To NRA cassava, pastors preferred UPC’s goat

As God’s dog, I listened to Pastor Joseph Sserwadda telling an intriguing story at his 6am talk-show on Impact FM/Dream TV last Sunday. 

The year is 1982. About eight pastors, including Sserwadda and Robert Kayanja, have gone to Vice President Paulo Muwanga’s home. It seems the UPC government is suspicious about their antics, and they fear possible government harassment, although they have no connection with the rebels.

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Muwanga will be late for the appointment. Meanwhile, the Vice President’s wife is a perfect hostess.

The finest tea. A stuffed goat is turning slowly over the fire. Sserwadda swears that this barbecue remains the most delicious goat meat he has eaten anywhere.

Immaculately dressed, Paulo Muwanga arrived. He confirmed that the hospitality had been good. They talked, and Muwanga told the pastors that all their preaching was because they needed money.

About Museveni’s Bush War, Muwanga said that there could be no leniency with rebels whose mission was to overturn the government.

At their departure, Muwanga gave each pastor Shs100,000, a huge amount in 1982. Sserwadda said that no one had given him so much money before.

Muwanga is emerging as a cool generous man, forced by circumstances to play hard ball!

Ironically, joining the show, it was Gyagenda Ssemakula, a confessed UPC member/sympathiser, who removed the gloss from Muwanga’s cold-blooded barbarism, which had not spared Muwanga’s own sister.

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His nickname, ‘Gulyokereyo’, was based on his declared readiness to burn in hell, if his crimes helped UPC to retain power.
Fast-forward: May 29, 2022. Exactly 40 years later, after his talk-show, Pastor Sserwadda was to host Prime Minister Nabbanja at his Victory Church in Ndeeba. Nabbanja was representing President Museveni, ostensibly to thank God for protecting Uganda from excessive Covid-19 suffering. In reality, another scheme in our Vampire State.

Nabbanja handed over Shs20 million from State House and Shs10 million from her office, thanking her hosts for supporting ‘a…l…l’ the things the NRM government did. All.

Idi Amin’s rule, war with Tanzania, and now the Bush War, had brought very hard times. Under unprecedented shortages, inflation, displacement and human rights abuses, Paulo Muwanga was entertaining luxuriously, donating public money without a clear principle.

In 2022, the Museveni-Nabbanja establishment is doing the same.
By coincidence (?), Sserwadda described his luck under UPC on the same Sunday that NRM brought his miracle.

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However, at the Ndeeba function, the LC1 lady chairperson of the area literally begged Nabbanja to redeem her little office, which was in rent arrears for two months, at Shs150,000 per month. Her salary is a token, or an insult, or a temptation for corruption: Shs10,000 per month!

As an afterthought, Nabbanja obliged. But with thousands of insolvent and non-performing LCs across the country, can the prime minister run the system using loose change from her handbag?

Yet such was not among Sserwadda’s concerns. Nor the horrendous plunder of national resources. Nor the cycles of primitive political barbarism. His new expressed ambition was to see a public holiday specifically associated with Pentecostals, distinct from the established holidays marked by other (presumably inferior, thankless) Christians.

He proposed ‘Thanksgiving Day’ on April 2. As he observed, immediately next, and in contrast, to All Fools’ Day, which of course some believers allocate to non-believers.

On reflection, a perfect date. Next to each other, the April 1 fools will observe more closely why the April 2 false prophets always prefer to eat roasted meat from the hand of the oppressor than munch cassava in the comradeship of struggling citizens.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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