| Opinion |
Story of the one-eyed,one-legged Sultan as told by a Ugandan
Charles Onyango-Obbo
At no point in Uganda�s history have the words �patriotism� and �unpatriotic� been used as they are today, thanks to the bloody rebellion by Joseph Kony�s Lord�s Resistance Army rebels.If you report either the casualties or losses suffered by the army, the Uganda People�s Defence Forces, and the LRA you are unpatriotic. If you report only the defeat inflicted on the LRA by the UPDF, you are patriotic. If you report or talk about atrocities allegedly committed by both UPDF and LRA, you are unpatriotic. If you report the violations by UPDF without mentioning Kony�s, you are a �traitor� and enemy. Now if you talk only about Kony atrocities, you a patriot.
If you say President Yoweri Museveni should by now have built an army that can fight off rebels without him physically pitching camp in the north to oversee operations and be photographed squeezed in trenches and doing target practice, you are unpatriotic. If you report that �Mzee� is the �ultimate military strategist� and portray his presence in the north as a �great morale booster� to the troops, and how the very fact of him present there sent Kony running for the tall grass, then you are a great patriot. The LRA on the other hand, generally believe that the Uganda press is in the pockets of the government, even when they call and their claims or views are given space.
So what does a journalist or commentator who wants to tell a little truth do without getting in too much trouble? A friend reminded me this week that during the Soviet Union, artists faced the same problem. How could they paint or write things that were not �anti-socialist�, �imperialist� or �bourgeois�, but �revolutionary� and �exalted the masses�? He told me of a BBC documentary that was made after the collapse of socialism, and reported the joke Soviet artists used to make to show how the official state approved standard for art (called �socialist realism�), and was as much hogwash as �patriotism� is today in Uganda, was invented.
The artists joked tha t it was inspired by events from the times of a famous Sultan. This Sultan was a warrior who had fought many great wars. He lost one eye in a famous battle, and a leg in another. One time he was seized by a desire to have a painting of himself. An artist was called into the Sultan�s awesome presence.
The artist looked at the Sultan with his eye and a leg missing, and decided that the great man could not be drawn with these disabilities. He therefore went and made a handsome painting of the Sultan, with both eyes and legs.
When the painting was brought to the Sultan, he went into a rage. He accused the artist of mocking him by painting a perfect picture of him, and by that saying that the missing eye and leg were ugly and too shameful to draw. He ordered that the artist be taken away and beheaded.
A second artist was brought in to draw a portrait of the great man. He had heard the story of the poor fellow who had been beheaded, and so he decided that he would draw the Sultan as he was. And so he did his painting, and there was the warrior, with a missing eye and one leg. The Sultan saw the painting and was, again, very angry. He said the artist was devaluing him by rendering him as an ugly creature, and that he did not appreciate that he had lost an eye and leg while sacrificing himself for the good of the kingdom. He ordered that that artist too be put to death.
Finally they brought in a third artist. He had heard of the story of the artist who tried to flatter the Sultan and was killed, and the one who told the truth and was also put to death. He went to work.
When he unveiled his painting, it showed the Sultan sitting on a horse and leading his troops in battle. To solve the problem of the leg, he showed the whole one facing the front side of the horse and the missing leg on hidden side. It was therefore difficult to know whether the Sultan had a leg or whether it was missing from that angle.
However, because the missing eye was on the side of the whole leg, it would have shown. The artist resolved the problem by showing the Sultan peering through a single lens field binocular, thus covering the missing eye. The Sultan was very happy with the painting.
Our modern-day Sultans don�t ride to battle on horses, and don�t have one eye and a leg missing. They drive to war in junk tanks, and their governments are missing an eye and a leg. But if you are a painter or writer, you are still only safe if you keep the junk tank and the government�s one eye and leg out of the picture.
Some things don�t change.
November 12, 2002 23:59:35
Gook
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