Prime
Why can’t we do right?
Author: Moses Khisa. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- The rules of the road, the small yet important acts that are required of anyone driving or riding, can be an inconvenience to the individual, especially one in a rush to get somewhere. But the rules have to be followed to avoid chaos and confusion, to mitigate against tragic accidents that may claim lives.
The sum total behaviour on our roads, starting with Kampala, pretty much captures the overall national mood and mentality. We are increasingly a people who see nothing wrong with doing wrong. I have made this point before, but let me have another go at it.
The rules of the road, the small yet important acts that are required of anyone driving or riding, can be an inconvenience to the individual, especially one in a rush to get somewhere. But the rules have to be followed to avoid chaos and confusion, to mitigate against tragic accidents that may claim lives.
Give way where it is required, stop when the traffic light is red and don’t suddenly leave or join a road particularly at a high way. Stop at the stop sign! Stay in your lane. Don’t create a second lane where it shouldn’t; doing so blocks or interferes with oncoming traffic. Don’t overtake where the road is clearly marked you shouldn’t.
The average Ugandan motorist effortlessly and casually violates all these and other rules as a matter of routine and normal practice. The key culprit is, of course, the minibus taxi driver, who is only bettered by the boda boda (motorcycle) guy. These two have for long led the way in establishing the norm of blatant and unaccountable wrongdoing on the road.
The big SUV folk, especially with government plates – the Judiciary, army and police being the most notorious – has a front-row seat. Even private SUVs now believe it is their ‘right’ not to follow rules.
All these different clusters have created a demonstration effect and a cascade that now makes nearly everyone to follow suit and do as others are doing – don’t follow the rules. If you do, you lose. You get punished by, for example, being stuck in gridlocked traffic while other people rush to their destination. The illusion here, although, is lost on most of us. Truth is, in the end, everyone is worse off under a system where rules are violated and chaos reign.
We must face up to this reality: Kampala has the most disorganised, chaotic and lawless road behaviour of any African city I have been to. The foremost supplier of this state of affairs is the boda boda man, now a symbol of wrong is right and the ‘do-as-you-want’ attitude, with impunity and unaccountability.
The sad and sickening aspect of it all is that we collectively seem not to be bothered or deeply concerned that road lawlessness is gripping us, and in the final analysis, we all are worse off. In some ways, this is a collective action conundrum.
We have a situation that hurts us all – a chaotic road situation – but we can’t come together to end it or push back. But the age-old solution to collective action is having an authoritative body that acts on behalf, and in the interest, of the public. That body is called government. It presides over an apparatus called the state, the subject of the series of writings I explored here over the last few weeks.
What we have then, as seen on our roads, is emblematic of failure to govern and enforce an order that serves a public good. That public good of enforcing law and order, which is the primary remit of a government, is very basic yet critical because a society that doesn’t run on a system of rules that are uniformly respected is doomed.
We are in a situation where the very people who are supposed to police the public, to ensure rules are respected, are instead at the forefront of breaking the law and doing wrong. The police, the military and, worst of all, members of the Judiciary, including judges driven in big SUVs, are among the worst culprits of the bad manners and despicable conduct on the roads.
These are supposed to be at the core of law enforcement, yet ironically, are active participants in the orgies of abusing traffic rules and running roughshod of basic road etiquette, ethos and decency.
Traffic sirens blaze all day in every part of Kampala and on highways often clearing the way for individuals who have no legal right of way. This happens behind tinted glasses of SUVs, another illegality.
These aspects of wrongdoing with impunity gained prominence on the watch, in fact promotion, of Gen Kale Kayihura as head of the police. It is against the law to have tinted vehicle window glass, yet it is something that exploded with police vehicles, military, government ministers and judges!
Now it appears any citizen, or perhaps those with the political connections and chutzpah to break the law with ease, have joined the fray of sitting behind tint to do wrong.
In the main then, looking at the bad manners and wrongdoing on our roads, inevitably we must conclude that we are a society in decline with regards to rule-based and standardised conduct that is governed by the law.
