Prime
Bishop’s cars or garbage trucks?
Author: Alan Tacca. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- ‘‘Govt cannot give sufficient financial support to the townships, municipalities and cities”
Jesus is unlucky. There must be times when people say things that make him turn in his grave, especially when they quote him but do the exact opposite of what he would have probably regarded the right thing in the circumstances.
Take President Museveni. His popularity may have sharply declined. Even his 2021 re-election looked so weirdly ‘Byabakamathematical’ that many of his opponents mischievously spite him by referring to his foe, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (or Bobi Wine), as ‘His Excellency (their) President Kyagulanyi’. But love or hate him, Mr Museveni is still the ruler of this chaotic republic.
However, because of the responsibility that goes with his office, and his tendency to dip his thumb into everything under Uganda’s sun, the people are right not to spare him when the delivery of services is short, late or confused.
Now, Uganda has not had a ruler who dabbled in biblical stuff in his speeches more than President Museveni.
Perhaps because the First Lady kind of drips with a sentimental religiosity, and one of the President’s daughters is a Born Again Christian preacher whose one church building, the compound wherever it happens to be located and its posh congregation can be deemed to constitute a ‘diocese’, earning her the title of ‘bishop’, plus the President’s interest in fables and folk storytelling; these factors have probably contributed to making the Bible a source of stories and insights for Museveni.
One of his favourites is the teaching where Jesus admonishes those who do what they are not supposed to do, and leave undone the tasks that they should have addressed, exposing a type of untruthfulness.
But does President Museveni have the moral high ground from which to sound truthful when citing this teaching?
Some days back, a mayor in Kiboga District was on radio lamenting the accumulation of garbage in the town where he was the elected political leader.
An arrogant and incompetent NRM establishment has obstinately insisted on a reckless multiplication of administrative units and other public offices.
But because of a poor arrangement of priorities, hand-tied decentralisation and horrendous corruption, the government cannot give sufficient financial support to the townships, municipalities, cities and districts it has created to serve its selfish political ends.
Hence, the mayor in Kiboga could not get the government to buy a truck to collect the garbage in his town.
Solution? He used his personal money to buy a truck. But the town council could not get back enough money from the central government (which takes and controls the money collected by the local units!) to buy fuel.
There are similar stories all over the country. Garbage greets you everywhere in our urban centres.
Yet the government finds money to buy luxury vehicles for a whole rack of semi-redundant high public officials, and for bishops who have completely failed at cleaning the hearts of the country’s powerful thieves.
Under a more rational government, things like garbage trucks and serious road repairs would be high priorities.
The roads would then make smaller vehicles more viable and easier for church administrations to buy and maintain. This would be more pocket-friendly regarding the laities that support the churches
As things stand, questions about their right to taxpayers’ money notwithstanding, even town-bound bishops can claim that only those huge gas-guzzlers ‘Museveni’ gives them can bulldoze their way over Museveni’s bush-styled urban roads.
Garbage trucks for ordinary taxpayers can wait.
But Jesus, who used to walk or occasionally ride a borrowed donkey, might have instructed Museveni to do the opposite.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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