Welcome to 2017! We wish you and your loved ones a happy, healthy and fruitful year.
As we start 2017, we look back on 2016 and take the best from it, while learning from the worst. And one of the success stories from 2016 was the Fika Salama operation, meant to reduce road accidents and end the carnage on the Kampala-Masaka highway.
The operation, conceived and implemented by the police and Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra), was not perfect. In fact some Ugandans complained about discrimination and outright mistreatment by the police.
But by and large, Fika Salama succeeded in disciplining drivers. In fact during the festive season, Uganda’s headline-grabbing accident was not on Masaka road but on Lake Albert, where a local football team and its fans perished in Buliisa district.
So, congratulations to Unra and the police! But we hope the spirit of Fika Salama will live on in this country – rather than being a fleeing reaction to a public outcry over easily avoidable road deaths.
The government in general should look at Fika Salama and remember that we do not need rocket science to fix many of the problems affecting this country.
Fika Salama reminds us of the sociological foundations of community life: discipline and dutifulness are rarely endemic or automatic in any community. Rather, they come from a combination of good individual dispositions and fear of sanctions.
The state and society in general regulate behavior by raising the cost of deviance. If you drink and drive and no one cares – or you bribe the police officer with Shs 5,000 – you will continue breaking the law until you perish or kill people in an accident.
But if you have to pay a heavy fine, go to jail or lose your driving rights for half a year, you will think twice before misbehaving.
From corruption to public service lethargy, to ministers and senior officials sleeping on duty, the government can help this country by ensuring that institutions work and statutory sanctions are applied without fear or favour.
As Fika Salama shows, it only takes institutions with courage, and leaders with spines.