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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