Corruption only feels wrong when you are not the one benefiting from it. For those who take part and profit, it looks perfectly fine. The corrupt live in a different world from the rest of us. While you are stuck in a taxi on Jinja Road hoping the conductor returns your 500 shillings, they drive past in a convoy of three black V8 Land Cruisers with sirens on. Your time costs you nothing. Theirs is paid for by the ministry.
They are shielded from the economy. They do not know the price of fuel or milk. When things get tough, they do not feel it because their fuel cards are paid for by the same taxpayers venting on Twitter. In the top lounges in Kololo they order without checking the menu prices. Looking at prices is for people with thin wallets.
The money does not come from hard work. It comes from mastering procurement. If you submit honest bids with proper documents, you are wasting paper. Contracts are not won on merit. They are decided in late night meetings in hotel bars in Nakasero, or on the golf course where multimillion deals are sealed in a single swing. Before anything is even posted online, the winner is told how much to inflate the budget so everyone gets their cut. A road that should cost 10 billion is written up as 40 billion.
They do not trust banks. The cash is stored in ceilings, under mattresses, and in jerrycans. With so much easy money, they become loan sharks, lending back to the public at 100% interest money that was meant for health centers.
They buy houses in Najjeera and Kira like snacks. Men keep multiple partners with matching new cars like a certain minister you know very well. Women keep young companions to carry shopping bags at Acacia. Their introduction ceremonies are spectacles. Instead of cows and goats, they bring tractors, herds of cattle, and five musicians for a 10 minute set. Their cakes are modeled after parliament or a road they budgeted for but never built.
To clean the money, they fund churches and buy sound systems. On Sunday they get front row seats and a testimony slot, while the person who gave 500 shillings is ignored.
In the village they build 10 bedroom mansions with pools in places where people walk kilometers for water. They visit once a year, raise dust with new cars, and leave. Their children attend international schools where one term costs more than an acre in Mukono. They think money comes from a wall.
With excess cash they open hotels and supermarkets they do not need, selling at a loss to kill real businesses.
But the bill always comes. Years of rich food and alcohol bring diabetes, gout, and kidney failure. Then the raids start. Cars are towed, accounts frozen, partners disappear, and church leaders stop answering. In Luzira, wearing yellow, they realize billions cannot buy air or new organs. The mansion is empty, the children are sent home, and the empire is gone. All that vanity for a place on a prison floor. Kindly note the picture attached below isn't related at all to the story.
โ๐ผ: Deox T