Alan Tacca
After the collapse of the Kiteezi garbage dump, where at least 35 people were confirmed to have died, and possibly scores more, plus many others seriously injured, God has been variously dragged into the picture.With a whole government minister, Mr Sam Mayanja, regularly contributing a full-length article, perhaps the thin weekly Luganda paper, Ono Bwino, deserves reading.In the August 20-26 edition, Mayanja solemnly mourned the Kiteezi dead, but he completely avoided touching those responsible for the tragedy. Instead, he waxed religious to divert the victims from their mortal anguish.
He exhorted those who had lost limbs, loved ones and possessions to thank God, “the holder of all power; because, as one hymn assures the wretched, the voiceless, they would all one day be healed/redeemed."Mayanja also dutifully reminded us that we will all die.
Note: I hope Minister Mayanja accepts my translation of his 'bakasiru' as the ‘voiceless’. So, a government minister who unfailingly (every week) attacks Buganda Kingdom officials for doing things that the Constitution does not allow them, now finds himself incapable of admonishing President Museveni's appointed honchos in KCCA (the Kampala Capital City Authority) for failing to do things about garbage that the Constitution expects them to do.
And the voiceless are being soothed, mellowed or calmed into a state of believing that they will ultimately turn out all right in God's plan. Now, Mayanja may be mistaken, but he may be right. From the holy books written when God was young, God would sometimes work in strange ways. What about today?Given the exhausting weight of five or six thousand years of His existence, even the greatest survivor among deities would probably have reason to slide into a state of Divine rest.
Was God working or resting in Kiteezi? Basing on sources claimed to be reliable, the same Ono Bwino edition alleged on Page 5 that President Museveni had decided not to have the KCCA chief’s previous contract renewed, because of purported incompetence.
The allegation goes that it is President Museveni’s daughter, Ms Patience Rwabogo, the pastor/owner of Covenant National Church where the KCCA chief reportedly prays, who pleaded with her father to relent and renew the chief's contract.
Where circumstantial evidence shows God to be resting, the Pentecostals imagine God to be hyperactive, just as witchdoctors imagine African spirits to be hyperactive.
From their view, it is God who would/must have directed the pastor to prevail upon her God-and-family-fearing father to retain the KCCA chief.
Paradoxically, if you infer that God must have wanted the chief and KCCA incompetence to be preserved so that the Kiteezi tragedy may happen, the Pentecostals flee. They run away from the logic because it goes counter to the traditional belief that a merciful God cannot be so diabolical.
Well, don't run. Just like African spirits are sometimes said to use witchdoctors to get human sacrifices before favourably influencing different human activities, maybe God used a strategically placed pastor
and KCCA incompetence to get human sacrifices before giving Divine guidance for serious city garbage works! No. These are theo-cultural games we are playing. God is in a state of rest.
The solemnity in government minister’s mournful voices must not divert our attention from the incompetence, greed and corruption without which the Kiteezi tragedy would not have happened.
The ingestion of oozing rotten matter as the victims rolled in the sliding garbage mountain; drowning or suffocating in the filth of this foul belly as their last encounter with reality on earth; these were terrible deaths for which our human rulers are squarely responsible.
Mr Alan Tacca is a novelist, social-political commentator. [email protected]
