Did Kampala RCC Hussein Hudu flee from Pentecostal demons?

In contrast, appointed by the President, the ministers, the executive director and the RDC have an authoritarian tendency.

For instance, their approach to getting a smart city is often ruthlessly militarised, leaving many urban poor dispossessed and humiliated. Never mind that during election campaigns, President Museveni sometimes expediently denounces his own team, claiming to fight for the small person even harder than the Lord Mayor.

Not being election time, the President’s team has been freely treating boda boda operators, hawkers and street vendors rather like vermin. On that theme, the RCC reportedly announced the expulsion of religious preachers from Kampala streets.

As everybody knows, Pentecostals have a pathological urge to exhibit their Godliness. So, virtually all Kampala’s street preachers are Pentecostals. But you have to be intellectually challenged not to recognise that most of them are little more than a public nuisance.

At the very most, a Kampala street preacher attracts a crowd of two disreputable-looking idlers and one street kid. Passers-by hear the preachers screaming, cursing, or scaremongering, but they are not really listening.

Joseph Sserwadda and Charles Tumwine trade as ‘apostles’. Ssalongo Mukiibi is a ‘bishop’. At their Sunday 6:30am talk-show on Impact FM/Dream TV last Sunday, Sserwadda narrated how he had intimidated the RCC until Hudu agreed to broadcast a retraction of the ban he had slapped on street preaching. Indeed, Impact FM/Dream TV replayed Hudu’s remorseful voice.

Given Hudu’s reputation, it was satisfying to hear him humiliated by an ‘apostle’ who was himself grossly misguided.

If you want to bring order to the city, you must go the whole hog.

Sserwadda argued that Ugandans are not yet civilised enough for measures like the preacher ban! However, he is on record against boda boda operators, who, although disorderly, give essential services to ordinary urban people and earn a living.

Sserwadda said the street preachers are sent by Pentecostal churches. So they are probably earning a living. But they bring more offence than an essential service.

Sserwadda also said that the preachers are given operating guidelines. But again, typically, he disowned those who do not follow the guidelines. It is like saying that UPDF soldiers who breach Gen Museveni’s 2021 anti-torture guidelines do not belong to the UPDF.

With more honesty, the other ‘apostle’, Tumwine, told of his horror and embarrassment when he and his daughter were harassed by a preacher not far from Cairo Bank and Radio One. He was accused of being one of the roguish men who drive around with young girls they defile.

Unless Sserwadda moves in a permanently sound-proofed cocoon, he should know that Tumwine’s attacker was following more or less the standard script.

Passers-by are indiscriminately linked to sexual immorality, witchery, devil worship, corruption; name it. The civilised respectful preacher is the exception.

Freedom of worship, like freedom to earn a living, certainly cannot mean freedom to deny others their peace and dignity. 

Would Sserwadda tolerate a preacher with PA loudspeakers outside his Ndeeba office window, or in the compound at his residence, making noise for eight hours every day?

When RCC Hudu hears our pastors rambling about demons, the poor man probably fears that demons are for real, and that Sserwadda might just unleash a pack of these dark red-eyed nastys to finish him.

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Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.

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