A few days ago, Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda provoked yet another controversy with one of his trademark unconventional arguments about things many of his countrymen and women believe they have already figured out.

If one listens carefully to urban Ugandans talking about their current government and what kind of government it is, one is bound to hear a range of negative epithets being used to describe it: Undemocratic, corrupt, inefficient, etc.

There is a dominant view about corruption — it has never been as entrenched and widespread as it has become ever since the current leadership came to power three decades ago.

There is, of course, no scientific study to prove the claim, especially given that under previous governments things of this sort were never discussed publicly, meaning that far fewer corruption stories were exchanged or even appeared in the media. Yes, even journalists who bandy them around today were that more careful then.

Just because there is no hard evidence, however, is no reason for arguing that the claim is false. It could well be true. There are simply so many Ugandans with individual stories of encounters with corruption.

The question Mwenda raised, though, was whether corruption impacts negatively on economic growth. His argument was that there is no incontrovertible evidence to prove that it does so.

If anything, he added, there is ample evidence to prove that some of the world’s wealthiest nations experienced rapid economic growth and became prosperous partly as a result of massive corruption from which some of their best-known wealth creators benefited immensely.

There are many Ugandans who believe, rightly so, that corruption is bad, and that it is responsible for so many bad things that happen to them and other Ugandans on a daily basis. And so without much or any reflection at all, many went on the attack, claiming he was “defending” corruption.

There is a danger, though, that in focusing on the ills of corruption and the damage it inflicts, if not on prospects for economic growth, then on ordinary people, we disregard much bigger and more serious problems: State capacity, or the lack thereof, our own reactions to it and, consequently, the role we play in perpetuating it.

In countries where corruption is kept at a minimum, it is not because their public servants or politicians, the two categories that in countries such as Uganda are pointed at by everyone as its key architects, are saintly or public-spirited.

For the most part it is because government bodies and institutions responsible for combating corruption do their job. They do it because they have the capacity, and because they operate in environments where the potential victims of corruption have been socialised to frown on it and to report it to them.

They in turn react by doing what the public expect them to do: Take appropriate measures and be seen to do so.

In places such as Uganda, we the citizens have come to believe that there is very little we can do about corruption. We feel powerless to combat it. There are very good reasons for this.

They are to be found in the way many government institutions and bodies mandated to fight malfeasance operate, how we relate to them, and how therefore, we have come to view them.

There are many examples to illustrate this. I will use only one. Recently, while talking to a young entrepreneur in the car hire business, our conversation wandered into a familiar discussion about education.

He sends his children to a private boarding school. The way the owners of the school treat him and his fellow parents contains several elements of corruption. I will not discuss the exorbitant tuition fees. Private schools, the world over, are known to charge exorbitant fees.

But in addition, he buys everything his children need while they are at school, including toilet paper, printing paper, exercise books, pencils, pens, and even textbooks. The children also have to carry brooms and scrubbing brushes as well as other cleaning materials.

The story does not end there. There is something called the “building fund,” to which he must contribute. Then there are “school trips” every term. They too must be paid for, or else “the children will miss out,” or so he has been made to believe.

And when it is time for the kids to break for holidays, the school decides, unilaterally, to retain them so they can “complete the syllabus.” More fees have to be paid for “holiday study packages.”

It is possible that among those who criticise corruption in government are the owners of private schools of this sort.

It is possible that senior government officials and ministers and their children suffer this kind of abuse, and that none of them has said a thing to the Ministry of Education in complaint.

Perhaps senior ministry officials know but won’t do anything, possibly because “the system” is not equipped to make it possible. Could this affect economic growth in Uganda?

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]