Why waste and spit go hand in hand
This week, our uneventful corner of the world woke up to the realisation that waste and spit go hand in hand. Just hearing about the billions spent on salaries for public jobs we don’t need, even just as estimates, can make you spit with fury.
Which is literally what the grandfather of the nation did during his most recent televised speech.
Public spitting is generally considered the height of bad manners, up there with public scratching of private itches and chewing with your mouth open.
And spit, like just about every other human secretion, has the tendency to inspire horrified revulsion when it is encountered outside a very narrow set of circumstances, which usually don’t include national TV.
And while the blue bloods amongst us are still having fits of disenchantment about the spitball that ricocheted around the world, one wonders what could possibly have led a man of such stature to punctuate a winding speech with this discourteous act.
Perhaps someone in the front row slipped off their shoes and released the funk of unwashed feet into the air? That would understandably result in a rise of bile and an uncomfortable rush of spit. Or even more likely, he ate something disagreeable just before the speech and the memory came back to haunt him?
Or just maybe, he was confronted with the reality of the whiny, entitled masses before him, the ungrateful wretches who have made a mockery of his sacrifice and turned into hyenas feeding off the carcass of his beloved nation.
The advisors whom he advises, the ministers whom he minsters to, and that bane of his life, the Parliament whose rapacious appetite for cold cash would shame the most wanton carpetbagger.
Any of these could explain the bizarre incident, especially since we desperately need one: it was so out of character! And no wonder the man hacked up a gallstone at the most impromptu moment.
God probably has an easier job answering the prayers of the faithful; at least they can’t drive up to his house to hound him for favours. (And when they do show up at his house, they are in a permanent state of quiescence.) No such reprieve for the grandfather.
Notwithstanding the difficult conditions that led him to reach for that napkin, we can all agree that this nation is fast reaching a collective state of nausea brought on by the realisation of all the money thrown away in the name of running this government.
If the Cabinet can now, all these years later, discuss the closure of more than 70 government agencies like they are lockup kiosks on Nakivubo Lane, do tell was anyone thinking clearly when they set them up? Are they thinking clearly now?
ICT and Information minister Frank Tumwebaze anticipated that he was opening a can of worms, but he did so anyway.
Because we won’t stop talking about government waste and the billions spent on a bloated public service. What we really want to know is how soon can we start the purge of advisors, commissioners, ministers and Members of Parliament?
Ms Barenzi is a communications professional and writer
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