Can God bring justice,  security to violent Uganda?

Author: Alan Tacca. PHOTO/FILE

What you need to know:

After the assassination attempt on Gen Katumba Wamala, almost every religious worker claims to know exactly what God thinks.

  • Unfortunately, they present a God who sounds unreasonable.

Apart, perhaps, from army Generals, who President Museveni once reportedly said do not get devastated, most people get deeply troubled by a death in their circle.

People in the religious industry tap into this emotional wound to reduce (or increase) the misery of the bereaved, and to have their day in the sun.

After the assassination attempt on Gen Katumba Wamala, almost every religious worker claims to know exactly what God thinks.
Unfortunately, they present a God who sounds unreasonable.

The religious workers say that it was God who preserved Katumba, and so Katumba should thank God. 

Most of them add that Katumba was preserved because he is a decent God-fearing man who has not completed his tasks on earth.

If this reading of God’s mind is correct, did the General’s daughter, Brenda Nantongo, and his driver, Haruna Kayondo, not deserve divine protection? 

A small man, Kayondo’s story is often ignored. But Nantongo was reportedly also a decent God-fearing person whose last utterance was “Jesus”. At 32, had she completed her tasks on earth? 

True, the religious workers reply, Nantongo was God-fearing, but her allotted days had run out. And her people must thank God for those days.

You can see the contradiction: If the four people in that fateful SUV lived or died according to a set timetable (predestination), then Katumba and his bodyguard’s last day(s) had not come. 

Their being alive was not because of a special divine favour. It is, therefore, irrational to thank God for their preservation; as it would be ridiculous to thank God that June 13 is not June 20.

God must be simple enough for ordinary people to understand. If God now needs exotic theological spin support, He has lost His supposed spiritual energy and socio-political relevance. This happened to the Babylonian, the Greek and Roman gods. And it is happening to Abraham’s God.

Our friends who variously describe themselves as Evangelical, Pentecostal or Charismatic, are trying to resuscitate (revive) the deity by fraudulent neo-pagan manipulation. 

Tune into the preaching and worship sessions on their radio/TV networks, especially after midnight, and you will be astonished by the extremes to which weird human behaviour can be stretched. You will even understand better why Covid-19 scientists keep places of worship closed.

The fact that God (like all gods) is a human invention does not necessarily make Him irrelevant. What undermines Him is the growing (again human) recognition that He is powerless.

Brenda Nantongo was probably a victim of travel arrangements and seating changes that have nothing to do with God, unless He is a God of malice.

There is a minority interpretation, only heard indirectly from the priests; that God took Brenda and preserved Katumba, so that Katumba might ‘suffer’ for remaining silent in the face of political oppression.
That, too, only makes sense if God is a sadist, with no real power over the oppressors.

Quite simply, Brenda took Katumba’s bullets from an assassin’s weapon, just as many other Ugandans have taken ‘stray’ bullets from weapons owned by the State.

Ugandans could benefit from glancing at modern Western Europe, which has very little God (only about five per cent people pray), but has plenty of democratic space, plain secular decency, and very little internal political violence.

Towering above ordinary Ugandans, are the Generals, who control Uganda. The citizens can choose to squarely face that reality, or languish in the delusion that if they pray hard enough, a commanding reasonable God will bring them more justice and more security.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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