Author: Phillip Matogo. PHOTO/FILE
In 2002, Brazil won the World Cup. Ronaldo, the phenomenon, not the epiphenomenon, got two goals past German goalkeeper Oliver Khan in the cup winning match. Quite aside from the frighteningly gladiatorial atmosphere the players are dialed into, Brazil had to score against Khan. Most players would say: No-Khan-Do. Not Ronaldo. I watched that match in a Kamwokya bar. As I sipped beer, a straw poll was organised. One of the guys who was so high he could’ve personified a greeting asked the bar who they would elect president: Norbert Mao or Mugisha Muntu. The room exploded into monologues disguised as dialogues as “drunkos” of dizzying levels of inebriation made their pick. In a room awash with booze, some were swept away by the tide of the moment and declared they would vote the bartender, if their votes could be bought in “rounds”. In the end, Muntu won.
By a landslide. And not because the land seemed to slide beneath us on account of a drink-up that was “for World Cup”, as Kampalans say. Muntu won because these booze hounds were all bark, no bite. Well-travelled, as children of diplomats. They had lived on a steady diet of universally-held values espoused in egalitarian countries such as Denmark, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. That day, and every other day after work, they would implicitly toast to their generational wealth out of ever-present beer bottles. On Election Day, these types are usually too busy nursing hangovers to vote. A show of hands in a bar, no problem. But walking to a voting booth to tick “Muntu” is like extending a handshake into a prolonged bear hug. It is an inconvenience, an item intruding upon their ledger.
Ultimately, they are torn between who they want for president and who that candidate happens to be. Who they want is fashioned by the presiding notion that only candidate Museveni can take Uganda to new horizons. However, rather paradoxically, who candidate Museveni is presented as happens to be Muntu. Fiction is just more believable than fact. As army commander, he was known to be rule-bound. Thereby implying his fealty to the rule of law. As a politician, he comes across as detribalised yet rooted in an unspoiled rustic otherness. All things considered, he is a leader. Candidate Museveni is believed to be the same, but Muntu happens to be that. Regrettably, Muntu is the candidate for prosperity-loving, middle-of-the-roaders who hope Uganda reaches the skies, they just do not want to have to stick their necks out in order to witness it.
To them, the supreme value of property overrides all nationalistic sentiment. So they support the status quo, by simply not voting for the candidate they would have voted for if they thought their vote would count. This is what has crippled Muntu’s politics. His hand-on-heart supporters are stay-at-home voters. They are too busy turning a legitimate football team into the butt of their jokes: summarising the word “Arsenal” by uttering only its first syllable. In other words, they are otherwise engaged. This tells us that Muntu’s candidacy, if he is running, has not tapped into the imagination of his followers.
They are like a division without a division commander, demobilised by this decapitation. Muntu continually warns us about Uganda sliding back to the origins of its devastation. We live in dangerous times, he admits. One wonders, then, why he is not ready to live a little more dangerously by re-casting his potential candidature away from being the “sensible choice” to convincing his followers that he happens to be the choice they are convinced Museveni is.
The writer is a professional copywriter.
