Mondo is a professor worth his title
SIR – During a recent Capital Gang talkshow, for the first time I listened to a Ugandan professor give an opinion worth his title.
SIR – During a recent Capital Gang talkshow, for the first time I listened to a Ugandan professor give an opinion worth his title. While NRM spokesperson Ofwono Opondo argued about the Mengo killings, saying the Mengo Road belonged to all and therefore justifying Lt. Magara’s forcing his way through the FDC supporters, Prof Mondo Kagonyera rightly said those in Magara’s car were wrong, having read that their action was likely to arouse confrontation.
Lt. Magara and his colleagues are presumed reasonable Ugandans who should have thought of an alternative route, assuming they were genuinely travelling on the Mengo Road just as Mondo said, rather than force their way through an opposition crowd. Besides, there’s no justification for Magara to have started shooting through the crowd with live bullets because that is not only an unprofessional way of using the gun, it is inhuman. Certainly the intention could not have been in self-defence after provoking the crowd!
A soldier deserving of Magara’s title cannot afford to do what he did, especially at a time when one of President Yoweri Museveni’s lauded achievements has been “professionalising the armyâ€.
Deo Tumusiime Kabwende
Makerere University
Lt. Magara and his colleagues are presumed reasonable Ugandans who should have thought of an alternative route, assuming they were genuinely travelling on the Mengo Road just as Mondo said, rather than force their way through an opposition crowd. Besides, there’s no justification for Magara to have started shooting through the crowd with live bullets because that is not only an unprofessional way of using the gun, it is inhuman. Certainly the intention could not have been in self-defence after provoking the crowd!
A soldier deserving of Magara’s title cannot afford to do what he did, especially at a time when one of President Yoweri Museveni’s lauded achievements has been “professionalising the armyâ€.
Deo Tumusiime Kabwende
Makerere University