WE NEED TO SKIP WITH A NEW ROPE: PASTOR BUGINGO CAN ATTEST TO IT

By Godwin Muwanguzi

I remind you: the hawk swoops on every chick—black, red, or yellow. So, you might fold your hands and laugh when your neighbour’s chicks go missing or when the adversary drinks their blood, but someday, the hawk will return, and it will devour all your chicks while your neighbours watch from a distance. 

When the country’s pillars are loosened and the centre holds no more, when wrong is right and right is treasonous, and when the language most understood is gunfire and slandering of the vulnerable, then citizens should bury their differences and speak truth to power—for such an ailing political system recognises no political associations, religious denominations, or academic acuity, but it proliferates and soon imbibes everyone. 

It’s no longer a secret that our country is an abode of inequity and that it requires nothing but a sober mind to see that the longtime captain is eventually sinking the ship because, even when he takes the wrong route, a few sycophants pat his shoulder and say: Captain tova ku main. It is no longer news that Uganda, under the NRM regime, has become a headless arrow in a bloody battlefield, where the warriors only have to save their energy by kneeling before their enemies and saying their last prayer, waiting for their deaths. 

We don’t have to whisper about the mediocrity that has become a competency in the NRM clumsy government; the talking corruption in every sector; the hitmen who have claimed more lives than COVID-19 that forced our pseudopatriotic president to shut down the country, giving room to educated thieves in different ministries to loot the national resources artfully—we don’t have to hide in houses under our rived beds before speaking out—these are facts: our country is a mess, and we should call it for what it is. 

The perpetual 2023 is worth reminiscing about—it was a year of exposing the regime’s filth; the parliament approved a supplementary budget for the statehouse, with our roads in the capital city having mouths that would devour cars, or send a young woman into menopause before her time; we fought homosexuality tooth and toe, as if it were the only vice in the country, ignoring corruption; we still witnessed multiple disappearances of the National Unity Platform supporters, of which some lost lives, just like it was the case in 2022 and 2023 respectively, which years we would call “The time forthe Devil’s feast; when the regime derived its pleasure from torturing Ugandans”; and the death of Isma, aka Jajja Ichuliand Sobi, all killed after praising the regime for its political stability—the list is long. 

And now that we have just started 2024, a year that should have been one of hope and reform, the antique patterns of the previous years trail us; a mouthy pastor, who has been praising Museveni’s regime for creating a safe environment—specifically one that prolongs his thuggery, escapes death’s grip as an unidentified assailant shoots at him, claiming his driver’s life. Pastor Aloysius Bugingo, for quite a  long time, has made the opposition a fragment of his heavenly gospel—he has called Mr Kyagulanyi gay and said that Muhoozi and his father are the only Ugandans who can propel the nation to Jerusalem. In whatever case, he is entitled to his opinion, except to dehumanise the innocent and spearhead criminality, that at last feasts with him. 

It has, eventually, become a culture among the Ugandan elite class, including the clergy—they only focus on what benefits them and somehow think siding with the government protects their loot from the wrath of the poor Ugandans. They disparage whoever stands up against their master, thinking that the dog of the king is the king of all dogs. Sadly, these people know the truth but are not willing to pay the price of standing up for the truth. 

Now the rumour has it that Aloysius Bugingo is in the hospital, nursing wounds, and at the same time grieving the death of his driver—this should be a pill that brings him back to his conscience. As he spends time with his family and celebrates having survived, he should answer the following questions: Who owns guns in this country? Is the country safe under Museveni, as he has always said? Did the NUP supporters deserve death for standing against tyranny? Do we need change to sort out the country’s mess? And if he can answer these many questions, he will learn to sympathise with the Olivia Lutayas and Yasin Kawumas of this country. Otherwise, victims of his master’s brutality will have no kind words for him, even when he fights for his life in the ICU. 

As Martin Niemöller, the theologian, said in his poem “They first came for the Communists” during his fight against Nazism in the late 1930s, no one is safe, and if we fold hands while people are being killed or detained without charge or trial—because it is not us—the next time it might be us, and no one will be there to speak or stand for us. So with the limited powers we have, let’s speak against the lawlessness that eats up our country. Injustice doesn’t know race, religion, or social status—it crunches everyone, and to put a knife on all this, we ought not to knot an old rope as it may continue to break as it has always for over thirty-seven years; all we need is to skip with a new rope. 

By Godwin Muwanguzi (Novelist & Poet)

godwinemuwanguzi2007@gmail.com