Prime
Do you sell Uganda as good stuff or scrap?
Author: Alan Tacca. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
Before President Museveni discovered that power was sweeter than he had ever thought, and that handing it over freely to other people required a conscience different from his; in those early days, Mr Museveni voiced a brand of wisdom that people will always recall to flog him with.
Rather like a big corporation, a country can succeed, even if not spectacularly. It can fail, even if not die completely.
Before President Museveni discovered that power was sweeter than he had ever thought, and that handing it over freely to other people required a conscience different from his; in those early days, Mr Museveni voiced a brand of wisdom that people will always recall to flog him with.
It is that thing about Africans overstaying in power. It will always haunt him.
Since we are all human, and therefore sometimes make mistakes, or deliberately tell lies, or are overpowered by some strong emotion over something that we really love, in the event speaking or behaving deplorably; in this mortal frame, if we were in President Museveni’s shoes, we would also probably wish we had never said such a thing.
After we had identified Africa’s main problem, and we had done 37 years and were apparently not satisfied, and mischievous people are taking our pictures and using the same cameras to shoot a disgrace called Nguema, we would almost certainly be forced to stand back and look at Uganda. Then a question might form in our heads:
If it was a corporation that had to be sold, can Uganda fetch a good price, or would it be sold as a heap of unclassified scrap?
There is evidence that it is very difficult to kill a country. Even Zimbabwe did not die. Nor Haiti. Nor Somalia. So Uganda can still masquerade as a country on the march.
But now we are President, in a manner of speaking. And we must look.
Start at the centre. Capital City. You have this Kyofato-what singing ‘Smart City’. Go to the Old Taxi Park. What do we see?
Coming down from Nakasero Market, we put Platinum House and Royal Complex behind us. We are standing at the edge of the park, which is 10 to 15 feet below us.
Stretching from the Yamaha Centre area to the Mega Supermarket area, the park’s stone-slated retaining wall is a very steep death trap for whoever may wander about with poor vision or a different disability; or someone slightly absent-minded, or is unfortunate to be accidentally pushed, or happens to be tipsy.
Over 10 feet; and there is absolutely nothing resembling a restraining barrier!
Kyofato-what? Before venturing in the gullied unpaved back-streets with their oozing sewers, this ravine where millions of people walk is testimony to a stupid city.
When the justice temple-master and the paramount fisherperson quarrel over turf and principle, but almost promptly reconcile for the sake of ‘serving the people’, you remember that serving the people is the Ugandan blunderer’s euphemism for self-preservation in a system where all our institutions are either chaotic or half-dead, and in both cases utterly corrupt.
Owiny-Dollo probably thinks that the imagination of altars is the delivery of justice. Basking in contradictions.
Nabbanja is deluded that by smashing a mosquito very loudly every day, she will eliminate malaria across the country in five years. Rustic naïveté.
When we look and cannot distinguish between bandits killing law enforcers and law enforcers killing fellow law enforcers, we are thankful that even sustained barbarism does not completely kill a country.
But we are not the President. Does President Museveni ever look back and regret abandoning his early wisdom about leaving power before his rule started degenerating?
Today, would he put up his country for sale as a functioning corporation, or offer it for auction as scrap?
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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