Alan Tacca
Basking in the sweetness of power, President Museveni has sometimes been proclaimed by some of his praise singers as being “next to God”.
With God in a state of rest, Mr Museveni’s power is up there.Not surprisingly, Ugandans charge Museveni when bridges and garbage heaps collapse; when they see silly roads; when boda bodas infest the land; when corruption and impunity are rampant; when democracy and justice are dying.
Yes, the buck stops at the man “next to God”.That is why some Pentecostal broadcasters repeatedly play back President Museveni’s voice, constantly reminding him that it is he who recognised the variously coloured Pentecostals as an autonomous religious entity or faith.
The pastors behind the broadcasts equally repeatedly accuse Museveni’s government of permitting the operations of fake pastors.But who is false and who is not false in a murky field where fantasy and dreams are confused with divine intervention; where demons are concocted through clear client manipulation; where emotional excesses are blatantly sold as spiritual encounters by practitioners who in any other enterprise would be dismissed as con-men?
If President Museveni was deeply committed to science and not soft-gloved on liars, he would subject Uganda’s top pastors to a special fact-finding committee. The committee would be tasked to investigate the truth or falsehood of their extravagant claims, with a view to confirm or debunk the presence of any super-active spiritual power.
For instance, every day, almost all these pastors advertise the next miraculous healing event. If they are honest, there should be thousands of ex-blind, ex-deaf and ex-crippled people; not to mention ex-Aids and ex-cancer sufferers. The committee would seek credible evidence from different communities and pre-healing hospital records before reaching any conclusions.
Since the pastors persistently pump their subjects with the narrative that they are victims of witchcraft (ddogo), the committee would investigate the veracity or falsehood, and the benefit or harm, in these witchcraft claims.
Instead of a largely unnecessary new marriage law that some Pentecostal pastors are pushing to fight turf wars with rival pastors and with the Muslims, Ugandans could explore the possibility of a law that restricts the promotion of gross falsehoods that negatively impact our people.Ironically, much demonised by fellow pastors, Samuel Kakande is also in a sense the most dignified.
In a broadcast conversation with ‘Bishop’ Mukiibi last Sunday, ‘Apostle’ Joseph Serwadda of Ndeeba Victory Church narrated how he had once confronted Kakande, and Kakande asked him why they did not let him do his things as he let them do their things.In short, let every pastor mind their business. Honest pastors, tell us: Valued as olive oil is in cooking, why would face-smears with this oil (your mafuta) bring more financial or school exam success than rituals with Kakande’s water?Both symbolic agents were there in pagan (pre-Christian) practice, and they survive in many non-Christian traditions.
There must be moments when President Museveni wonders whether he opened a can of worms.No matter how many times they scream “Jesus” or worship Museveni for letting them be, the Pentecostals will remain diverse quasi-cult worshippers without a common creed, with every pastor jostling for personal ascendancy, and the more cunning ones manipulating the machinery of the State.
But if pastors with big congregations persistently say that pastors with even bigger congregations are fake, and we have thousands of dubiously identified and comically named new churches across the country, how did (how could) Uganda National Bureau of Statistics separate legitimate Pentecostals from the false ones and reach a credible demographic in the last census?
