When we get stuck in national political habits

We commentators seem to say the same things all year around and approach the problem the same way.
A daily newspaper reports a front-page story involving government expenditure, misuse of public funds or an NGO publishes a report critical of the human rights record of one or two branches of our security forces.

The radio and television talk shows pounce on the report or news story and make it the focus of their debate and analysis.
There is general agreement that violation of human rights or the embezzlement of government funds is illegal or criminal.

The newspaper columnists and pundits on social media pick up on the controversy too and it becomes their topic of discussion.
In response, the government dispatches one or two presidential aides or officials from the media centre to attend these talk shows or write articles in the print media explaining or clarifying on what really happened.

The discussion of and arguing over this topic continues for a few days until another front-page story comes up, then the cycle starts all over again.

Because of this, Uganda comes across as a country with a healthy climate for debate and exchange of views.
The country is ranked favourably by international media and human rights monitoring groups in as far as freedom of expression is concerned.

In all the while, nothing is done by the government to address the crises and issues that were first published in that front-page news story.

We are settling into commentary on public affairs as a way of life and part of a new political and social culture.
This is the same way wedding meetings that started off as a necessity in the period after the 1979 war when Uganda was hit by severe scarcity of basic commodities continued on into the 1980s as a collective effort at funding weddings and is now an established tradition in Uganda.

After the 1979 war, schools started requiring pupils and students as part of their shopping list at the beginning of the term to include one or two rolls of toilet paper.

It is coming to 40 years since the UNLF government held power and the scarcity of basic commodities like sugar and soap came to an end in the late 1990s, but in many parts of Uganda children are still required to bring toilet paper and brooms to school at the start of the new term.

I don’t know if this is how democracies evolve and grow, by endlessly discussing the same topics and themes with or without seeking or finding solutions.

But this is what Uganda has become, a land of commentary and debate that changes nothing.

After the 1979 war, with the country shattered, the European Economic Community (EEC), as the EU was then known, started to airlift emergency aid into Uganda to deal with the refugee crisis and hunger in Arua and Karamoja.

After the NRM government came to power in 1986, sympathetic Western governments and agencies began to donate medicine, tents and money to deal with the social and economic disruption the 1981-1986 civil war caused.

NGOs as part of the Ugandan social landscape were born. Ostensibly, NGOs were founded as a stop-gap measure to address the immediate crises facing the country and for which the government did not yet have the capacity to solve.

Permanent feature
However, NGOs eventually became a permanent feature of national corporate life.

The news media itself has also developed its own reporting and analytical tradition in tandem with this reality of Uganda has a semi-dysfunctional, aid-dependent state.

Even in the face of rapidly changing consumer tastes brought on by digital technology and platforms, the media carries on with its old habits of delivering the news.

The implication here is that Ugandans have moved from viewing their present circumstances as abnormal and temporary that should be reversed, to regarding the status quo as normal, unchanging and unchangeable.

The lesson in this is that we should be on guard against settling too much into habits. We should periodically stand back and question the basis of what we do.

It is very easy for collective societal habits to turn into tradition and eventually into culture.

Uganda needs a few radical thinkers and people of action to jolt the country out of its present complacency and comfort with the established order.