Some Ugandan things make the country look like one big dark comic show.
Take the street circus that Maj Kakooza Mutale used to put on. He would come out leading a band of a few dozen men, one of them bearing a drum on his chest. The drumming and so many coarse voices in song were the benign part of Mutale's street processions. Otherwise the band whipped many people in urban centres where President Museveni and the NRM were thought to have little support during an election campaign period.
There is a district in Uganda called Kalangala, a group of Lake Victoria islands. But in Luganda the word 'akalangala' also refers to a form of madness.
For a reason I have not researched, Maj Kakooza Mutale's violent outfit was officially called Kalangala Action Plan.
Then there was this (famous?) drama in which shadowy black-T-shirt-donning government security thugs invaded the High Court and seized people who had just been released by the judge.
We were subsequently told that the thugs belonged to a hitherto unknown outfit, the Black Mamba.
In the normal world, the black mamba is an aggressive and very poisonous snake.
Then we had (or have) a kind of facility called a safe house, and there were many of them, where people got tortured and felt extremely unsafe.
Well, since Ugandans hated 'safe houses', some of the work done in those facilities was moved to the regular police stations. Like Nalufenya.
When Ugandans started hating Nalufenya, some of the grim work done there was moved to the floor of Parliament and to the open street. The State had discovered that it could whip or torture its victims virtually anywhere with the same impunity as before.
Ugandans live with these and other dark jokes without seriously disrupting public order. When they call a demonstration or public protest, they are generally physically blocked and tear-gassed before the protest even starts, with its supposed leaders often held under 'house arrest'. The people go home and largely keep quiet.
One dark joke that is repeated with total abandon in Uganda is the charge of treason.
Ordinarily, in any jurisdiction, treason is an extremely serious crime. The State does not formally utter a charge of treason against a citizen lightly. Except in Uganda.
If you do not proceed carefully, and you are whistling the title song of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as you fry your popcorn in a town where NRM big men are unpopular, you could be charged with treason.
In Uganda, the command structures of the security forces do not take responsibility for the acts of extrajudicial violence perpetrated by their trained and supposedly order-regarding individual men/officers, although ordinary Opposition politicians are expected to control all their untrained and sometimes unruly supporters.
However, you probably remember this recklessly naughty youngster who used to run around crying "wolf... wolf... wolf" when there was no wolf.
Initially, the people rushed to protect the youngster and, I suppose, their sheep.
After a few false alarms, the neighbourhood decided to ignore the boy.
But lo and behold, at the next alarm, there was a real wolf! Or maybe wolves. Outside folk tales, in real life, wolves hunt in packs. The boy did not like what followed.
Ugandans love big weddings and colourful traitors. President Museveni himself was a product of treason. If his regime overstretches the treason joke, his people may start dreaming of breeding other traitors; real wolves, and with voices sweeter than Maj Kakooza Mutale's.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
