Ugandans demanded equality before Independence

A. J. Bwangatto

As Uganda race forward to the celebration of the Golden jubilee of her independence, a lot has been written by many people about the history of Uganda and the events that shaped our independence and post-independence era. But the way our history is written and presented, it perpetuates a subversive discourse which is precarious to the unity of the country. Almost all our history is presented in the model of Buganda/Baganda and the rest of Uganda/Ugandans. During my O' level history lesson, there was always a topic about “collaborators and resistors of colonialism.” It is argued that some ethnic communities in Uganda collaborated with the colonial administration as “quasi colonialists themselves” and others resisted fiercely this whole colonial project. Our teacher liked this topic and he would retain us in class even during break-time. This discourse of collaboration and resistance to colonialism is perpetuated in our education system and social consciousness as a claim of stating historical facts, but I fear there are adverse effects to the unity of the country. This lingering discourse of collaborators and resistors has been perpetuated for decades in our school curriculum and the curriculum experts cannot detect the dangers embedded in such thoughts as each generation of Ugandan students are fed on the same. My contention is that by presenting Ugandans in such dichotomies as resistors and collaborators of colonialism, we are perpetuating divisions among ourselves even describing and identifying ourselves as tribalists. This again perpetuates the mistrust and hatred among the citizens and the projects of patriotism will never achieve any objective. I feel as we come close to the 50th independence anniversary of our country, we need to read and re-write our history with national lenses having a view of highlighting the contribution of all Ugandans in the fight for independence and development of the country. All the people in Uganda suffered the consequences of direct foreign domination and currently we are all suffering from clandestine foreign powers and ideologies. Our mindset is corrupted and the values of nationalism are completely deficient! We need to present ourselves as one people working to liberate ourselves from the yoke of colonialism in its overt and covert forms. 

When we if scale back into our history the British colonial administration in Uganda effectively barred Ugandans from participating in the higher levels of commerce, industry, and agriculture, thus precluding the emergence of an indigenous class with a stake in the country’s economy and, hence, its social and political stability. If we follow the progress of events in the colonial era, we notice a systematic technique to marginalise the Africans and relegate them to the periphery of society of which they formed a majority. There was tough resistance as the unfortunate events unfolded in the course of the colonial period with their resultant effects. As early as the 1890s the colonial state began excluding Africans from the processing and marketing stages of production, the most lucrative in the colony’s commodity-based economy. Kabaka Mwanga tried to buy a saw-mill but was prevented by the colonial authorities from doing so. In 1909, Governor Bell ordered the destruction of hand gins, which handled some thirty-five percent of cotton produced in the colony and nothing was done to give the hand ginners alternative employment in the processing sector. In 1913, Kina Kulya Growers’ Society of Ssingo Farmers was discouraged from marketing its own cotton. The Cotton Rules of 1918 restricted middlemen from operating within five miles of a ginnery, all of which were owned by foreigners. The Buganda Growers’ Association tried to market its own cotton in 1923 but was discouraged by the government. Four years later, Seperiya Kaddumukasa tried to erect a ginnery on his land but was refused a license. In 1920 the Buganda Cotton Company was prevented from ginning and marketing its own cotton. In 1932, when the Uganda Cotton Society tried to obtain high prices by ginning and marketing its own cotton and eliminating the Indian middlemen, it was not allowed to do so. In the same year, the Native Produce Marketing Ordinance (Coffee) curtailed the buying activities of African businessmen. 

