This article is written for those with Big Mind, not those with Small Mind. To understand what I mean, you need to acquaint yourself with Japanese Zen approach of Big Mind, Small Mind.

Small Mind is the aspect of mind that we use throughout the day to live our lives, thinking through situations, decisions, projects – essential, necessary and often very helpful in writing as well. Small mind means having narrow interests, sympathies or outlook or typical of a small-minded person or marked by pettiness, narrowness or meanness. It may also mean having strong opinions and refusing to consider new or different ideas.

Over the more than 38 years of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s rule of Uganda, most Ugandans have been reduced to using small mind to fit in. For example, in the political arena we now see many political actors using small mind to prepare themselves to remain able to fill their stomachs and pockets without adding any value to the democratic development of Uganda and Ugandans in a complex Century.

Having used the National Resistance Movement (NRM) which they do not really love, effectively to remain afloat politically in order to primitively accumulate wealth, they are now strategising to remain to remain so Tibuhaburwa Museveni, beyond the reign of Tibuhaburwa Museveni. They have imagined that after Tibuhaburwa Museveni it will be his son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, to ascend to the throne of what manifests more like the new Kingdom of Uganda.

Apparently, Democratic Party President Nobert Mao recently observed that even politicians in the Opposition are strategising similarly as their counterparts in the NRM are doing without thinking about Uganda and the future generations of Ugandans. What is uniting them in their shortsightedness and narrow conception of politics is General Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s new idea of Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU), which is cast more as a non-governmental organisation (NGO) than a political party to conceal the General from direct involvement in politics since the Uganda Constitution 1995 prohibits soldiers from participating in politics although they have been as Ministers, etc.

Moreover, the truth is that PLU was formed from within the NRM. Even some of the top actors in PLU were appointed to ministerial positions by the President Tibuhaburwa Museveni. Many members of NRM now politically identify themselves as NRM-PLU.

In the Opposition, it is not uncommon to hear some actors in the Democratic Party (DP), National Unity Platform (NUP), Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) etc, characterising themselves as PLU.

Thus, we have DP-PLU, NUP-PLU, FDC-PLU, UPC-PLU and so on and so forth. This is a plot against Uganda and Ugandans. It means that if Nobert Mao, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, manages to bring about changes in the Uganda Constitution 1995 whereby the president is elected by parliament, then PLU will, most likely, have the largest number of members in the Ugandan parliament. If NRM proper is rejected by the electorate, then PLU will carry the day and elect the President.

If the president and his son agree that President Museveni is re-elected President, then he will be assured of enormous support from LPU leaning member of parliament, most of who will be NRM-leaning as well.

If President Tibuhaburwa Museveni agrees with his son that he steps down whenever that will be possible, then automatically the leader of PLU will be elected [resident of Uganda, whether Ugandans like it or not. Universal suffrage will be a thing of the past. The right of Ugandans to choose will be no more. This is a gigantic plot against Uganda and the indigenes of Uganda. It will the last nail in the coffin carrying the disempowered Ugandans.

The indigens cannot continue to say that all power belongs to them as the Uganda Constitution 1995 falsely states while putting all power in the hands of the President. Power will now be firmly in the family of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni by constitutional design. The issue of political concern, therefore, is the future of the family of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni and those attached to it kin-wise and ethnically, not Uganda and Ugandans.

Big Mind, on the other hand, refers to the quality of awareness – the aspect of mind that allows us to be aware of thoughts as they arise. You may have noticed while meditating that we have the ability to see thoughts not only as we replay them, but also in the moment itself, as they arise. This is awareness – this is Big Mind – and it tends to feel quite spacious, leaving us feeling more at ease. Unfortunately, as intellectual space reduces in significance, Big Mind is becoming overtaken by Small Mind, not only in public affairs but also in the academic realm.

Increasingly, academics are concentrating on academicism and scholasticism and far less on developing intellectual capital and articulating and clarifying issues for the people. This role has been usurped by politicians or their NRM Kyankwanzi Political School – bred intellectuals, whose role is to articulate and clarify issues in favour of the powers that be. This is a major plot against Uganda and Ugandans for a long time to come. There will come a time when the people will never listen to alternative ideas, articulations and clarifications other than those of the powers that be.

