Are pastors called ‘Basumba’ for reasoning like Kasumba?
When I completed my primary education at a village school and went to Kings College Budo, I in effect jumped from cow-dung classroom floors to 1960s envy; complete with cricket pitches and tennis courts.
But the school also had an interesting ‘mythology’. One of the things from its mystical past was ‘kasumba’, a type of reasoning that was neither based on evidence nor followed the rules of logic.
Playfully, but unconsciously sharpening their power of reasoning, students used the expression to ridicule each other’s irrational arguments, although hardly anyone knew how ‘kasumba’ became the characterisation.
From my investigations, it seems there were two dogs on the upper sports ground. When the otherwise distracted owner checked on the two pets, there was only one. After a failed search, a labourer pointed to a large underground water tank near the playground. Someone had carelessly left the tank’s inspection cover open.
Since they could not see the dog anywhere, the labourer deduced – and convinced the rest – that it must have fallen in the tank. The wise man was called Kasumba. Fortunately, dogs being quite good swimmers, the animal would not drown. The school handyman put on his swimsuit, head flashlight and rope, and descended to rescue the dog.
When the handyman emerged, the puzzle remained. The dog was not in the tank.
In Kasumba’s mother tongue, an ordained Roman Catholic priest is called ‘Faaza’; from ‘Father’ in English. An ordained Anglican/Church of Uganda priest is called ‘Omwawule’; separated for reverence. Among the various Pentecostal groups, an ordained or often self-appointed pastor (pasita) is called ‘omusumba’; from the English ‘Shepherd’. But a ‘Faaza’ and ‘Omwawule’ are also sometimes informally called ‘basumba’. A shepherd, or ‘omusumba’, of course looks after sheep. In biblical narratives, the sheep’s docility was a desirable attribute. Believers could be led like sheep.
Nowadays, we despise the sheep, because it is rather stupid. We tend to extol free thought, even adversary thought. But the temperament of the sheep is exactly what the musumba ordered. If Health minister Ruth Aceng et al had the time to tune in the broadcast stations owned by our basumba, they would be astonished by the kind of reasoning these people and their followers live on. Pure ‘kasumba’.
Last Sunday, the three basumba who talk about their faith at the Impact FM early morning talk-show were in their most depressing form.
As usual, they pleaded that churches should be opened, because food markets and arcades had been opened, and those who went to the markets were the same people who would come to the churches. A dubious claim. But more importantly, the dynamic nature of human activity/movement dictates that every additional area you open compounds the risk of exposure. To understand this, you ask mathematicians; not a prophet. Pestering by the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda does not change the mathematics.
Our talk-show basumba then turned to the Covid-19 conspiracy theories. The wildly fanciful pictures of a ‘monster’ called Bill Gates and the nefarious ‘New World Order’; the biblical phantasmagoria in John’s Revelation; some weird number associated with the Beast and the anti-Christ; our talk-show brains were confusedly pouring out all this comical stuff as serious content, reaching a kind of consensus that they would reject any anti-Covid-19 vaccine from the West.
Their ‘kasumba’: Without a vaccine, Africans had not died in big numbers. Therefore God and their prayers must be protecting them.
Clearly, Mr Kasumba’s presence is unnecessary. Our basumba require only a virus to demonstrate ‘kasumba’ reasoning in the face of 21st Century problems.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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