Prime
Gen Nalweyiso can try making gangster films
Author: Alan Tacca. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- According to Mirundi, Nalweyiso and Enanga should have never openly admitted that a criminal like Sipapa had been working with serving soldiers and exploited his contacts with State power.
Infected from above, many Ugandan bigwigs imagine they are still greatly relevant when they reach retirement, instead of retreating with dignity to do other things.
Again, from above, they sometimes acquire the grandiose title of ‘presidential advisor’ to nourish their delusion. Never mind that many admit they never in any way ‘advise’ the President.
Perhaps to prove their standing, but inadvertently exposing the uncoordinated thinking in their own government, President Museveni’s advisors sometimes fight each other.
So, just as the Speakers of Parliament and the Prime Ministers were cursing each other over the Nyege Nyege festival, media presidential advisor Tamale Mirundi was ranting to eject security presidential advisor Lt Gen Proscovia Nalweyiso from her swagger bubble.
In his radio/TV chat exhibitions, Mirundi thinks Nalweyiso is not a serious General. He has been spitting such acidic scorn that Nalweyiso – and police spokesman Fred Enanga – may have no faces left.
Apparently, their crime was ‘openness’. According to Mirundi, Nalweyiso and Enanga should have never openly admitted that a criminal like Sipapa had been working with serving soldiers and exploited his contacts with State power.
The wisdom from Mirundi’s head is that the security duo should have parroted the standard myth that there were no criminals in the army.
So, do you clean the army (and maybe the country) by denial, by covering up, by diversion? Is this government by State-crafted lies, by propaganda?
But just as the Speakers improved Nyege Nyege ticket sales, Mirundi tickled the interest of people who would generally ignore the lady General.
Among other details from various sources, The Observer (September 14-20) reported Nalweyiso vowing to fight Uganda’s criminal gangs.
Ah…ah…Wait! I feared that the retired General might have been watching gangster movies and got carried away.
One of the favourite themes in cinema involves a specially gifted retired law enforcer being assigned (by a private or public entity) to track and eliminate notoriously elusive and violent gangster(s).
The gangsters are killed or rounded up. The retired tough guy returns home, perhaps bruised, but victorious.
Now, retired Lt Gen Nalweyiso is probably very gifted, but her field is not specialised police work. And she is not some 25-year-old commando, or an ultra-fit street gunfighter ready to venture into and navigate the dark alleys and sewage-choked drainage channels in our deep slums; the filthy ecosystem in which she would have to battle some of our hardened stone, dagger and gun-wielding criminals.
A man like Sipapa (which literally means a person who does not rush) lies low, observing the situation, very much like a leading Bush War expert recommended when the Covid-19 bug invaded. And the next thing you see is a story for cartoonists and historians.
Furthermore, the fabric of the vampire State; its high impunity, gross inequality and rampant joblessness, the cloth through which the criminal thread is woven, has not been reformed.
It is hard to visualise Nalweyiso tearing up this fabric and succeeding where she and other generals failed when she was in full active service.
So, why not get out of the Ugandan anti-retirement box? Think Hollywood. Nalweyiso can make gangster films in which she plays good guys.
Being fiction, she can fix the plots and her exploits as she wants. Because it is not real life, the dangerous parts can be played by stunts.
And, of course, the blood from wounds she sustains in action would be tomato sauce. After the cameramen have left, she can scoop up the stuff and literally eat it with her potato chips.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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