There was a growing movement in the colonial period to press for equality and fair treatment of the local people by the colonial administration. There were growing disparities between the Africans and the foreigners and the pressure was mounting to the colonial administration to exercise fairness in the running of the economy. This quest for fairness in economic matters corresponds with what is known generally, that the national economy, as it is the product of men who work together in the community of the state, has no other end than to secure without interruption the material conditions in which the individual life of the citizen may fully develop. Consequently, in 1938 the Baana ba Kintu (The Descendants of Kintu) Association was brought into being partly to address the problem of excluding Africans from marketing commodities. The Bataka Party, building on the Bataka movement of the 1920s, was founded in 1946 to fight the exploitation of the Asian cotton buyers. When the cotton hold-up, that is, a refusal by peasants to sell cotton, was organised, their demand was to participate in the marketing of agricultural commodities. The Ugandan authorities, instead of curtailing foreign control of the economy and encouraging Africans to participate, increased levels of immigration from 1949 to 1959. European immigration grew from 3,448 to 10,866, an increase of 215 percent, and Indo-Pakistani from 35,215 to 71,933, a growth of 105 percent. The banking system was controlled by British and Indian based banks and they did not lend to many Africans although they operated on an accumulation of African peasant savings. In 1949, Ignatius Musaazi called for the use of peasant stabilisation funds to create an agricultural bank. By that time Africans had been left so far behind in business expertise and capital that they could not compete with Indo-Pakistanis and Europeans. Africans could not participate in the lucrative wholesale trade because the colonial government issued wholesale licences only to traders with permanent building of stone or concrete and very few Africans had such buildings. By 1959, when a trade boycott of all foreign-owned stores was proclaimed by Augustine Kamya of the Uganda National Movement, Africans handled less than ten percent of national trade.

With such a background, we could without doubt identify the problems which independence would bring. Ugandans were handed a country with no integrated economy geared to the satisfaction of domestic demands; no indigenous property owning class with an economic stake in the country, that is, a class that would have had to lose by the occurrence of social conflict, and no consolidated ruling class that could offer a strong base for social stability. This was an apparent recipe for violence because of the sharp stratifications existent in the Ugandan society at that time and when race decided a man’s place in society. By then, society was stratified in three grades: Europeans coming first, Asians second and the Africans were at the bottom. This racial division was extended to salary structures, financial provisions for education, housing and all other kinds of privileges which created envy and animosity. This explains the euphoria that followed the expulsion of Asians by President Amin. Many people in Uganda interpreted it as a reversal of colonial injustices. And Amin was applauded and credited as one individual who tore down the edifice of colonialism. Our history shows that all Ugandans are victims of a foreign ideologies and interventions and must stand as one to work for the development of the country. For God and My Country.

