What makes Museveni laugh 

There is that book by my wonderful friend, cartoonist and cultural entrepreneur, James Tumusiime, What Makes Africans Laugh?

Searching for answers to this question, Tumusiime looked everywhere, from the general public to high-profile individuals. What makes Africans laugh? A good joke, gossip, fake news, beautifully-told stories, or unexpected things?

But while Tumusiime does a wonderful job in both writing this book and also living his life as a humourist—especially with his very successful Bogi Benda cartoons of the 1970s and 1980s that rocked East and southern Africa—he fails to appreciate the fact that people with power have tended to have a grim sense of humour.

It is a dirty thing; sort of cynical: consider, for example, the tendency for presidents to set up their juniors for embarrassment, say, by giving them assignments—and titles— that are clearly beyond their mental and political capabilities.

Surely, they laugh at watching them make fools of themselves. It is like encouraging a child to pronounce a word you surely know they have not yet learned. It is hilarious hearing them mess up the syllables. And at the peak of their frustrations, you pick them up and cheer them on with a cookie or a cake. This humour is grim.

When he called his ministers, fishermen and fisherwomen—that is, abavubi in Luganda—clearly Mr Museveni was joking. He himself laughed when he said it. But since humour comes from a real place, what made the joke appreciable and funny was that Ugandans believed Museveni’s ministers were truly “fishermen and fisherwomen.”

We just didn’t know he would say it out loud. Basically, Museveni was saying, about his own ministers, that they were lacking in sophistication (in small things such as fashion and table manners); would be mindless about the future/tomorrow of the country ( just like fishing people since the lake never migrates elsewhere nor dries up), the joke was in the fact that he said it.

We believed Museveni that his ministers are the type to find pleasure in small things—vehicles, houses, damsels, so-called side-chicks— and would be servile in saving him. They started likening him to God. To think that these new honourable people were as dilute as just explained was all right. But to say it out loud would be difficult. Thus, it was simply funny when the man himself voiced it.

Picking cue, the legislator from Kira Municipality, Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda took swipe at the newly appointed prime minister, Robinah Nabbanja. That if she had applied for a job on the open market, even a company specialised in garbage collection would never hire her.

Oh, we enjoyed that punchline! Surely Bwana Museveni enjoyed that joke, too. These appointments nowadays are meant to humour the man making them, not to embarrass him by appearing too smart and edgy.

Let’s consider just three recent examples: Not too long, Inspector General of Government, Beti Kamya, perhaps inspired by late president John Magufuli’s example in neighbouring Tanzania, felt energised enough to do a lifestyle audit of people with power in the country.

“What do these men and women in public offices own and how did they get it?” is a major question behind these lifestyle audits in the fight against corruption. At a public function, Kamya would be warned—by the very man who appointed her––to go slow on doing lifestyle audits on his people.

That it risked prompting corrupt officials into taking (he called it investing) their money outside of the country. That they were stealing but investing in the country, Museveni explained. Recently, Kamya would be reminded to completely leave soldiers out of her lifestyle audit nonsense. Tell me if Bwana Museveni never sits back and laughs at this woman, and between gasps of laughter, says things like, “this marauding woman… kekeke! What does she think she is doing?!”

Recall that time when parliament overworked itself censoring the current state minister for Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Persis Namuganza. Oh, the drama was intense. I can imagine Mr Museveni watching the evening news for weeks on end, laughing and jeering at “his children” overworking themselves, citing this law, and that regulation, seeking to outsmart each other.

Knowing that he has the actual button with power to censor anybody, Museveni would be like someone watching a YouTube video—with bushera and popcorn in hand—at the end of the video, he clicks the “don’t like” icon: “Pfff, they really overworked themselves, didn’t they?”

Then came the ongoing iron sheets and goat scandals: Yes, these low-grade metallic iron sheets, which had been cheaply procured for the wretched of Karamoja.

You would think, these are surely small things that these ministers and former and current speakers of parliament—had they not been fishermen and fisherwomen, but folks with integrity and self-worth—would never wish to be anywhere close. But they did, and now have to run to Museveni to save them.

Because he knew, these ministers of his were capable of this low-grade theft, he must have sat back and laughed his lungs out. It is my sobering contention that Museveni and his core team fully understand that smartness and straightforwardness does not matter in this regime of politics.

As a man taking instructions from elsewhere—from big banks, GMO industries, Euro-American embassies, organisations such as UNESCO, WHO, World Bank, etc.— Museveni and team have fully imbibed their powerlessness in this power chain.

Thus, they have decided to both strive to enrich themselves personally (as they please their masters), but also have a good laugh, and laugh with the country. It is all pretence. It is a game!

yusufkajura@gmail.com

The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.