Dead Russian enrages govt
By The Analyst
WEEKLY OBSERVER, 9th June 2005Kampala, June: Hardly six months after it outlawed the staging of Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues, government plans to slap a ban on another world-renowned play, Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector.
A source close to the government’s Chief Joker, emeritus professor Bouquet Nya, told The Analyst that some government officials were peeved that Gogol had written about them in his play that takes a dig at corruption in public offices. The play was first staged in 1836 under the title “The Inspector General.”
According to the source, the government intends to sue the Russian playwright posthumously for “including us in his stupid play without our permission.”
“Anyone who has read the play knows that Gogol is writing about us. Aren’t we the ones who shake in our boots when we hear that the Inspector General or Government Inspector – call her what you like – is in the Nakasero, Kololo, Kamwokya or Ntinda neighbourhood? Aren’t we the ones who try to blackmail and bribe her to our side? Aren’t we the ones who are funny, like Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky?”
Prof. Bouquet told a cabinet meeting, according to our source. The professor reportedly said that there was even a Hlestakov in government – the Gogol character who was mistaken for the Government Inspector and took full advantage of the mix up.
“Hlestakov is right here in this meeting. He has been going around with his camera photographing rice, filing silly reports and being a playboy,” the professor reportedly said. “So who is Gogol writing about, if not us? How come we have every single character he wrote about in this government?”According to a cabinet source, the entire cabinet agreed with the emeritus professor that Gogol was a very bad man, and his play was even worse.
“When some Russian chap decides to plagiarise our very lives, it is time to take action. We cannot have the entire world, let alone our own people, read all about us in Russian books or, worse still, act out our lives on stage,” the cabinet resolved.
It was decided that the government would first sweep all copies of The Government Inspector off the streets; ban staging of the play and finally “sue that Russian fiend out of his grave.”
Asked how the government expected a man who died in the 1800s to defend himself in a court of law, Prof. Bouquet Nya reportedly said that that part of the puzzle should be left to him.
“I know a couple of witch doctors who can make dead men talk. We can’t let Gogol get away with murder. He will have to explain why he wrote about us. More importantly, he will have to explain how he wrote about us more than 100 years before we were born,” the professor reportedly insisted.
(ps. If you enjoy polical humor, The Government Inspector is a must read!)
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