Rogue pastors are good for NRM

Before I became God’s dog, American and other foreign pastors used to fly into Uganda supposedly loaded with the power of God.
Quick opportunity spotters rode on the wings of characters as laughable as Benny Hinn by fronting them as star miracle makers at their Pentecostal crusades.
Time is a great vindicator. Many of these preachers have confessed or been exposed to be frauds in their own countries. And their supposed miracles have been debunked.
Clearly, their enterprise was a performance art form, dramatically but superficially pasting selected biblical stories in today’s contexts, where many desperate people had immediate needs.

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Our pastors were ready to exploit these people, claiming to deliver miraculous health and wealth – through Jesus – just as the foreigners had done.
With the names of Jesus and God everywhere in these performances, many followers do not get it at all that the pastor is essentially doing what the witchdoctor does: lying. Both are frauds.

I already knew that God was resting. So I enlisted as His dog, warning against frauds using His name. It is hard. They are tireless, absolutely determined.
But that is understandable. It is their livelihood at stake. They are doing the only work they have become good at. Adding to their natural gifts as performers, some have spent months at bible schools being taught how to make God look awake and super-active in our world.
Although it is fairly easy to see through the fraud, the pastor knows that his charm and repetitive constructs will entrap enough feeble brains under his control. And he does not fear what his critics think.

From newspaper pictures, Pastor Joseph Collins Twahirwa, who is accused of defrauding and raping Ms Anda Saulite, a Latvian lady, is chiselled with good looks and dresses immaculately.
Uganda’s pastors are obsessed with looks, with clothes, with sexual attraction and marriage. The way they scream about eccentric sexuality, you would think that the tiny demographic of Uganda’s LGBT’s had suddenly exploded into millions of homosexuals.
They spend very heavily on their wardrobes but beg for money to clear essential bills, including those that keep their broadcast stations on air – and the pastors on display!
They congratulate each other (again on display!) when they happen to maintain (or appear to maintain) monogamous relationships, perhaps because fidelity is so rare in their celebrity-seeking lifestyles.

Pastors see demons in every human weakness, but I have not heard a single pastor driving out the demons of egoism.
This hollow religious sub-culture has inevitably produced many varicoloured predators and get-rich-quickly crooks.
Pastor Twahirwa has attracted a lot of attention probably because his case involved a European victim and the alleged extreme of rape.
But our pastors are perpetually designing and expanding channels of exploitation; from endless ‘seeds’ to targeted (single-purpose) prayers and anointments; and now 5-Star-priced dinners celebrating love!
Round the clock for 12 months; the central quest is how to lure their followers to pay more.

Recent suggestions by different contributors to this newspaper (that the government should consider enforcing strict guidelines for pastors to control exploitation) will probably yield nothing. 
It sounds cynical. But why should a government as corrupt as the NRM improve religion? It would rather incorporate the conspicuously leaderless army of pastors as partners in perversity; more evidence of degeneration everywhere.
Look: There are weevils in the police and Judiciary. There is rot in Parliament. There are crooks in the mosques and churches. Why not shut up about the ruling soldier-politicians? They do not look so outlandishly wicked after all.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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