Author: Alan Tacca. PHOTO/FILE
There is something about Uganda that has been more or less normalised. It is the death of plain honesty.
Powerful political leaders, senior government officials, business people, different professionals and academic administrators now very often thrive on methodical dishonesty like ordinary crooks and go scot-free. Sometimes they even get glorified. Those citizens who worry about Uganda sometimes put their hope in the sermons of our religious leaders.
But about two weeks ago, a friend with whom we were schoolmates passed on. A special afternoon funeral service was held at a Church of Uganda outfit not far from Makerere University, and not far from the home of the deceased.
Hundreds of people attended, and a handsome cash collection was made.
According to a minor official at the church, the (written or unwritten) practice in the Church of Uganda is to announce the amount collected, to retain 10 percent and pass on the bulk of the money to the bereaved family.
However, whispers claimed that about Shs4m was collected, but no figure was announced. Secondly, Shs500,000 was given to the bereaved family.
If these things are true, the church got a midweek windfall of about Shs3.5m, and the bereaved family (which was feeding a huge gathering for days) was short-changed.
Why so many Ugandans expect – and even demand – free meals at funeral gatherings is for another day.
When in close proximity with death, mortals are perhaps least inclined to resist the manipulative power or question the basic honesty of their priests.
I am reminded of another funeral I had attended in the Matugga area on Bombo Road just over a year ago.
A Church of Uganda clergyman had just finished the normal sepulchral routine. The departed old lady had been returned to the mineral state where dust and ashes belong, and the mourners were beginning to make the sombre journey from the graveyard.
Completely novel to me, the presiding priest had hurriedly left the graveyard and set up a mini neo-evangelical performance in the compound.
Imitating Pentecostal pastors, the priest was blowing his trumpet, exalting himself as a superior spiritual person.
He intimidated non-Christians and challenged moderate and lukewarm Christians to declare that they had become (saved) fanatics there and then.A number of hands went up.
But most astonishing, the priest now cunningly started an open-air session of blessings-for-cash!
Death from the graveyard was brandishing his teeth and roaming about, perhaps contemplating the order of future victims in his grim enterprise.
To many ordinary mourners, the man of God was standing between damnation in hell and the beauty of heaven after death. This was their moment, a great opportunity.
Moreover, the priest was also asking each supplicant to name their most urgent earthly desire, which he assured them would soon be realised as he laid his hand on their heads, one after another.
The queue was long, and the money accumulating in an empty mineral water carton.
Greed was dancing in his eyes, his voice impatient, and the blessings blatantly superficial.
Ugandans are used to a corrupt political elite that has organised their country into a vampire state. They are also accustomed to the comically ballooned and sometimes weirdly tragic pretences of many of our pastors and witchdoctors in the pursuit of wealth and status.
As Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba gets distracted in different battles, he may not realise that his Church could little-by-little slide from episcopal control and creep into the generalised mess of a dishonest society, further puncturing the myth that religion is the mother of integrity.
Alan Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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