Our sportsmen should ask, ‘What would Bad Black do?’

It was feared that it is from them that community spread of the virus would spring. Try as they may, government couldn’t get around their weakness for – Ugandan – sweetness. They needed Bad Black to influence the ladies of the night – and day – to hold off on doing the business for a while.

She obliged and recorded a video endorsing the Ministry of Health’s message. Thing is, she wasn’t paid. It might have been owed to the slow and laborious government procurement processes or because someone who was getting paid thought that she would take the hit for the country.

After lots of back and forth, including letters on Government headed paper, many would have mellowed down and meekly started to work the back channels. Not Bad Black! It was campaign season and the influential National Unity Platform had the ruling party by the gonads.

Ruling party functionaries were jittery and buying whoever they thought had influence over one constituency or another. Bad Black simply took a photo of herself, wearing red overalls and a red beret – the opposition party’s regalia – and posted in on social media. I don’t even remember whether she bothered with captions; but her message was clear, and received immediately. She got paid! 

Government had created a crisis out of a solution. It wasn’t the first time and would certainly not be the last. 

Conventional wisdom dictates that you plan – which involves anticipation and execution. But it doesn’t always seem like we get a lot of that in and from government. This incompetence and inefficiency would be easy to gloss over if there was enough tact or effort to conceal it – but there usually is none.  Where am I going with this? 

In case you haven’t heard, the men’s national basketball team, the Silverbacks are the latest sufferers of government’s inadequacies. The team is on a roll in Kigali, at the Afrobasketball tournament, where they have just qualified for the Quarterfinals. It’s a miracle – the kind that we have come to expect of our sportsmen – that even amidst this crisis, the boys are still mixing with the best.

How are they able to concentrate when they, apparently, are on the verge of getting evicted from their hotel, for failure to clear their bills? Against all odds, they have made it to the quarterfinals, despite having traveled on the eve of kickoff – because unlike their competition, they didn’t have money to go any earlier. 

A few days to their departure, government had hastily put together about Shs 300 million, but that was handed over to the moneylender who the federation owed from a previous engagement.

It makes no sense why and how government always seems to find money for everything else, apart from what’s important; or why, when the money comes, it is always at the last minute. Worse, what kind of people these are, that they have absolutely no ability to learn from the past and do better the next time. 

These are the sorts of troubles to be expected of banana republics and basket cases – which I need not name. They should also tell you a lot about the quality of the people in charge.  – yet their continued occurrence might be an indicator that we really aren’t all that. Mostly, they make you wonder what worth is in representing your country if those in position to facilitate the process don’t even pretend to try.

Those who play in and around politics have figured out a way to get paid, but unfortunately, sportsmen cannot grease the system with kickbacks or issue the kinds of threats and blackmail that the ballsy Bad Black managed. So, something has got to give.

The team will likely get invited to a lavish state dinner to celebrate its feat. Speeches and promises from yonder will be regurgitated and then forgotten faster than the food will have been digested. Do you think Bad Black would show up to the dinner if she was a Silverback?

Mr Rukwengye is the founder, Boundless Minds. @Rukwengye