Regarding Anne Mugisha, there are many issues here but let us look at just one: The so-called 'South African Truth and Reconciliation' that she finds so humbling.
The only reprieve I give her is her admission when she writes:.
.... my understanding of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) wasso narrow and amounted to a political cliché:...
(She should change 'was' to 'is'). Imperialism gave a Nobel Prize to Bishop Desmond Tutu, purportedly, for coming up with this 'Truth and Reconciliation. It is a cruel hoax. For he did no such a thing, ladies and gentlemen. 'Truth and Reconciliation' is the brainchild of the the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. This was an evil church, as far as the black man is concerned. (In reference to Africans, Apartheid theology always wondered: 'How can a wise God put the soul of a human being into the body of a baboon?' ) Now let us go to an establishment English family: The Hastings !! One of these Hastings was a Governor in the British Colony of Thailand. While there he produced a son and named him Adrian Hastings. After studying History at Cambridge, this Adrian Hastings became a priest and later on moved to Uganda during the Colonial times. By the time of our Independence this Adrian Hastings was teaching at the Catholic Seminary in Masaka (Bukalasa/Katigondo). (He is the fellow who organised the fireworks display in Masaka to celebrate our Independence). He seems to have thrown in his lot, soul and all, with us. 'Gone Native', as they say. Later he moved to Mozambique. Those are the times when NATO was in cahoot with the Portuguese colonists who were dropping napalm bombs and burning Africans. He was very incensed, and he exposed the infamous Wiriyamu massacre. This was world news, for you historians out there. Wikipedia says: *In December 16, 1972, Portuguese troops massacred the inhabitants of the Mozambican village of **Wiriyamu*<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wiriyamu&action=edit> *, 30 kilometers from the city of Tete. [1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambican_War_of_Independence#_note-Westfall>The Wiriyamu Massacre occurred when Portuguese soldiers killed between 60 and 400 villagers accused of being Frelimo sympathizers. Many of the victims were women and children. There are even reports that accuse Portuguese soldiers of using human heads as soccer balls. The massacre was revealed in July 1973 by the British Catholic priest, Father Adrian Hastings, and two other Spanish missionary priests.* ** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambican_War_of_Independence Hastings pushed Christendom to respond and he helped organise a Word Council of Churches conference to formulate a Church position on this abuse of humanity. Three positions emerged. The priests from Colombia were adamant that the church had to take up arms and join in the people's fight from colonial subjugation. Some of these priests went back to Colombia, joined armed struggle, but died in very mysterious circumstances. The second position, of some liberal priests/ pastors/ theologians, was to support the colonised oppressed in their armed struggle for liberation, especially in settler Southern Africa. The Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa became very alarmed by this turn of events. So they pushed a third position for churches to adapt i.e. The vacuous concept of Reconciliation where the settlers remained with our land, but offered the hand of Reconciliation to the black man. They offered to accept us as also children of God. (Rather than baboons with a human soul ? ) That is the birth of this concept of Truth and Reconciliation. Giving Tutu a Nobel Prize for it is just an imperialistic fraud, pure and simple !! Adrian Hastings had a related fourth position, though. He pushed the churches to declare that the masses of the people had a moral right to armed struggle, not only from settler colonial subjugation, but from all oppressive regimes. Fellow Ugandans, one of Father Adrian Hastings students is our present Chairman of the Uganda Human Rights Commission, Rev Father John Mary Waliggo. (As for me I am disappointed that Fr Waliggo has used this Office to cover up Museveni's crimes against our people. Be it the Mukula train wagons massacre, the sodomy and annihilation of our dear ones in Acholi, Lango, Teso etc......) Father Adrian Hastings died in England a few years back. I doubt he would be proud of his student, Father John Mary Waliggo !! I really get annoyed to see Anne Mugisha rehash trash of the Animal Farm, David Copperfield type etc...... or her distorted and imperialistic nonsense of this Truth and Reconciliation fraud. She deludes herself that it we who forgave the crimes of apartheid. The lady's reading list is, exclusively, of thrillers !! How can we forget so easily that when the elderly mother of the martyred Steve Biko tried to ask de Kock to tell her in more detail about the final moments as her son was being killed, Tutu cut her off saying that he had to rush to a Sabbatical at the University of Georgia !! So much for this humbling Truth Commission of Anne Mugisha !! Fellow Ugandans, we were always told that no regime could be worse than Obote I. Then that no regime could be worse than Idi Amin. Can anybody swear that no regime can be worse than Museveni? We have to care whom we replace Museveni with !! I think it is naive to pin ones hopes on dubious characters or hope for liberation under leadership of simpletons. Surely Uganda has many sons and daughters fit for the task. It is not like we scrapping the bottom of the barrel !! ======================================= On 7/22/07, Mitayo de Potosi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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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