What would it cost to hold a rock concert in Namirembe Cathedral?

What you need to know:

What we are. Monuments, public squares, libraries and museums all speak to a human ability to transcend individual needs and aspire to common greatness. Unfortunately, you only need to see what we are doing to the National Theatre, the Uganda Museum, Mabira Forest, Lake Victoria or even Lutembe Wetland to see that we have turned into people who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

There has been much swinging of bats and throwing of bodyline bouncers after news emerged that the National Council of Sports has rented out the cricket oval at Lugogo to a church once a week for the next two years.
The cricket community has been quick to slag the NCS and its own association, which appears to have given bowled money before wicket.

I should, right off the bat, declare that my sympathies lie with the cricketers: I went to Mwiri when it was still the Mecca of the game; I am an unabashed tree-hugger; and my appearances in church are infrequent, often having to do with seeing off the dead and those who soon wish they were (ahem!).

In fact, I have played at the Lugogo Oval on a couple of occasions. On the last one, many years ago, I was at the crease with John Nagenda for Journalists XI. (Nagenda is far better than your columnist at the game, and at writing, although on the latter account, I hope to give history a tough time deciding, if I am able to stop work from interrupting life).
Anyway, I was out for 17, caught at point while attempting a square cut, then took three for 25 with the ball – not bad, Justine Ligyalingi, eh? We won, but then life happened and I haven’t been back to play since.

I understand the angst over the NCS decision and I can tell you for free that anyone who says the wicket wouldn’t suffer from an evening of trampling the devil underfoot is a liar. But there is a bigger problem.
First, the NCS is grossly underfunded. In financial year 2017, they asked for a measly Shs5 billion to run all the sports disciplines in the country – roughly about as much as a single by-election locality attracted recently – but they only received about Shs3b. Of course, they have their own internal rot, but these desperate folks will clutch at any financial lifeline to keep the lights on and make payroll.

It is tempting to shift the blame to the church in question but, regardless of what you think of the prosperity gospel and its sleek entrepreneurs, this too is merely a symptom. This church is not the first to rent the cricket oval – there was a full-day festival at the same place earlier this month, for instance, for which no such umbrage was recorded – and it will not be the last.

Drive around Kampala and you will see that there is no hill, valley or swamp where a determined man with a silver tongue, stage presence and a good memory for Bible verses cannot open a gospel retail outlet. Except the golf course. People will pray in the streets, in classrooms, in restaurants, and even wade knee-deep through a swamp while reading from Job or Leviticus, but I’m yet to see a pastor hold a crusade in the sprawling Kampala golf course.

The underlying issues here are power, money and identity. You can’t touch the golf course because the members have all the three. The pastors can rent any space because they have or will soon have money. The historic Nakivubo stadium had identity but its trustees had neither power nor money.

Yet no musician has thrown a concert in Namirembe Cathedral, never mind that it has great acoustics and is, I imagine, usually free on Friday and Saturday nights. And the folks of Blankets & Wine are yet to host one in the grounds of Kibuli Mosque, despite its excellent views of the city. There are some things around which society ought to rally not because they generate a lot of money, but because they are priceless.

For example, one could make a lot of money from vegetables grown organically and delivered fresh to the market; so should we cover the Sheraton Hotel gardens in greenhouses since it is near Nakasero market? Or move the golf course to Nakasongola, which has a lot of ‘free’ land so that we can cram in a few more malls in the green belt?

These things are about who we are and how we see ourselves as a society and as a people. Monuments, public squares, libraries and museums all speak to a human ability to transcend individual needs and aspire to common greatness.
Unfortunately, you only need to see what we are doing to the National Theatre, the Uganda Museum, Mabira Forest, Lake Victoria or even Lutembe Wetland to see that we have turned into people who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and a poor man’s freedom fighter. [email protected] Twitter: @Kalinaki.