What Goes On In Milton Odongo's Head?

An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead.

Carl Jung

There is a dubious office created by Uganda’s Museveni, dubbed the Resident District Commissioner (RDC), which harkens to the days of the all-powerful colonial district commissioner. The docket of the office is supposedly security which, in context, means ensuring the president’s omnipresence and self-perpetuation. From observations it seems the office is a dumping ground for election losers and the dumbos in the Museveni’s NRM fiefdom. Now, give such characters access to the coercive security apparatus such as the army, the police and other opaque state tools, and some of them will throw their weight around to the chagrin of those not in the government camp.
The Grotesque Milton Odongo Looms over Bewildered Peasants
The name Milton Odongo may not mean much, but in the minds of local opposition politicians in the district of Gulu, Uganda, he is the personification of the Anti-Christ. He is the overzealous and overreaching Gulu assistant RDC, who for the last few years has been such a prick. He has jailed, harassed, and disrupted many opposition politicians—all for what?

Here are some unskillful incidences of assistant Gulu RDC in action:
Ordered local radio station not to host Dr. Besigye, the leading opposition presidential candidate

Assaulted Betty Aol, an area MP

Kissing Museveni’s butt in Kaberamaido

Ordered that drugs at a public hospital be given only to members of his party, the NRM

Shoves Gulu mayor in jail

Arrests a local journalist

Each of us has perceptions on how things should be, but as soon as we come into contact with others, we find that they may have different perceptions of their own. Determining whose end will prevail is what leads to conflict. And conflict is not bad in itself because often the end results are greater than the sum of the parts if handled skillfully. Our particular action to achieve our objective depends on our view of the world and how we have been conditioned to act aggressively, passively or respond skillfully. Incidentally, Odongo uses the schoolyard logic of: my way or the highway; heads I win, tails you lose; winner takes all; zero-sum game. Unfortunately, this is the environment which is far too common in the African political dance. Stripped of any semblance of organic traditional wisdom for consensus, we have the dualistic and competitive consciousness we learnt in centuries of western schooling.

The west can open its market; vast wealth can be dug from the rich African soil, but without a collective change in attitude, Africa will continue to spin on its wheel on a journey to nowhere. Milton Odongo, the Gulu assistant RDC, a cog in this wheel, is a poster child of what is wrong with Africa.