One for the road for LKOS

Mar 03, 2007

OF course the party has to stop sometime, but just a final little one for the road! Yes I refer to <i>The Last King of Scotland</i>, and this week’s wonderful moment when Forest Whitaker grabbed the Oscar statuette and hoisted it high at the awards in LA, USA. Words failed him, which brought a lit

John Nagenda

OF course the party has to stop sometime, but just a final little one for the road! Yes I refer to The Last King of Scotland, and this week’s wonderful moment when Forest Whitaker grabbed the Oscar statuette and hoisted it high at the awards in LA, USA. Words failed him, which brought a little

wetness to the eye I can tell you! Then when he found his small prepared speech and the words gushed out of him, including his “thanks to the people of Uganda” I knew in my bones, which I perfectly knew before, that he was the direct opposite of Idi Amin: he good, the other bad. And yet, in the film, and perhaps beyond it, he “knew” Amin inside out, and was spellbindingly able to present him to the world. It was an astounding execution, in both senses of the word.

If Laurence Olivier had done it, as he did Othello, he would have left his fingerprints on it, and his cunning eye. Let me be carried away: I think Whitaker’s performance will be remembered when many of us, including maybe himself, are dust to dust. Where I fear for him, almost pity him, is where will he fuse into the energy to reach this level ever again?

And, is it not a wonder that the evil Amin was also a forbear of this fabulous magic, LKOS? As I have said before, Whitaker brought him to us as a capricious mass slaughterer but a child of God. When Whitaker thanked Uganda to millions upon millions of viewers, he was already
filling our hotels and others to come; splendid reward for those who built for CHOGM!

Already we are searching for another Uganda film, on the lines of What Happened Next; but not as propaganda. Who out there will dare write it? Will Giles Foden have another go; can lightning strike twice? What about you or me? For now I’ll just have a tiny little one and hit the road!

***

The news from the Juba Talks (that’s a joke of course, as this column called them from the very start – The Juba Jokes!) continues to be horribly consistent. Kony and his God forsaken terrorists have done yet another runner. How many now? It should have been fully expected. All would be wholly sad, if it wasn’t for the wonderfully bracing thought of those the monster has ditched in Juba, who will now be shivering at the thought of returning to their depressing exile. But Kony yet again has laid waste to his people’s hopes for Northern Uganda.

On Wednesday it was heartrending to read of desperate Acholi (many of them good sincere folk) rushing to Juba to see what on earth they could do to make the brute change his mind about it. Alas! The same day President Kabila mouthed words to the effect that he was going to hit Kony in Garamba. Too late, Sir; if only you could have taken part when Uganda asked to help finish off these terrorist there. Do you have a Congolese equivalent of shutting the door after the horse has bolted? And do you have the troops to do the job?

You will find out in no uncertain manner sooner than you imagine! Meantime let Uganda not loosen its grip by considering rubbish about moving the Talks (such as they are) out of Juba.

***

From the Uganda Cricket Association, the news is almost as grim as Juba, except, of course, that cricket finally is just a game (but what a game) and few are slaughtered in it. But the passions aroused, on and off the field of play! Right now we are seeing those occasioned by the wily William (“Wily Willy”) Kibukamusoke, following his unexpected election to the chairmanship of the UCA. This is the second time; first time round he was slung out on a technicality almost before he had warmed the chair. Wily Willy has been an outstanding all-rounder player, of that we cannot deny, combining his “qualities of the night” to bewilder the opposition. More power to that elbow! It is when he attempts to apply the same methods to day to day affairs, that people’s noses turn upwards.

Quite simply he has never been a born leader, nor ever will be. The very week of his new portfolio, he came very close to throwing a bottle at the head of a Vision photographer, for the sole reason that the latter was carrying out his mandate of taking pictures after a game. The spluttering leader had to be restrained by a young spectator a third his age. What if he hadn’t? Neither was this the end of the affair. Kibukamusoke, whose day job is manager of the crumbling Namboole Stadium on the Jinja Road, has now barred the Vision from the stadium!

Is this temperamental wonder fit to lead the Uganda Cricket Association, which continually rubs shoulders with the greats of the game? He is not. And that’s not where it ends. He has chosen for his committee people who in general know little of cricket and have hardly played it at any discernable level. Is this not typical of Wily Willy?

He wants people he can totally control. And, whisper this, I have been informed at least two of them are not in regular employment; one of them no less than the Hon Treasurer! Get it? Let us together grab the fellow and his cohorts and legally deposit them in the can.

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