Updf Could Outsmart Kony
Print This Page
Visit�The�Publisher's�Site
New Vision (Kampala)
COLUMN
January 24, 2004
Posted to the web January 26, 2004
Kampala
A bevy of senior army officers has been reduced to men. They have been disarmed, paraded before a military court and charged with, among other things, for enrolling ghost soldiers to fight the Rasta man Joseph Kony.
As an aftermath of this occurrence, the ever predictable Ken Lukyamuzi was on his soapbox proclaiming to all that this whole thing is a ploy by the Museveni government to divert public attention from more pertinent issues like corruption and the just ended school term (I hear it's the third!).
Wow! Finally the controversial legislator is experiencing some brain activity. I have always confined him to that class of people who are only good at chewing carrots and hiding in yam plantations, but his latest revelations have waned that preconception.
When he brought up this issue, I saw the mark of an intelligent man!
Have a drink on me, Ken.
Come to think of it, what is wrong with ghosts doing a job and being paid for it?
The Kenyan national football coach is called Ghost Mulee. He is paid a salary, and I have not seen anyone being taken to court for this. Why then should we parade officers in court for paying ghosts that have been fighting Kony?
We have been caught in this Kony quagmire for bollocks years with no end in sight. When a battalion of invisible souls decides to help us sort out the mess, you parade the appointing officers before court?
What is happening to this country?
Kony has been branded a spiritual-war monger. The best way to deal with him is to pay him in the same currency. He has spirits, then let us use ghosts!
By the way, these are not your ordinary run-off-the-mill ghosts. These are patriotic creatures. They are not out to give people nightmares. They have no intentions of standing for president in 2006. They do not increase fuel prices. And, they do not procure junk products from Belarus. They are just a bunch of celestial beings inspired to tame the suffering of Ugandans.
Ever since capitalism killed the spirit of voluntarism, you do not expect someone to risk their butt pursuing rebels for nothing - you have to pay them.
The army officers' crime is that they sorted out these ghosts salaries on the dot. Mbu, the ghosts could be a fraud just because they were not physically there to sign for their pay cheques. But the bible says, "blessed are those who believe without seeing!" Maybe at the time of payments, they were inside the Sudan.
Mr President, I ask you to pardon the officers implicated in this ghost saga. Ghosts are not like us human beings. Unlike that Bushenyi poet who walked over to you and reminded you of the money you promised him years ago, ghosts are ruthless especially when they have done a job and have come demanding for their salary.
You have no alternative but to pay up, or else you die of a hydro cell (empanama) that is so massive, that you have to push it around on a gadi-gadi, (a wheel barrow -- that is what the ghosts in Nebbi do.)
So do not blame the officers for giving the ghosts what was due to them.
Well, if the officers paid these ghosts for not doing their jobs, then that is another case. But, if the ghosts actually went to the frontline and fought then, eeeeehhh banange, you have to pay.
I compel every Ugandan with the slightest grain of matter beneath their cranium to come up with lasting solutions to the Kony debacle -- this thing has to end.
We have used bees, witch doctors and clergymen. I think using ghost soldiers is not exactly a bad idea. Maybe next time instead of recruiting humans in the army, we should recruit ghosts. Kony has a robust affinity for women, so we should specifically recruit female ghosts.
If they do not wipe out Kony in minutes, then I am not Saggy, the son of Buzu.
=====
Now that is a GOOD ONE!!!
MK
