Can Museveni swallow himself like a magic python?

As we know, the rich tend to associate with each other. And there is the English saying about birds of the same feather.
So, last week, President Museveni of oil-endowed Uganda spent a full four days visiting oil-rich Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the ruler of Equatorial Guinea. I have seen the photos, and President Museveni was not covering his nose.
Talking of feathers, Mr Museveni regards his vision very seriously when choosing presidential advisers. To that end, as everybody knows, his media adviser, Mr Tamale Mirundi, is the most brilliant intellectual, the most informed Ugandan, and probably the only competent political analyst working on the Ugandan scene.
Against his towering intellect, you would think men like Dunstan Busulwa or Gyagenda Semakula, who host him on some of his radio talk shows, are paid to sound glaringly ignorant and uncritical or lost in servile adoration.
Indeed, on the Friday (August 25) President Museveni was being pampered by Nguema, back here in Kampala, Mr Mirundi was breathing pure fury when a character who did not fully respect his intellect was standing in for Mr Gyagenda on Impact FM.
Either inadvertently, or for a mobile-money financial inducement as Mr Mirundi – live on air – insisted, this character allowed a listener to call into the programme and ask a “stupid” question.
The storm was instant. I got the impression that Mirundi had shot up. He was ranting, choking, swearing. Gyagenda would not permit such a caller, he screamed.
Mirundi literally threatened to strangle his host and bash his head against the wall, and the programme was abruptly cut off a few minutes prematurely.
Were these bizarre things really happening? Or was I dreaming? No, I was not dreaming. And there was nothing bizarre. But I probably did not understand the beauty of the fire when a great intellect was shining in an area of divine inspiration.
In the exalted Victory Church environs of Ndeeba where Impact FM and Dream TV do their holy work, there are apostles who pray for you on Wednesday and you get a job that week. Another Wednesday prayer and you get a promotion. One more magic prayer for your newly acquired piece of land, and a brick house materialises.
In the equally exalted environs where Top Radio and Top TV operate, there are pastors for whom a four day-old corpse is just the right candidate for a resurrection.
And to his credit, Mr Mirundi never tires of thanking the Pentecostals for being almost the only broadcast station owners enlightened enough to allot time to his running mouth.
Other great Ugandan minds also appreciate. A very distinguished listener recently called into one of the shows and applauded Mr Mirundi for his expositions as a “logicist”.
Another great Ugandan thinker, Mr Tony Owana, now recognises Mr Mirundi as a “prophet”.
And another visionary called and declared the President’s adviser an “angel”.
However, when President Museveni has close connections like Mr Nguema and Mr Mirundi, why is Uganda staggering like an angry village drunkard who has lost his purse, his path and his purpose?
According to Mr Mirundi – and he is incapable of being wrong – Uganda is now controlled by Mafia-like gangs that Museveni cannot beat; partly because he does not understand how they work, and partly because he is ‘kind’, or ‘lenient’.
Corruption is rampant; land disputes are multiplying; the police are incompetent and often criminal; the judges are the same; the economy is bleeding; senior government workers are blackmailing the Executive and demanding impossible pay cheques like bandits scrambling for booty from a foreign land; the government is rolling back the country’s cash-guzzling authorities and agencies and also its cash-starved ‘free’ education.
Mr Mirundi acknowledges all that, and the solution he is laying out is that Gen Museveni should overthrow his own government. An act of treason.
He must be right. But like the listener whose question set the broadcast studio on fire, we ordinary mortals often ask stupid questions. So, this self-overthrow; is it a bit like some infinitely flexible creature – perhaps a magic python – curling a full circle and swallowing itself from the tail?

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator. [email protected].