Odokonyero is here

In July, last year, Madhu Krishnan and I convened two creative writing workshops in Kampala and Gulu, taught by Nick Makoha and Jennifer Makumbi, respectively.  Moses Odokonyero and Jacob Katumusiime were very central to the secondary school teachers’ focus group discussions we held alongside the workshop. The results of the workshop are eighteen short stories, written by emerging and young Ugandan writers, now available for public enjoyment in an anthology, published by Black Letter Media.

Alongside the workshops, in the same month last year, Noosim Naimasiah and I collaborated on a documentary film project on the question of social media and its impact on creative writing. For the film, I interviewed five major Ugandan writers, namely, Jennifer Makumbi, Stella Nyanzi, Nyana Kakoma, Ernest Bazanye and Acan Innocent.

The July days spent with Noosim, Zahara Abdul, Lewis Ainebyona and Esther Mirembe were enjoyable and I am proud of the product of our labour. I am personally grateful to Henry Brefo who has been the key strategy man for Writivism since 2016, Roland Byagaba who has been the man in charge of all things Writivism since September 2017, Rukundo Joschua, and Mulialia Okumu for their labour, and unflinching support.

The final version of the documentary film is on tour in the United Kingdom next week. The film will be screened in Brighton, London and Birmingham. The Uganda screening news will be released as soon as they will be available. I want to be there, obviously. While I wait anxiously to travel to Kampala for that screening, and the launch of Odokonyero, the anthology, enjoy four of the eighteen short stories in the anthology, below.

Candano by Fred Sunday Mugisha

Tendo by Esther Mirembe 

My Name is Ojwiny by George Ocen 

Let me Write to Dad by Jacob Katumusiime 

It was a pleasure doing these things, to celebrate five years of Writivism, no wonder my electronic self passed out in August, and I missed two weeks at the beginning of the semester. I am happy to see the fruits of all that labour.

On Nyana Kakoma’s “Chief Mourner”

There is no story that has made it hard for me to review without spoilers as Nyana Kakoma’s “Chief Mourner”. It is hard to compare it with another short story by a Ugandan, without spoiling too much. But I will try. This is afterall an experiment in writing very brief reviews and not spoiling.

 

“Chief Mourner” is published in the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing anthology, A Memory This Size and other stories. It is the very last story, and it is such a powerful way to end the anthology. It is a story that stays with you.

 

“Chief Mourner” is a story of our times. As the trend is when it comes to African literature in English, every single short story is read as representative of Africa, as carrying a burden to paint an image of that country, Africa, and Nyana starts hers thus: “There is a lot to be said about finding out that your boyfriend, Jude has died via Facebook.”

 

Nyana’s Africa is in the technology era. It is an Africa with Facebook. An Africa dominated by social media, that you can read all about African life on the social network. Lives are lived online as much as they are, offline. And news of death travels online faster than it does offline.

 

The protagonist in the story, lives in Mbale, a country town on the Ugandan Kenyan border and her boyfriend Jude dies on his way back to Kampala, from visiting her. Reading this story brought me memories of the days Mateos was a popular hangout place, and Ban cafe was the coffee shop of choice in Kampala.

 

It is a short story that captures our times. By ‘our’, I mean Ugandans who came of age in the social media era. We were born in the 1980s, we were joining university at the time blogging was the thing to do, indeed, Nyana’s tribute to Joel Ntwatwa captures what I am describing. Ntwatwa, whom we lost recently was one of our generation.

 

“Chief Mourner” has a place among the short stories that mark our stamp on Ugandan literature. Nyana is a luminary of our generation. And Jude represents those we have lost.

 

While Ntwatwa died this year, five years after Nyana’s story was published, I feel the story is a literary tribute to him and others of our generation who have passed on. I have here in mind, Hillary Kuteitsa and Boaz Muhumuza among others who died in their 20s and 30s respectively. “Chief Mourner” is told from the perspective of the girlfriend who wasn’t introduced to the family as a girlfriend and how she mourns, and what she finds out about her deceased boyfriend during the vigil and other mourning rituals. When he can no longer answer, as Weasle sings of Mowzey Radio.

 

It is a great story, to which I will return when I dispense with the restraint on including spoilers in the review.

The 2013 Caine Prize anthology was published by New Internationalist, Jacana, and Sub-Saharan publishers.

A Brief History of Public and Private Education in Uganda and the Bridge Schools saga

The Bridge Schools are back in the news. They were ordered to close by the Ministry of Education two years ago, for failing to fulfill basic minimum requirements for private schools in the country. They went to court to challenge the decision and they lost the case. Parliament undertook its own investigations on the matter and returned with a position that agreed with the Ministry of Education. Bridge schools do not abide by the minimum required standards for private schools.

