Big Hats and Military Fatigues

Its been over three months since i read a rather famous book written at
about a time of testing for the church in Uganda.
I suspect that history will try the current regime with the same
challenge.
How do you deal with a Spying Church?

It is clear that at some point, the Last King of Scotland had a turning
point in his life at which a critical decision was made from a
historical leaning towards Israel and onto the Arab World.
This affected everything in our foreign policy and was responsible for
major changes in governance in this country.

Big hat seems to have adopted a different strategy. He has courted the
church and showered her with gifts (mainly 4 by 4s) and also created
alliances with pentecostal movements rendering them virtually powerless.
The latter now enjoy use and access to Stadia and other massive end of
year events at historic strongholds like Kololo. This has been quite an
achievement granted his so called Marxist leanings and his aversion to
post-colonialism.

Given some of the activity that is going on with the Non-Governmental
Organizations, and the moves by government to try and monitor their
projects, there is bound to be a lot more heat in the church as well.
This is because NGOs and CSOs are both covered by the same registration
rules that run churches. Which is why there were no surprises when the
Internal Affairs ministry had a meeting with local religious leaders-The
rooster was coming home to roost!

It never was wise to make religious declarations in Rome...and maybe
this is why the battle to split the activities of the church from those
of the state have always mattered. The fear was that if the leader of
Rome chose to adopt a faith, all his subjects would feel inclined to do
the same (slaves would have no choice) thereby negating the effects of
true conversion. This is why wise leaders often refuse to declare
adherence to faith especially when they rule such diverse
groups.

So in our case big hat has had few options but to oppose most of the
activities of his predecessors. He has therefore had to negotiate
complex coalitions with past enemies and struggling to appease them.

Maybe the euphoria of Independence prevented us from coalescing around a
single idea. Perhaps our former colonial masters used this excitement to
devise other means of governing. Maybe by educating our fighters they in
turn further enslaved them. Only time will tell. In the meantime, the
ghosts of freedom past are back to haunt us and our leaders.

I am keen to see how some of these complex issues will be interpreted.
I suspect that part of his strategy will be to make use of infiltrators
to see if they can get access to churches and their leaders.