For that is the life of money. Perambulating toward whoever lays claim to it. Last week, we the people awoke to news of a man, a well-paid man, a highly placed man, who claimed a perambulating Shs 500 million.
The man sat at a table as expansive as the colonizers’ conference when they laid out pre-colonial Africa and served themselves generous swathes of glorious Africa. Now, this man in his day job is a leader, an elected leader who supposedly opposes prosperity sponsored by corruption and impunity.
The people are seeing red – how could a leader who carried a bulky title, LEADER OF OPPOSITION; capture Shs 500 million all for himself?
Ideally, the opposition should not exist merely to perambulate about opposition. The opposition should reflect a viable alternative to the incumbent ruling party. The opposition should not sit at the table and quietly join the chomping of national resources. How that lofty expectation meets the insidious reality is where accountability starts.
In defense of the man, the top leaders of the cultish institution where this man serves/worships, are apex predators when it comes to public expenditure. Fearless predators who chomp through gargantuan portions of public expenditure, to the chagrin of the people whose ask is very simple.
A country that works – where each one chomps and thrives collectively. Thus, the man is a mere reflection of the governance system that stands on the brittle shoulders of coercive force and corruption. When cornered over the Shs 500 million, the man mbu did that which does not happen in this land.
He allegedly confessed and accepted responsibility; and even agreed to step down from the juicy perch. Sounds like a perambulating tale with special effects from Wakaliwood. The people oohed and aahed that the man had done the noble thing or perhaps more noble things to come in a land where mafia, pigs, parasites, haters, and foreign homosexuals usually take the fall.
However, the man came back with a perambulating retort. Indignant, the man did not respond to the Shs 500 million accusations but painted a picture of a man in the throes of a well-oiled witch-hunt.
In the struggle for public accountability, the people ever enterprising with a healthy dose of laughter turn to social media. On social media, the people neither slumber nor forget; they keep receipts. Why social media?
The people long ago read the room and understood that to keep one’s voice/ head down is to live long for who doesn’t want the soft life of long life? Out on the physical streets, the people are hemmed in, smothered with blanketing corruption, blithering impunity, unadulterated unemployment, etc.; the list goes on depressingly.
On social media, the people are uninhibited perambulators- they are out of the closet, impudently loud and proud. The internet to autocrats is that persistent delicious itch; you want to scratch it so bad that you can almost taste the deliciousness of the itch. Yet, provocative as it is, your stubby fingers cannot reach it; for the itch is deep, buried within your bones. To reach it would require mildly eviscerating yourself.
Here in the green pearl of Africa, the people have been holding itchy exhibitions. These exhibitions are bad-mannered, an absolute affront to the saintly African values where power is unquestionably ‘speak when you are spoken to’. To the leaders, the people are badly behaved for exhibiting to the whole world, our dirty linen.
When the leaders hear that an infamous American security contractor opined with quintessential brashness that the colonized nations of Africa and Asia should be recolonized, they might feel vindicated and cry, ‘We told you so! The ‘internets’ is dangerous! Now the real colonizers want their kitty back!’
The American in his day job peddles security ‘solutions’ to nations that might need a hand holding onto power in exchange for access to natural resources. An altruistic security contractor might innocently chance upon such nations in Asia and Africa. A grand coincidence indeed.
The American (whose bloodline is yet to suffer the entanglement of colonialism) argues that Africa and Asia’s leaders, to rephrase mildly, are brutal greedy ingrates who do not care about their people. Flammable snowflake leaders. Such profound insights this security contractor has gained from his profitable trade.
Come now; let us perambulate away the stink of colonizers lording their privilege over the colonized. Let us return to our bad manners. The people are bad-mannered. Look how they talk so rudely about the excesses of their leaders. Why are the people so hateful? Where is their patriotism?
As the 500 million continues to perambulate about the man’s bulging pocket, what does it tell us about the entire governance system? What is the cure for a wound so deep that the cure looks like self-disembowelment?
The writer is a tayaad muzzukulu.
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