Opinion

It should be remembered that during the burial or Professor Adoniya Tiberondwa, a UPC stalwart, at his home in Bushenyi, General Kahinda Otafiire told mourners who dressed in UPC colours that as combatants, they would wear the red T-shirts and then go on the rampage. At other times, they would wear the uniform of the UNLA, which they had in plenty, since the majority had just walked out of the UNLA. This way the population would be easily hoodwinked to believe that it was UPC youth wingers killing people.

With the passage of time, President Tibuhaburwa Museveni has tended to appoint members of his family and ethnic group to high-ranking offices, which has introduced a high degree of political and other injustices, political careerism, political impunity, political hereditarism and political corruption, hence exclusionism in leadership and governance of the country. The latest, which did not come as a surprise, was the appointment of his son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as the Chief of Defence Forces of the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UDPDF). This is the most glaring show of political and military impunity of the president of Uganda

Liberation is primarily intellectual. It is in the mind and the heart.There was a time during the struggle when we thought that all we wanted was to rule ourselves”. Thus, political independence is not political liberation. In Uganda, we have more or less remained where we were when we got political independence from the British colonialists.

The kind of oppressive attitudes and behaviours are backed up by the institutional arrangements. This helps to clarify the confusion around what some claim to be “reverse racism”.

Material poverty gets worse if it is dominated by what is called intellectual poverty. When intellectual poverty is allowed to proliferate throughout society from bottom to top and throughout leadership and governance from top to bottom, there is inadequate intellectual capital and power to address the complex issues generated by an impoverished environment, populace, leadership and governance of a country. Everything to do with development, transformation and progress becomes a gigantic lie. Taxes are wasted. Investment in anything does not yield benefits to the taxpayers. Those who are supposed to use the taxes to develop social services and infrastructure target them for personal aggrandisement and/or enrichment.

Perennial military slogans, songs and celebrations yearn in year out and perennial lie that we experienced liberation are also perennially concealing the truism that we are under conquest, occupation, domination and rule by people who came from elsewhere and captured our instruments of power.

In Uganda, the single most threat to the belonging of species, including Man, Homo sapiens, is Man – particularly the political, entrepreneurial, corporate and nomadic-pastoral Man. Most of the blame goes to our education system, which continues to produce selfish and individualistic graduates, who in the total society manifest as the greedy, the selfish and the individualistic. When they should be building communities, society and country as “wholes” they build themselves, their families, kith and kin and ethnic groups.