Open letter to Museveni

The pastors protest a proposed policy intended to regulate the operations of Religious Faith Organisations (RFOs), arguing that the policy targets Pentecostals. The most contentious issues in the proposed policy are; demand for formal (theological) training of the religious leaders, accusation of moral decay and manipulation, accountability,  call to contribute to national development, and the charge of extremism. The pastors’ plea has been more reactional, offering us less opportunity for constructive discourse. 

However, let us reflect on the contradiction within the rationale on which the proposed policy is built. President Museveni, we need to be reminded that Joseph Kibwetere’s movement which orchestrated a mass murder-suicide had three seminary trained priests, and with Rev Fr Dominic Kataribaabo being a qualified clergy. 

Kibwetere’s movement also possessed a high form of moral dogmatism to the extent that they advised married couples to deny themselves conjugal rights, as a form of self-discipline. If we should also claim that religious movements manipulate their followers and fleece them, should it not be imperative to also ask: within what socio-political context is the manipulation possible? What makes citizens shun the welfare promises of the state and run to pastors who have turned God into a granary, and self-appointed themselves as the door-guards? 

Yet still, Mr President, when we insist that to be tolerated, these religious movements must contribute to national development, have we forgotten how Kibwetere’s movement was also supportive of the government’s development programmes?  

Yet, the directorate insists that RFOs need to be regulated, owing to histories such as the history of the Allied Democratic Forces and al-Shabab, Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Movement, Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and Joseph Kibwetere’s Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTCG). 

We need not be reminded that there is nothing religious about the acts of mass violence that have manifested from within all these movements. Rather than religious, the violence of such movements should be read as political statements. Mr President, we need to reflect on the nature of the state within which such movements arise, and focus on reforming that state.
 
The precolonial state of Nkore has lessons to offer us in addressing the question of religion. Nkore practised religious plurality and there was coherence of many faith beliefs, to the extent that the Omugabe housed all guardians of the different religious/faith beliefs at his court. While the Omugabe had his own beliefs, his subjects had the freedom to worship their own. Religious beliefs were never politicised and Nkore never had a state religion, until the British colonial regime imposed one. 

How do we explain that despite the proliferation of many religious beliefs, none of the issues raised in RFOs policy can be traced in Nkore’s precolonial history? To answer this question, Mr President, is to overcome the Pentecostals’ charge against your government, of a conspiracy to impose a state religion. 

Given that some of the Pentecostal pastors emerge out of the discrimination within the Anglican or Catholic Church, which institutions then shall be offering the formal training for these religious leaders? The Pentecostals’ alarmist interpretation of the policy is thinkable because indeed, while the proposed RFOs policy recognise and wants to operationalise self-regulation of the religious organisations, it also seeks to dictate the mechanism. Shouldn’t self-regulation be contextual, Mr President? 

Mr Katumusiime (PhD) is a social sciences researcher at Makerere University. 
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