Despite this consensus by all the three arms of the state, Bridge Schools are open. They have put up a very strong and well-financed PR campaign, which includes portraying the Ministry of Education as contradictory in its approach to the schools. Bridge supporters ask how the Ministry can claim to uphold standards when other schools are not doing better than Bridge. The purpose of this short post is to explain the various types of schools in Uganda, and the different roles the Ministry plays in the ownership, management, supervision and regulation of the various types of schools.

The Ministry of Education is a regulator of private education in the country. The word ‘regulator’ is very important. The Bridge schools fall under the private ones whose relationship with the ministry is that of being the regulated. In its role as regulator, the ministry of education is supervised by both the judiciary, to resolve disputes, and under parliamentary oversight. In the Bridge case, both the judiciary and parliament agree with the decisions of the Ministry of education. This regulatory role over private schools should not be confused with other roles of the ministry when dealing with other types of schools, to which I turn below.

To understand the complex situation of public education in Uganda, we have to go to the colonial era. The first schools in Uganda were religious schools. They were owned by missionaries. The colonial government decided to give grants to these schools but never owned or took them over. In as far as they were ‘church-owned’, these schools were in a technical sense, private schools. The Muslims realising that they were losing out because of the religious discrimination in these schools (which were set up to convert the ‘heathens’, to ‘civilise’ them and so required baptism etc), started their own schools to provide education to Muslims. The colonial state also started a few schools in urban areas, that were not attached to any religion. The Asian community and local governments (kingdoms, especially Buganda, for example) also started their own schools. Primary and secondary education during the colonial era in Uganda was segregated by religion, class, gender and race to different extents. There were schools for only European children of colonial administrators, and Asians, and upper class ‘natives’. Then there were schools for the rest.

The idea of ‘government-funded’ schools started from the colonial era. The colonial government sent money to religious-based schools, as support. The colonial government did not in fact have an office for education until later. It decided that education was a function for the missionaries, and its role was to support them. To run the schools, the missionaries and the church charged fees from parents, to supplement government funding.

A lot of changes have happened since the colonial era, including racial integration in the earlier European and Asian-specific schools, but what has not changed is the ownership of religious schools. In a strict sense, there are very few ‘public’ schools in Uganda. If we use two broad categories, public and private, the public are the state owned schools, so we are talking of schools like Shimoni demonstration school, Nakasero primary school, Kitante primary school, Kigezi College, Butobere, etc. When Obote made Uganda a republic, the state took over assets that used to belong to kingdoms. Some schools became state-owned than local government-owned that way. The kingdom had started its own non-denominational schools in its role as a local / federal government. The rest of the schools are not state owned, and therefore fall under the definition of private, as that which is not state owned. In this category, are schools that are religious, the majority, and those started by private entrepreneurs for profit, and others started by communities.

This broad category of private schools can be subdivided into two sub-categories. There are government funded but privately owned schools, and private commercial schools that do not get government funding. Government funded schools are those started by religious organisations, or even local communities, that the state funds through grants, as it were in the colonial era. Most of the so called government schools, fall in this category. Gayaza, Kigezi High School, Namagunga, Mbarara High School, Bweranyangi, etc. They are not public schools, strictly speaking because they are owned by the religious institutions that started them. Government pays salaries, gives them grants, etc but ultimate control, ownership of land and structures, all that is religiously or community owned. So we can say that the government funded schools are half public, half private. The others are private profit-making, commercial schools. To be fair, there are also privately owned schools that are not government funded, and do not make profit, the Nyaka Schools are an example.

The Ministry of Education is the relevant office in government that owns and runs if you may, the strictly public schools, which are very few. It owns the land on which they sit, it has total control of these schools. It has some limited power over the government funded schools because of the money it gives them through paying salaries to teachers and other grants. Universal Primary and Secondary Education funds are in that milieu, and not all government funded schools accepted these programmes, again because full control is by the religious organisations and communities that started them. So, not all government funded schools are part of the UPE and USE programmes.

The ministry is also the regulator of the commercial and non profit, private schools, started by individuals, companies, organisations, even religious organisations. Majority charge school fees, they make profit, and do not receive government funds. This is the category in which Bridge schools fall. The role of the ministry as regards to these schools is purely that of regulation. It sets the standards that they need to meet, and supervises them to ensure that they are compliant. Some private schools do not charge fees but do not receive government funds either. Such non-profit schools like Nyaka, referenced above, are totally philanthropic. They, too must meet the basic requirements set by the ministry, as if they made profit.

