Here is a deal: We pray for Uganda for 3 days

Alan Tacca

What you need to know:

  • Insecurity. As the managers of the State gamble and fumble with surveillance technology, our religious entrepreneurs have jumped on the death of an NRM walking flag to push their agenda with our souls.
  • Prayers, prayers and more prayers.

From time to time, I ride along with the ridiculous to see whether it is strong enough to survive an encounter with an appropriate test of reason.
In the wake of every high profile violent death, Ugandans tend to fire their emotions and sentimental “correctness” into overdrive. They lavish praise on the departed, and even those who do not believe in the survival of souls after death often get carried away and recite the standard formulations over the dead person’s soul.
Those who earn their pay, their perks and their prestige by doing things that include protecting the citizens get overwhelmed by their frustration that they failed at their responsibility with the measures and tools in place.

Impulsively, they cobble together packages of new quick-fix measures, reflecting their concern but without concealing their practical handicap.
And, of course, they never forget transferring more of their (official) responsibility by over-emphasising collective (community) responsibility. That is, they rig an otherwise legitimate principle of shared responsibility!

Talking of tools and measures, just as there seemed to be an obsession with SIM-cards, there now seems to be an obsession with closed circuit television cameras, a blanket of pixels that will (we are told) constantly cover the whole country for billions shillings.
Even in these hard times, you are tempted to smile. But again, being hard times, give the cameras a chance.

By and by, the President will discover the limitations of this mid-tech game of angles and moving-picture resolution. He will see the enormous holes in his pet blanket, and he will be puzzled why the face of a motor-cycling bean weevil in one frame sometimes looks like the face of a bedbug in the next frame.
He will also be taught how easy it is to knock out some of those little eye machines that would not have gone blind on their own in the first 12 months.

The next measure then may be to prohibit all kinds of motor-cycles on Uganda’s roads!
As the managers of the State gamble and fumble with surveillance technology, our religious entrepreneurs have jumped on the death of an NRM walking flag to push their agenda with our souls. Prayers, prayers and more prayers.
Last Sunday (June 10), Mr Joseph Serwadda and his early morning Impact FM/Dream TV talk-show colleagues brought back their old song about a prolonged binge of national prayers staged at various sports stadia.

For some odd reason, Pentecostals seem to think that God is either deaf or a noise-indulgent hooligan. Anyway, after attacking President Museveni for referring to Pentecostals as noise-makers, and after they vowed to pray with even more noise (although note that successful pastors/apostles/prophets generally do not live near their churches, which make noise in slums and crowded neighbourhoods occupied by people they despise, while they themselves set up home in quieter neighbourhoods), Mr Serwadda and his colleagues called for three days of no work and intensive prayers.
Well, why don’t we go along with this rather ridiculous proposal?
Why doesn’t the President assert his power and grant the request? We all want peace.

Our talk show people cited Elijah’s fire contest. After three days and three nights of being implored by a whole nation, God would surely be ashamed not to save little Uganda from her current plight.
But… but… If God does not respond clearly, if Uganda continues on its present course or deteriorates, we make a law to remove all noisy churches from our residential neighbourhoods.