Has Museveni taken and enlarged Omugabe’s magic?

Ugandans steal anything. ‘Big’ people steal half the money budgeted for constructing roads. ‘Small’ people steal the road signs.

To address corruption, Mr Museveni’s latest effort was to elevate ‘fishermen’; maybe novices with good intentions, but too naïve to fully comprehend the ramifications of the corrupt State. In any case, he has simultaneously rehabilitated some dark veterans, presumably to restore balance, should the fishermen get too clever.

Presidential media advisor Tamale Mirundi has also spent years spitting venom at the ‘mafia’. And although he says its underworld boss is very close to the First Family, Mirundi proclaims the gang’s final defeat with exactly the same regularity as he announces its resurrection.

Is it a game? 

Mirundi curses Mwenda for alleged tape mischief. Indeed, a human being who mischievously implicates anyone before an African president is like a killer who avoids a fair fist fight. Yet the President neither punishes Mirundi nor Mwenda.

Emboldened, Mwenda’s ‘mischief’ only grows. For instance, we commoners often heard Mirundi talking lovingly about the ‘Muhoozi Project’. Mirundi and the First Son were like blood brothers. But experts in T-shirt symbolism claim Mwenda has ‘stolen’ this project too. It is jjoogo, total contempt; yet Mirundi does not rip out Mwenda’s throat.

Then there was ‘Kajiiji’. Kajiiji became Kajiiji, until Mirundi assured Ugandans that Kajiiji would not appear in Museveni’s post-election Cabinet. Yet people who claim to know ‘Kajiiji’ say he is still there, as if Museveni is clarifying: “I do not do things at anyone’s ntoli, or behest. Kajiiji is my cadre, not a Mafioso. Who anyway is not a crook?”

That is how Museveni works.

I recently wrote about Museveni’s officials who literally live on talk shows, praising themselves. 

A few days ago, Jinja RCC Kyeyune Ssenyonjo described how, when he was still in Buikwe, he frantically and successfully worked the phone to get a child molester arrested. But when he arrived at the scene, bribes had already changed hands, and the minor’s parent(s) compromised. Kyeyune gave up.

Eh? In my stupidity, I thought that bribery had just increased the number of crimes Kyeyune now had to deal with.

In short, Kyeyune had worked very hard, then not worked at all!

Economic Monitoring minister Peter Ogwang recently declared all the districts corrupt.

So, what were the RDCs and RCCs doing? RDC Fred Bamwine was asked on Impact FM/Dream TV.

Bamwine recited the culprits: the police, the prosecutors, the courts, and especially democracy. Except himself and Museveni. 

Someone called into the programme, saying that after Museveni’s 35 years in power, only another leader could fight corruption.

As a true stooge, Bamwine’s host, Gyagenda Semakula, ‘rescued’ the RDC with a silly reply, arguing that even the caller could get rich after 35 years of failure. Bamwine used the cue to give more ridiculous analogies.

In his October 28 broadcast, President Museveni recalled his encounter with some village women after Milton Obote abolished kingdoms in 1966. The women could not imagine an Ankole without Omugabe. Museveni taught them about a new Ankole, with them as ‘wealth creators’; just like his desired Uganda.

Making oblique references to ‘parasites’, it was hard to grasp what exactly Museveni meant. He disowned the LC officials, because these were elected. But, curiously, he did not disown himself, also an ‘elected’ leader.

However, if it is parasites as we understand parasites, his regime has created more parasites (per capita) than all Uganda’s kings created before 1966; parasites who, like the Omugabe’s village women, cannot visualise a Uganda without Museveni.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.

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