Youth should focus on economic emancipation before political adventurism

Sep 05, 2018

We live in an interesting fast-paced technological evolutionary era where so much or nothing can be made of that great potential that is our youth.

By Joshua Turyatemba

As the tide starts to subside over what happened during and after the Arua municipality MP elections, the ocean is beginning to reveal those who were swimming naked in the ocean.

From allegations that someone had been badly hit with an iron bar and his face was unrecognisable, to kidney failure problems onwards to someone fearing guns and could not dare hold one etc. And as time goes on, more truths will emerge.

All this well-oiled and highly co-ordinated machinery was aimed at churning out a fabricated narrative aimed at generating widespread sympathy and international but largely misinformed condemnation. This is not to say that incidents didn't happen that indeed did not reflect well upon the security forces in the way they handled perpetrators of the attendant chaos.

One though should be keen to discern an attempt to create ghetto-town replicas around the country replete with a high disruptive potential and governed by a kingpin. The Bugiri and Arua scenarios already gave a clear indication of what would happen if such squads were unfettered in their intimidation of the peaceable electorate. That is how the mob came to rule Chicago and New York over a century ago; one street at a time.

But in all this, the battle was for the highly impressionable minds of the youth using the various social media platform and specifically Facebook, to propagate a particular narrative. Doctored images of Kampala streets on fire and engagements between armed forces and mwananchi, ‘massive' demonstrations in major cities seamlessly found their way through the arteries of Facebook.

The faulty bit with this kind of wishful construction is that time brings out the truth as the wild fires begin subsiding.

During the last presidential elections, political actor Charles Rwomushana engineered a photo showing the body of one of the presidential aspirant's aides who had been allegedly killed and his body stitched. Only for that very person to show up and later hold a wedding ceremony. Yet during that time that image held sway, local political and other actors had thrown all kinds of names at the NRM government.

On the quelling of demonstrations and the comparison drawn with other countries, did the authorities handle them professionally? One needs to ask how many times have demonstrations in London commenced with burning of tires, blocking roads, harassing passersby. In those cities, if that happened, it would promptly be termed terrorism and ferocious force used to quell it. In fact, you wouldn't even go as far as lighting the first tire. No citizen of those cities would even do that to test the brutality of their forces the way we casually do in Kampala.

We live in an interesting fast-paced technological evolutionary era where so much or nothing can be made of that great potential that is our youth. If misled by some self-seeking uninitiated ‘messiah's come to town lately, they spend their most productive years mulling over political issue after political issue as if that is all there is to their life. And in this, an image has been painted of a rosy, hustle-free and luxuriant world for them, but which can only be obtained in a post President Yoweri Museveni era. What a lie.

But another option also exists where Uganda will continue on its now began journey as the food factory of the East African region and beyond. To achieve this, there is need to harness this great potential that is the youth and engage them in meaningful production.

Blessed with the good climate and fertile soils where almost everything grows with little effort, this is another part of Uganda that the youths need to attack ferociously and with the same zeal that they put into listening to, believing and following prophets of doom who have been at their pulpits since 2001, preaching that the fall of the NRM is next day.

Any faithful who has been following that gospel ought to look at the last 17 irrecoverably wasted years of political adventurism with consternation and caution that young son or neighbor of his to rather work hard.

The Government has put in place a number of initiatives such as the Youth Livelihood Programme, Operation Wealth Creation and others whose core aim is to ensure economic progression of the youth and country in general. Therefore, before they are turned into fully-fledged disciples of doom and despair, the youths need to first embrace these programmes and try them out.

One thing that is for sure though is that if all that emotional and physical energy that is being expended in fruitless political gymnastics is transformed into agricultural production, we shall all have a more profitable year. In the future, one should never allege that during their youth, they did not get to work because they were watching and waiting for President Museveni to leave power.

The writer works with Operation Wealth Creation


 

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