All the Facts, Miss

Selective perception confirms our prejudice; then selective memories reassure us that this prejudice is consistent with experience—and it flows along automatically, leaving us a clear conscience. Kaplan & Kaplan


Human intellectual progress, such as it has been, results from a long struggle to see things “as they are,” or in the most universally comprehensible way, and not as projections of our own emotions. Ehrenreich
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The other day a lady from West Nile wrote in local daily. She felt that a prospective presidential aspirant was not being completely forthright. He supposedly asked for investigations into some of the murkiest past atrocities which the winners and losers alike get red faces to distance themselves from: You did it. I did not; you did it.

Our fair lady’s problem was that the said aspirant did not mention the traumas of her people in the immediate post- Idi Amin. For example, you could feel her pain as she told of her people going into exile as the winners terrified the people of West Nile. No excuse here. But the lady did not mention the nine years of Idi Amin’s horrors in which some West Nilers are perceived to be culpable. Unfortunately, the wrong-headed dynamics is that a people carry the sins of its sons. All the facts, miss.

Then, comes the recalcitrant ex-FDC lady—she of the federalism crusade. Check out some of what she had to say.

She declared: The problem of Uganda originated with the British ferrying resources to Britain. Now, the unitary Uganda government is doing similarly as it sucks taxes from the regions to the seat of power in Kampala. This sucking will not stop with federalism. In fact, the taxation structures will become more complex: The states and kingdoms will have to exact their pounds of flesh, and the federal government its loot.

Surely, our cotton found its way to Lancaster. Our tea supplemented the Indian tea just as Gandhi was shaking the status quo. Copper was a good conductance required to electrify the imperial palaces. While we are at it, let us not also forget the schools, hospitals, roads and the administrative structures that we all agreed were the best in Africa, South of the Sahara, excepting the Boer’s South Africa. Nothing comes from nothing.

Talking about Uganda’s problems; what about that business of protecting one kingdom from another? That single act came to haunt the newly minted independent nation. Did it not galvanize the 1966 crisis, reverberations of which still linger to today? What is that break-away kingdom within a kingdom? What is its paramilitary training all about? I don’t want to imagine even the potential rivers of blood. What is the craze for districts if not fiefdoms which may create more bad blood?

And don’t forget the loss of self-confidence which sends us in a frenzied search for meaning in all the wrong places. If Creflo Dollar jets into town and peddles his bizarre “Christian” wealth credos, even generals pay homage. We subscribe to the violence of our former colonial masters instead of condemning it as no less barbaric than the rut war of chimpanzees answering to primitive instinct to perpetuate genes. What is to be said about a nation whose parliamentarians are bought on the cheap to change a key tenet of a constitutional mandate?

Our esteem lady goes on to say that the calls to get rid of Museveni is misplaced. She can’t get over being “betrayed” by her former FDC boss. But the question is: Mr. Museveni opposes federalism; why not gang up against him instead of going off in a tangent in a fit of egocentric emotions?

So, ladies, the passions deserve A+ but, for credibility sake, give all the facts and let the chips fall where they may—just the facts, mums!