Africa-Press – Uganda. On June 11, during the 6am talk show on Impact FM, where Tamale Mirundi is hosted by his worshipper, Gyagenda Semakula, Mirundi divulged that the Victory Church ‘apostle’ and Impact FM/Dream TV boss, Joseph Sserwadda, had called and told him about a threat (to Sserwadda).
The context of the alleged threat was the endless exposure of the odious activities, including incriminating recordings of (true or software-engineered) conversations of people close to President Museveni. Mirundi calls these people the ‘Mafia’ or the ‘Fellowship’.
Almost immediately, an angry Sserwadda called into the show and rebuked Mirundi for revealing the names of people in his narratives. Sserwadda demanded that Mirundi avoid names and talk about issues.
Sserwadda was being unfair. Mirundi was in fact working within the licence given to him by Impact FM/Dream TV. Names have been consistently presented as issues in his programmes.
Many listeners probably assume that exposure, personal attacks, including insensitive attacks on named people’s physical features, slander, blackmail, intimidation and terror-mongering are standard ingredients in the Friday talk show, which is titled: “Mirundi Mulalu, oba Mulamu?” Translated: Is Mirundi mad, or sane?
You would think that, as the station boss, Sserwadda understood what it means to ride a tiger. Does the fearless naming of individuals only become reckless when he is named?
Exactly two weeks earlier, by the sheer ferocity exhibited in its expression of hatred towards named individuals, the May 28 programme had violated all imaginable boundaries in civilised broadcasting; apparently to the satisfaction of Sserwadda and his crowd.
There is something ‘cheap’ about the taste of that crowd; cheap in both the moral and aesthetic senses; in ways analogous to the enjoyment of pornography.But so persistent is this vulgarity that it seems to serve a purpose in the mechanisms of NRM rule. How?
President Museveni sometimes boasts that he operates like a guerrilla against his political opponents. Presumably, this means that he sees his political opponents as traitors. So he has no qualms using conspiratorial methods (spying, deception, bribery, blackmail, ambush, violence and so on) to entrap or defeat his opponents, instead of competing with them in normal open contests. This makes them frustrated and hateful.
Secondly, Museveni’s capacity to surprise (praised by his admirers) can lead to arbitrariness on his part, and mistrust by senior colleagues who may feel entitled to participate in decision-making.
Demonised by the Opposition, and not trusted by the more credible NRM members, Museveni risks ending up with mostly family and despised hangers-on as his camp; opportunists, mercenaries, land thieves, shoplifters and a herd of weaklings.
This collapse of integrity may explain the bizarre paradox of a regime employing functionaries who spit fire and vow to kill named ‘Mafiosi’ in government, apparently to deceive the public that there is an ongoing war on corruption, and a President who protects and reappoints the same Mafiosi to preserve the vampire State.
The obscene talk about a Descendants Resistance Army (DRA); the idea that the corruption and impunity of 35 years has produced an upper class – or a caste – whose children have a birth right to control tomorrow’s Uganda; this DRA talk is not just the ultimate insult to living Ugandans, but the clearest testimony of the ideological bankruptcy of the NRM; the voice of a desperate ruler fumbling to fix the future.
DRA? The dead Bush War fighters must be turning in their graves.Tomorrow’s tragedy is that after today’s corrupt mediocrity, almost any DRA brute who grabs power can masquerade as a redeemer of the republic.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political [email protected]