Both educated and uneducated will have recourse to Small Mind, and will tend to see things the same way in favour of power or the rulers.

The plot against Uganda and Ugandans started in the bushes of Luwero (1981-1986). The justification was a rigid election of 1980, which ushered in another President Milton Obote regime (Obote II). The bush war was unfortunately dominated by refuge element’s, mainly from Rwanda and Mulenge in east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These elements have since dominated the military and political space of Uganda at the expense of the indigenes of Uganda. They usurped the instruments of power and captured the state of Uganda. Since 1986, they have captured every civic space and environmental space of Uganda, mainly through land grabbing, fisheries grabbing and grabbing of underground wealth, which they exploit clandestinely in such a way that the indigenes do not benefit at all from their natural resources.

The greatest tool of plotting against Uganda and Ugandans was the constitution of Uganda 1995, whose making was presided over by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni. The process involved many refuge elements, who had far more say in its letter and content than the indigenes who were used to legitimise NRM rule constitutionally. The resulting constitution invested all power and authority in the president of Uganda (Tibuhaburwa Museveni), reduced former kingdoms of Buganda, Bunyoro, and Toro and the semi-kingdom of Busoga to mere cultural institutions without any political power, and abolished the former kingdom of Ankole completely.

It created a new indigenous group of Uganda called Banyarwanda Tutsi of Rwanda, Burundi, Mulenge (in DRC) and those who had been refugees in Uganda. This was a major plot against Uganda and Ugandans.

The Constitution even decreed that any children found loitering on the streets in Uganda and who had no belonging to Uganda would automatically become Ugandans five years after it became operationalised. As if this was not enough, the parliament of Uganda created a category of citizens called dual citizens, which could only be exploited maximally by refugees from Rwanda, Burundi and Mulenge, since the majority of Ugandans had no opportunity of becoming citizens in other countries. The implication of this was that foreign elements with dual citizenship would presumably equally compete with the indigenes for opportunities such as jobs and other resources.

However, the passage of time has shown that indigenes have increasingly lost out. The people with foreign roots are accessing everything, destroying the environment and cultures, dispossessing and displacing indigenes from their traditional lands, turning them into internal refugees. There is nothing they have not grabbed. Natural resources are now fully in their hands, thanks to the constitutional provision that put all power and authority in one-person – the President of Uganda.

In effect, future generations of Ugandans do not belong since where they would belong has been grabbed by the people with foreign roots. This is not unlike what happened in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, North America and South America, where the indigenes lost everything to the foreigners. Apparently, the indigenes of Uganda are participating in making sure that Uganda is lost to the people with foreign roots.

The plot against Uganda and Ugandans is being implemented along many dimensions – political, economic, social, ecological, environmental, cultural, legislative and judicial, to name but a few.

Socially, policies and strategies have been devised to ensure that more refugees enter Uganda a big budget is created to educate them to arm them with quality education inaccessible by the indigens. Meanwhile a new slave root has been created to ensure that many more young girls, who would otherwise reproduce the population of indigenes is shipped out to slavery in the middle East as commodities.

Uganda is a refugee economy. As I wrote in my article ‘Uganda’s refugee economy and its linkage to State Interests’, the Uganda economy is built to meet state interests of converting Uganda into a haven for refugees and a curse for the indigenes. The economy is now burdened in every sphere of life by refugees, who also dominate leadership and governance of the country.

Unfortunately, refugees and former refugees are now the greatest single factor behind the destruction of Uganda’s environment and its cultural foundations base on land as the refugees grab land in every part of the country. This is a plot against the environmental and the cultural future of Uganda and her indigenes. It might turn out to be the greatest roadblock to the realisation of independence and sovereignty of Ugandans in the 21st century.

Refugees and former refugees, now casting themselves as citizens of Uganda, have captured all the political, economic, social, ecological, environmental, cultural and military spaces in Uganda and are manifesting as the masters while the rest of Ugandans, of whatever station in life, are manifesting as the slaves. It is as sad as that.

However, the indigenes are playing a critical role in ushering in and sustaining this status quo: both as voters and political actors in the ruling party and the opposition parties. It is as if they have all given up on Uganda, themselves and the future generations of Ugandans.

For God and My Country.

A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).