Gureme, reflect on your life

Dec 17, 2002

I have decided to write back to Mr. Francis Gureme just so he can know what other people, other than those he works to please, really think about his attitude.

I have decided to write back to Mr. Francis Gureme just so he can know what other people, other than those he works to please, really think about his attitude.

I have found myself amazed, many times, to see how much anger and bitterness Mr. Gureme is able to harbour and for such a long time.

I happen to know that Mr. Gureme’s sour attitude, which seems to have become a vendetta, started when he lost a job that he had at the Kampala International Conference Centre. I believe that that anger has made him blind to reason, and to the fact that there is still a large percentage of people in this country who have very high respect for the President, and who genuinely admire the work he continues to do for Uganda.

Mr. Gureme thinks, and prints, that “Contrary to what the honeyed portrayals of the likes of John Mwesigwa Nagenda may feed him, the President has become so unpopular, at any rate among the enlightened class. That furthermore, whereas they earlier watched him on TV for hours, today they generally do not.”

Gureme then goes ahead to state, without shame, that he “ocassionally compares our times with the last days of Hitler whose word counted even against that of military experts.”

It is mind-boggling to realise that a man like Mr. Gureme, who has lived in Uganda all his life and served in Amin’s and Obote’s two regimes, has no good words for Museveni.

He should at least thank him that he, indeed, has the freedom to write all the abuse he wants to knowing that his life and the lives of all his loved ones are safe. Also knowing that even those of his family who work with Museveni’s government need not fear for their lives or their jobs.

For a man who served under Amin, Gureme has a very short memory if he cannot remember that no person, young or old, enlightened or not, could say anything about Amin, let alone write it in the papers.

Mr. Gureme should know that
President Yoweri Museveni, in his own right, qualifies to be one of those “military experts”, and his word does not simply count because he is the President — which in itself makes him Commander-in-chief of the UPDF — but he actually formed the core group of what makes the present UPDF single-handedly.

Today, whenever there is a security threat anywhere in Uganda he personally moves his camp to that part that is at risk, and yet he is the President.

I have never heard anybody raise a question when he is risking his life for the sake of protecting others. I wonder, therefore, whether “word” is more important than the actual work he does in terms of the “military expertise” that Mr. Gureme is talking about.

Then, of course, I read about what Mr. Gureme calls the Ugandans who continue to be afflicted by the disease of “akajanja (craze) and “my stomach”. If I understand him correctly, I wonder why Mr. Gureme was fighting so hard to keep a job at his age, the loss of which has made him so bitter.

At his age, would it not be nice for Mr. Gureme to be in the countryside, keeping a sedentary eye on his cows, receiving the respect due to an elder, and making peace with his Maker. Instead, he chooses to be in town writing such views as: “Can Uganda Continue under an Autocracy up to 2006 (See The Monitor December 8, 2002).

Reading all this foretelling of catastrophy makes one wonder whether the author is a Ugandan or a foreigner who has no good wishes for Uganda.

This reminds me of what Jesus said to those who thought they were mourning for Him when they thought His death was the end. He said, “Mourn for yourselves and for your children, for indeed they will begin to say to the mountains “fall on us” and to the hills “cover us!”

“For if they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?” Therefore I say to Mr. Gureme: do not foretell doom about the country that you live in, for if the “crisis” that you so glibly talk about came, it would not be as easy as you think and it may not be limited to those you wish it for.

Sometimes, I wonder who bewitched us Ugandans. One would have thought that an old man like Mr Gureme, who, in his own words has “witnessed the birth of all our Constitutions” would be really praying and preaching to ensure that Ugandans live in peace and harmony.

The Banyankore have a proverb: “Eyabura Omukuru eegyenddwa bwira,” (when a country or society lacks counsel from its elders, it becomes a wilderness). Take heed, Mr. Gureme!

Janet K. Museveni,
First Lady of the Republic of Uganda

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