We should begin by congratulating our courts on the courageous, timely and decisive action taken last week to convict the half-naked woman who dared speak such unspeakable things. I will not repeat them, lest I, too, lose my shirt, but the entire nation owes a debt of gratitude most effusive to the courts. The scourge has been stemmed. The crisis curbed. The danger dammed. Thanks to this court, no Ugandan is ever going to insult the president again.
Nope. Not on facebook or twitter, not in their bars and churches, not in their gyms and nightclubs. Not in their decrepit slums, not in their decayed hospitals, not on their blighted farms, will any Ugandan ever raise a word against the president again. Phew.
Because when you arrest one woman for it, everyone else either sees it for the heinous act of treachery that it is, or they are intimidated, so scared that they dare not breathe such a thought even in their darkest, loneliest, most secret room.
I belong to the second category. I am so scared of ending up like Dr. Nyanzi that President Museveni is the best African alive, is perfect beyond perfection, and is the reason the second coming has been delayed so long — Jesus our Lord Himself beheld Uganda and said, “They’re alright. Dude’s got it covered.”
After this article, I am going on a pilgrimage to the Entebbe Expressway to kiss the ground his convoy speeds over. Because I am so scared, really, so scared of saying the wrong thing and ending up half-naked in a court that I will take no chances.
So, rather than discuss what the utterances, the case, or, for that matter, the breasts were, shall we talk about safer things?
Like why?
I cannot speak for Dr. Nyanzi. I cannot even speak to Dr. Nyanzi. I am intimidated into silence so I can not speak for people who have the courage to speak their minds. But when you ask why naalongo would hurl obscenities and jiggle her tits like that, I can at least hazard a guess.
I am an adept and prolific hurler of obscenities myself. I don’t just hurl them. I toss, fling, thrust, and even at times violently ejaculate them at the sky, depending on the severity of the circumstance.
It may be falling down an uncovered manhole, it may be having another phone stolen, it may be another fruitless trip to NIRA, but I will release a salvo of blistering prose that will burn the air. I even patented a few new ones; hybrid forms that mix Luganda, English and, courtesy of my last ex, Acholi.
The reason is usually that when things don’t work the way they should and we can’t do anything about it, we feel frustrated and helpless and betrayed.
When I fall into an open manhole, I make an allusion to certain wild animals and their bodily excretions that I then opine are analogous to KCCA, for example.
While my ode to the city council echoes out of the hole in the ground, Agent Zzike might amble up. Agent Zzike is the one who beats you for stepping on the grass. He’s the grass task force SWAT unit.
Say he heard me down the hole. If then unzips his trousers and urinates down said hole, I presume it would be legal, since that’s what sewers are for, and it is not public urination if there is no one else around. Plus he drinks a lot so he could very well susu down the manhole upon me.
At this point, would you expect me to freestyle a TED talk about Urban Planning initiatives to secure manhole covers from theft and offer workable and affordable solutions that KCCA can take into consideration to eradicate the endemic problem of dudes falling into sewers?
I am sure you would understand if I let loose the ones which mix Acholi, Luganda and English, with each portion is delivered in the appropriate accent.
I think the Doc is crazy. I think you have to be crazy to dare exercise your freedom of speech in Uganda today. And there are more crazy people here than you think. Susan Namata, 21, Joseph Kasumba, 19, Moses Nsubuga, 35, then Joseph Kabuleta, probably 48 –he is too babyfaced for me to know for sure — and any of the other lunatics who have been arrested, charged with speaking out of turn.
She is crazy. She took her tits out and jiggled them while screaming foul curses in court. She is crazy.
The rest of us, meanwhile, are quite sane. That is why we live in a country where they arrest you for your free speech and we keep our shirts on, our thoughts to ourselves and our mouths shut.
