First thing Uganda must embark on when proper leaders turn up

The day will most certainly come when all that we have seen and known for nearly four decades will fade and fizzle into the dustbins of history. And we shall look around, shake our heads in disbelief and wonder whether all this was just a bad dream; a nightmare and we have woken up from a long, long slumber. But the rubble, the mess all around us will remind us that this was no bad dream; it was an actuality that we lived through and miraculously survived. And that it is time to pick up the pieces; like the Israelites did after decades in Babylonian captivity – rebuilding Jerusalem, and putting up again two enduring hallmarks, the city wall and the Temple. 

The day will come, when our captivity will end and proper leaders will enter State House; people who have no agenda but the betterment of Uganda. We are talking about people whose every waking thought will be how to make this country work for everyone; and how to ensure that every citizen feels that they own this nation and those who work are gainfully employed. 

A Uganda where crime will be abhorred, impunity will be punished and merit will be rewarded. A Uganda where those who are hardworking will reap heavily and where people do not have to abdicate their dignity and self-esteem, to lick boots and bottoms of those in high places in order for them to ascend politically and economically. And when we have those leaders, one very critical thing at the top of their minds will be polishing up and implementing the Sesema Agenda: taking back whatever property of the nation was looted; taken in broad daylight by those who wield the instruments of coercion and by those close to the centre of power. 

It will be time to cause each culprit to vomit all that they have eaten. The State has accurate records of its properties and just because a swarm of locusts, wearing the mantle of ‘new government’, swooped and munched on just about everything that had “state” or “public” written on it, doesn’t make their plunder legitimate. Neither is their looting irreversible. All it takes is a new political order with right-minded people, whose personal agenda is not to stay in power forever, but to build a strong, united and prosperous Uganda that endures forever and where leaders come, serve briefly and leave.

It’s coming to four decades of Ugandans watching in horror as the caterpillar and the cankerworm gobble up everything that belongs to the State. State ranches and farms, government houses and lands, government enterprises, name it. Law and justice do not always mean the same thing; neither does legal always mean legitimate. That is why legislation that serves the interests of a small predatory elite, acting in nothing less than enlightened self-interest can bring an entire nation to its knees, because, by ripping off the State steadily and systematically, there comes a time when all wealth and power lie in a few hands and nearly everyone else is a hostage or slave in their own country.

We shall need new legislation that requires all property acquired illegitimately to be given up; to be yielded to the State. Sesema! Tapika! Vomit! And in that day, those who illegitimately acquired the properties will be paraded in court to answer for theft of public property. In that day, there will be nationalisation of all properties erected on public land and all businesses whose funds can be traced back to the public purse.

The patriotic Ugandan must each take a vow to themselves; that when the locust, the caterpillar and the cankerworm are gone, we shall pick up ourselves from whence we’ve fallen and begin the rebuilding process.

Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda    

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