Whether they partake in their traditional rites and ceremonies openly or under concealment, Africans are constantly reminded by their fellow Africans to despise themselves.
It is not that these traditions are by any logical reasoning inferior to their foreign equivalents. It is just that “African” (in the African mind even more than in the European) has come to be associated with backwardness.
That is why, when Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga goes to Nhenda Hill to thank the spirits of her Baise Igaga clan for being an auspicious presence on her political journey, the people around her (including the clan leaders!) feel a need to “defend” her action.
It is like she had violated a code of conduct, a perversity for which they had to fidget around and find an acceptable explanation.
So you are treated to a whole range of wise voices; from Kadaga fulfilling an annual “duty to her clan”, to a visit to “promote tourism”.
Some of these explanations, of course, may complement each other. An interesting call of ritual duty can attract both leisure and educational tourism. However, in this case, the explanations appear to be meant to cover or gloss over an event that is considered “embarrassing”.
That is why our newspapers have been contrasting Kadaga of the shrine with Kadaga of the Christian bishops; the backward and the modern; as if this meant the irrational and the rational.
But if celebrating Kadaga’s ancestor spirits is embarrassing because they do not have an autonomous existence, because they are only a figment in the imagination, then celebrating Christianity’s Jesus should be equally embarrassing.
The idea of a person being born after a virgin conception (before tomorrow’s advanced cloning bio-technology), and that person literally rising from the dead; this is as ridiculous (or as rational) as Kadaga’s ancestor spirits being active and roaming among their living kinsmen.
Having one myth in the Biblical text and the other passed on orally is essentially a difference in literacy in ancient times. To have a mythical tale recorded in a “holy” book obviously greatly improves its circulation and its prestige, but it does not necessarily make it factually truer than the orally transmitted myth.
However, now that Ms Kadaga has descended from Nhenda hill with the blessing of her ancestors and the blessing of the bishops, she has a real world mystery to deal with; a mystery called NRM money.
Europeans have innocent (?) folk traditions like how Father Christmas brings gifts for children at Christmas. And Ugandan village youngsters are told how the rat takes their milk teeth and replaces them with coins. I suppose one makes European kids look forward to Christmas, and the other makes the pain of tooth extraction more bearable.
Members of the NRM Caucus in the young 10th Parliament must be wishing they do not run out of milk teeth. Even before they had taken their seats on their maiden mission in the House (electing the Speaker and Deputy Speaker), each had pocketed Sh5 million.
Not salary, not allowances; just a “gift”; because (His Excellency admits) the President of the republic did not want them to be broke.
When non-NRM legislators and ordinary people query the source of the money, I believe I have heard the President refer to NRM “fundraisers”. Friends of the ruling party, I suppose.
There are of course no rats that ferry money into the President and party chairman’s charity system.
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