The Palace Is Not Safe If The Cottage Is Not Happy.

As I write this week’s column, school term started four days ago but most children in state owned and run schools have not been doing any studying because the teachers are on strike. The detailed facts, factors and actions behind the ongoing strike are beyond the remit of this column but suffice to say that it is in reaction to Government’s failure to honour a promise to raise teachers’ salaries by 20% in this financial year. Not being privy to the earlier negotiations between Government and UNATU, the teachers’ union, we have no idea about how the figure of 20% was arrived at or why the respective parties agreed upon it being paid in this financial year. However it is safe to assume that both Government and UNATU were represented by well informed, capable and adult representatives who understood the gravity and financial implications of the matter that they were discussing. So if a figure of increment and the date of commencement were mutually agreed upon, why are we at this juncture, with teachers on strike, the children idle and the Government belligerent? 

It is not unusual for people, corporations, or even Governments to fail to honour commitments to pay. If it was unheard of then lawyers and courts all over the world would be idle. So we need not dwell too much on the fact that Government has failed to keep its word to the teachers. What we need to look at closely is the fact that Government is unapologetic about its failure to meet its own solemn commitment.  We also need to ask ourselves why Government has failed to pay and is now talking about sacking the striking teachers, or sweeping them out of the way, as one minister was quoted as having said.

Education is a vital public service that is managed and provided by the State. Education policy and the spending priorities are set by the Ministry of Education and some of the bigger decisions are made at Cabinet and higher levels. However there is a key ingredient missing in the decision making matrix, which, I suggest, militates against the permanent resolution of the ongoing problems in this sector. None of the key decision makers in Government have their own children or grandchildren in state schools. This creates a fundamental disconnection between the decision makers and those teachers, parents and students whose very basic lives are affected by the decisions made. The key decision makers might as well be making decisions about schools in Liberia, because the decisions that they make do not affect them or their loved ones in a real tangible sense.

I have said it here before that if Uganda was a restaurant then it would have the dubious distinction of being a restaurant in which the chefs and waiters do not eat the food that they cook for and serve their guests.   In such a restaurant the guests must not be surprised by the poor quality of the food that is presented to them. The cooks and waiters show, in the loudest possible way, by their actions, that the quality is poor by not eating the food. However the restaurant analogy becomes strained here because guests can choose to take their custom elsewhere. Ugandans are captive in this system and must either pay through the nose for an alternative education for their kids or simply grin and bear it hoping that in the random hit and miss of Government decisions on education, there will be more hits than misses and that their children will get something useful out of it. But hope, as they say, is not a strategy.

The opting out of the elite from public services that they manage for and on behalf of the people of Uganda is not limited to education. No self-respecting official would be seen dead (pun intended) in a Government health facility yet they expect the people to suffer those same services or die in the hands of traditional healers. The problem of poor or irregular power supply does not affect them because they have dedicated lines that are not subject to load shedding or they have powerful standby generators which run at the taxpayers’ expense. In other words, the elite have opted out of or devised means of working around every key public service that they manage for and on behalf of the people. To add insult to injury, these opt-outs and work-arounds are funded by you and me the victims of the poor services.

In the result, Uganda is increasingly two countries sharing a single geographical location. One Uganda is a small self-entitled and deluded bubble that floats over the other Uganda, which lives in the daily reality of destitution and discontent. Bubbles are always very pretty when inflated and floating gently through the air. But they always burst when they come into contact with solid, sharp reality. Benjamin Disraeli put it in more stark terms, “The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.”

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