Christianity and Communism are Incomparable

I am prompted to write in response to an article “Is Christianity doomed just like communism?” by Allan Tacca which appeared in the Sunday Monitor of April 15, 2012. The article in question is interesting to read and I appreciate the creativity of the author in weaving all sorts of ideas to entertain his readers. According to the language of that text, it is more of an informative text rather than anything else. By informative I mean, it is intended only to provide some knowledge and this is juxtaposed to performative texts which intends to put in place either a policy or a working system!
However, there are some incongruences within the text which are irreconcilable. First, the comparison made between Christianity and Communism betrays all the rules of logic. How could Tacca compare a Socio-Political system (Communism) with a religious system (Chrisitianity)? The two have different foundations and motivations and aspirations for their existence. Whereas communism is rooted in human history and is solely attached to that history with mundane aspirations, Christianity trascends human history and projects itself to eternity with everlasting aspirations for its adherents. Christianity and communism are fundamentally incompatible - one a spiritual creed, the other materialist. Christianity lays down that a man’s responsibility to his neighbour is personal, a matter for his individual conscience, while communism decrees that all duties are collective, to be enforced by the state. At first glance, communism may look like the fairer system, and Christianity the more selfish. That’s why Tacca wrote that “…the once ruthless Castros were more polite and flexible than the Pope.” But we have to contend that, communism and its blood-brother, fascism, have been responsible - in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America - for more human misery over the past century than any other systems of belief thought up by man. By denying human beings their individuality, all totalitarian systems brutalise the human condition, reducing everyone in their sway to the status of ants, or cogs in a machine. Christianity teaches that each of us is a moral being, responsible for our actions to our Maker, and individually bound to love our neighbours as ourselves. I don’t know what motivated Tacca really to make such an absurd comparison!
Secondly, the reference to Christianity was only denoting Christianity as expressed and practiced in the Catholic Church. The evidence within the text suggest that his objective was a veiled attack on the doctrines, practices and traditions and leadership of the Catholic Church. In the opening sentence he said “…Pope Benedict should not forget that his organisation has also accumulated plenty of soot.”By sarcastically referring to the Church of Jesus Christ as “Pope Benedict’s organisation” is indicative of his impoverished knowledge about the nature of the Church, its history, its constitution, its mission on earth and its ultimate end. Thirdly, he clandestinely, made a lot of bewildering claims against the practices of Catholics that leaves any sober mind questioning why! His passive reference to Msgr. Ngobya with ridicule and cynicism is a sign of deep seated hatred for Catholic practices. He said that: “…A priest here who died 26 years ago has been exhumed and could eventually get elevated to the rank of a saint. Among other requirements, there must be a miracle. Will that miracle be the departed man’s heart, brain and liver that are said to be in pristine shape? What if the miracle is formalin or a fiction? Apparently, he has already been dismembered, and parts of his body will be kept as fetishist relics by Catholic officialdom. Touching his coffin means good luck. We are in the realm of medieval superstition and the occult. It is a very archaic world, a Catholic world.” With such a remark, he relegates Catholic practices to medieval times of supersitions and fetish beliefs. As a novelist and socio-political commentator, what normative criteria does he apply in evaluating religious practices of believers who belong to a certain community of faith? Who instituted him to critique Catholic beliefs and practices? Whom does he represent in this project?
Again, by reading his text, one observes that he participate in a lingering universal discourse which is motivated by militant intellectualism that draws its meaning and existence in critiquing anything Catholic just because it is Catholic. Tacca uses the same language as that used in that anti-Catholic universal discourse that trashes the Church and christianity altogether: He refers to Christianity as “organised religion” and he expresses “rigidity of the Pope towards his flock” and he refers to those distinctly Catholic practices such as “…the marriage of priests and the ordination of women.” He bends so low as to participate in that cheap redundant and stale rhetoric which claims that “…the central beliefs of Christianity – creation by God, Christ’s virgin birth and resurrection, and heaven for us after death – are no longer credible.” I would like to request Tacca, who claims that the central beliefs of Christianity are no longer credible to furnish us with the details of the standard that he applies to consider what we believe and practice as credible or no longer credible. Tacca in his writing behaves like a self-appointed jury who handles a case beyond his competence and jurisdiction. And he thinks that any set of ideas that wobbles in his finite mind is true and worthy of public consumption.
It is prudent and necessary that institutions and communities that provide millions of people with meaning, hope, and support to their lives and experiences be given due respect and a second-thought. Tacca writes with that stinking pride and self-aggrandisement as he attempts to deconstruct the tenets of Christianity without providing any meaningful alternative. He is just an idealist author who writes with less reflection on the significance and consequences of his writings! According to the article of Tacca which exposed his deficient knowledge of the Catholic Church and Christianity in general, I propose that he assigns himself some homework on Christian Theology so that we could engage in a lasting and fruitful conversation.

