Did Nema mark Fools’ Day?

Relax. We have done just over one-fifth of the 21st Century. So there is plenty of time before 2100 AD.
From a different angle, we live in very demanding times, and we have wasted almost a quarter of this century. So we are running out of time.

Some Western flatterers refer to this as the African century. And, as expected, many deluded Africans grin with satisfaction.
I say the believers are deluded – or kind of mad – because the leaders sitting at many of Africa’s different steering-wheels are lingering about, or exhausting themselves in such self-destructive endeavours that they cannot make Africa leap to seize its century.
Contemplating the wars, natural disasters, diseases and their huge socio-politico-economic effects, serious countries engage dedicated thinkers to develop solutions to save those countries from chaos and collapse. 

In contrast, many African countries have rulers whose obsession is how to steal the next election. Hovering around those rulers are merchants of fantasy and fake prophets peddling superstition instead of more scientific accounts of our difficult world.
For instance, when fierce storms and landslides recently devastated parts of the Americas and south-eastern Africa, I heard some of our pastors parroting the patently ridiculous interpretation that, in Brazil, God was unleashing his wrath over the excessive ‘sin’ at that country’s last Carnival. And the combination of global catastrophes was supposedly conclusive evidence that the present world is ending, with Jesus coming back.

Too many Africans shape their lives around this kind of crap, instead of consciously striving to construct ideas that can make Africa triumph over its chronic duplicity and backwardness.
Uganda is part of this pathetic Africa, in which drought, rain and landslides are widely believed to come from God.
Now, once upon a time in this Uganda, an outfit called Nema (National Environment Management Authority) was created. Nema is not a fiction. It is the country’s designated watchdog over the environment.

Wherever you see swamps or large tracts of wetland that have been filled with soil and developed into processing and low-tech assembly factories, you can safely assume that the relevant Nema officials have been napping. Or they were on their guard but were persuaded that it was all right to invade these natural water sponges.
Persuaded, or ‘persuaded’. A beautiful word; don’t ask questions.

When previously protected forests are mowed down on an industrial scale, you can assume the same. Nema napping; or Nema ‘persuaded’.
The polythene bags and plastic bottles found lying everywhere and clogging all our storm weather channels are partly Nema’s marvellous handiwork; or anti-work.
But Nema now resembles a humongous giant waking up. Being so big, the exercise is like a slow motion spectacle on a borderless virtual screen.

Wow!
Again, being so big, the details are startlingly sub-real.
If you take a motor vehicle out on the road and are caught without a waste-paper (or waste-plastic?) basket in the vehicle, or if you dump all sorts of things in the wrong places, you will be fined Shs6 million (more than $1500) – or something like that – on the spot.

This means that if you have a relatively old car with not-such-good resale value, it is cheaper to abandon the car and go buy a similar vehicle!
The sins described by Nema and corresponding fines go in that fashion, up to billions of shillings.
This theatre started – or was supposed to start – yesterday. It was perfect timing on a continent determined to do nothing realistic to seize its century. So Nema has displayed an unexpected sense of humour, because yesterday was Fool’s Day.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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