Mitayo,
Change is indeed important as a first step. I could not imagine Gordon Brown
mentioning the word CHANGE 8 times in his acceptance speech of barely 15
minutes at Downing Street in June. Yet this is the fellow who had been Blair's
right-hand man for over 10 years !
The moment Mu7 moves on, new ideas which are being subdued even in NRM will
spring to life.
It does nobody any good to keep shooting down everyone who comes up to try and
address our common destiny without presenting any alternatives.
Supporting the status quo is unacceptable.
I wonder what magic, in terms of charisma and ideas, there is in living in
Toronto and not elsewhere. If even us in backward Uganda can receive any
Journal from anywhere, how can you doubt any place in Canada, especially in
this internet age !
DMN
----- Original Message -----
From: Mitayo de Potosi
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; The First Virtual Network for
friends of Uganda
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2007 9:13 PM
Subject: [Ugnet] Greetings Brother Gook
Greetings Brother Gook.
At one time I had delusions that out there, there was some critical mass of
enlightened Ugandans to be relied upon to articulate the real course for our
country's future.
I don't have such delusions any more !!
Take Munini for example.
How do you leave Kigezi for Canada, and instead of living within civilised
Toronto you choose to go and live into some jungle called New Market?
I don't think the fellow has read a single Medical Journal in twenty years !!
Then there is this Anne Mugisha who was part of the gangsters that run-down
the Uganda Commercial Bank Bank before they gave it away to British
Imperialism. (A Bank that was built with the blood and sweat of our dear ones).
In the article below, like countless other times, she writes a summary of
some superficial and meaningless text.
Have you ever seen her write some analytical piece on either our local or
international issue?
And she purportedly is one of the leaders in FDC; can you imagine? !!
And the situation is not any better in either DP or UPC !!
I am pained and embarrassed to acknowledge that on the issue of 'being smart
and enlightened', on our national scene, gangster/criminal/dictator Museveni
beats all these idiots hands down .....
For fools, slavery is our lot.
==========================================================
July 19, 2007
Rising above evil
OPINION
Anne Mugisha
I happened upon a profoundly humbling book by South African
psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and promptly regretted my lapse in
following developments in the northern Uganda peace talks.
While I have continued to follow the headline stories I
have not fully pursued the behind the scenes efforts by well meaning ordinary
folks in finding long term solutions to very complex social issues. In her book
'A Human Being Died That Night,' Ms. Gobodo-Madikizela who worked closely with
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu;
transports her reader into exploring the mind of apartheid's notorious death
squad chief Eugene de Kock.
Her candid analysis of the thinking behind evil deeds leads
us to closely re-examine traditionally held beliefs about crime and punishment
and even hard nosed cynics are forced to re-evaluate the purpose and effect of
punitive justice.
Until I read this book; and I am reading it sparingly,
enjoying each paragraph and hating to see the pages get closer and closer to
its end, my understanding of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was so
narrow and amounted to a political cliché: A mechanism that will be instituted
to enable Ugandans at some time in the future to deal with the mistrust of
government institutions caused by decades of human rights abuses by the state.
Many Ugandans are struggling to understand why the Acholi
people would forgive the evil deeds of both the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA)
and the government after two decades of carnage.
We are so steeped in the traditional legal system – where
crime attracts punitive measures equal or greater than the crime, that we
cannot fathom how a community that has been raped literally and figuratively
can contemplate to let off criminals of evil proportions at a ceremony that
involves toasting to a bitter drink. Pumla's book has made it possible for me
to understand that there is such a thing as rising above evil and achieving
reconciliation through acts of forgiveness.
The book also teaches an important lesson to those
personally responsible for crimes against political opponents and who falsely
believe that the 'system' will always defend them. When apartheid ended, de
Kock and others who killed and tortured people found themselves exposed because
the ideology for which they had been sent on evil missions had been defeated.
They were isolated and left to reckon with the reality that
they were just plain criminals who committed evil deeds against ordinary people
to defend an evil system. When they attacked communities in neighboring
countries they had the full backing of the secret police and believed they were
defending their country against 'communists' and 'terrorists.' Today they sit
in jails abandoned by those who sent them on killer missions and without an
ideology to justify their murders.
I thought of those who torture and kill innocent people in
safe houses in Uganda believing that they are fighting terrorism and realized
that they are not dissimilar to foot soldiers of apartheid in South Africa, or
those of the LRA who tortured and maimed innocent civilians in northern Uganda.
The foot soldier always believes that they are committing atrocities for a
greater good.
If only they could foresee the isolation that awaits them
when they finally face the consequences of their evil deeds.
Here is an excerpt from Pumla's book:
'…apartheid turned religion on its head and through various
church-based structures…provided a theological vocabulary to disguise the naked
evil of what was being done…
Yet when de Kock appeared at his 1995 trial, arrested by a
post-apartheid government but in essence tried by the apparatus of the former
apartheid state…the state attorney set the scene for de Kock's trial by
isolating him from the system that he had served…
Those who gave de Kock orders, who once worked hard to
protect him from being found out, were no longer available or willing to go out
on a limb for him… this despite the fact that de Kock had received many medals
for his killing raids, including the highest national award for bravery, the
Silver Star…'
'Asked by the TRC whether they had authorized the crimes
that were committed by apartheid's foot soldiers, the master architects of
apartheid responded time and again that there was no official policy that
sponsored illegal acts of violence.
Yet when those who spoke out against apartheid were
assassinated, died in police custody, or simply disappeared, when families in
neighboring states who were thought to be harboring ANC members in exile were
killed, when cars and buildings associated with the liberation movement
exploded or burned down, no politician called for the investigation into these
mysterious occurrences.'
Each night I pray that I will be around to witness events
at Uganda's future Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The author is a Special Envoy, Office of the President,
FDC.
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