Can professors and very big words cure NRM decay?

Prof Yash Tandon is a true Ugandan. And just as our roadside food vendors are dedicated to the chapatti theme, Tandon is apparently still milking his neo-communist ‘common people’ theme in his books, and applying some of his ideas on the local political scene as he used to do (it is rumoured) when helping former president Milton Obote with his pamphlets before Idi Amin disbanded the UPC show in 1971.

Tandon’s favourite ogre, imperialism dressed in neo-colonialism, is also still alive and well. Incidentally, this ogre is very useful as a punching bag, taking some of the pressure away from Africa’s corrupt despots.

On his own testimony (Sunday Monitor; August 29), Tandon is working on a project in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Being a professor, Tandon is supposed to be taken seriously. So, after taking us on a long sketchy tour of variously connected past events and bookish stuff (history?), when Tandon tells us that he is on the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU), heading the hunt for funds to finance PMDU, I was not supposed to laugh. But I laughed, and laughed. 

Yes, as government officials steal and waste taxpayers’ money, not to mention the cost of maintaining a semi-fascist order, you hire an avowed anti-neo-colonialist to beg for resources from the neo-colonialists.

Prof Tandon, you are not a serious man. You mean you wake up every morning, get into your car, chauffeur or self-driven, or jump onto a boda boda (to beat the jam) and report to Prime Minister Nabbanja that you have come to work on ‘Deliverology’ and the ‘Parish Concept’? I am quoting you.

We have all heard about the parish thing; another variation on Museveni’s idea of controlling people by making them think that wealth will be bestowed on them by his special intervention.

On the psychological level, Uganda’s parish model seems to be designed to make small people imagine money moving from a presidential sack, fly above the heads of middling officials, and land directly in the hands of the small people; the illusion that bureaucracy has disappeared.

That is the parish thing. But, Prof Tandon, what is deliverology? Are the goals of enriching parishioners, constructing roads, or delivering healthcare only achievable after a systematic application of a scientific theory, a philosophy (or an ideology) called ‘deliverology’?

You cannot be a clown like me and not laugh. Whether it was conceived under former Premier Ruhakana Rugunda, or under incumbent Nabbanja, and regardless of who dreamt up deliverology, take it from me that this must be the most grotesque, the ugliest and the most ridiculous linguistic concoction that one is likely to find anywhere in government policy papers.

As a nation, we must guard against enemies who write things in government literature that embarrass us. Otherwise, tomorrow someone will create monstrosities like ‘hakuna-muchezology’ or ‘hakuna-fujjology’, or ‘anti-pigology’, as the official formulations of the President’s philosophy of good governance.

More seriously, Prof Tandon should not waste scarce (neo-colonial?) resources on his proposed symposium. It will only generate more high-sounding verbiage to add to PMDU’s opaque stock, with its odd and puzzling ‘Anglican/Christian (?) references, which already sufficiently divert attention from the malaise of government dysfunction and corruption; a problem that has grown out of, not imperial/neo-colonial dependence, but sustained internal greed and incompetence. 

This is a process of decay Museveni perfectly understood and talked about 36 years ago. A symposium will not make him return to 1986, but it can be exploited by an NRM pretending to look for solutions.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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