Building a Culture of Law-Governed State

Building a culture of a law-governed state


I have read many opinion articles in the New Vision Online and each has a recommendation, an explanation or as the column suggests, each has an opinion about a certain aspect of Uganda’s numerous challenges. I have gone through the list of articles one week, and it is quite diverse with authors making attempts at highlighting our problems and also offering some useful insights. I have found this particular undertaking very exciting and it has renewed my hopes for a future for our children. This is motivated by the fact that if we get more enlightened and informed voices on the salient issues affecting our country, perhaps, we could realise a desirable social change. I have read and critically evaluated the arguments in the following opinion articles:
• Time to revisit Museveni HIV/AIDS approach
• Do human rights abusers and despots live only in Africa?
• Maximum restraint and reconciliation are inevitable
• The increasing commercial sex work: What can government do?
• Time to deliver for girls, women
• A4C actions foreign backed
• Ugandans need skilling
• Use Kony film to up tourism numbers to Uganda
• Step up fight against Tuberculosis
• Political leaders need dialogue, not hostility
All these writings and the ideas expressed therein are good in themselves and they highlight the problems that we face as a country and the possible solutions. This means that many Ugandans are conscious of the challenges that we face as a nation and they try to suggest thinkable solutions that we can apply to overcome them. But they cannot translate into policy action since the constitutional infrastructure is enfeebled by individuals who place themselves above it. I find it that many Ugandan writers use informative language other than the performative which ought to influence policy and the direction of national events.
However I would like to maintain that the one particular aspect which is critically important to the development and stability of any country, but missing in many of our writings and speeches, is the right culture that supports a law-governed state. When the current constitution was enacted on September 22, 1995 and promulgated on October 8, 1995 it created the understanding that finally Uganda has become a sustainable, just, law-governed society founded on constitutionalism. Those of us who believe in the strict following of the rule of law thought that the constitution is the supreme arbiter and guide in all people’s lives and experiences. But on many occasions it has been trashed, altered, reviewed in order to serve some narrow interests. If one follows the events as reported in the media about land grabbing, demonstrations, protests, police brutality, oil deals, power-struggles among politicians and civil servants and the blatant culture of corruption at all levels, is all indicative of a vacuum in our rule-of-law structures.
The Ugandan constitution of 1995 is built on those properties that over a long period have been taken to define the very essence of constitutionalism, that is, constitution-making power of the people and about which there is a broad consensus. If we take the following tenets as basic to modern constitutionalism: First, the claim that the arbitrary will of the political rulers must be submitted to rules. This could be expressed differently as a government under law, a rule that governs the governors or in a more pointed version, the rule of law and not of men. Second, that constitutionalism implies the principle of popular sovereignty. This follows from the premise that in modern societies, of which Uganda claims a position, the ‘people’ is the ultimate of sovereign power; by sovereign I mean being self-determining, self-governing or independent. The third essential element of constitutionalism is the idea of limited government. This means that both the purposes of government, and the instruments available to power-holders to realise those purposes, are de-lineated – something implicit in the term ‘constituted power’. This entails some kind of separation of powers. Again constitutional government calls for rules which define accountability of the rulers to the citizenry.
As Uganda celebrates 50 years of Independence, we, Ugandans must re-invent ourselves as a law-governed society. It has been observed that almost all developed and emerging economies where poverty is virtually eradicated and people are lifted out of poverty, the secret is through the development of a strong law-governed state with individual freedoms, property rights and civil society institutions. If we are to set priorities for the next fifty (50) years of Uganda’s independence, our primary concern should be to build Ugandan values and build a law-governed state as part of the social vision to characterise our national identity. The rest will automatically suit!

Mourn Oh! Powerless African Union!

