Miracles failed; Museveni and the pastors talk work

What you need to know:

Free money. President Museveni, who boasts about the NRM numbers in Parliament and local government councils, now seems to be puzzled by his bags of ‘free’ money and economic numbers that do not add up in his debt-ridden country.

Around 2006, President Museveni projected that every Ugandan household would soon be earning at least Shs20 million every year. His catchphrase – indeed a multi-billion government programme – was “Bonna Bagaggawale”: every citizen would get rich.
In today’s money, the projection would be more than Shs30 million (about $8,000).
Because the President is the President, many supposedly serious people cited this fantasy as something that was worth talking about.
As a patriot, I worry about the trillions of taxpayer shillings lost in uncoordinated schemes since the President started the language of poverty elimination and wealth creation.

The beauty of socio-economic reality is that it has exactly as much respect for an emperor as for a prophet. That is, none. If the people cannot earn much bread, a ruler’s decrees and a prophet’s incantations will not turn their crumbs into mountains of cake.
Trying to grasp the condition of our poorer people, I see the family of a factory slave earning Shs100,000 per month. His semi-literate wife tends a quarter-acre shamba and runs a roadside vegetable kiosk near Mukono. Three children. The oldest goes to a UPE school, hawks steamed maize and helps at mama’s kiosk in the evenings.
Without the factory slave, the President’s dream of industrialisation would disappear completely.

With mama’s shamba, Mukono Resident District Commissioner Fred Bamwine, who sings food security (‘omusiri gw’emmere’) everywhere, can claim that he is not redundant.
The roadside kiosk echoes Museveni’s ‘income generation’ theme.
This hardworking family is not in extreme poverty. However, its income, even with mama’s labour monetised, is below a quarter of President Museveni’s fantasy of 13 years ago.

Above all, like a vampire, the State sucks most of this income through indirect taxation, institutionalised inequality and horrendous corruption. The family now understands that its projected prosperity was a myth.
This family has another problem. Mama had saved bits of money with a 30-member women’s group.
After her turn came to take the ‘boom’, she was lured by a powerful pastor to ‘sow’ the Shs500,000. For her harvest, the kiosk would become a supermarket.

The pastor had smeared her forehead with oil and bottled for her a few spoonfuls to sprinkle in her kiosk.
Five months later, the kiosk is still a kiosk. And she still has to meet her weekly group saving obligation.
President Museveni, who boasts about the NRM numbers in Parliament and local government councils, now seems to be puzzled by his bags of ‘free’ money and economic numbers that do not add up in his debt-ridden country, especially as Opposition politicians charge that he has deliberately impoverished his people so that he can control and rule them more easily. He is now urging people to work harder to defeat poverty.

Our pastors also realise that their followers are beginning to catch them out as con men, so they are emphasising the necessity of work, even as they peddle their miraculous angle to prosperity.
On their radio stations, you now sometimes hear a pastor going on for hours and days just parroting the gospel of work, and citing related biblical passages.

But, surely, even if we sometimes fail to strictly adhere to the principle of work, is there an intelligent person who needs biblical passages to understand it, except those whom the pastors had brainwashed and turned into miracle-seeking dummies?
Then again, if President Museveni and the pastors were the purveyors of the fantasies of miraculous wealth, are the rest of us so idiotic that we should listen to them as the most enlightened champions of work?

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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