Public discussion about the Bridge schools issue conflates the three types of schools above, and the different roles the ministry plays, in regard to each type. I do not think that any useful analysis can emerge from the conflation of three separate types of schools, which come with different roles for the Ministry of Education. The Bridge Schools are profit making, but pretend to be ‘doing good’, helping the poor and so do not meet the minimum set standards because of this. Isn’t it ironic that Nyaka Schools, which do not charge school fees, which have over time proved to have had a huge impact on poor communities, actually meet the set standards? They are nonprofit, and private. Bridge as a private school, is in the league of Kampala Parents, reputed as one of the oldest private schools in the country, and it must meet the minimum standards set. It is corporate capitalist greed, the desire to make as much profit as possible, at the expense of children’s futures that sees Bridge Schools seek to cut corners.

For further reading on the history of education in Uganda, see Ssekamwa and Lugumba’s A History of Education in East Africa. Wulira, also produced a podcast episode on the UPE programme. See their references and listen to the podcast episode.

Dear Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda

On January 25, 1986 when the Uganda National Liberation Front military government was defeated by your National Resistance Army (NRA), I did not exist in any form. Not even as an idea. Not even as a foetus. I was born almost two years after that day. This means that as you celebrate the feat of leading Uganda for thirty one uninterrupted years this 26^th day of the month of January, the year of our Lord 2017, I will wait for ten more months before celebrating my thirtieth birthday.

Our generation of Ugandans, born in 1986 and after deserves to be named after your stay in power. We deserve to be known as the Museveni generation. We grew up knowing that your name is a synonym for presidency. Indeed we said things like, Kenya has changed its museveni, to mark the handing over of presidency in that country from Moi to Kibaki and from Kibaki to Uhuru Kenyatta. To us, the office of the president is you, and you are the office of the president. That is reductionist. You are more than the office of the president. You have defined much of the reality in which we have grown.

We remember our childhood, teenage and young adulthood days by the various policy and political events in which you were the central player. Whether it is the start of the Universal Primary Education programme in the 1990s, under which most of us attained elementary education, or the 2000 political challenge for the presidency of your organisation (system), the National Resistance Movement by Kizza Besigye, or even the 2005 Juba Peace Talks with the Lord’s Resistance Army, or the 2011 Walk to Work protests: you were the lead player that shaped those events, and as a result, you dominate how we remember our own personal histories.

You have re-imagined and created Uganda in your image. You have been in power for longer than the combined years previous leaders stayed in office. Today, I like to think about these realities as merely that: facts, without imposing any value judgement. My letter to you, Yoweri has nothing to do with whether it is right or wrong for you to have shaped our generation through your short and continuing stay in power. I know that your handlers and propagandists are itching already, to tear down whatever I wish to say, if they sense that this letter is criticising your short stay in power. I wish not to indulge them.

Yoweri: I want to ask about a side of you, that I wish to see more of. Can I call you Grandpa? I have read that people called you Mzee, even before I was born, you were already called Old Man. To a person born in 1987, age-wise, you qualify to be a grandfather. But also, given your role in shaping the conditions and realities of my short life on earth so far, I think it is respectful to call you Grandpa. After all, where I grew up, they taught us not to call elders by name. I apologise for the bad manners exhibited in the previous paragraphs. Can we cut out the handlers and propagandists at this stage? They should not care what grandchildren tell their grannies.

Grandpa: I wish to see more of your intellectual side. I remember glancing through my father’s copies of Sowing the Mustard Seed and What is Africa’s Problem in the late 1990s, when I was too young to appreciate your wisdom. As a young adult, I would read you in detail and appreciate that you wrote that scholarly verification of Fanon’s Theory of Revolutionary Violence in Mozambique during your undergraduate study. That thesis is important for my political commitment to and interest in the fight against imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, to borrow bell hooks’ naming of the system of our oppression. I also appreciate that you published selected essays on protracted warfare that military strategists world over should also be thankful for.

I appreciate most of your speeches, where you forget to score points against perceived Ugandan political opponents and go off on tangents in which you seek to interpret phenomena on your own terms as an ideas man. Most times I pick interest in how your neo-liberal practices as president contradict your ‘freedom fighter’ rhetoric. Your actions have entrenched the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’s hold onto Ugandan society. But I remain greedy Grandpa, for your written material and intellectual things, and so allow me, as you would a grandchild, to ask for more. Please publish more, Grandpa. Our generation deserves to read more narration of events that have shaped our lives from your perspective. Just as you disagreed with your teacher Walter Rodney at University of Dar es Salaam on the issue of the existence of God, you know for sure that some of us will disagree with your viewpoint as is expected in a situation where there are two and more working minds.

