How I wish they understood the reality of Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes 9:1-3. There he reminds us that the rulers and the ruled, the oppressors and the oppressed “share a common destiny.”

Dear Tingasiga:
The Old Man in Mparo, Kigezi struggles to get up from his bed. A constant backache has graduated to serious pain only relieved by sleep. His Mukiga herbalist has tried his medicines for several months. Things are getting worse.
He remembers the words of a visiting friend, a doctor working in a distant land, who advised him last year to seek professional medical attention. It might be cancer you see.

The prostate, that naughty little organ that sits astride a man’s urinary passage, useful during one’s youth, is notorious for going wild, attacking bones like a guerrilla soldier – quietly, slowly, unremittingly, focused.
Men ignore its symptoms at their peril, the doctor told him. It is akin to politicians who ignore the protests and pain of their subjects. They may suppress them for a while, but the protestors will eventually win. It is the malignancy of dissent.

So it is with the prostate, the doctor friend had told the Old Man before giving him money to take him to Kampala to seek help from the specialists. However, the Old Man had better and more urgent things to spend the money on. One had to eat. One had to support the orphans, his grandchildren whose parents had succumbed to the complications of HIV/Aids. One had to give a tithe to the church, including arrears dating back more than five years. He walks very slowly, opens the front door, squats on the verandah and shields his eyes with his hands. The sun is already high in a cloudless sky. His neighbour brings him his copy of the day’s newspaper. He reads the President’s response to Dr Kizza Besigye’s interview with the Sunday Monitor.

A knowing smile graces his face when he reads the President’s reference to the Book of Ecclesiastes Chapter 3:1-8 where Solomon writes: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under Heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot…a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace”
“This is a rather angry letter,” he judges as he continues to read. Perhaps that is why the President has quoted a very narrow, albeit famous, aspect of an important scripture.

“I wonder whether the President has read the entire Book of Ecclesiastes,” the Old Man says, without looking up from the paper. Has he read Chapter 4 of the same Book? Perhaps he has, but prefers to ignore it, for it seems to speak about the plight of Ugandans.

“Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun,” Solomon writes. “I saw the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter; power was on the side of the oppressors – and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.”

The Old Man knows Ecclesiastes by heart. It describes his experience and sentiments, shared by millions of men and women who live on the edge of society, desperate even as their rulers boast about the economic miracle and the wealth that has been enjoyed in the land during the last 27 years. He squints into the distance. Shiny cables stretched across wooden poles carry electricity, one of the great developments in Mparo in recent years. This, together with the gravity water that flows through underground pipes, is a well-deserved credit to President Museveni’s government.

Yet it means nothing to the Old Man. He is condemned to darkness in his home. He must continue to rely on water from an old well, nearly a kilometre away, which he can no longer fetch himself. The modernisation programme eludes him. It is an illusion, present yet absent; tantalising yet unreachable.

The Old Man, like the vast majority of his peers, cannot afford the cost of these things. No electricity, no water, no healthcare, no worthwhile education for his grandchildren, no pension, no real voice in national matters. Is that what citizenship means? Is his role simply to vote and legitimise his oppressors? He turns the newspaper pages, to more stories of corruption and the unimaginable lifestyles of the well connected, those self-styled patriots who are bleeding the country dry.

Names flash through his head. He lifts up his eyes. His neighbour has been quietly studying his body language. “Oh how they have plundered this land!” the neighbour says.

The Old Man replies softly: “It says in Ecclesiastes that all man’s efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied. It also reminds us: ‘Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless’.”

Yes, his neighbour says. How I wish they understood the reality of Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes 9:1-3. There he reminds us that the rulers and the ruled, the oppressors and the oppressed “share a common destiny.”

Dr Mulera is a Daily Monitor columnist based in Canada.
muniinikmulera@aol.com

Dear Tingasiga:

My elderly friend, a retired school teacher in Mparo, Rukiga, Kigezi, tosses and turns in his bed, his insomnia a consequence of many unanswered questions tagging at his heart.

What does it really mean to be a Ugandan citizen? Does he have the same rights and privileges as all these other people he reads and hears about?

For example, does all the stuff in the Constitution which talks about the right and duty to defend and resist any group of persons seeking to overthrow the established constitutional order really apply to him?

Would he not be whipped senseless if he tried to peacefully resist the plans by the current military rulers to overthrow the parliament of Uganda? 

To think that his son gave everything in the struggle for freedom!  He switches to more practical concerns as stories of the colonial and immediate post-colonial period flicker in and out of history’s mist.

His children attended school way back then at a cost that was so affordable that his teacher’s salary, supplemented with profits from his banana plantation enabled him to educate four of them and meet his other expenses. The bright fellows received the best education at two of the finest government secondary schools, before going on to the world-famous Makerere University, their entire stay paid for by the Uganda government.

Fifty years later, the old man hears from his neighbours and other acquaintances that their children cannot afford to go to college or university.  Their examination results are so abysmal that they cannot compete with students from the rich-schools in the Kampala area.

The cycle of poverty which used to be broken by a good education is back in full swing in Kigezi. “I am sure this is the same story in every district in this country,” the old man mumbles.

Memories of free health care at Mparo Health Centre flood back, as though emerging from a smoky tunnel to a distant land. The care they enjoyed was better than that offered in many hospitals today. These days he does not even bother to go there. Why bother when he knows the answer: “The drugs are out of stock, Mzee.”

