Karimojong iron sheets stolen? Stupid

Author: Alan Tacca. PHOTO/FILE

What you need to know:

  • Indeed, one might reason that the NRM people who are intimately connected to State House generally plunder in billions.
  • The NRM-operated system of government would only get seriously interested in the culprit if the stolen item was the State itself.

Let us suppose you have just safely walked out of the supermarket.
You have paid at the till for every item that was in the trolley.
You have not been harassed in any way by security. You deem yourself innocent.
Now, supposing you put your hand in one of your pockets and found three brand new handkerchiefs or as many pieces of underwear. Surprise!
You did not have the items on your shopping list. Perhaps you were drawn to them and compulsively picked them up, but then ‘absent-mindedly’ dropped them in your pocket instead of the trolley. And when you were paying for the items in the trolley, you did not ‘remember’ what you had ‘absent-mindedly’ done with the small clothes.

Well, after discovering these ‘free’ things in your pocket, what do you do?
Do you happily increase your pace homeward to add these items to your possessions?
Do you run back to the supermarket and explain what might have happened?
Were you genuinely absent-minded, or did you act instinctively?
What if a suspicious undercover supermarket operative followed you out on your way home and at some stage blew the whistle?
‘Thief…thief…Wuuyo …The man in the yellow shirt…’

What would you do?
A few weeks back, I wrote how appropriate it was – even if hazardous – that the colour of the clothes forced on our imprisoned criminals was the colour deliberately chosen by leaders of the ruling NRM as the party’s identifying colour.
Well, if the thief happened to be one of our NRM honchos, the supermarket whistle-blower would have wasted his time.
Why; because the man or woman he pursued would have been ideologically moulded into a hardcore remover of things that did not rightly belong to them, and to do so without feeling any shame.

Secondly, the NRM-operated system of government would only get seriously interested in the culprit if the stolen item was the State itself. By which I mean, the centres and symbols of power; military barracks, State House, Parliament, key communication infrastructure, the Operation Wealth Creation cash bunker or vault, and so on. Petty items stolen from a miserable supermarket would mean nothing. The shop can go hang.
Now, the recent systematic removal of roofing iron sheets meant for Karamoja by various ministers, who apparently turned the said sheets to whatever use their wisdom dictated, is just another detail in the catalogue of events that have made the NRM government resemble a fraternity of thieves.

The roll call of the culprits is astonishing. They are such senior officials, yet what each honcho hauled away is relatively small, considering the billions of shillings regularly stolen by our bigwigs.
Indeed, one might reason that the NRM people who are intimately connected to State House generally plunder in billions.
The NRM people less close to State House, but with big offices, are limited to plunder in tens and hundreds of millions, beans, goats and iron sheets.
And ordinary NRM functionaries or workhorses grovel around and grab whatever crumbs they can get their hands on; even underwear.

But the unanswered question is: You have these stolen or misappropriated items or cash, what would you do if the whistle went off?
Okay, if I was an NRM fat dog, or hyena, and the matter was specifically these funny iron sheets, I would fire back:
‘This is a vampire State. Didn’t you know? Have you lynched the princes who swallow dams, choppers, roads and whole hospitals? Are Karimojong manyatas roofed with iron sheets? Stupid. Bring the Karimojong goats.’


Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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