I know that some of the propagandists in your employ are now tempted to respond to this blog post by attacking me personally, and listing all your publications. They probably think that I am not aware of the long list of your publications. I do not know if they sometimes think that our generation does not know how to use Google to find information, or they are the ones who do not know how helpful that search engine is. So, indeed we Google a lot, and specifically I, look out for any intellectual material authored by yourself there is, online. I also look for the same offline. Our generation is after all not able to live fully digital lives because of what you would call infrastructural bottlenecks, when you wear the bureaucratic jargon on your tongue. Your critics would add the fact that sometimes you pull out of that hat, a vague justification, that gift that keeps giving, of ‘national security’ to try to deny us the use of the internet as happened during the 2016 election. But let me not pay attention to the propagandists in your employ and their antagonists, your critics.

Let me state my second ask. It is related to the first. Grandpa: why don’t you impose a cultural agenda onto your government? Maybe that is a wrong way to phrase it. Let me re-phrase. Grandpa: can you impose a cultural agenda onto your government? Surely, you can’t limit the role of culture in the revolution to the military songs of the NRA. You know that Amilcal Cabral’s concept of the building of national culture and consciousness went beyond that.

I love that in your personal capacity as an intellectual, you have been part of two groups of linguists that have worked on a translation dictionary, and a thesaurus. I have expressed elsewhere my issues with these two projects. I have questioned the dominance of Runyankore and Nkore ways at the expense of Rukiga and Kiga ways, yet they are described as including both the Banyankore and Bakiga nationalities. My critique of the work does not take away its value. I think that it is important work. Indeed as bell hooks says, the critic only engages the work that they ascribe value to. Given the technological domination of the world by White Supremacist Eurocentric media and modes of knowledge, our generation appreciates the labour of those intellectual fighters who keep our own languages and heritage accessible to us. In your personal capacity, you are one of them.

But Grandpa: why do you do these projects as an individual? Why doesn’t your government have a cultural and language policy to support this work, in the process extending it to other nationalities in Uganda, beyond the Banyankore and Bakiga? I could list the various provisions of international human rights treaties ratified by Uganda that require the state to promote indigenous languages and heritage. Indeed, even the 1995 Ugandan Constitution has provisions that support this case. Sections of various Acts of Parliament can also be cited to boost the case for state investment in indigenous languages and heritage. But for now, I choose to write to you a blog post than to take your government to task in the courts of law. From your Kavunuuzi and Katondoozi projects referred to above, I know that you are interested in this type of work, as an individual. Why, Grandpa: doesn’t this interest and personal investment seep into public policy?

As a President of Uganda, your government’s cultural and language policies for the last 31 years have served a colonial and imperial agenda. They enforce White Supremacy in the name of ‘development’ and ‘modernisation’. They turn full lives into commodities, following neo-liberal capitalist logics. They alienate black children from their immediate environments, history and heritage, to the benefit of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Grandpa: knowing that you are a former student of Walter Rodney, the Guyanese historian and Pan Africanist Marxist who gave us How Europe Underdeveloped Africa among other revolutionary texts, I know that this gospel is a staple on your ideological plate. I imagine that at a personal level, you do not like your own government’s cultural and language policy framework. But why does your government continue to do this damage, Grandpa?

Instead of you always asking UNESCO to fund your personal heritage and language projects, a state institution should exist to support this work. As you know, our generation has its many demands on the state and on your generation, given the conditions of our growing up. You are all we know. We may not yet be big on demanding a cultural and language renaissance, but you can be sure that we will appreciate this in the long term. Why don’t you institutionalise your personal hobby of contributing to projects around Runyankore and Nkore heritage so that other intellectual workers in the indigenous arts, from other Ugandan nationalities can make their contributions? Grandpa: is this too much to ask? You surely can persuade your colleagues in government to allocate some of the hundreds of millions of US Dollars the Consolidated Fund already has, from oil related income (that batch for which the handshake was given) to this.

My final ask is petty, Grandpa. It may even be problematic. Actually, it is. Please Grandpa: do not allow your handlers and various propagandists to come here and pretend to respond to this open letter. I know this last paragraph is a gift to them, as they think that they will use it to delegitimise what they may perceive as an attempt at discrediting you. Grandpa: please prevail on them. They may not see how well intentioned this plea from a child who has no choice but to carry the label with your own name, having been born during your era as Ugandan president, is. I know you are busy, and that this last paragraph could be the reason this letter may not reach you, but I believe that there are spiritual dimensions to our existence on earth and so you may find this letter telepathically. I will be glad to receive a response through action, Grandpa. Or even clairvoyantly.

