In Summary
  • Rendition. Empty tins make a lot of noise which will very often make you laugh. Visit this page every Sunday to encounter Empty Tin and his warped ideas.

The last couple of days have been nothing but brouhaha about Uganda-Rwanda diplomatic tensions that saw movement of goods and services at the common border badly affected. Every other patriotic Ugandan has been going on and on about how the UPDF would decimate and reduce Rwanda into a mass of rubble within 24 hours if the two countries went to war.

Sipping expired dregs of coffee, I sat in this chair and imagined things. A Chinese man once said, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.” But this is not the whole story. Do you remember that this guy whose bodyguards whacked a traffic policewoman was supposed to be recalled from duty? When did it happen?

Exactly! We have already forgotten this and moved on. All the noise and damnation had fizzled out like dew in the sun. Yes, we can’t focus. We can’t sustain a cause and achieve it. We move on way too soon. Now imagine taking such a Ugandan to war…

What can a typical Ugandan ever sustain? Our nation is like a Liverpool title race. We climb up the mountain of valour and shout down Kasirye Gwanga who has just deflated car tyres with bullets. We make a lot of noise about it and call for the man to finally be made to account for impunity because records show there is much more than just deflating tyres and burning a tractor to him.

And while we are at it, Man United overturns a 2-0 first leg home defeat to progress in Paris. Then there, the TL that has been dominated with calls for impunity to be dealt with are replaced with #GGMU, Ole, Fergie…

There is a woman called Stella Nyanzi. Apparently, she tried to eat a gun muzzle whose trigger was half-pulled. Behind her, she saw a line of men and woman with placards in her support. We shouted her name and made emotive calls and whatnot. The following day, we woke up to news that a man who herds cows using assault rifle had told a judge to go to hell and back.

Now Stella is there bearing the brunt of her bravery as the people who spurred her on have moved to discussing this man who asks his interlocutors to report him to God.

So you ask yourself, is there anything Ugandans have ever taken for a cause and demanded to the letter? Is there any cause they ever sustain apart from the er… er… groin region?

The other day we were supposed to demand that Umeme contract should not be renewed. Then they put back power for a few hours and everyone moved on.
Soon after, this minister received a $500,000 gift donation that he didn’t even declare with the IGG. Ugandans made noise, climbed on top of trees. One threatened to commit suicide by jumping from the 12th floor of Workers House.

The same dude climbed down surfing on his phone and reading news of Sheila Gashumba telling haters to F off her relationship with a former convicted bank robber. Imagine from discussing a global corruption scandal to losing attention to Sheila Gashumba affair!

That is why if a typical Ugandan was planted in an ambush in some valley during a war and asked to lay still for a few hours until the enemy arrived, he would forget his mission and the gun as soon as he reads on social media that Makerere has ordered the main building windows painted yellow.