Thank God for UPC choice!
Mar 27, 2010
NOT that I am a regular churchgoer, although I attend some funerals and weddings; but that there is God I believe, although He mainly remains deeply mysterious to me. I might add that I am suspicious of those who pretend to know Him through and through, since by so doing they seem to me to make Him
John Nagenda
NOT that I am a regular churchgoer, although I attend some funerals and weddings; but that there is God I believe, although He mainly remains deeply mysterious to me. I might add that I am suspicious of those who pretend to know Him through and through, since by so doing they seem to me to make Him smaller and easily solvable.
But when the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) chose to pick as their new leader one Mr. Olara Otunnu, I rejoiced at this reminder that God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. In a blinding flash I knew He had performed this wonder!
Why lie? I have held deep dislike of UPC and all its works almost from its conception back in the late 50s/early 60s. The cavalier, and often sinister, way in which it treated Uganda and its peoples, especially the Baganda (from whom I spring) was and remains loathsome to me. Its second coming, nearly two decades after the first, was if anything worse.
When I served on our first Human Rights Commission what we discovered was even more dreadful than I had remembered. Worse, very few UPC members felt the smallest remorse at their Party’s doing. Indeed a staunch, and now late, member told me, not joking, that he regretted UPC’s founding leader, Milton Obote, for his over-lenient attitude to Baganda. Jumping rattlesnakes! I expressed my shock, and more.
Until UPC has relented of its past sins, it should never be allowed by Ugandans to run this country again. But if it had been difficult for it to make a return before, it has become doubly so since Mr. Otunnu was elected Leader.
Late in the night someone phoned to say Otunnu seemed headed for a landslide. I burst into an involuntary song. Certainly none of the other candidates were exactly earth-shakers, and would have zero chance of winning the 2011
Uganda presidential election, but by
many indices Mr. Otunnu will quickly prove the most fragile of the lot. He had forgotten much of Uganda (and especially Ugandan politics) in the quarter of a century he had been absent, as he proves each time he opens his mouth. He was said to have taken Ivorian citizenship when hoping to run for Secretary General of the UN, as hopeless a mission as now running for the Ugandan presidency. What a windmill tilter!
Hardly anyone knew about his domestic arrangements, although rumours proliferated. Conservative Uganda prefers a family man. He had mortally enraged the Obote family: Milton Obote being UPC “ownerâ€. Obote’s son, Akena, threw his offer of office in his face, awaiting his own chance. UPC’s coma is approaching rigor mortis. You would have a heart of tungsten not to laugh. Glory to God on high!
**************
The Kasubi Tombs saga continues to reverberate. As stated here last week it was a horrific night when the main hut (hut only in shape, but arguably the biggest thatched one in the universe) went up in smoke. It is a wonder no reports have yet come of people dying of shock at the news, let alone the ancient women who “guard†the place.
If there is any consolation it is that it is not the first time such a thing has happened, even at Kasubi itself, and that in the place of what is burnt down, others are built in replacement. Do we still have people with the knowledge to do it? Could they even perhaps construct a wider span than the one just gone?
Accusations are being thrown around like confetti about who carried out the abominable crime. (What about the drug-takers and other criminals who populated the jungle at the Tombs?) Some of demented minds have even pointed the finger at President Museveni, the man who brought back the monarchies to Buganda and other places in Uganda: robbed by the UPC above. Theirs not to ask what possible benefit he would accrue from such a deed!
What goes on in the putrid minds of such people? To them it is normal to receive greatly and as quickly forget. In Luganda we have a proverb: “Enkoko y’Omwaavu teggwa neebaza.†“The poor’s chicken never stops being thanked for.†Once eaten, the giver always reminds you of it, bringing it up in any conversation however far-fetched. You might say, “What a sunny day today!†He will counter with, “Even sunnier than the time we chomped that little chicken of mine?â€
You learn to regret the day. Similarly I will be attacked for bringing it up again: Museveni was the begetter, in his capacity as Leader of the Movement, but even more than that, in his personal capacity, to bring back normalcy, through the restoration of monarchies and much else besides, to this country.
Over the kingship question he had many times to fight those in the Movement itself. (They must be saying: Didn’t we tell you so?) I am happy to be the chicken-giver. As a Muganda I do so in profound shame at those who spoil our good name by pouring rancid accusations at the very one who brought our sanity back. Let that chicken never be forgotten by people of sound mind and goodwill.
