption in private offices but because space is limited, and it is public offices that should account to me given that they directly use my taxes. I also make the direct link between what one would call deliberate unemployment and corruption. And I say deliberate because there is no political will to fight unemployment.

Corruption can also mean any form of abuse and any aberration or moral decadence- sectarianism, cronyism, influence-peddling, forgery, perjury, vote-buying, bribery, marginalisation, foul play even in politics including Machiavellianism. Machiavellianism connotes a principle of the end justifies the means. If you use depraved means to attain an end whether or not that end is good, that is simply corruption. I think it should be the purity of means to justify the end.

But corruption should be broadened to cover the entire society because corruption is not exclusive to office bearers. There are many people forging Makerere university transcripts, would anyone say they are not corrupt? What of the unemployed bright Ugandans who do course works for students in order to survive? Unless, the root causes of the cancer are addressed, the minister’s bill won’t go a long way.

What explanation can the government give for the high unemployment rates when people with university degrees are less than 0.5% of the country’s population yet government departments alone employ around 500,000 according to the figures from the Labour Market Information Bulletin from the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development? I have told my students a degree is intrinsic within the person, it is the knowledge attained in the course of study.

If you have course works done for you, you forge documents, or cheat exams you get a certificate which is a mere paper and not a degree. I have never had a full time job ever since I finished Makerere University with very good grades in 2004 purely because of political corruption; because the offices some of us would occupy on merit are often given on know-who and come-from-where basis. It is prudent, therefore to argue that the patronage embraced by the government constitutes high level corruption. And this is the basis of my skepticism about this government fighting corruption.

I know of a family in this country from Kisoro where virtually all children upon completion of their studies are recruited into the police and they become District Police Commanders in a blink of an eye. The problem of corruption in this country is structural. The government can hire me as a consultant if it genuinely wants to fight the monster. The bible says what you sow is what you reap. If fake people are the ones hired, what stops them from perpetuating the system that saw them enter office? If one forged papers or cheated exams what would stop them from stealing public funds?

But also, if one was brilliant but failed to get a job because of corruption like what happened in the recent police recruitment what would stop them from pursuing the end using any possible means? Finally, if one has 100 relatives or friends on the streets who would be employed purely depending on one person, what would stop them from stealing public funds to meet their family or social obligations? The government must do a thorough examination of itself. Otherwise, it will find it very difficult if not impossible to fight corruption. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Corruption simply reproduces and reinforces itself.