Sincerely

Furayide: P.O Box Nyanja, Kabale.

‘There is no difference between you and Dr. Besigye’, Henry Mutebe tells Andrew Mwenda

Dear Andrew Mwenda

My letter to you is in Dr. Martin Luther king’s spirit who once said that ‘a time comes when silence is betrayal.’ You have spoken; I have read, listened and heard. In your submissions, you raised very important issues which in all fairness deserve a response.
I will try my best, not to attack your character or person, because that is not the ethic of a civilized debate although, I will not shy away from pointing at examples of your own pieces, submissions and words well recorded in history that may be a good mirror for you to do your own self-appraisal on the way you put your ideas forward.

You are no doubt a man of great potential but like all elements of great potential, they can all in the same manner be elements of great danger. The beauty and burden of your gifts is that you can use them for good and bad. You are a man finely gifted in speech and argument. For this, you have been recognized and celebrated in many forums. You have used your gifts to mobilise resources and established great businesses that employ other Ugandans and you must be credited for this resourcefulness. There is no doubt that like many others, you are a useful and active citizen who is contributing to the development of your country.

More significantly, through hard work, exposure and good luck, you have established yourself as a public figure, who is not shy to let those you meet know it. In your famous resignation letter, you quickly reminded your former boss, ‘Almost every year of my work at Monitor, I won a certificate of excellence. I broke the biggest stories in the country, hosted the greatest names on radio, and in many cases even attracted the largest advertisements.’ Andrew, you are a man of great achievement. We thank God for such incredible talent. In a country young as ours, we need those voices that can always disturb the normal course to make us reflect on alternatives and refine our goals and targets. Your contribution in public policy discourse is well profiled and continues to extend the boundaries.

That said however, as I have commented on one of your earlier posts before, I need to remind you Andrew that you have gotten accustomed to being right, being the one with the last word, and the know it all person and Yes, you are the old man of the clan, yes you have the ‘Last word’, yes you are connected and have access to classified spaces where no one else reaches, but even then, you are still one human being born into a world with others who should equally have their opinion treated with respect and who do not need to be tagged as mentally retarded or ‘fanatical’ simply because they do not subscribe to your line of argument.

In recent days, you have been quoted as calling a certain section of people mentally retarded and ‘fanatical’ yet your own history is ripe with examples of a complete ‘fanatical’ in the real sense of the word. The words and tone you use to describe supporters of Besigye or other people who disagree with you is sometimes the real evidence of what may not be good with your form and delivery of ideas.

A couple of years ago, you wrote a stinging piece ‘isn’t Museveni fleecing us’ in which you sharply criticized the president for all manner of evil. Thank God the president is a cool headed man, who from his wisdom treated you differently and you can now pass for a business man around town because he can allow a government he leads to give you adverts and also access other opportunities which he has the discretion to have failed you. President museveni is indeed a calm person.

That attack on the President and his family also drew the attention of the usually silent people like Mr. Rwabogo Odrek, who in a response to your letter said, that years of mentoring at the Monitor had ‘…produced a rabid and reckless politician, not a professional journalist’ that he thought you wanted to be. I am sure he reflected very much before he wrote those words and I hope you have the humility to read that letter again and reflect more.

I ask you to read that letter again; because it should tell you so much about how some people genuinely feel about the way you put out your ideas. He added that the newspaper was producing ‘many kids like you who feed us with garbage every day on airwaves and in print and expect the nation to sit and listen’. Like he said years ago, I think it is unfair for you Andrew, to often put opposition supporters into one box and simply regard them as ‘fanatical’ and call others mentally retarded. Odrek called your submissions ‘the daily noise that pollutes the air on the radio.’ And that you have “have learned nothing like the Bourbons in France who ruled the country before the French Revolution.’

I have used those statements just to give you a mirror to look into the past and see how it is dangerous to simply keep peeing on people’s legs and think they are too dump to notice it or simply remain too nice to tell you to stop it. You are good at talking, and sometimes fail to listen to yourself or others. I have heard you on radio several times and many times, your own panelists struggle to find space to make their arguments, you just won’t allow them to put their ideas forward. We have also heard from the corridors how sometimes the studio is charged because you just won’t use appropriate language when referring to others’ views. This sort of behavior is totally unacceptable Andrew. You may have been used to being right and being told you are the sharpest tool in the box but you need to listen more to others and respect other people’s right to hold their views. I want to imagine you are naturally a fast speaker and that may give you problems holding back when you want to make a rebuttal but you need to learn the patience to listen to others and respectfully disagree using appropriate language.