NOT that I am a regular churchgoer, although I attend some funerals and weddings; but that there is God I believe, although He mainly remains deeply mysterious to me. I might add that I am suspicious of those who pretend to know Him through and through, since by so doing they seem to me to make Him smaller and easily solvable.
But when the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) chose to pick as their new leader one Mr. Olara Otunnu, I rejoiced at this reminder that God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. In a blinding flash I knew He had performed this wonder!
Why lie? I have held deep dislike of UPC and all its works almost from its conception back in the late 50s/early 60s. The cavalier, and often sinister, way in which it treated Uganda and its peoples, especially the Baganda (from whom I spring) was and remains loathsome to me. Its second coming, nearly two decades after the first, was if anything worse.
When I served on our first Human Rights Commission what we discovered was even more dreadful than I had remembered. Worse, very few UPC members felt the smallest remorse at their Party’s doing. Indeed a staunch, and now late, member told me, not joking, that he regretted UPC’s founding leader, Milton Obote, for his over-lenient attitude to Baganda. Jumping rattlesnakes! I expressed my shock, and more.
Until UPC has relented of its past sins, it should never be allowed by Ugandans to run this country again. But if it had been difficult for it to make a return before, it has become doubly so since Mr. Otunnu was elected Leader.
Late in the night someone phoned to say Otunnu seemed headed for a landslide. I burst into an involuntary song. Certainly none of the other candidates were exactly earth-shakers, and would have zero chance of winning the 2011
Uganda presidential election, but by
many indices Mr. Otunnu will quickly prove the most fragile of the lot. He had forgotten much of Uganda (and especially Ugandan politics) in the quarter of a century he had been absent, as he proves each time he opens his mouth. He was said to have taken Ivorian citizenship when hoping to run for Secretary General of the UN, as hopeless a mission as now running for the Ugandan presidency. What a windmill tilter!
Hardly anyone knew about his domestic arrangements, although rumours proliferated. Conservative Uganda prefers a family man. He had mortally enraged the Obote family: Milton Obote being UPC “ownerâ€. Obote’s son, Akena, threw his offer of office in his face, awaiting his own chance. UPC’s coma is approaching rigor mortis. You would have a heart of tungsten not to laugh. Glory to God on high!
**************
The Kasubi Tombs saga continues to reverberate. As stated here last week it was a horrific night when the main hut (hut only in shape, but arguably the biggest thatched one in the universe) went up in smoke. It is a wonder no reports have yet come of people dying of shock at the news, let alone the ancient women who “guard†the place.
If there is any consolation it is that it is not the first time such a thing has happened, even at Kasubi itself, and that in the place of what is burnt down, others are built in replacement. Do we still have people with the knowledge to do it? Could they even perhaps construct a wider span than the one just gone?
Accusations are being thrown around like confetti about who carried out the abominable crime. (What about the drug-takers and other criminals who populated the jungle at the Tombs?) Some of demented minds have even pointed the finger at President Museveni, the man who brought back the monarchies to Buganda and other places in Uganda: robbed by the UPC above. Theirs not to ask what possible benefit he would accrue from such a deed!
What goes on in the putrid minds of such people? To them it is normal to receive greatly and as quickly forget. In Luganda we have a proverb: “Enkoko y’Omwaavu teggwa neebaza.†“The poor’s chicken never stops being thanked for.†Once eaten, the giver always reminds you of it, bringing it up in any conversation however far-fetched. You might say, “What a sunny day today!†He will counter with, “Even sunnier than the time we chomped that little chicken of mine?â€
You learn to regret the day. Similarly I will be attacked for bringing it up again: Museveni was the begetter, in his capacity as Leader of the Movement, but even more than that, in his personal capacity, to bring back normalcy, through the restoration of monarchies and much else besides, to this country.
Over the kingship question he had many times to fight those in the Movement itself. (They must be saying: Didn’t we tell you so?) I am happy to be the chicken-giver. As a Muganda I do so in profound shame at those who spoil our good name by pouring rancid accusations at the very one who brought our sanity back. Let that chicken never be forgotten by people of sound mind and goodwill.