Tunde Asaju

By Tunde Asaju

I don’t know what gives Africans the right to think they are smarter than their ruiners. People seem to forget so quickly that the moment they vote in elections, brains should go on holiday until the next round. Elections, dear people are signals that your thinking faculty has been farmed out to your elected or selected representatives. If you think you’re smarter than the politricians, next time there’s elections, test your smartness against the anointed. If you win, then you’re truly smart but if you lose, then you’ve got a mileage of rope learning to go and that should settle the matter, no questions asked.

What would Uganda be without the guiding arms of His Excellency, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni? I know what. It’ll be an absolute jungle where the Buganda fights the Bayankole with the Basoga serving as referee with fringe tribes swimming in their own blood from Entebbe to Gulu. But the Almighty God moved to prevent that tragedy by dashing Uganda King Museveni. Museveni did not take his divine mandate for granted. From time to time, he subjects himself to electoral mandates but has found no worthy opponent thus far, only a rag-tag army of social media malcontents. But to fulfil democratic righteousness, he lets the legislature, an elevated rubberstamp to adjudicate on matters concerning his age. If you ask him, he is better than his younger colleague, Joseph Kabila who runs Africa’s biggest mineral-rich nation but wouldn’t hold elections because the country is broke.

For all his democratic altruism, what does Museveni get but heckling by a few opponents. They’re rejecting their saviour much like the Israelites rejected God in asking for a King to rule over them like other nations. Even though Museveni has no equal and cannot be replaced by anyone living or dead, Ugandans forced a vote in parliament populated by people with black belts in Ugandan version of kungfu and karate. 

But the great Museveni does not accept defeat. If he did, Joseph Kony would have ran him out of the palace in Kampala long ago. Knowing that Ugandans have no clue what is good for them, the great Museveni thinks and acts for them. He oiled the wheel of parliamentary endorsement with the legendary Ghana-Must-Go. Last week, by unanimous votes, or what the Ijesha calls ‘sekan komi, sekan ko raare’ cut me some and I’ll cut you some, the Ugandan parliament reconfirmed what philosophers have always told us; that age is just a number and that Museveni’s is simply not listed. They expunged the age and term limit for the president and cut for themselves a parliamentary term limit of seven years.

We all knew we would get here because in the African definition of democracy, nothing goes for nothing! If Ugandans had accepted their fate without the dance of shame, their foreign reserves would be bursting at the seams. Heckling helped the MPs boost their brown envelopes from $3k to $50k according to conservative estimates. If Ugandan rapper, Abramz knows what’s good for him, he’ll join Museveni (himself an accomplished rapper) to wax a record for the King. It pays and if he needs a consultant, I am from Kogi, the home state of Dino Melaye and from the same constituency.

Greater things have happened in Zambia where this week, an attempt to give the Chinese the recognition they fully deserve was thwarted by internet trolls. The Zambian police force had inducted about half a dozen Chinese reservists into the force with pomp and fanfare. It was the endorsement the Chinese have been waiting for, since taking over Zambia’s mines, making babies for their domestic staff and not to forget, building the African Union a befitting AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa. It was said that when the first Sino-African child emerged, the exasperated father named him Som Tin Wong.

Well, Zambians felt something was wrong when they found out that they now have Chinese reservists in the efforts of the Zambian police to curb crimes and introduce community policing. Although the Zambian Police Act, a colonial relic like all the others bans the recruitment of officers with foreign partners, this recruitment went on oiled wheels, until…

Well, it set the internet abuzz and after defending the recruitment, the Zambian police chief Kagoma Kanganja decommissioned, the commissioned officers. It was rumoured that Kanganja’s ban on police officers marrying foreigners was to prevent Zambians from populating their police force with Malawians and Congolese who were said to be pulling from the large pool of unmarried Zambian officers. I have never been to those parts of my continent, but the few Malawians and Congolese I see would not be fairly recognizable on the roads like the Chinese.

I don’t understand the furore over the induction of Chinese into African police and military. The Chinese are our friends and they are everywhere running everything everywhere, from prostitution rings to mafia-style systems. They understand the language of business in Africa and they speak it better than the pretentious Europeans and the uppity Americans that want to punish the world for hating what it likes. The Chinese don’t meddle in your internal affairs. Africa needs friends like them to keep the Americans and other enemies at bay.

[email protected]