Be bold enough to speak out against wrongs in society

When they came for the communists I did not speak for I was not a communist. Then they came for the Catholics and I did not speak…. When they came for me there was nobody left [to speak]”!

The article, ‘Urinating on the street is wrong’, in the Sunday Monitor of May 5 by a ‘concerned citizen’ thrust me back through to memory lane to 1955 or thereabouts when the exiled King Edward Muteesa II returned from England amid unprecedented jubilation in Buganda and my late father Joshua Mukasa Naluma was serving his last term as chief at Nakawa Gombolola Mumyuka; having completed assignments as chief at Nsaggu, Wakiso, Najjembe and Nyenga.

I had just started school in what was known as the Sub-grade level [kindergarten or Nursery school] at an Anglican Church School at Mbuya, close to the present Nakawa Courts of Judicature. I passed-by recently and was surprised and happy to find that the Mango tree from which as children we used to pick mangoes in the morning before the general parade for checking cleanliness and jiggers before going to class still stands.

While those who had noxious body odours were forcefully bathed by the prefects, safety pins were used to remove jiggers and a solution of salt and red pepper poured into the wound created by the operation.

Fifty eight years down the lane and 50 after independence from the colonialists who those of the genre of my father are sometimes blamed for having served, Uganda does not manufacture even a simple but essential instrument such as a safety pin and images of children and adults infested with jiggers are still shown on the front pages of major newspapers because they are newsworthy!

Unlike today’s chiefs, the chiefs of those days exuded a strong and charismatic personality; they wielded a lot of judicial powers alongside the formal institutions. Mr Naluma, a former senior medical assistant under Dr Albert Cook at Namirembe Hospital, a Tutor in the department of anatomy and physiology at the medical school between 1922-28, and a Veteran who served as Kabaka’s representative andh Sergeant-Major in the Medical Corps during the Abyssinian Campaign of World War II between 1939-45, used to drive around the Gombolola in a Ford Anglia with three Rhino skin whips of different sizes.

Whenever he came across anybody emptying the contents of their bladder or bowels by the roadside he would stop the car, reach out for the right size of whip and give the offender five lashes! Those staggering home from whatever destination after imbibing one too many did not escape the whip either.

He did not spare his whips when it came to his children bringing home poor grade class term reports.
Those were the good [some might say bad] old days of the past when chiefs needed no introduction and organisational and family discipline as well as what diplomats call ‘correct form, etiquette and good manners’ were important!

‘Concerned Citizen’ need not fear to reveal his/her name when writing against what he/she believes to be wrong. In a country where an MP caught on the wrong side of traffic laws has the audacity to piss on police officers, the very symbols of power and authority; the time is nigh when Ugandans, with care not to be caught on the wrong side of the law, ought to speak out lest they regret their silence like the German who lamented having not spoken out when Hitler’s Gestapo persecuted people the German dictator perceived as threats to the Third Reich.

I recall the quotation in a book by the late Professor Karugire, a former Academic Warden of Northcote [Nsibirwa] Hall and renowned Professor of History at Makerere University which went something like, “When they came for the Jews I did not speak because I was not a Jew.

When they came for the communists I did not speak for I was not a communist. Then they came for the Catholics and I did not speak…. When they came for me there was nobody left [to speak]”!

Mr Baligidde is a former diplomat.