By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

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Recently, Norbert Mao, president general of Uganda’s oldest surviving party the Democratic Party, disclosed that the party compiled a National Stolen Assets Register.

Mao’s DP are now waiting for the right time to constitute a National Stolen Assets Tribunal of eminent judges to legally restore stolen assets to the state and other rightful owners – apparently once a new government is in place.

In the meantime, they keep updating the register whenever a school playground is allocated to a corrupt investor, a billion shillings from the Treasury is dubiously invested in a private business or a huge tract of land gets registered in an individual’s name and is then resold to a third or fourth party.

It could even be a vehicle in one of the statutory authorities that are currently being disbanded, somehow getting “owned” by an officer as a severance package.

Compilation of lists when Ugandans feel desperate is not new. During the Independence struggle 60 to 70 years ago, Kampala had a fire-spitting activist called Augustine Kamya who spearheaded a boycott of European and Indian businesses. Kamya’s agents kept their eyes open for any African patronising the racially blacklisted businesses and secretly consuming the forbidden goods.

The names would be passed on to Kamya who then would add the culprits to the list of betrayers. The Luganda word for betraying the boycott was the same as for marital infidelity – kubaliga. At the time, nothing was worse than being put on Kamya’s list for you immediately became a leper among fellow Africans.

Fast forward to the 1980s when the DP’s then president general, Dr Paulo Kawanga Ssemogerere, was leader of opposition in parliament following the controversial 1980 election. A civil war was raging and human rights had automatically been shelved in the conflict areas and in the city, where suspected rebel collaborators were being “disappeared”.

Ssemogerere fought many a fierce battle for human rights in parliament until on the presentation of the national budget by then president Milton Obote who doubled as finance minister, he led a walk-out of all opposition MPs.

He then announced that he had started compiling the Black Book of officials who were violating Ugandans’ rights. You can’t imagine the panic those two little words caused. Ssemogerere was castigated and called all manner of names for compiling a black book.

The man never even mentioned the thing again, but many government officials started changing their arrogant language and also engaged in more reasoning with rather than abusing the opposition. Four decades later, good old Ssemo still hasn’t released the names in his little book.

Then in the early 2000s, human-rights activist Miria Matembe was serving as minister for ethics and integrity. Disturbed by the level of extramarital activity among her honourable colleagues in parliament, she alluded to a list of unofficial couples she had compiled and intended to table.

Panic is an understatement to describe what the said list caused in the august House. Nobody except Matembe knows whether she really had a list, but it certainly made the honourable pleasure-seekers operate more discretely.

Now the next government of Uganda is being offered the National Stolen Assets Register. But what DP’s Mao has not anticipated is the current government doing the smart thing and compiling its own National Stolen Assets Register/Tribunal even before the next election in 2021.

Why wait for a new government to do it? It could even enhance the chances of the current government getting re-elected by citizens and taxpayers pleased that today’s leaders are serious about fighting graft.