I will now turn to the contradictions in your ideas. There is a sharp contradiction in your frames of analysis of issues that is recurrent throughout all your submissions. For example, earlier on, you suggested the order by chaos theory as a solution to the conflict in Congo. You have said the same of South Sudan arguing that these regions should be left to fight, kill each other until a winner emerges and establishes order. You are against external intervention but fail at the very beginning of the argument to recognize that there are no arms factories in these regions. Arms are ferried into these regions and the minerals being looted are sold somewhere. So there are already external forces animating the action. Your premise falls when you imagine a domestic solution when there is actually an external cause. You argue that the domestic solution is what will stop the conflicts when you know too well that there are external funders and mineral dealers who are fueling these wars.

Andrew, since 1996, close to 6 million people have died in the conflicts in the non-Democratic Republic of Congo. That is precisely about 800 people every day for the last 20 years and in your opinion, and in your righteous mind sir, you think the war should go on until a winner emerges? Really? 800 people should die every day until a winner emerges? Wow. Anyway, I can understand that for you as a journalist that is news and money. War is business and that will be extra money for you since you are always the first to get the news or ‘truth’ as you always say. On those grounds I can understand your argument. However, you need to put yourself in the shoes of those you report about and understand that like your family members at home, they want to live a normal life and not merely be statistics and stories in your newspaper. The death and suffering going in South Sudan is simply untold yet you have said the same for this country. The years selling nothing but words can not give you a slight idea what the heck happens when death violently takes millions leaving behind helpless children and women. You have been lucky not to get the feel of this situation in person but those who have do not wish, even for a minute, to hear the guns roar which for you is news to sell and money to make. I just think that as someone with opportunity and space to shape public opinion and interact with decision makers, it is very regrettable that you hold and defend such a destructive theory. However, it is your opinion and you are entitled to it.

But let’s even assume that such a theory is fine by any standard, order by chaos, why don’t you apply the same theory to the growth and development of FDC or the opposition in Uganda? You have described the opposition as disorganized and unable to take power. You have consistently argued that Dr. Besigye is the problem in FDC who is stifling its growth. By supporting the order by chaos theory, you fundamentally contradict yourself when you seem to suggest to the opposition to have a different growth theory. Why is the suggestion different from your usual line of thought in this one?

I thought your school of thought is that order and authority emerge from order by chaos theory? Why don’t you leave FDC to organically go through its own disorder and find its own growth? By extension of your argument, the disorder should be healthy for it re-invent and find what works. Loyalty to FDC as an institution or Besigye as an individual is a matter for the people to decide. They know what they want and will always decide. NRM has fielded president Museveni because he works for them. To the supporters of NRM, it is not a point how many times he contests, all they want is their party to be in power. In the exigency of circumstances, they find him the best player and he has always scored. So I am not sure, as a realist, you should find Dr. Besigye’s commitment to remain active in contesting for power problematic. You have taken Besigye as the principle problem and do not want him to contest for power. I find this very simplistic. To simply wish away one person and think the opposition will now grow and win is to say the least a very laughable idea. I find the contradiction quite interesting. I think as president Museveni has argued, the people decide. That is now the order. Whether is it chaos, it is the order.

In another opinion letter you wrote for Aljazeera, you castigated president Obama for lecturing Africa when the US itself has enough problems. In that article, you write that ‘Obama acted like a colonial headman lecturing the natives on how to behave as good subjects.’ Don’t you think you are doing the same for FDC and the opposition? You had some advice for Obama saying ‘If there are weaknesses in our governance they are ours to struggle against and overcome.’ In the same spirit, if there are weaknesses in the opposition there are theirs, and theirs to solve. You on one side castigate others who you say ‘Lecture’ Africa but forget your own intervention and lectures to others. The lesson we should learn from this is that we need to listen to each other. If you do not want to listen to lectures from the US or Obama, you should in the same spirit not lecture FDC, NRM or the opposition. Or else, you mirror the actions of the ‘colonial headman’ whom you brutally condemn. Like President Kagame advised you, ‘write your stories’ in the independent and leave matters of FDC to FDC (going by your theory of order by choas…they should be left to work it on their own). Fair deal? Your opinion is just but an opinion of Andrew Mwenda. There are 3.5 Million Ugandans who voted for Besigye despite how or what you think of them. You attacked president Museveni for years yet his support continued to go up. Does that tell you something about an opinion? Millions continued to support President Museveni despite the sharp criticism and attacks you laid on him in the years before. The lesson from this is that at the end of the day, the people decide and while offering our opinions, we must not label, demonise and put people into boxes making them look evil simply because they fall into a different political space.

