
Makerere University celebrated its 75th graduation ceremony with 13,658 students each receiving a crown of thorns. The vice-chancellor said to the newly minted graduates: “There are no jobs. The only job available is looking for a job that you will never find. So become entrepreneurs.”
As he spoke, his audience started to murmur. Many graduates were wondering how they could start businesses when the business of starting a business seemed to be none of the economy’s business. It was like asking a pregnant lady to preserve her virginity.
“Shut up!” shouted the vice chancellor, who had initially campaigned for his job on the promise that he would be the virtue chancellor. Alas, there was a pencil-thin line between virtue and vice. And this line was overdrawn by those who liked to conflate the two Vs into a single V for vehemence.
“I have told you to create jobs instead of seeking them,” he added vehemently. “I created this job. There was never a vice chancellor before me. I came to Makerere with some advice and they stressed the syllables in the word ‘advice’ to add vice. That is how my advice led them to add vice to the chancellorship. It was originally wholly virtuous. ”
At that point, a man 6 ft 4 in tall and powerfully built as a light heavyweight boxing champion who was in super heavyweight shape fell from the sky like The Terminator. However, unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, he was not a cybernetic organism with a human exterior and a metal endoskeleton. He was all human.
Suddenly, a booming voice from on high announced: All rise for His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.
Everyone at the ceremony was stunned. Right before their eyes, the former president stood erect, not because of the V in the vice chancellor’s title. He stood erect as in stiffly upright. We agree. Times are hard. But let’s be guided.
Anyway, Amin gave the vice chancellor a withering look. Then, he turned to the assembled students and addressed them.
“My mission is to rid the country of these vices…” At that point, he looked over to the vice chancellor whose tail was lodged so firmly between his legs that one would think he was inappropriately happy to see Amin.
Ignoring the vice’s pitiful demeanour, Amin continued: “Uganda is suffering from the misrule of a man called Mujee. I would call him a life president, but he seems to be wedded to power. So let us call him a wife president.”
The students were ecstatic. Forgotten was Amin’s reportedly eight-year reign of terror characterised by widespread killing, torture and the very pauperization of the country. Close to 300,000 Ugandans, out of a total population of 12 million, were murdered by death squads of the Public Safety Unit and the State Research Bureau. Then there was the humiliating year of 1976 when Israeli commandoes raided Entebbe Airport to rescue 100 Israelis who had been taken hostage from a hijacked Air France plane.
Then there were Uganda’s bilateral relations with Tanzania, defined by Amin's regard for Julius Nyerere, then the president of Tanzania, as an old woman and a prostitute and his expectation that Queen Elizabeth would send him '' her 25-year-old knickers'' in celebration of the silver anniversary of her coronation.
Instead, Amin’s last days living a simple life in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he was often seen driving a white Chevrolet, were remembered. This is in addition to the fact that graduates are left jobless in today’s Uganda while government fat cats live in luxury.
Then there are the abductions and human rights abuses that have proven that Aminism was not the product of Amin. So Amin’s speech was hugely welcome. For Ugandans were now officially like Malcolm X’s field Negroes who when confronted in the field and told, “Let’s run.” They didn’t say, “Where are we going?” They said, “Any place is better than here.”
Disclaimer: This is a parody column