The Voiceless and Powerless African Union
Fr. Ambrose J. Bwangatto
I read with sympathy when the African union delegation was denied landing permission to Libya by the big powers who are pounding Ghadafi with sophisticated guns and the innocent civilians who are bearing the consequences of a war they never planned. The AU committee in their communication desperately said: “The committee, in conformity with resolution 1973(2011) of the United Nations Security Council, requested for the required permission for the flight carrying its members to Libya in order to fulfill their mandate. The committee was denied permission.” By the way, even Uganda ministers Sam Kutesa (Foreign Affairs) and Amama Mbabazi (Security), who represented President Museveni, were part of that delegation. If one takes a cursory look at the AU which is a huge block of 53 African states, numerically, they outnumber the United Nations Security Council which is composed of just five permanent members — China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States — and ten non-permament members Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Colombia, Gabon, Germany, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal and South Africa. So, in principle the United Nations Security Council is controlled permanently by just five countries which determine its core business and the security issues in the world which need attention. This explains why the “UN Security Council” assessed Libya’s security situation as grave and immediately voted for a no-fly zone, a measure which was implemented with swift and rapid action and force. I was thrilled by President Museveni’s extensive statement about Libya, which appeared in the main daily newspapers on Tuesday, in which he tried to make a careful and objective assessment of parties in the Libyan conflict without siding with anyone completely, and only ended by saying: “It is high time we did more careful thinking.” Museveni, in his statement, appeared more of an idealist than a pragmatist he is known to be.
Anyway, following the development of events over Libya in the past few days, one would be prompted to ask why would the African Union not handle this problem as President Museveni is claiming that it is an African problem which requires an African solution? If the AU would be actively involved in Somalia which is destabilising the maritime business in the Indian ocean, why would the AU not handle Libyan question as well? And why would Africans ask for permission to fly within Africa? All these and other nagging questions would be given a simple reply: Africa is perceived in the global discourse as still being under tutelage. This myth that Africans are learners is a concept that dominates the consciousness of the developed world and hence relegate our voices to the margins. Even issues typically African will not be accorded world attention unless they are articulated by the voices of the powerful master in the west. We as Africans are rendered voiceless and when we try to talk our voice is drowned by the loud voice of the powerful master. But this trend of events could not be allowed to continue eternally.
Africa must act. Africa must develop strong systems of governance coupled with improved infrastructural development. African leaders must invest in their populations and have a strong and vibrant skilled manpower. It is practically the same as treason for an African leader whether in politics, religion, business, or culture to feel secure by keeping their money in Swiss Banks and invest in the London Stock Exchange and buy a home in a Scandinavian or European country. Africans must invest heavily in the health sector and hence control the sickness of the population, otherwise we shall continue to be mocked as a sick and nauseating continent. Since education and research are the real tools to turn around the fortunes of any population, educational curriculum should be revised to address this requirement. Without a vibrant research culture, there is little chance that meaningful development would be achieved. Research is important because it engages the mind in generating ideas, and the hands in experimenting them. Africa will participate in the world discourse as a meaningful partner, if there is some significant development in all its dimensions. None will respect or listen to any leader whose middle class is the political elite around him and its cronies, whose country lacks infrastructural development, whose population is sick, poor, hungry, emaciated and ignorant. It is not helpful for Africa to keep blasting and criticising the west for whatever they do to Africa, rather Africa must look for answers to get out of this humiliating situation of marginality and how to achieve the development of the continent.

