Welcome to Uganda, the land of a million prophets. Unlike in the olden days when a new prophet would come up a hundred years after the last one passed away, in Uganda we get a hundred new prophets every year.
And those are the big ones. We shall talk about the mini-prophets later.
What has made the science of prophecy in Uganda rather rampant is the elevation of predictions to prophecies.
Ideally, a prediction is made by using available data to project how a scheduled event will turn out.
For example, if two candidates are facing off in an election, you can predict that Candidate A will win with a majority of so many percentage points.
However, in Uganda that has been elevated to a prophecy. And so whoever can wave the Bible and make a right prediction is called, or calls himself, a prophet.
What is nice about it is that women are also claiming a significant role in this growing sector of prophecy
“Although I don’t like the way they feminise the title and call themselves ‘Prophetess’.
One famous prophetess used to wear only trousers and stockings and nobody ever saw her legs, leading speculation that she had the lower limbs of a goat.
Finally when she retired – our prophets actually retire when they go bust – after a bitter dispute with her male prophet partner, she started wearing short dresses and lo and behold – she actually had human legs!
Unlike the prophets of yore who were not recognised in their homelands, the Ugandan prophets are adored by the people they grew up with.
They are an inspiration to village mates and slum mates who on seeing them drive big cars also work hard to become achievers.
Then we have the smaller prophets, mini-prophets in fact, who do not have to carry any bible and they are in their millions.
These ones prophecy the outcome of European football matches every weekend.
