I will stop attending the SACCO meetings when invited as a guest. Yesterday I received an invitation in writing from a couple to attend a gifts and money giving ceremony to his wife. The invitation did not include a provision that as a guest I would be required to participate in the process of giving gifts and money.

At one time during the ceremony the husband, a young brother of mine, was asked to come to me for gifts and money.

Clearly I did not understand why I should give gifts and money when I was just an invited guest. I asked a neighbour: “What did the couple do that was worth me giving out gifts and money to them?”

I grew up in the 1950s and the 1960s, when the culture was different. When visitors came to our home (my father’s home), they did not come with gifts and money to give us. Instead it was my father who would give them gifts such as chicken and goats, not money. These were the likes of headmasters, district commissioners, parish chiefs, subcounty chiefs, county chiefs, Members of Parliament or Kyabazinga (king). They went away happy because the practice was to make visitors happy.

But today, when visitors come to our village, especially the politicians, they are the ones who give gifts and money to the people. Isn’t this bribery or buying of people’s choices of who should lead or represent them?

I can tell you that things are crazy these days. I will stop visiting where people expect me to dip my hand in my pocket to give out money. I like seeing people think and reason rather than being blinded by things and money. The practice is really bad. We are becoming non-thinking, non-reasoning nation. We are being made to accept that life is just things and money. 

I don’t know who does not want people to think and reason. A non-thinking, non-reasoning nation will become a dumping ground for stupid ideas and practices. Its people will just be things themselves, since they will have no capacity to think and reason.

Yet at this time when we are under all kinds of threats and dangers, thanks to globalisation, we need to have a cadre of people who cannot only think and reason but can, most importantly, engage in critical thinking and critical reasoning.

Otherwise we risk being flooded with people, even if educated to the highest level, who are just zombies – mules incapable of thinking and reasoning coherently and correctly. They will not be different from – say drug peddlers – who do what they are told without applying their mind to the instructions. So the nation will be a nation of mules from top to bottom!

No Uganda must be a country of thinkers and reasoners who don’t just say yes, yes when they mean no!

For God and My Country.

• A Tell report / By Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a former professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Makerere University, Uganda