THE MONITOR-15/02/2003
By Badru D. Mulumba
Renowned academic Prof. Mahmood Mamdani on Thursday criticised former US Assistant Trade Representative for Africa Rosa Whittaker for the negative remarks made against religious leaders and parliamentarians campaigning for a negotiated end to the war in northern Uganda.In an article in the New Vision on January 9, Ms. Whittaker attacked Gulu Municipality MP Norbert Mao for calling for amnesty and negotiations to end the northern conflict. The article was a response to the Capital Gang of Jan. 4 in which President Yoweri Museveni participated by phone from Gulu.
�I thought it [the article] was very negative for the future of democracy that if you have a conflict you don�t negotiate,� said Prof.Mamdani while delivering the inaugural lecture of the Leadership Lecture Series at a dinner at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel.
The series is organised by the Uganda Society, which marked its 80th anniversary on Thursday, and sponsored by uganda telecom.
Ms. Whittaker�s remarks threaten democracy, said Prof. Mamdani in the one-and-half-hour lecture titled An African Perspective on Nine Eleven.
Ms. Whittaker now helps Uganda with its export push into the American market under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act.
Mao�s amnesty call, Whittaker said, was unlike the patriotic stand by former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes on the World Trade Centre.
Ms. Whittaker said the leader of the Lord�s Resistance Army Joseph Kony �merits neither Amnesty nor negotiations� and the Acholi religious leaders should see the �wisdom in this�.
But Prof. Mamdani said Uganda cannot draw lessons from the way the United States is dealing with Al Qaeda in its fight against LRA.
He said America�s handling of Al Qaeda is different from how they handled an internal threat � the Oklahoma bombing by Timothy McVeigh, an American.
�If there is any comparison to us, it is not with Al Qaeda; it is with Timothy McVeigh,� said Mamdani, who is ! the Herb ert Lehman professor of Government at Columbia University in New York. �The north is part of Uganda.�
However, Special Senior Presidential Advisor Martin Aliker defended Ms. Whittaker: �Ms Whittaker never talked about conducting the war in the north, but the manner [in which] some of my tribesmen [the Acholi] especially those in Parliament are not sympathetic to the president.�
�Peace is about negotiation,� Prof. Mamdani responded. �It is not about winning forever and losing forever. It is about living together so that nobody wins everything and loses everything.�
Asked the real reason France and Germany don�t support the imminent war against Iraq, Prof. Mamdani said Europeans fear long term dominance by the United States.
�The rest of us have been through that,� the professor said citing colonisation and re-colonisation through Structural Adjustment Programmes.
�But the Europeans don�t want to be in our position,� Prof. Mamdani said. �All they are saying is that they have an independent view.�
February 14, 2003 11:19:42
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