In response to Bishop John Baptist Odama, who believes that removing age limits for the office of the President is ill-advised, Mr Ofwono Opondo, a government spokesperson, told the bishop, and by implication all religious leaders, to stick to religious matters only in the current political stalemate.
It is unlikely that they will do so. Mr Opondo, and others who think like him, holds the curious and somewhat odious belief that religious leader have no stake in the politics of this nation. According to them, the constitutional rights to freedom of speech, and freedom to hold one’sown views, whether political or otherwise, are for some mysterious reasons not available to religious leaders.
Mr Opondo forgets that unlike traditional rulers, who in Uganda may not hold political office, and who are restricted from partisan politics by the constitution, there is no such restriction for priests, pastors, bishops, sheikhs or imams, as far as I know.
I suggest that before he tries to gag religious leaders, he might like to engender a private member’s motion in Parliament, since it is all the rage, to change the constitution to restrict religious leaders from getting involved in politics.
Otherwise it is extremely patronizing to tell religious leaders to stick to church matters. Why not tell doctors, teachers, lawyers to stick to their professions as well? Does religion in itself make someone politically incompetent.
Mr Opondo knows very well that there have been many religious personalities whose intervention into politics have been salutary, and sometimes revolutionary. To name but a few, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jnr, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, and closer to home, Bishop Janani Luwum, Bishop Festo Kivengere, Archbishop Kiwanuka, Cardinal Nsubuga.
So why this repeated cry from some in the ruling party for religious leaders to ‘mind their own business’ when there is a political crisis?
Obviously, certain politicians believe they have a monopoly on ‘the business of politics,’ when actually politics is ‘everyone’s business.’
Maybe it is because politics has many of them actually become an income-generating business, a place for ‘eating.’ The commercialisation of politics in Uganda is such that competition from any quarter is a threat.
“A man eateth where he worketh,” the saying goes, and so according to these political monopolists, religious leaders must eat where they work, in the church or mosque, and not from the political trough.
The more obvious reason for restricting religious leaders from the politics, though, is fear. Fear makes one insecure. Mr Opondo, like all who find autocratic harmless, there are several reasons to be very afraid of religious leaders.
One, they have larger national constituencies which cut across political, ethic divides, and which they are able to address at least once a week without having to pay for it. Politicians, on the other hand, have to pay for studio airtime or wait to get invited to talk shows, or put out their propaganda at great expense.
It is for this reason that during political campaigns, politicians are keen to visit churches and mosques and be allowed to address congregations. They know the power of the pulpit.
Two, messages from religious leaders carry more weight more easily that those of politicians because
a) their messages are associated with deeply held religious beliefs anf values
b) the integrity of religious leaders is still perceived to be more than of politicians.
for these reasons, bishops and pastors are constantly courted by politicians. Some bishops are given gists of vehicles by the state when they are consecrated. It is pure patronage, in order to influence what religious leaders might say to their congregations.
Thirdly, religious leaders are capable of mobilizing (or counter-mobilizing) the masses against tyranny and oppression by speaking directly to their consciences when necessary, as did the liberation theologians in Latin America, in the late 20th Century.
This is perhaps the greatest fear modern autocrats have of religious leaders. They know that spiritual leaders can mobilize the masses against them perhaps without much effort; that the masses can easily be de-programmed by religious leaders of all propaganda that has been put into them by and at such great cost by the regime; and that the regime might be unmasked for what it is, and power taken away from it.
Without doubt, religion can also be used destructively as it is seen with ISIS, the medieval crusades, the inquisitions, the ongoing Middle-East conflicts, and the Northern Ireland troubles. This is also true with regard to the religious wars in Buganda at the end of the 18th Century, and of course Kanungu.
Yet the two great World Wars and Cold War, in which millions perished, were not caused by religious, but conflicting political ideologies.
Religious leaders, therefore ought to speak up even more, and ignore the intimidation of a regime which displays signs of insecurity. In any case ‘they can only kill the flesh, but not the spirit.’
By Fr Anthony Musaala.
