Easter is here with another chance to seek redemption

Very powerful people in Uganda love to invoke God’s name. We have heard before that Uganda is a religious (read Christian) country. I suppose this stems from our national motto being “For God and My Country” — fear God, love country.
The logic is that we should place God before country, or rather that God is very much central to the wellbeing of Uganda. Our blood-soaked history since we adopted that motto at independence has demonstrated that we may have a country, but God is just not a key part of it.
If you love/fear God, it means that you accept the teachings of your religious belief system.
In Uganda that means Christianity is key, and so is the regular reading/recitation of the Bible, a foundational text even if it comes in many versions.
Believing in the Christian God demands obeying the Ten Commandments and respecting the meaning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
But, look. We invoke God’s name in vain. Literally. This happens almost all the time. We talk about God and we forget country. Yet country is not just an abstract concept in political science. Country, state, nation, whatever, means real people living in some definite territory under defined authority.
From on high in the land, we promise sanitary towels to our teenage girls and then promptly renege on the promise. It is as if the promises made, even in the heat of an electoral campaign, mean absolutely nothing. We are citizens who are not treated with respect. Our leaders lie to us casually (not that lying any other way is less serious or acceptable).
When our leaders ignore country, they are ignoring the people they purportedly exist to serve. Inequality is growing. Agricultural productivity is stagnant or regressing. Unemployment levels are becoming “impossible”. Healthcare is bad. Education is failing.
As for corruption, well, it has long been normalised. Not being corrupt is the exception. The present case of junior Labour minister Herbert Kabafunzaki is instructive. His guilt or otherwise will be decided by court.
It’s interesting, however, that he would be caught up somehow in extracting a few million Shillings from an employer he was supposed to be investigating for sexual harassment. Where does that leave the young woman who ran to the minister seeking help?
The powerful can behave badly, get caught and buy their innocence, with the help of other powerful people who should be calling them to order. That is the drill. Damn the small people. Would the God of that national motto approve?
It is one of those very Ugandan things that minister Kabafunzaki did not see it wise to “step aside until his name is cleared”.
These leaders have no honour, no basic decency. Yet you will hear them claim leadership comes from God or some such self-serving drivel.
It is encouraging that the one who appointed him has asked Mr Kabafunzaki to step aside as an administrative measure. This sort of thing is rare because the tendency has been to hide behind the law — I won’t do anything until I have solid evidence, until the courts decide. Baby steps.
It is Easter Sunday. How about thinking about that national motto again? Or else, as the late Chango Machyo once suggested, let’s remove God from the motto. That won’t stop us lying to ourselves about our righteousness, but we will be acting with honesty.
Monsignor Hilarious Kaijanabyo, the priest who formulated the motto, would be unimpressed if the change happened, but possibly he would understand.
Happy Easter.

Mr Tabaire is the co-founder and director of programmes at African Centre for Media Excellence in Kampala.
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Twitter:@btabaire