Book review: The Greedy Barbarian

Their village is set in a fictional place called Buregyeya.

Rukundakanuzire’s father Rwabutwiigi gives him land upon which to establish a homestead, but that’s not all he gives his son.

He also initiates him in the family tradition of night dancing and cannibalism.

Rukundakanuzire and Ingabire give birth to a baby girl called Bekunda, whose beauty seemingly rises from the foam like the goddess Isis.

When the girl becomes a teenager, Rukundakanuzire is very protective of her and in his eagerness to keep village suitors a sanitary distance from her heavenly beauty, he kills one of these suitors!

The dead man’s family exacts vengeance by slaughtering Rukundakanuzire’s hoard of cattle. Thereupon, Rukundakanuzire is forced to flee to the mountain-girdled village of Mubaya.

As she grows into a woman, Bekunda’s beauty proves to be both gift and curse for she is gang-raped by some village roughs when Rukundakanuzire is away from home.

Soon, she discovers she is with child and has to run away because a girl who gets pregnant before marriage is punished with death.

In a neighboring village, she gives birth to a boy called Kayibanda and turns tricks as a prostitute.

As a prostitute, she’s as beguiling as the most beautiful of sunsets, so every man wants to bask in her love…to the exclusion of other prostitutes. This, naturally, leads to the other prostitutes getting jealous.

They thus plan to eliminate Bekunda in what becomes a turf war between harlots.

After the prostitutes physically assault Bekunda, she is left disfigured and loses an ear and an arm.

She then chooses to run and so gathers up her son Kayibanda to leave the fictional Muhemba in order to live in the neighboring country, Kalenga.

While in this new country of lush pastures and magical possibilities, she meets and marries a nomadic pastoralist called Kagurutsi who has the mystical powers of the Bachwezi.

Bekunda’s son, Kayibanda, soon grows into a teenager and becomes the scourge of the Malanga village in Kalenga.

All the villagers want him dealt with, so Kagurutsi is forced to take him far away to stay with his friend in Biguri: a propertied and even-tempered man called Chief Bamwine.

This story proceeds apace as Kayibanda goes from becoming a criminal to jailbird to government assassin until he finally becomes president of Kalenga.

After Kagurutsi introduces him to the powers of the Bachwezi, Kayibanda becomes an untouchable dictator with the moral code of a Mafioso.

Although “The Greedy Barbarian” carries the disclaimer of a “book of fiction”, most of the names, characters, places and incidents are thinly veiled references to actual persons, places and incidents.

In the style of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, this book is a satire on the corruption of power in which concrete and specific characters and situations stand for other characters and situations so as to make a point.

It is clear that the author seeks to make a point about the absolutely corrupt being corrupted absolutely.

In this imagined world, Bekunda and Kayibanda came from Muhemba (a byword for Rwanda) and settled in Kalenga (which is code for Uganda) in order to escape a harrowing past.

Although the author denies it, Kayibanda is said to be the fictional version of president Yoweri Museveni. While Bekunda is believed to be Museveni’s mother, Esteri Kokundeka and Kagurutsi is a fictionalised Mzee Amos Kaguta, Museveni’s father.

The author drops clues as to who these characters might represent in real life. The most striking one being Kayibanda’s speech on the steps of parliament after being sworn in: “This is not a mere change of guard but a fundamental change in the politics of this country….”

On the whole, this book is fast paced and easy to read, although the author rushes the final three chapters as the book proceeds towards the fall of Kayibanda.