Writer: Alan Tacca. PHOTO/FILE
One feature that Pentecostal pastors share with witchdoctors is that their involvement with demons is very central.
Christianity and most other religions make some kind of reference to the personification of evil, but serious thinkers know that evil spirits or demons are fabled/imaginary figures that have no autonomous existence operating outside the mind.
As in medieval times, the more primitive religious mind today easily subscribes to demons and the supposed power to exorcise them. Your pastor and witchdoctor claim to have that power. Whether one works in the name of the Holy Spirit and the other with African spirits is immaterial.
Both are lying. This brings us to another feature shared by many of our pastors and witchdoctors. They intimidate other people by cursing, making themselves appear powerful by instilling fear. So, if you believe them, they can free you from evil spirits, and they can summon evil spirits or push God Himself to ruin you. Or even, apparently, to damn a sports stadium like Namboole. For much of 2024, the Victory Church pastors had been showering the army (UPDF) with praises and flattery for the renovation work on the national stadium.
In December, Namboole seemed ready to host Victory Church’s 2024/25 ‘passover’ prayer binge for the first time since the Covid-19 lockdown. But their relationship rapidly went bad when the Namboole establishment unceremoniously stopped the arrangement. If God was not in a state of rest and had counted the times the pastors and their sympathisers have cursed Namboole since that cancellation, He might have done them a good turn by planting a volcano under the stadium.
Well, there has been no volcanic explosion, but the men of God have been publicly rejoicing that the stadium has, after all, failed (as they allege) to meet the requirements for top competitions like Afcon. According to them, the Namboole establishment is being punished for treating them and God with contempt.
This is pure superstition. And wishful thinking; the imagination that God is part of their unforgiving meanness. As God’s dog, checking on His condition every day, I know that God has not stirred to do mischief anywhere. Moreover, even when He was young and active, God – Yahweh – did not think favourably of being worshipped in sports arenas.
That was for Hermes, the Greek god of sporting prowess. And perhaps Nike, the winged goddess of victory (no pun intended) in musical, athletic and military competitions. Sports stadia are pagan temples where humans flock to worship immortals like Usain Bolt, Messi, Nadal or Akii Bua, and on whose turf God Yahweh’s pastors were encroaching in the case of Namboole.
However, just as the gods Hermes and Nike are comatose and did not sabotage the 2024/25 ‘passover’ for encroachment, God Yahweh is resting and could not punish Namboole management for contempt, even if the stadium had been His temple. More seriously, the realities of Namboole have nothing to do with gods. The facility has been abused since its early days. Around 2017, a prominent politician from eastern Uganda owed Namboole over Shs700m. Did he eventually pay?
Today, competent accounting would probably put renting the arena for 24 hours at around Shs1 billion. Connected opportunists want it for a song. Maintenance? Repairs? Development works? Well, taxpayers. If Namboole’s managers are not good or straight enough as the pastors have been broadcasting, who in Uganda is good or straight enough? The pastors are not different. Where are the hundreds of disabled people claimed to have been miraculously healed at Namboole? They are ghosts.
Mr Tacca is a novelist and socio-political commentator.
