Can the real Holy Spirit please stand up?

If by now you have not at any time been part of a loud, saliva-spitting discussion, complete with expert analysis, about the recent goings-on in Israel and Iran, you need to do better. It is all every “intellectual” worth their salt is talking about. How else will we know you own a TV or have internet on your phone? Friend, get a life. 

Consume some international news, then do us all a favour and retell it as if you were there in person, or as though we have not watched the same bulletins, while you lecture us on Middle-East history as if you were right there in the garden when God said, “Let there be light.” Speaking of God, with all that is going on, whom would you worship: the God of Israel or the god of Uganda? They both have worshippers, so they are not sitting by the phone twiddling their holy thumbs, waiting for you to pledge undying love and devotion.  

After what Israel’s been up to, dropping bombs and missiles like nobody’s business, making enemies of countries ten times its size, and allegedly abetting genocide, I know a couple of Ugandans who are taking it very personally and now seriously hating on the one they identify as their God.

And who can blame them? The only alternative is facing the random ridiculousness back home, where, while you are busy dodging potholes, boom, you are told you are now the Holy Spirit, all because there is a vote tagged to your name. I have wanted to be many things in this life and the next—namely, a jazz-band singer, celebrated grand-piano player, or a rich person with a lot of hair, but the Holy Spirit? Never. I know you read the story, but just in case you did not, because you were more concerned with other people’s politics, here is the brief.

A couple of weeks back, Speaker of Parliament Annet Anita Among, addressing residents of Kyazanga in Bukoto West during a thanksgiving ceremony organised by the area Member of Parliament, equated President Museveni to God the Father, his son and Chief of Defence Forces Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba (MK) to God the Son, and the voters to the Holy Spirit. In her words: “We believe in the Trinity. We believe in God the Father, and God the Father is President Museveni. God the Son is MK, and now you are the Holy Spirit (voters). Therefore vote for them. God be with you all.” 

We are used to our dear leaders equating the President to God, so we are kind of over that blasphemous guff. But now we are the Holy Spirit? Mon Dieu! First, there is nothing holy about us or our rich “worshippers.” 

We are all out to gain from what is essentially extremely cheap transactional coitus: we grab as many cartoon-sized handouts, poorly constructed rhetoric, and oversized party T-shirts as we can, and when D-Day arrives, we pay in votes, or abstain.

Then we wait for the next election cycle and redial. While we wait, we grumble about how selfish and incompetent the people we voted for (or did not) are, and threaten never to return them to power, all the while haunted by Thomas Jefferson’s warning: “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” (With “elect” now used very loosely and relatively.) I wonder, though, is there a man or woman out there who will vote for the aforementioned trio because he or she was called the Holy Spirit? If someone (insert name of preferred dependent) approached you for money and said, “You are so Holy Spirit-ish,” would you be moved to splurge on them? Please, let us be in ourselves. 

No need to complicate our lives further with campaign lines that do not make sense. Lie to us well and respectfully. If you must use flattery to win or lose votes, be smart about it. Start small and stay subtle. No one needs to know you are lying except the Holy Spirit, who sees and knows all.