Uganda’s ‘naked emperor and society’

Trouble ahead. This is the story of how the State uses Ugandans’ financial vulnerability to control the society.

In all this is the constant factor: the NRM state, Big Brother, is watching your every transaction and financial dealing. The State can ruin you in a number of ways. If you are a newspaper, it can starve you of government adverts (the government is still the largest advertiser even in this privatised economy).

If you are a hotel, your trading license can be withdrawn or when it expires, the license not renewed. Thus the country has actually been reduced to a society of economic slaves who dare not speak out just so they can have one more meal. This we see so clearly in the other puzzling feature of the 2000s: the NRM “rebel” MPs. Their every position and statement indicates they are all but former members of the NRM but somehow they cannot leave the party, whether it arrests, humiliates, tortures and intimidates them.

We got into this Fools’ Paradise and now it is nearly impossible to get out of it. It brings to mind the theme of the sinister 1977 song by the American Country-Rock band The Eagles, titled Hotel California.

It’s a song in which an unsuspecting traveller weary from the long journey checks into a hotel where, he discovers all sorts of debauchery and sin, gets disgusted and wants to leave, but is told that “You can check out any time you want/But you can never leave”.

So like the rest of upwardly mobile Ugandan society, Cerinah Nebanda’s family must put aside their innermost thoughts and take the pragmatic step of once again aligning themselves with the very political party and government they hold in suspicion.

“Welcome to the Hotel California/Such a nice surprise”, goes The Eagles’ song.

timothy_kalyegira@yahoo.com