Forget the rest. This has been Uganda’s biggest war in 36 years

 He said he feared for his life, and that he was likely to meet the same fate as another whistle-blower, Babita Deokaran. Deokaran was shot 12 times in August this year outside her home in Johannesburg shortly after dropping her daughter at school. Someone really wanted her dead.

 Deokaran’s “crime” was that she provided crucial critical information regarding fraud into the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) in South Africa during Covid-19. Last year alone, South Africa spent over $26 billion (Shs92 trillion) - more than twice Uganda’s national budget for 2020/21 - on its pandemic fight. 

 Depending on the source, anything from $3 billion to $13 billion of it was eaten. South Africa is setting new standards for corruption in Africa, so the stakes are very high. And whistle-blowers are an endangered species.

 There is a pointer there to the corruption situation in Uganda. South Africa is one of Africa’s most democratic countries, and you no longer get imprisoned or have to flee into exile no matter how anti-government your politics. But try and stall the gravy train, and you are a dead woman.

 Because of how dramatic and uniquely barbaric the repression of opposition politicians like Kizza Besigye and Bobi Wine (Robert Kyagulanyi) has been, we tend to think that the fight for power in Uganda is the biggest deal. What if it isn’t?
 Uganda is ranked one of the most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency, and last year it performed even worse, placing as the 142nd most corrupt nation in 2020 out of the 179 tracked. That was an increase from 137 in 2019. 

 In 1989, a phenomenon broke on the Ugandan political scene in the person of Basoga Nsadhu, the man from Busiki in Iganga District, when he arrived in the National Resistance Council (NRC). 
 Basoga caused turmoil with endless exposes of corruption, using parliament to unleash waves of documents detailing the rise of graft. He hogged the headlines, and helped sell copy, as we say in the business.

 Basoga, one of the NRM’s most accomplished mobilisers ever, was a backbencher from 1989 to 1994 and caused a lot of mayhem in that period. He kept up a feeble fight after he was appointed Minister of State for Information, but it was clear the cause had lost him. By the time of his death in 2003, his enemies were alleging he had crossed to the dark side and become vice-chair of the Uganda Corrupt Brotherhood.

But the fight continued, with Miria Matembe picking up the mantle, and she kept it up much longer after she was appointed minister. By now the anti-corruption crusaders inside politics and Parliament were more, with Winnie Byanyima becoming the new nuisance inside NRM as the 1990s closed, but unlike Basoga, striking an alliance across the political divide with folks like Mao Norbert Mao in the opposition. It was that alliance that made possible the Parliamentary censure of Jim Muhwezi and Sam Kutesa for alleged abuse of office.

Something remarkable, whose full import we have not reckoned because it was not dramatic, has happened. The anti-corruption forces in the NRM have been sleeker. 

While those who fight the political opposition use crude brute methods, those who wage war against whistle-blowers and anti-corruption crusaders have been sophisticated.  

They sway with gifts and using an array of means slowly squeeze the resistance out of their opponents until they fall by the wayside in exhaustion. 

The political establishment understood that the anti-corruption battle in Uganda was perhaps more subversive.