Come, pray in the beautiful new Ugandan church 

And so, we are into 2024. In three weeks, the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) and President Yoweri Museveni will celebrate their 38th anniversary in power.

 Putting aside how they have exercised that power, and the state of the country today, that is an impressive run. Alone, the NRM has been in power over one and a half times longer than the motley of previous governments combined. Usually, we would now focus on explaining how they have been able to hang on for so long.

Instead, we shall explore a separate question Ugandans don’t ask a lot: How long will it take the constitutional opposition in Uganda to win power? The question is not asked often partly because since independence, it hasn’t happened, so we have no history to guide us. If we look harder though, there are some breadcrumbs we could follow.

However, before we get there we need to look at the bigger issue; about the state of Ugandan society in which the politics plays out, in the 38th year of NRM rule. Ugandan society today is dynamic like only a few others in Africa. But that dynamism has not been political. It has been primarily social, meaning the health of the society, the relations between private societies, and the spaces where peoples’ heads are, are good.

However, the vehicle that makes them part of broader national contract, especially the management of the state, is wretched. First, hard as it might be to believe, Ugandan society has become more rational (even more scientific) and secular. For the first 30 years of the NRM, Uganda was dominated by all sorts of religions and pastors.

It began with Alice Lakwena, the rebel leader of the Holy Spirit Movement, who got her followers to believe that smearing themselves with shea butter would stop the government soldiers’ bullets. Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who took over her mantle, were less delusional but had an extremely perverted and violent view of fringe Catholic purity.

Outside the north, in the rest of the country, it was also a glorious age for miracle and instant- salvation-peddling pastors, who made massive fortunes. We shall not name them, but they built mega churches on top of hills and dominated the stories in the newspapers, TV, and headlines. It was they, not rich business people – or the mightily corrupt - who drove the flashiest cars in town.

Even President Museveni sought their approval and made a big deal when he persuaded them to visit the State House. The wane of the power of the pastors began around 2011, and they fizzled by about 2018. Today, Pastor Elvis Mbonye is virtually alone as the celebrity pastor in town. Even 10 years ago that was unthinkable. Nothing marks this change more than the fact that Museveni prizes the support of artists with names like Full Figure and Bucha Man, than a Pastor Kayanja.

It is a good thing. It is a transition to worldliness. New churches have emerged, but they are secular. The biggest of them is the self-care and fi tness church, the largest and most diverse movement (that defi es ethnicity and religion) in Uganda ever. Unlike the situation up to 10 to 15 years ago, there are now more gyms in Kampala, than churches.

It is mind-boggling the number of Ugandan running communities, who do an uncountable number of races in all directions. Even in my hometown of Tororo, there is a (secondhand) sports bicycle shop and a local cycling club. This movement has its temple. The body is the temple. We see it also at the Nyege Nyege Festivals and events like Sheilah Gashumba’s Kampala Brunch where young women and men celebrate what their mamas gave them with relish.

To these we shall return in future. The other thing that has happened, fuelled partly by the Internet and nearly 200 FM stations, is the rise of a new generation of local musicians – and comedians. Twenty years ago, I didn’t know of a single musician in Tororo who played popular music, let alone rap. Not too long ago, I went to a funeral vigil, and from around midnight up to around 4 am when the music stopped blaring, the DJ played Dhupadhola pop, hip hop, and rap. I had never heard any of the songs.

Later I asked a local fixer in Tororo, and after a while, he got me a flash disk with about 50 songs by popular musicians. The story is the same in the rest of Eastern Uganda, North, West Nile, Western, and most dramatically, Southern/Buganda region.

This cultural richness is part of the societal dynamism described earlier. However, all this innovation and creativity is not organising politics - which is one of the reasons it has succeeded. Next week, we will look at what has happened in the political opposition kingdom.  Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”.

Twitter@cobbo3