Jimmy Spire Ssentongo
I am writing in application for a job in your esteemed association. I believe I have all the credentials to qualify for the highly-respectable jobs your gang does for our country.
Before I go into the gist of this letter, let me first express my sympathies to you, Honorable Paddy Sserunjogi (Sobi), for the humiliation you recently faced when you were violently arrested by misguided officers in full mis-glare of the cameras. It was such a dark day in the history of official criminality!
Like you later asked, Sir, ‘who are those officers who dared arrest Sobi?’ That’s what happens when an institution forgets or carelessly strays from its duties.
Kizza Besigye and these honorable clowns dressed in red are there freely addressing the press and challenging the age limit law in courts while those idle officers are prioritizing arresting you, comrade Sobi! Oh holy shithole!
Next time that happens, we, the concerned gallant citizens of this shithole republic, are going to protest in front of the offices of the Criminal Protection Society (CPS). We can’t accept this criminality to reign unencumbered in our Kifeesi city. If we do, next time they will arrest the honorable dedicated kibooko platoon too.
The other day I watched Norbert Mao and Charles Rwomushana cunningly dare Afande Kayimba on Frontline (NBS TV) to arrest Boda Boda 2010 volunteers. They said if he arrested them, he would be sacked. See how he swallowed it hook and sinker, coming to parade his conspicuous toothlessness on the Sobi phenomenon!
They never learn! Do they? Now where is Sobi the man? Conqueror of the police empire! Lion of the city! You are on radio roaring, as they place back their warped tails safely between their hind legs. Who is laughing last?
They said you confessed on TV to have killed people. It’s what I have heard them spew in the name of a crime by you! Rubbish! Just murder, of sijui a human thing! Afande Baguma and dear DPP (Director of Public ProBagumanation), we need your wise counsel here; is this a crime of interest, dear Shitholians?
Before I digress, back to my application. I take the pleasure to present to you my humble qualifications. I am trained in philosophy. I’m ready to skillfully deploy my Metaphysics, Ethics, Epistemology, Logic, and Axiology to help you come up with a Philosophy of Thuggery and Urban Petty Terrorism.
Considering the acceptability and sophistication to which your trade has grown, we now need an ideology, a mission, a vision, a strategic plan, an organogram, and a public relations scheme.
I won’t hesitate to abandon the classroom once you recruit me into your highly regarded trade. I envy the respectability you command in high offices. Besides, it pays better than these things that burden us with loads of stuff to memorise and heaps of scripts to attend to.
Yes, we are paid. But, as responsible citizens, a significant part of this we surrender in taxes – much to be stolen and wasted. Part of what we are left with, we buy some assets – which your esteemed followers, dear Sobi, come to pick at their own unchallenged permission.
“Police is investigating it”; just like last year, the year before, and years forgotten. They promise that they will get to “the bottom of the matter”, as if they are now on top of it! Oh, again I digress!
I would love to as well enjoy the liberty of simply collecting what others have painfully laboured for. I long to be the fear of the city, where people would tell each other in Kampala traffic jam: “Hey, close your windows. This is Kifeesi time and territory”.
And I collect phones of all those who insist on opening car windows, as if they think police is their mother. I open passenger doors and pull out bags, as helpless drivers scream like wounded kangaroos.
Oh that feeling of being called on phone by an officer saying: “Hey bwana Ssentongo, someone is here to report that their phone has been snatched. It’s a Samsung in a blue jacket. Her explanation shows it is you among the boys I know that operate there. Bring it here now”. Then I return it for the officer to get their day’s cut too, before I go find another victim that won’t report.
Recruit me, buddy. I promise to quickly learn the art of replacing laptops with concrete tabs in taxis. “Hey, help us tighten the door”, isn’t that the magic line? Then I kick the idiot out of the running car to go rearrange their bones and skin.
Like Joseph Hill of the reggae band Culture sang, with me in the mix, “dog a go nyam dog in dis city”. Why should I wait for a salary when there is plenty of stuff floating around town to be picked at no cost? Let no one pretend to be shocked; quick money and stealing wherever one can is the trend. So, who will throw a stone?
Let those public servants tell us where they get all the monies to buy square miles of land and erect mega structures that rise at the speed of sparrows. Do their salaries multiply like Jesus’ fish?
It’s Kifeesi by disguised means – violently snatching from our national wallet, sometimes leading to otherwise avoidable deaths. Isn’t it murder to squander health funds? Shouldn’t abandoning the health sector count as mass killing? Sobi, see them stammer! Hire me, please. Our life expectancy is low; so, I won’t accept to be delayed by decent money. I will get saved later.
As for you dear officers that are idling here reading my application, go do your work. News coming in is that Besigye and Bobi Wine have just been sighted walking near the old taxi park. Kamata adui…
The author heads the Centre for African Studies at Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi.
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