Uganda · Politics · Satire

A Parliament of 529 Jokes

While the cameras were busy at Kololo, something quieter and, frankly, funnier was happening on Parliament Avenue.

SEGAWA ELVIS WILLIAM 15 May 2026

Parliament House, Kampala. The most expensive comedy club in East Africa.

"Where there is no vision, the people perish."
— Proverbs 29:18

"Awali ennyama, wewaba n'enswera."
Where there is meat, there are flies — Luganda

So President Museveni was sworn in on Tuesday, and the country has not stopped talking about it. Good. Let him have his Tuesday. Today I want to talk about Wednesday  and Thursday, and Friday  because while the cameras were busy at Kololo, something quieter and, frankly, funnier was happening at Parliament House on the Avenue.

Five hundred and twenty-nine grown men and women have been queuing up, alphabetically, to swear an oath. Five. Hundred. And. Twenty-nine. My friend, the entire country of Iceland is run by 63 MPs. Rwanda - our neighbour, our better-organised neighbour, the one we like to pretend we don't envy - runs theirs with 80. We have 529. And on Day One they only got through 184 of them. The Clerk needed twenty-one assistants just to hand out Bibles and tick names. If the swearing-in itself requires twenty-two civil servants and three working days, what exactly do we imagine these people are going to do when they get to actual work?

I am told it is "one of the most representative legislatures in the world." The Speaker herself said it. I do not doubt her. The question that the Speaker did not answer, however, is the one our grandmothers would ask: representative of what, and to whom?

Akalulu k'embwa kafiira mu nju. The dog's vote dies inside the house.

You can be very loudly represented and still very quietly ignored.

❦ The Oath, and What It Is For

Article 81(4) of our beautiful 1995 Constitution requires every elected MP to subscribe to two oaths. The Oath of Allegiance. And the Oath of Member of Parliament. In both, they swear - swear, with hand on Bible or Quran - to defend the Constitution. The same Constitution that this same body has amended into submission. Term limits? Gone. Age limits? Gone. Presidential petitions in court? A formality. Coffee farmers? Sold to one ministry, then another, then back again, while the farmer himself still cannot afford the boda fare to his own garden.

Jesus had something to say about people who swear oaths very loudly:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Matthew 23:27

I am not calling anybody a Pharisee. I am simply noting that the Pharisees, too, were very fond of ceremonies. They had the best robes. They were photographed with their families on the steps of the temple. They thanked their patrons publicly and at length. Sound familiar?

❦ The Thank-You Speeches

An oath, like a wedding, is only as good as what comes after.

This is where the comedy becomes art. Listen to what the Speaker, Honourable Anita Among, said on the very day she took the oath to serve the Republic:

I want to thank President Yoweri Museveni who has entrusted me with a very big responsibility of running this parliament. Speaker Anita Among, 13 May 2026

Brothers and sisters. Entrusted. The President entrusted her with Parliament. Not the people of Bukedea. Not the 529 MPs who, in any functioning democracy, would elect their own Speaker as a matter of internal sovereignty. The President. Entrusted. Her. With Parliament. She said this out loud, into a microphone, with cameras rolling, and nobody - nobody - saw fit to be embarrassed.

Then the Honourable Robinah Nabbanja, our Prime Minister, took her turn:

I am what I am because of the President. He identified me when I was still a young woman at the age of 26. Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja

Now I am happy for Madam Nabbanja. Truly. May we all be identified by somebody. But this is not a Parliament of 529 minds. It is a Parliament of 529 mouths, fed from the same hand, and asked occasionally to chew on legislation.

❦ The Real Job Description

Let us be honest about what our MPs actually do:

01Show up.

02Collect the allowance.

03Raise the hand when the Whip raises his.

04In the unlikely event of independent thought, find themselves suddenly named in a corruption probe, transferred to a useless committee, or visited at night by men in plain clothes.

05Repeat.

The Bible warns us about this kind of leadership too. Isaiah was not subtle:

Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them. Isaiah 1:23

You can read that verse aloud in any Ugandan village from Kabale to Karamoja and watch people nod like it was written last Tuesday at Parliament Avenue. The prophets, it turns out, were excellent political analysts. They just had no internet.

❦ "Kisanja Hakuna Kulala"

The President said it on Tuesday: kisanja of no sleep. And the Speaker, on Wednesday, repeated it like a school prefect quoting the headmaster.

Friends, I have one small question. Who, exactly, has been sleeping? Has it been the boda rider who wakes at 4 a.m.? The mama mboga at Nakasero who hasn't taken a day off since her firstborn was in primary? The teacher in Kotido on shs 400,000 a month? The nurse at Mulago doing double shifts because half the staff hasn't been paid? Or has it been the 529 honourables, half of whom you cannot point to on a map, who have spent the last five years collecting iPads, SUVs, and "facilitation" while the country they swore to serve runs on prayer and remittances from Dubai?

Embwa erya enkofu y'esula enjala. The dog that ate the Guinea fowl sleeps hungry -  because nobody will feed it again.

It is a warning to greedy stewards. The dog ate well once. But trust, once eaten, is also gone. And then comes the long, hungry kisanja.

❦ So What Now?

The worm that eats the cassava lives inside the cassava.

I do not write this to despair. Despair is a luxury, and like most luxuries in this country, it is imported and overtaxed. I write it because somebody must, and because the joke is funniest when told plainly. Our Parliament is a joke. Not because the individuals in it are all stupid - some of them are quite clever, which is the saddest part - but because the institution has been hollowed out so completely that even its swearing-in ceremony is a kind of comedy of manners.

They swear to a Constitution they have helped to amend. They thank the man whose power they are meant to check. They promise "no sleep" to a population that has not slept properly since 1986.

But here is the proverb my grandfather used to end with, and I will end with it too:

Ekiwuka ekirya muwogo kibeera mu muwogo. The worm that eats the cassava lives inside the cassava.

The rot is not coming from outside. It is not the World Bank. It is not the donors. It is not even, entirely, the man at State House. It is inside the tuber. It is sitting in green leather chairs on Parliament Avenue, swearing oaths it has no intention of keeping, in front of families that will benefit from the breach.

May God, who in His mercy allows even the wicked to take oaths, have mercy on the country those oaths are supposed to protect.

Amen. And selah.

⁂

P.S. -  If you are an MP reading this and you are offended, congratulations. The Spirit is doing its work. If you are an MP reading this and you are not offended, please find a different line of work; you are not actually awake.