You accuse Dr. Besigye of turning and not respecting his word, yet in your resignation letter to the MD of Monitor, you start by saying you had resigned from Daily Monitor and from the radio talk show and will not reconsider their request to go back or continue to write! Today, if I am not mistaken, you are back at the radio, what happened? Why did you turn back? What took you back to the radio? See? People change. You changed! The same reasons you had that changed your mind should be the same frames you should use to understand that ideas change, people change, contexts changes and strategies change and it okay for people to change. It is a sure constant in life

You are tired of seeing Besigye on the political stage, how about if we also said we are tired of seeing you on TV and hearing your voice on radio, would that be a good deal? You feel the right to occupy the public space but think others should not occupy it? What’s the name given to that kind of behavior? You ought to use the same to understand that Dr. Besigye and others who want to contest need to be left to compete for as many times as they want.You and Besigye are no different. You are all sellers of ideas or opinions. So there is no difference between you and Dr. Besigye. Why do you wish him away while you think its a good idea for you to remain in the public space? You all occupy the same space, the market place of ideas. In my view, as the president has always said, The people decide. The president espouses that idea and in my opinion, it is should be given some thought. The people decide. How they decide, what information they have to decide is a debate for another day, but as a principle the people decide.

You were one of the sharpest critics of President Museveni to an extent of attacking his family in some of your pieces. Today, you are on air defending and praising the very man you said was very bad and leads an ‘illegitimate regime.’ That illegitimate regime you said now feeds you and sustains your business. Is it still bad? Were you lying about it or situations change? What happened to the bad Museveni, the corrupt Museveni, the bad man you described, the illegitimate regime? Or maybe you lied about him? What happened Andrew? I think all these situations teach us that people change, situations change and no one should be held hostage to a past. People and organizations must continuously reflect and be left to self-renew. You have changed Andrew. Others too, have changed. That’s just a fact of life. So you ought to be careful when pointing fingers to people for changing when you have taken the same route. No one should be condemned for changing their position as long as they have good reasons to do so. The president has on a number of occasions given his reasons for deciding to run again. On many occasions, many of his supporters find these reasons valid and they do support him again. In the same manner, Besigye has changed positions several times because the situations required that he does. In the end, the Ugandans are the judges, we all have one head … and our opinions should be treated with the same weight as other Ugandans, whether you call them fanatical or mentally retarded. This demonizing of politicians is simply too dangerous and as a journalist, you ought to know that we hold you to a certain standard and we are not dumb to know where the boundaries of journalism and political advocacy and witch hunt start and stop.

Andrew, I will end by re-echoing the words of Odrek who implored us that sometimes someone needs to tell you that you are overly arrogant and self-righteous. I believe Mr. Odrek Rwabogo when he wrote a letter in response to your piece expressing his concern at your ‘apparent negative contribution to the ethics of journalism in Uganda’ and that ‘Many times you act as if you are heartless, not knowing that when all chips are down, Uganda is where all of you belong.’ He also added that he was hopeful that you would grow since you had gotten a fellowship at Stanford. Perhaps now that you call yourself the old man of the clan, may be you feel you have grown, but like he implored us that you had turned from real journalism to ‘witch hunt’ and had become a reckless politician’, I feel the latest attacks are evidence to these concerns that were earlier on expressed and they show your contradictions.

I ask of you to understand that being intelligent comes with some level of responsibility, integrity, honesty and humility. Odrek, years ago but perhaps prophetically put it that ‘You have a highly inflated sense of self exaltation. I guess that is the reason you are a presenter, debater, judge and everything else on your talk show’. And he advised us that ‘someone needs to tell you that there is a different and better way things are done.’ This is what I am doing Andrew. I am telling you that there is a better way to address people. There is a better way to put your ideas across without abusing people and there is a better way to disagree. Otherwise, like Odrek said, people may continue to take your submissions as ‘the daily noise that pollutes air on radio.’

