Satire: The Mafia calls archbishop for a corruption chat

The archbishop implored people occupying public offices to refrain from engaging in corruption.

However, speaking during the Easter Sunday service, the archbishop explained that that those who attempt to combat corruption often find themselves targeted by their colleagues. He has a point: fighting corruption is a lonely road.

It is a road that your colleagues will not join you on. Instead, they will make sure your emails headed “Let Us Fight ‘Chai’ now” are spammed.

That way, they can always say they forgot your emails as they suffer from Spam-nesia. 

Anyway, after the archbishop’s speech, the Mafia got concerned. Not the Italian Mafia, but the Matooke Mafia.

Yes, the Matooke Mafia is the mafia you often hear about when people are talking about shadowy Ugandans who pull the levers of power when it comes to the president getting elected or his opponents finding themselves unalived. 

Whereas the Italian Mafia is organised around families each with a boss or don assisted by an underboss, lieutenants, and soldiers while the supreme authority of all the families is called capo di tutti capi, or “boss of all bosses,” Uganda’s Mafia is less sophisticated. 

It can be organised around several office attendants who want to make a “difference” when purchasing office supplies. So when you run afoul of their “enjawullo”, you have upset that Mafia. 

It works this way all the way to the top of the food chain where office supplies suddenly become known as iron sheets.

And, at that level, office attendants transfigure into the top government officials who love iron in their “chai” because it’s “the sheet”, as young people say. 

This Matooke Mafia called the Archbishop to remind him that they are doing God’s work. Because if they never indulged in “bad”, how would people be able to tell it apart from “good”? 

Theirs is a public service reminding people that bad governance is there so people know that good governance has everything to do with a dietary deficiency of iron sheets when it comes to “eating”. 

“I see,” replied the archbishop. “So you are doing God’s work by doing the devil’s bidding? This is as enlightening as the Illuminati, of which my cat ‘Brian’ is a member. How did my cat join the Illuminati? Well, I spell my cat’s name wrongly. I write Brain instead of Brian. So the Illuminati thought they were recruiting a brain instead of a Brian with no brains.”

The Matooke Mafia, realising they were not getting anywhere with the archbishop, threatened physical violence. 

“We warn you archbishop. We have the Karate kicks we learnt when practicing corruption. Oh yes, you may know taekwondo but when know Chai kwon do. So beware!”

They then hung up as the archbishop asked for whoever was in charge of the offertory bags to bring them to him. 

Clearly he was concerned that the church Mafia was a reverse church mouse. That means they were as rich as a church mouse is poor. 

When the offertory bags arrived, he scanned the contents for any green fingerprints…the tell-tale sign that the Matooke Mafia had touched them. 

It appeared that only two cents were missing. That’s because nobody wanted to offer their two cents on how much money was originally in the bags. 

This is the problem with Ugandans; he said under his breath, they do not want to put any money where their mouths are when it comes to going beyond lip service in combatting corruption. 

So there are only cheques and no balances when it comes to their transactions with the corrupt: themselves.  

“Where is the balance? There was more in our offertory,” the archbishop lamented. 

At that point, a young priest reminded the archbishop: “Your Excellency, I think the correct term is ‘change’ not ‘balance’.”

To which the archbishop solemnly nodded before declaring, “Where is the change?”

As soon as the president got wind that the archbishop wanted change, he sent him a hefty brown envelope. 

Miraculously, the Archbishop changed his tune. 

“Corruption is the curse of unshared blessings, but since the president has shared…we now see chai-to-chai, I mean eye-to-eye,” he revealed.