Illustration. Eddie Mutwe. REPRESENTATIONAL PHOTO
Eddie Mutwe’s beard has been moved from the basement, where Runyankole lessons come with a close shave, to another location. Oh yes, his lustrous beard is currently swept under the rug. We are not sure whose rug it is, but reports have it that the rug belongs to the CDF.
He reportedly purchased it after he found out that Kakwenza might have escaped from Uganda with the help of a flying carpet. So that’s how the CDF ended up with a rug that was previously moustacheless.
However, Mutwe’s fierce and bushy beard has changed that. After giving security officials a fright after they mistook the beard for a jihadi beard, it grew further in prominence and personality.
This is when the beard reportedly went rogue. It avoided barbers as it walked the razor’s edge of potentially looking like a caveman’s facemask. In September 2018, for instance, police arrested Mutwe’s beard in Arua after mistaking it for the Afro beneath Osama bin Laden’s jaw. It was held for a longer period than effective lessons in Runyankole will allow.
So, back then, the heavy beard had not yet learnt how to pronounce “lockdown” as “rockdown”, as required in basic Runyankole. If it had learnt the language, it would realise that there is no democracy in a country where “elections” are pronounced like they are an enlarged and rigid state of things.
Mutwe’s beard is not the only beard in history to have been targeted by security forces. The CDF will tell you how one of his heroes, Fidel Castro, found that his own beard was on a wanted list.
In 1960, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tried to get rid of Castro’s beard. They tried dusting his boots with thallium salts — which would have made Castro's Mabira Forest-esque beard fall out.
This attempted “de-bearding” may appear foolish to you. However, Castro’s beard was reportedly not so flippant about it. You see, the CIA believed Castro’s iconic beard was central to his charismatic persona and something which ironically saved him from hairy situations. The Cuban people loved it and would urge Castro to consider any attempt at cutting it off as ‘sheer’ madness.
The plan to send Castro’s beard on permanent leave would begin by the dusting of Castro’s sizeable shoes with thallium salts, as said before. What was not said before is how these salts would have caused a chemical reaction intended to induce hair loss, depriving Castro of his beard and his swag.
Castro’s beard’s African relative, Mutwe’s beard, now finds itself in similar hot soup. It has been targeted for possible subversive activities. But we all know the truth. Mutwe’s beard outgrew the CDF’s moustache in appeal. This sent shockwaves through official Kampala, thereby throwing the succession battle wide open.
That’s because beards are what define power in today’s politics. Not in Uganda, where we have never had a president with a full beard. Maybe that will change if we get our first female president, who knows? Anyway, in America, the vice president is changing the facial hair game. The Wall Street Journal reported JD Vance as the first major US leader in almost a century to have facial hair.
Harry S Truman, the 33rd US president, serving from 1945 to 1953, wore a goatee while in office in 1948. Charles Curtis, the VP to President Herbert Hoover from 1929 to 1933, had a moustache and was the last vice president to have facial hair.
Anything associated with a power that’s not their power scares the powers that be in Uganda. So Mutwe’s beard, with its obvious association to powerful beards in the US, had to cause some kind of a ruction.
Still, everybody agrees that a beardless Mutwe is not the same as a bearded Mutwe. So, the CDF must refund Mutwe’s beard.
If Mutwe were truly a criminal, the CDF could just colour his beard in FDC-blue and declare him a character of violent disposition straight out of a Charles Perrault story. But he’s not a criminal; he’s a victim of moustachioed men whose jealous facial hairs want to be like his beard when they grow up.