Mr Mwenda, need I repeat Odrek’s words, that ‘you need some sense of humility and to give people some respect if you want to be respected in life.’ Like you attacked the president and his family years ago through, and now today you find yourself in the not very good position of having to eat from the very people you abused, it is just good to treat people with respect and know that you cannot be sure what tomorrow holds. Those so called fanatical and mentally retarded people may be more useful to you than you may want to imagine. There are so many brilliant Ugandans who can engage in debate but the way you put your ideas forward, your sense of self-righteousness and language does not stimulate such engagement. In the end, Uganda will still be here with or without you, me or Besigye or Museveni. Your opinion is just but an opinion like many others. Do not abuse others simply because they support other candidates. Years ago you called the president illegitimate, today that president gives you bulango in your newspaper! Have you learnt something or as Odrek said, you have learnt and forgotten nothing? A word to a wise, … Andrew, the Ugandans decide. FDC decides. NRM decides. We need to respect all Ugandans and their views.

For many people its not even the parties or individuals that matter to them, they just want a decent living and a good day. Whoever speaks to their situation is all that matters to them. The president has done so many incredibly good things. Besigye has also done so many good things to put the government on pressure to deliver and to sometimes bring to the attention of the president things that many around him do without his knowledge and make him look a bad person. Right or wrong has no party. People just want a good country and no body should be simply put into any box as NRM or FDC and labelled simply because they have a different idea. For me it is not important whether it is people of FDC or in the opposition you call fanaticals or mentally retarded, or the people in NRM or the government you have earlier on called illegitimate, and other charged words… the point is the language and labeling which can have dire consequences for the people you put in that box. Nobody is fanatical, that’s just their choice. NRM fanatics or Opposition fanatics… as long as they are peace loving people, they should be respected.

By calling people hooligans, mentally retarded, fanatics, useless and all the other words you have used on air before, you promote a very dangerous narrative about an undefined group of people who may be mistreated by authorities or whose views may be ignored just because of the way you have shaped the public discourse on the identity of these people. As a journalist, you have the professional responsibility and moral obligation to be careful and selective with the choice of your words. Can’t we just live in peace without having to disrespect others. In the end we are all mixed but the same. Those who support FDC are our brothers and sisters… and those who support NRM are our brothers and sisters… we are all just Ugandans. Can’t you just earn a decent living without having to demonise others?

Henry is a lecturer at Kyambogo University and is currently a graduate student at Akersus University College of Applied sciences (HIOA) in Oslo. He broke the record as the youngest lecturer in Uganda when he was retained to teach at 22 years of age. He is also a philanthropist. 

The Internet Forgets

Forget, internet.

Forget that I am portending that the dictator in Kampala will one day not whoosh past in his convoy.

Forget that I am foretelling that we shall mourn the Kasese massacred, that we can’t mourn today.

Forget that I do not see the going on the pieces of paper thrown into iron boxes every five years.

Forget that I do not see it in the copper and iron of the bullet either.

Forget everything I say, now.

Forget, internet.

Forget.

Wait

When he says that he likes your smile

You start thinking that he means more

 

Wait

 

When he takes your number

Your friends hear that he must be interested

 

Wait

 

When he WhatsApps you the hearts

Your fears begin to fly away

 

Wait

 

When he asks to meet at a restaurant

Your friends confirm his interest for him

 

Wait

 

When he asks how you feel about him

Your heart wants to burst with excitement

 

Wait

 

Wait and wait until he thinks that you are not interested in him

Wait and wait until he stops initiating things

Wait and wait for your own leadership to emerge

Wait and wait for your own existence to shake so much you grab the phone and demand to see him and tell him what you have been feeling before it kills you.

Stop me from talking

I want to listen

To sit and hear you talk

I want to be told things

 

But I can’t stop myself from talking

I can’t help but respond to everything I hear

Teach me how to keep quiet, how to listen without responding

 

You are telling me about when you were spanked

I do not know why I have to tell you about my own spanking experience

The time that man looked under your skirt

I do not know where the story of that girl in the neighbourhood who was molested comes from.

 

Teach me to listen

I now do not know how you ended up on the boat to Italy

Because my tongue spilled half-known stories of exes who migrated.

 

I ask you to pick up the story from where you left it, where I do not remember

You oblige but forget to tell me not to take what looks like your thunder before it gathers steam

And so I start talking about postcolonialism and all the isms that take us away from your story.

 

Does imprisonment help people who do not know how to control their tongues?

Is there a school for listening?

Where do those who can’t listen go to learn how to listen?

Six Apologies

I am sorry that our parents did not teach us to leave when the love runs out

I am sorry that leaving abusive unions has become a revolutionary act

I am sorry that the world does not like it when we choose ourselves

I am sorry that we have to forgive ourselves for wanting peace

I am sorry that we have to be shamed for preferring ourselves

I am sorry that I have to apologise for your right to love you

Sin

Her eyes told you to stay away

Why did you come?

The road to heaven is a one-way