|
|
On The Mark:
With Alan Tacca |
On Mike Mukula�s Museveni, kisanja
July 25, 2004
|
As regimes become long in the tooth, less accountable and more reckless, the spotlights gradually swing and focus on the ruler as a person for more intense public scrutiny. The laws of African politics at this stage also dictate that a government functionary chooses between demonstrating total loyalty and suicide. In �President inspired me�� (Sunday Monitor, July 18), Hon. Mike Mukula, State Minister for Health and lord of the Arrow Boys militia, has given us such a glimpse. Before a gathering of company executives at his home, Mukula was painting a profile of courage, a show of which (nine years ago) inspired him to join politics. If not misquoted, he said: �I remember when we crashed in Kidepo on September 27, 1995, the president was the first person to get out of the plane, squeezing himself out through an emergency window. He jumped on top of the others and in no time, was already out. If the plane was to explode, he would have survived.�� Are you thinking of stepping-stones? Well, even I cannot think of a more strange reason for anyone joining politics. But then I am dim-witted. �Bravo!�� Mike would have us cry and join politics, even as he and his fellow passengers are presumably still inside the crippled plane. Before the military establishment this week stopped former bush war fighters from giving us stories of the �mustard seeds�� they had also sown, we had seen school children being trapped and lured, en masse, into a war many must have had to be indoctrinated to understand. The abuse of women was recorded; the pangs of hunger and other hardships had been endured; the death of comrades and vast numbers of peasants was witnessed. The hearts of the heroes left their imprints. Some went to exact vengeance. Some went because they were stranded between the passion and the fire of the combatants. Some went to fight for a package of ideals. They were tales of intrigue, trust, loyalty, suspicion, daring and luck. And Museveni came out of it all, not only as first among the survivors and conquerors, but with a posture that made him pass as generally �fair�� in the heart; although that reputation was apparently not enough to inspire Mike Mukula to join politics. Fairness is the easiest thing to understand, but it is also the easiest to miss out on. Long before European-styled education was introduced, our forefathers had codes of fairness that were understood by even the young and are still valid today. A team of evolutionary biologists working with primates has demonstrated the presence of a �sense of fairness�� at the instinctual level, suggesting that we share this faculty with some of our fellow monkeys. Yet it is equally true that there are very educated people in our age that will toss all their scruples into the bin in pursuit of the spoils of power. A great favour, so to speak. (See �Appreciate Movement, Mukula urges Baganda��, The Monitor, July 20) It is the old Movement government disease, the cheap illusion that by patronizing a handful of men and women you have answered the socio-economic needs and spiritual aspirations of whole communities. To a peasant in Singo, whose wife has died in labour because the nearest medical facility is thirty miles away, what help can come from a police chief whose juniors are busy chasing opposition politicians in Kampala, or a minister of Justice defiantly planning to spend 30 billion shillings on a useless referendum? In pre-colonial Buganda, virtually every minister and every chief was a Muganda (the peculiarities in newly acquired territories aside), but this did not prevent the public approval rating of the reigning monarch from sometimes ascending, and sometimes being in sharp decline. There were even a few cases of open revolt. Just like with Obote�s two regimes, or Amin�s, or Paulo Muwanga�s, or Museveni�s in its later years, the expressions of discontent mainly arose from a generalized sense that the ruler was not being �fair��. You can amend or twist laws and have them inscribed in the books and written on billboards. If those laws are perceived to be unfair, the people will always instinctively dream of new revolutions. The president himself, of course, need not fear upheavals, even with a coat of highly inflammable dry banana leaves on his back. For, once again, he would probably be the first through the emergency window. |
� 2004 The Monitor Publications
MSN 8 helps ELIMINATE E-MAIL VIRUSES. Get 2 months FREE*. -------------------------------------------- This service is hosted on the Infocom network http://www.infocom.co.ug
