Paradoxicals
The amount of time we spend protecting our integrity and reputation in a paradoxical society, is testimony of a crisis.
Liberalism has taught us well, to detach from every social and adhere to a pursuit of materialism. To dismiss the public for private, and the social for individual. Incidentally, we attempt to adhere to traditions while denying that these changes have shifted power bases away from traditional power brokers.
As a people, we build our public profiles over years and hope to cash in on it as social capital. Integrity and reputation are about consistency, but also about how the public value it. These values , as currency for procuring social capital, are validated through socialization.
Social capital as a concept has been in circulation since 1890 and used in social sciences until about 2000 when American political scientist, Robert D Putnam popularized it in his nonfiction book: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and revival of America and has since been used widely in health studies to explicate social inclusion as a prerequisite for health. The book highlights the perils of neoliberalism in perpetrating social isolation and exclusion.
Basically, social capital are the networks and relationships among individuals who work and live together. These relationship are the drivers of social cooperation needed for proper function and efficient functioning of society.
Aspects of social capital are everyday values such as trust, reciprocity, information sharing and cooperation that are associated with cohesive social networks and societal harmony.
A strong social capital highlights strong social inclusion factors – that people trust each other and make deliberate effort to do good or less harm to each other. Information they generate is intended for the good of society, inclusively. We anticipate that low levels of distrust, for instance, would make a community confident and trusting with each other to accept reciprocation. A cooperative society is a progressive and often healthy society.
The reverse is true – Putnam demonstrates scenes of social isolation among seniors in respect of low levels of social capital. In addition, distrust for one another and apathy towards social institutions engenders apathy, leading to social isolation. Distrust is a potent chalice for killing cooperation in society.
Cooperation is diminished further when information is subverted, concealed, distorted or apportioned to manipulate society for the good of a few.
Information is the string that coordinates society, communities, families and relationships at every level. Without a clear information sharing system, distrust and anxiety fetters, and that can collapse a society (crime, war, discrimination, xenophobia etc).
This is the case for Uganda – low levels of social capital – distrust for one another that has stifled cooperation at every level of society leading to pervasive corruption, theft and impunity.
Everyone in Uganda is a suspect by default.
You do not have to do anything. Just show up in any social gathering or town looking different or speaking with a unique tongue - you are a suspect. Everyone in an office is precisely a suspect of corruption; anyone doing better than the other is a suspected mole of the regime.
This mole labeling affords this regime a right of hegemony and unnecessary credit accorded to greedy politicians who scheme for opportunities to benefit individually out of public efforts.
Distrust is most intense among those in opposition. Besigye, Mao, Bwanika, Muntu and everyone underneath their ladders are all painted with the mole brash to stir public distrust against their efforts at challenging status quo.
What is the purpose of this labeling, and who benefits? What is the basis of this charge, anyway?
Uganda’s society is where Police officers are also the highway robbers, exhibits thieves, illegal gun traders; where bank tellers steal customers' deposits; teachers de-school students by defilement and a sitting president is an exhibit in another country!
This is a paradoxical society where everyone is distrusted. Ironically, even with sch distrust levels, business goes on as usual.
Distrust is an ideological device being used artfully to prevent opposition from organizing at any level of society. Students of political science could interest themselves with this phenomenon - distrust that creates a paradoxical society like Uganda!
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