We can’t mine copper anymore, so what’s wrong with mining ministers?

I was born in Kilembe Hospital in Kasese District. I used to brag that this alone made me the most brilliant idler in Uganda until I met Bisiika. Now, unlike me, Bisiika has ancestral ties to DR Congo, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda. Put another way, he has a katogo of genes from all those countries, making him so good upstairs that he is considered an oracle.If you are reading this and you don’t know Bisiika then you probably do not know that there is someone who can solve the riddle of the chicken and the egg. The other day I feared for his life when he foretold the purgatory itinerary of a regional leader.Soon after that oracle, Pierre from down south-west stretched his leg and hand concurrently, reached for his torch and switched it off as he kicked the bucket.

Then Tanzanians started making up how their big man was seen attending Mass and visiting this or that place until they couldn’t hide the truth anymore.

Anyway, the other day one of the disturbed minds consulted Bisiika’s oracle over a small matter. Evelyn wondered if the copper deposits in Kilembe were depleted so that mining should just cease like that.

“Did Uganda run out of copper or is it being mined like gold?” she asked Bisiika.
The man who could foretell deaths of strongmen offered Evelyn a gold necklace or bracelet instead. If you asked a rock which of the revival of Uganda Airlines or Kilembe Mines was easier and made more sense, the rock would speak.

In October last year, Sarah Opendi visited the remains of Kilembe Copper Mines in her capacity as State minister for Energy and Mineral Development. She revealed that the government was working to revive the thing that has been dead since the 1970s.
Someone should have told Opendi that in this government, it’s easier to mine and process ministers whereupon the residue is discarded with disdain. But that someone who could have forewarned her is Bisiika. He didn’t.
Now Opendi is like mineral residue. Discarded.

People should just come to terms that Kasese is near Congo, the cradleland of minerals. You can’t convince me that the copper mines in Kasese became idle like this forever deputy premier when even Ssekandi was dumped.
If Uganda really had copper, the mines would have long been back running and even exploited to nothingness or we would be doing it “like gold” as Evelyn posed.

As someone who has ever confidently walked away with a belle from Bisiika, I can confidently say that there has never been any minerals in Kasese to begin with. There is no way we would be sitting on copper when the advent of electric cars has led to global demand for copper.

Kasese borders Congo, remember?
But there is another possibility, that this government has no time for mineral resources but is only interested in mining human minerals packaged as ministers. The process is the same. Pick a Ssebugwawo here and dump the excess eyebrow pencil wannabe and traitors of the Lord Mayor.

Then you recycle someone who knows a thing or two about how to divert medical funds at a time Covid-19 is running the global economy with trillions of shillings exchanging treasuries.

Meanwhile, there are these species that go around placing full page ads in the media to claim a top office as good for a woman. Slap them with a carrot. It hurts but they can eat it as they cry when they realise a carrot is sweet like the sight of a woman sipping ajon from a calabash to celebrate the displacement of a seemingly politically expired tortoise.

And the one who said she did not want a copper necklace but a gold-studded seat, you just task her with overseeing the chimney in the copper smelting plant so that her voting bloc say, “Abaino, Mama waife ali mukintu.”
Yes, to hell with Kilembe Mines. The times have changed. It’s more politically fulfilling to mine ministers.