Ugandan political candidates advised

Propose development policies not emotions in campaigns

Fr. Ambrose J. Bwangatto

Uganda has officially started the season of political campaigns with fanfare, drama and bickering between and within contending parties. Such a scenario is expected especially in political pluralism where the major operating premise is exclusion of the opponent. In the process of competing for political offices, candidates struggle to exclude others from political competition and political parties seek to exclude others from attaining any political advantage. The means used in this process vary and this tells why some pessimists, after observing politicians, conclude that politics is a dirty game. Since politics revolves around power and its trappings, political candidates pay their particular focus to attaining and maintaining power. This implies that politicians in power strive to maintain it and those without power endeavor to get hold of it. This situation makes politics to be so competitive and politicians to be so creative to achieve their ambition. In politics, the basic consideration is that the end justifies the means to achieve that end. This kind of argument would be the motivating factor for the many rosy promises the candidates are to make to the electorate, however unrealistic some may be.
Towards the year 2000, we witnessed to mantra-like slogans which characterized almost all political speeches: Clean water for all by the 2000; Education for all by the year 2000; Health For all by the year 2000; Good life for all by the year 2000. Ten years after, we are yet to achieve some of these promises. So in these campaigns, Presidential candidates have started with promises like granting federo to Buganda, cutting the cabinet size, free education, restoring the defunct parastatal bodies, re-instating presidential term limits, zero tolerance to corruption and its causes, equitable development, a just and fair land policy and jobs for all citizens and many more such promises. But the question is how realistic and fundamental are these promises to the life of the ordinary Ugandans and the mechanisms proposed to achieve them?
When one traverses the different parts of Uganda, the stark reality is that our worst challenge, as a country at the moment, is the level of wallowing poverty and underdevelopment in which thousands of people are still trapped. It is heartrending to notice the high level of dependency where the fortunate few Ugandans have to sustain whole clans and villages in their day-to-day economic needs. Such a scenario suggests that individual Ugandans seek to claim economic independence so as to achieve their full humanity and integrity. When we talk of economic growth, it should be related with human progress and a resultant quality of life. And the statistical data provided by government with projected economic growth rate requires to be translated into people’s actual lives. This is so because it is assumed that the faster an economy is growing the better off people are; and a rising GNP is taken to mean that a health and people’s lives are improving. But given our situation in the country, the life of the ordinary Ugandans is yet to improve to acceptable human standards.
Therefore, this carries a number of consequences for the candidates vying for the various political offices. (1) The electorate would like to have their questions answered in the policies and programs of the various party manifestos and how these would be achieved other than being drawn into insignificant personal differences between candidates. (2) Campaigns must be governed by rational arguments about real issues affecting the life of ordinary Ugandans other emotional flare-ups of politicians. (3) The various candidates must be proposing policies and developments programs and the challenges which face the nation and rationally deconstructing or ripping through alternative policies and programs of their opponents other than discussing trivial issues of personalities. (4) Ugandans as a decent people deserve pragmatic proposals from their leaders other than being drawn into non-constructive arguments which will never be realized in their daily ordinary life experiences.
Despite their differences, political candidates need to identify a common ground for the good of the nation and by acknowledging their differences; they can find common premises on which to work together for democratic changes and participation. The guiding principle for all candidates, despite their personal egos, should be to have a free, democratic and prosperous Uganda!

