The President is right on patriotism

Apr 02, 2009

President Yoweri Museveni has realised that everything (including patriotism) starts and ends with education. The current lectures on the course unit, introduction to patriotism, with the course tutor being the President and intended for all the unpatriot

Stephen Olukor

President Yoweri Museveni has realised that everything (including patriotism) starts and ends with education. The current lectures on the course unit, introduction to patriotism, with the course tutor being the President and intended for all the unpatriotic teachers, is energy and time invested in the right direction.

It is unpatriotic people who are teaching the youth to be devoid of patriotism. This may result into a country of ungrateful citizens who cannot even sing a single stanza of the country’s national anthem, let alone think about its meaning and apply it.

However, the President should be made aware of the fact that 92% of the teachers are seemingly unpatriotic because of the deep-seated disillusionment and cynicism with his government. Whereas people can be encouraged to love, love for one’s country or, indeed, of a person or thing is spontaneous. Once many teachers are disappointed that a country that is so rich yet very poor has nothing to offer to improve their plight, the only lesser emotions they are capable of are some degree of affection and loyalty, not love. This is not to say that teachers do not love Uganda, but actually, paradoxically speaking, to love Uganda is to hate Uganda and to hate it is to love it. No wonder that is why those who claim to love Uganda are aimlessly plundering it.

In Plato speak, it takes eyes to see a cup and a table, but to see the cupness and tableness requires something else. For the President to think that all Uganda’s teachers can be so blind as to not see what the country has for them is far-fetched. Going by the famous man’s assertion, ‘Ask not your country what it can do for you, but what you can do for it’, what is it that Ugandan teachers have not done for this country? Equally, for any teacher who has travelled outside Uganda to proclaim not to love this country, is unfathomable ingratitude. The beautiful scenery and hospitable people prompted Winston Churchill to describe it as ‘The Pearl of Africa’. And this was no outlandish use of language. The President’s preaching on patriotism did spur my ‘patriotic’ mind to write a simple poem for Uganda and here it is...!

The writer is a secondary school teacher

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