The President's Most Dangerous Enemy: An Excerpt from The Missing Corpse

“Let’s be real. You really think someone gets rich by shouting ‘dictator’ into a microphone? No, my father, God rest that iron soul, he wasn’t just a president, he was Uganda’s original mob boss. And he shared. That’s the secret to staying in power, boys. You don’t kill your loudest enemies. You feed them.”

The soldiers shifted, some stifling grins, others dead silent, absorbing the dark gospel.

“Every time a new rebel rose up with a mouth too big and a crowd too loud, Daddy would send a messenger. Not a threat. Not a bullet. A sack of money. Just enough to buy silence…or at least turn the fire into smoke. They’d take it. Every single one. Setup businesses, buy land, build towers with their siblings’ names carved in stone. And in return? They played opposition like it was theater. Great actors. No plot.”

He leaned forward now, voice dropping to a near-whisper.

“Except for one fool. Barigye Kato. A man with the ego of a demigod and the brains of a wet brick. Took my father’s money, then still tried to take the throne.”

The room stiffened. The General smiled like a man about to rip the wings off a fly.

“Since we’re all here, and I’m feeling generous, let me tell you Barigye’s real problem with my father. It wasn’t politics. It was personal. It started in the bedroom.”

A few of the men laughed uneasily.

“Barigye was once my father’s personal doctor. That means he saw everything, if you catch my drift. Claimed to one of my dad’s high-school flings; Evelyn Basiima, fine legs, poor judgment, that he was, shall we say, better equipped. Bigger stick. Better hammer. Evelyn, ever the scientist, decided to investigate. Opened the lab. Ran her tests.”

He paused, letting the vulgarity linger like a ghost in the room.

“But after a while, the novelty wore off. A big tool is nice, she said, but it doesn’t get you into the State House. She started missing the presidential treatment motorcades, bodyguards, silk sheets. She wanted a president, not a penis. And that’s when Barigye made the dumbest promise of his life. He told her, ‘I’ll become president of Uganda.’ He resigned from government. Started calling himself a revolutionary.” "He sold the same old pitch to the voters—that he had the biggest hammer in the country. The campaign crowds, started calling him Mr. Hammer, like he was some mythical blacksmith sent to fix the nation by smashing its skull."

The General’s voice hardened.

He ran against my father, again and again. Got votes, sure. But votes don’t count if you don’t count the votes. My old man didn’t waste time charming the masses. He charmed the counters. That was the game. “But Barigye… He got desperate. When ballots failed, he went for the nuclear button. He reached out to the very machine that put my father in power: MI6. Yes, London’s invisible hand. The men who planted the seed and watered it with blood and oil.” He spat on the floor.

“You can take my dad’s woman. Maybe. But you don’t take his power. That’s sacred. MI6 didn’t like that. Daddy was their Frankenstein. They don’t take kindly to rebels trying to smash their toys. So, they baited Barigye, set a neat little trap, then wrapped him up in ribbon and handed him back. Return to sender.” Now the General’s face was stone. “And that, my friends, is the true story. Not the garbage in newspapers. Not the whispered lies on X Spaces. This is the story you remember. This is why Barigye will pay. One way or the other, he will kneel—apologize to my father’s ghost for breaking his heart and disrespecting his throne. Or he’ll learn the hard way that some mistakes get you more than killed.”

— Yasin Kakande

Author of The Missing Corpse