Ugandan political candidates advised

Propose development policies not emotions in campaigns

Fr. Ambrose J. Bwangatto

Uganda has officially started the season of political campaigns with fanfare, drama and bickering between and within contending parties. Such a scenario is expected especially in political pluralism where the major operating premise is exclusion of the opponent. In the process of competing for political offices, candidates struggle to exclude others from political competition and political parties seek to exclude others from attaining any political advantage. The means used in this process vary and this tells why some pessimists, after observing politicians, conclude that politics is a dirty game. Since politics revolves around power and its trappings, political candidates pay their particular focus to attaining and maintaining power. This implies that politicians in power strive to maintain it and those without power endeavor to get hold of it. This situation makes politics to be so competitive and politicians to be so creative to achieve their ambition. In politics, the basic consideration is that the end justifies the means to achieve that end. This kind of argument would be the motivating factor for the many rosy promises the candidates are to make to the electorate, however unrealistic some may be.
Towards the year 2000, we witnessed to mantra-like slogans which characterized almost all political speeches: Clean water for all by the 2000; Education for all by the year 2000; Health For all by the year 2000; Good life for all by the year 2000. Ten years after, we are yet to achieve some of these promises. So in these campaigns, Presidential candidates have started with promises like granting federo to Buganda, cutting the cabinet size, free education, restoring the defunct parastatal bodies, re-instating presidential term limits, zero tolerance to corruption and its causes, equitable development, a just and fair land policy and jobs for all citizens and many more such promises. But the question is how realistic and fundamental are these promises to the life of the ordinary Ugandans and the mechanisms proposed to achieve them?
When one traverses the different parts of Uganda, the stark reality is that our worst challenge, as a country at the moment, is the level of wallowing poverty and underdevelopment in which thousands of people are still trapped. It is heartrending to notice the high level of dependency where the fortunate few Ugandans have to sustain whole clans and villages in their day-to-day economic needs. Such a scenario suggests that individual Ugandans seek to claim economic independence so as to achieve their full humanity and integrity. When we talk of economic growth, it should be related with human progress and a resultant quality of life. And the statistical data provided by government with projected economic growth rate requires to be translated into people’s actual lives. This is so because it is assumed that the faster an economy is growing the better off people are; and a rising GNP is taken to mean that a health and people’s lives are improving. But given our situation in the country, the life of the ordinary Ugandans is yet to improve to acceptable human standards.
Therefore, this carries a number of consequences for the candidates vying for the various political offices. (1) The electorate would like to have their questions answered in the policies and programs of the various party manifestos and how these would be achieved other than being drawn into insignificant personal differences between candidates. (2) Campaigns must be governed by rational arguments about real issues affecting the life of ordinary Ugandans other emotional flare-ups of politicians. (3) The various candidates must be proposing policies and developments programs and the challenges which face the nation and rationally deconstructing or ripping through alternative policies and programs of their opponents other than discussing trivial issues of personalities. (4) Ugandans as a decent people deserve pragmatic proposals from their leaders other than being drawn into non-constructive arguments which will never be realized in their daily ordinary life experiences.
Despite their differences, political candidates need to identify a common ground for the good of the nation and by acknowledging their differences; they can find common premises on which to work together for democratic changes and participation. The guiding principle for all candidates, despite their personal egos, should be to have a free, democratic and prosperous Uganda!

