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Netters,
In a presentation I made this past Monday to a
group of Northwestern law students preparing for a study trip to Uganda, I made
a case of how the U.S. government has consistently given political cover to
the Museveni regime in its anti-democratic activities.
Little did I know that we would soon be
presented with a steaming fresh instance of such high-level U.S.
interference in political discourse in our country. This colonial
mentality on both sides is odious.
vukoni
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, February 15, 2003 2:56
AM
Subject: ugnet_: Northern Conflict: Prof.
Mahmood Mamdani criticises Rosa Whittaker
THE MONITOR-15/02/2003
By Badru D. MulumbaRenowned 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 wit! h 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 t! hat they have an
independent view.�
February 14, 2003 11:19:42
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