NRM, the bottle and the pig

Sorry, Ugandans, your motto is obsolete. As God’s dog, dutifully patrolling His sphere, I have consistently reported that God is in a state of sublime rest.

Dismantling illusions often requires a special effort. But when you have conquered and silenced the clatter around you, and your mind is open and ready to receive pure knowledge, you will marvel at the monumental beauty radiated by the silence of the great Divine.

So, God is not involved in our leisure or mischief, even as we have recently been trouncing almost everybody on the planet in key areas.

Start with our politics. Nothing outlandish like, say, Bobi Wine’s head growing so big that President Museveni’s generals would need a crane and a Fuso truck to deliver him to a detention centre. No. It is the size of Museveni’s ruling party.

Some weeks back, the ever resourceful NRM staged a countrywide registration of party members above the age of 16.

Reports indicated poor turnout. But according to the NRM, the updated so-called Yellow Book will have about 18 million members.

Bless Uganda’s super mathematicians! With a population of under 50 million (including under-16’s), achieving that figure would have required the intervention of a witchdoctor. 

Another field where Uganda has triumphed is drink. The latest figures from WHO statisticians put Uganda ahead of all sub-Saharan Africa in the consumption of alcohol. The record: 12.2 litres per capita. Hurray! All of you drunkards who are classified as ‘departed’, rest in peace.  

You are properly represented among the living.

Uganda has also topped mainland Africa at eating pork. Bless the pig. 

The only African country that has beaten us is the Seychelles, and only daring from the safe distance of the Indian Ocean, knowing that we are landlocked and have no navy.

Finally, we also came on top of the whole world at fornication. The most caring husbands are in Brazil. Kudos in other small-small departments went elsewhere. But we beat everybody at the big one, fornication, which appropriately concludes an evening of so many beers and the desired preparation of pork.

Our detractors, of course, will try to pull us down, citing things like the sudden rise of 357 assistant RDC’s as evidence that the whole country generally acts like a drunkard, except when it acts as mad.

They will also cite our boda bodas racing up and down the city, or the spectacle of street preachers screaming at everyone but to no one in the urban jungle, saying that only in a drunken or mad country can these things be normal.

Other enemies will weave narratives of fake science just to taunt us. You remember the yellow piglets mischievous people unleashed in the precincts of Parliament. Now they will sing this pork thing to no end, associating the greed among our leaders and the populace with the demolition of mountains of pork.

But as true patriots, we should not be deterred. As long as we are excelling at something, we should celebrate.

The only thing perhaps at which we should draw a line is pupu. 

If some statistics junkie comes up with the demographic that we are the world’s top dumpers, we should promptly hit back that this was far better than the constipation in their heads.

We must never take any affront lying down. And we cannot be completely dammed. With our fornication, we will always multiply and thus secure our future, even if God remains in His sublime rest.

That is Uganda: For NRM, the bottle and the pig.

Mr Alan Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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