Kayiira Murder Report: Lessons for Uganda

Kayiira Murder Report: Lessons for Uganda

The year was 2007 and it all started well at least on the political front. The Democratic Party then flexed her muscles and forced the government to wake from its complacency and stupid slumber and come out after 20 years to release the Kayiira murder report which it has kept under the carpet all along. I am not interested in the whole debacle whether the report is true, real, genuine or authentic. But I am interested in what transpired from the report and what the whole story taught us as Ugandans.
1. That once the people stand resolute on a certain question incessantly, they can force the government to wake up from its political siesta and take action. Ugandans are too gentle compared to other East Africans that’s why we are constantly abused by the political elite and they go away scot-free. The Democratic Party has paved for us the way and opened our eyes. If Ugandans can stand together and make enough noise without fearing any manner of intimidation the government can accomplish something. There are a lot of things that call for urgent action from government and we cannot have the courage to note them down since the list would be endless. With pressure from D.P, the government which that was complacent for 20 years, managed to contact the Metropolitan Police in the U.K in a record time, produce the “certified copy” of the report to the press and table the same before Cabinet for further discussion. But all such action and speed has been prompted by the pressure and firmness from the Democratic Party. This is a great lesson for us fellow Ugandans. Since President Museveni alleged that his Cabinet Ministers are a sleeping lot, it seems, they need a lot of noise to wake them up and act. The President expressed what Uganda actually is, that is, a disorderly society. Uganda as a developing country has not yet built up viable social institutions which would guarantee equal opportunity to the individual citizens and the proper and harmonious functioning of the state. This brings us to the idea of a well-ordered society, which is a society effectively regulated by a public conception of justice, as a companion idea used to specify the central organising idea of society as a fair system of cooperation. However Uganda as a political society is deficient in the structures which ought to exist in a well ordered society. This creates a sort of social discord because the following three elements which operate in a well ordered society are lacking or partly deficient. First, and implied by the idea of a public conception of justice, it is a society in which everyone accepts, and knows that everyone else accepts, the very same political conception of justice. Second, and implied by the idea of effective regulation by a public conception of justice, society’s basic structure, that is, its main political and social institutions and the way they hang together as one system of cooperation, is publicly known, or with good reason believed, to satisfy those principles of justice. Third and also implied by the idea of effective regulation, citizens have a normally effective sense of justice, that is, one that enables them to understand and apply the publicly recognised principles of justice, and for the most part to act accordingly as their position in society, with its duties and obligations requires. In a well-ordered society, then, the public conception of justice provides a mutually recognised point of view from which citizens can adjudicate their claims of political right on their political institutions or against one another. Subsequent to the above, and an analysis of the existing context in contemporary Ugandan society, it is quite obvious that the country is not nearer the concept of the basic structure of society, which “is the way in which the main political and social institutions of society fit together into one system of social cooperation, and the way they assign basic rights and duties and regulate the division of advantages that arises from social cooperation over time.” I would consider that failure to measure to such a standard would place Uganda in what Rawls considers as the “burdened societies”. He portrays such societies that, “while they are not expansive or aggressive, lack the political and cultural traditions, the human capital and know-how, and, often, the material and technological resources needed to be well-ordered.” This understanding would illustrate the kind of problems which would reign in a society and the position of the individual person in the whole setting. It seems the Ugandan government can only act as long as there is pressure born upon it. Similar to the above Kayiira report, Uganda ratified the International Labour Organisation-C26 Minimum Wage- Fixing Machinery Convention in 1963, to fix minimum wages, but more than 40 years after the ratification, Uganda still lacks a clear minimum wage-fixing mechanism. Under this convention, each member of the International Labour Organisation that ratifies the convention is supposed to create or maintain machinery whereby minimum rates of wages can be fixed for workers employed in certain of the trades or parts of trades in which no arrangements exist for the effective regulations of wages by collective agreement. The Ugandan government had to make an international commitment to pass labour laws before the end of April 2006. This development had been born by pressure from the United States Congress, failure of which Uganda risks being removed from the list of beneficiaries of the US’s African Growth Opportunities Act (AGOA). The bills under consideration are: Employment bill, Occupational Safety and Health Bill, Labour Union bill, and Labour Dispute bill. This is prompted by the fact that labour laws which were enacted before the 1995 Constitution are obsolete with some provisions contradicting the constitution. My foremost conclusion on this point is that our government can only act as long as there some pressure from outside. Wake up Ugandans and make noise!! Bravo and thumbs up, Democratic Party!!
2. That no wrong-doing will ever be hidden from the memory of Ugandans however long it takes to uncover the truth. Memory is one of the greatest tools we humans possess. Memory is the retention of, and ability to recall, information, personal experiences, and procedures, skills and habits. There is no universally agreed upon model of the mind/brain and no universally agreed upon model of how memory works. Nevertheless, a good model for how memory works must be consistent with the subjective nature of consciousness and with what is known from scientific studies. Subjectivity in remembering involves at least three important factors:
(a) Memories are constructions made in accordance with present needs, desires, influences, etc.
(b) Memories are often accompanied by feelings and emotions
(c) Memory usually involves awareness of the memory
One of the most popular models of memory sees memory as a present act of consciousness, reconstructive of the past, stimulated by an analogue of an engram called the "retrieval cue." The engram is the neural network representing fragments of past experiences which have been encoded. The evidence is strong that there are distinct types and elements of memory which involve different parts of the brain, e.g., the hippocampus and ongoing incidents of day-to-day living (short-term or working memory); the amygdala and emotional memories. Memories might better be thought of as a collage or a jigsaw puzzle than as "tape recordings," "pictures" or "video clips" stored as wholes. On this model, perceptual or conscious experience does not record all sense data experienced. Most sense data is not stored at all. What is stored are bits and fragments of experience which are encoded in engrams. Exactly how they are encoded is not our concern but what is important is that people store their daily experiences and they come to form their imagination. Parliament has, in the past, passed touchy bills and it is alleged that there is a plan to table other contentious bills which are anti-life like abortion. Ugandans are carefully watching what is going on and will one day demand an explanation, since they keep all such issues alive in their memory.



Fr. Ambrose J. Bwangatto

St. Mbaaga’s Major Seminary Ggaba
P. O Box 4165 Kampala
UGANDA (East Africa)
Homepage: http://ugandapeople.com