Does NRM/ Lumumba’s money grow on trees?

Radio talk-show junkies sometimes refer to one Sekabanja as ‘RDC’. At other times, they correctly call him ex-RDC, since he is no longer a serving residential district commissioner.

Mr Sekabanja can talk! A staunch defender of President Museveni, his style is the exact opposite of Mr Museveni’s crude supporters, who usually come out blazing, promising gunfire, buckets of acid and horrible death to both the overt opponents and fake friends of the President.

When Sekabanja is talking … and talking, you get the impression that the walls of his mouth are coated with a film of molten butter, and his words are flowing rapidly through a filter of very soft feathers.

It is very difficult to defend the NRM regime’s political machinations and contradictions without sounding deceitful, but Mr Sekabanja has mastered the craft of sounding shifty but cultured, and mistaken rather than a crude outright liar. There must be city con-men who would pay serious money for just his silky tongue.

Our talk show junkies often playfully mock Mr Sekabanja for defending a corrupt regime that does not reward him as handsomely as it rewards its more cynical opportunists.
Well, as (I suppose) an honest man, during a recent talk-show, Mr Sekabanja revealed that although he was no longer an RDC, he was still being given money.

No Uganda watcher would be surprised. Virtually every NRM/Museveni propagandist has two faces. One face is a volunteer’s; the other face is a mercenary’s. And the volunteer does not shrink at all when the mercenary brags in the same radio programme.

So, one is left wondering, does the State ‘pay’ a huge rack of RDCs and also ‘give’ money to ex-RDCs who just talk and talk? Or do the senior (and very wealthy) members of the ruling NRM periodically return to their private ranches, sell a few hundred cows and bring the money to the city to give to the Sekabanjas?
Just over a week ago, when the NRM secretary general, Ms Justine Kasule Lumumba, was answering questions about the impending creation of even more districts, she was quoted saying:

“The NRM is a party of the people; when they want something, we give them. The other issues of funds are not our problem.”
So, if groups of people ‘demanded’ new districts, whether to help the NRM get more parliamentary seats or for some other dubious reason, the NRM did not feel any responsibility to educate those groups to see things beyond short-sighted self-interest. And, without any shame, the implied cost did not trouble the secretary general or her party!

You cannot do anything except marvel at the sheer arrogance.
No; not arrogance. Worse. In the broad public space we share with diplomats, economists and other technocrats from countries that we still beg for TB and malaria drugs, it is worse than arrogance for the secretary general of an African ruling party to say that the cost of the country’s bloated administration does not even feature in the party’s concerns.

Bill, spouse Melinda and daughter Gates, very wealthy Americans, could each have a private jet of their own and spend their lives holidaying and stuffing themselves with food. But they don’t. They know that money does not grow on trees. And they are concerned about the cost of things in far away needy Africa.
The NRM/Lumumba mindset is worse than arrogance because it undermines us as Africans. After so many unlearnt lessons, it reinforces the not-entirely-dead prejudice that the African, or indeed the Black hominid, is slow in the head.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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