As God’s dog, with the Almighty still in divine rest, my hardest task remains trying to counter the claims of religious leaders who exploit innocent believers.
Their grip on the victims is unyielding. Their resolve to keep the victims desperate is phenomenal.
Whenever the victims gain some space to see clearly, the operators gang up on the victims, blocking the space to ensure the position of ignorance is restored.
Where possible, they deploy pre-emptive indoctrination reinforcement narratives to nullify any anticipated rational interpretation.
Witchdoctors do exactly the same thing. Keeping your mindset in a backward frame for peddlers of the occult to manipulate and fill with weird spiritualist baggage leaves them relevant.
That is how many cases of illness and death in African communities get attributed to witchcraft, disgruntled ancestors and various evil spirits.
Every misfortune presents opportunities. The passing of the Omukama of Tooro, Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru IV, is a glaring example.
Soon after the king’s passing, three pastors were talking on their Sunday morning radio/TV show. One told his colleagues and their audience that Omukama Oyo had become a Born-Again Christian in the Pentecostal (rather than Church of Uganda) fold.
Furthermore, the pastor said the death of Tooro’s kings when they were still young was caused by an evil spirit. He proposed a Tooro ‘crusade’ specifically organised to exorcise this abominable spirit.
For the umpteenth time, he cited a crusade where he and another pastor had prayed and exorcised a similar spirit haunting Buganda’s royal house, enabling Kabaka Ronald Mutebi to turn over 70!
It verges on psychological harassment to repeatedly use the monarch’s health challenges in religious self-promotion.
Senior religious clerics of all shades – and indeed many ordinary people – regularly pray for our traditional leaders, but they do not overtly seek their (or our) gratitude when those leaders overcome their difficulties.
Doctors in Uganda, Europe and the USA who work tirelessly and professionally with our leaders as their patients must be quietly astonished that otherwise fairly educated people drag the theme of evil spirits to the centre in situations where scientific explanations are available, or at least possible.
Then again, at the emotional level, where Tooro’s grieved loved ones have human feelings, does it comfort them or increase their anguish to be told that their royal household is haunted by an evil spirit?
Moreover, if the departed king was a committed Born-Again Pentecostal, as the pastor assures us, doesn’t the evil-spirit explanation (deliberately or unintentionally) portray evil spirits as sometimes stronger than Jesus?
As I have noted before, pastors and witchdoctors are two faces of the same coin. And the evil-spirit thesis reinforces their power and extends their relevance.
King Harald V of Norway passed around the same time as Omukama Oyo.
Harald famously said Norwegians who worshipped God, and Allah, and no God at all, and boys who loved girls, and boys who loved boys, and girls who loved girls were all ‘Norway’. He died peacefully at 89. His father, Olav V, had died at 87. But it would be ridiculous to attribute this longevity to their liberal religious views, and equally ridiculous to attribute Oyo’s short life to his (reported) Born Again devotion. Or even to Tooro’s supposed malevolent spirit.
Few events have united Ugandans in sadness as Oyo’s death. Guardians of Tooro’s traditions, politicians and religious operators of different convictions must, therefore, restrain themselves from unduly exploiting this loss. God will not get up to guide their actions.