If consultation with other doctors was necessary in the old days, he was always assured of an affordable and predictable bus ride on a well-maintained road from Kangondo to the big town 50 km away where prompt and free medical attention awaited him at Kabale Hospital.

Now he does not even think about Kabale Hospital. Not even his enlarging prostate has persuaded him to take the trip to Kabale. He has no money to spare.  Oh, there was a time when his efforts at banana farming benefited from free consultation with local agricultural and veterinary officers. He had free access to a weekly market at Kangondo where he could count on a moneyed local clientele, including the wives of miners who received regular remittances from their husbands at Kilembe Mines. Nowadays he is not sure how he survives.

He remembers the days when he was assured of justice and  he felt that the government actually cared about him those days. Perhaps that is why he used to receive his salary on time. He did not enjoy paying the graduated taxes, of course, but he knew that the chiefs did not steal the money and that it was always put to good use for the common good.

Perhaps corruption existed back then. How come he had not heard of the word? How is it that he respected the elected officials and other big men? He could never have imagined any of the big men being sent to the “place with no fire” (prison).

The old man suddenly remembers a lecture he heard on radio a few months earlier. It was a monologue about patriotism. “Of course I know my duties as a citizen of Uganda,” he mumbles. “I respect the national symbols and the rights of others. I am always ready to do my part in the service of my community and my country.”

Corruption, stolen elections and other forms of abuse of power – these and other maladies which threaten the long-term survival of the state, are not lost on the men and officers of the UPDF.

Dear Tingasiga:
General Yoweri K. Museveni’s reported threat of a military coup d’état against Parliament is a contemptuous threat against the citizens, one that invites, nay, demands a non-partisan, peaceful, reasoned and sober resistance by the citizens.

However, not even the generals who are threatening to overthrow their own regime should feel too smug that it will be an easy walk to martial law. Military coups are rarely clean operations.
More often than not a coup has triggered a countercoup. Enough army chiefs and coup leaders have been murdered during the military takeovers that those contemplating this dangerous measure ought to worry about their own fates.

The examples of Nigeria and Ghana, two countries that had professional armies even in the dark ages of the immediate post-independence period, are rather sobering.

In the aftermath of the January 15, 1966 military coup in Nigeria, one of the bloodiest in Africa’s military putsches, Maj. Gen. Johnson Iguiyi-Ironsi, the army commander, became head of state. He was murdered on July 29, 1966 in a bloody counter-coup that saw the emergence of Col. Yakubu Gowon as head of state.
On July 29, 1975, while Gowon was attending an OAU heads of state Summit in Kampala, he was in turn overthrown by his old rival Maj. Gen. Murtala Mohammed. The latter lasted just over six months, assassinated in another attempted coup on February 13, 1976. Nigeria was well on its way towards the abyss in which it sank for the next 30 years, one from which it is still struggling to fully emerge.

Further west, the Ghana military overthrew the civilian government of President Kwame Nkrumah on February 24, 1966, to refocus the country on the objectives of the struggle for independence. Whereas the coup had been led by Col. Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, the new military regime was led by Gen. Joseph Arthur Ankrah. In gratitude, Ankrah promoted Kotoka to the rank of Lt. Gen. and made him army commander.

Gen. Kotoka was killed in a coup attempt against the Ankrah regime on April 17, 1967, this one led by very junior officers – Lt. Samuel Benjamin Arthur and Lt. Moses Yeboah. The coup failed, but Ghana was well on its journey of multiple coups and counter-coups that would sap its body and soul over the next 35 years.

The story is the same all over the continent. Military coups consume their intended victims, inflict huge collateral damage on the onlookers (citizens) and ultimately swallow their authors- usually men without ears who confuse bullets with power, and have a tendency to turn guns on each other.

The UPDF generals who may be considering making a foolish move had better revisit the dark and bloody history of their predecessors all over the continent, men like Jean Bedel Bokassa, Idi Amin, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Muammar Gaddafi and others, once invincible masters of their guns, now reviled by history.

Of equal interest to me is Gen. Museveni’s legitimisation of the buffoon regimes that he has so eloquently vilified over the last 30 years. One cannot overthrow the current Parliament without endorsing Prime Minister Milton Obote’s overthrow of the Uganda government in 1966.

Among the triggers of the 1966 coup was the attempt by some ministers to remove their own Prime Minister from power using a constitutionally legitimate move of a vote of no confidence in him.

One cannot justify a military coup aimed at “refocusing the country”, without legitimising similar claims by Maj. Gen. Idi Amin in 1971 and Lt. Gen Tito Okello Lutwa in 1985. Check out their “reasons” for overthrowing Obote’s governments.

Judging by the history of military coups in Africa, the current Uganda army has had many reasons to consider overthrowing the government.
Corruption, stolen elections and other forms of abuse of power – these and other maladies which threaten the long-term survival of the state, are not lost on the men and officers of the UPDF.
Yet it would only be the suicidal Ugandan or one suffering from dangerous amnesia who would wish formal military rule on our country. The efforts at civilian government, complete with our bruised and bleeding democratisation attempts, are a far better alternative to the rule of the gun.

Those who prefer the predictable order and control under formal military rule to our rather irritating experiment with democracy ignore the wisdom of Sir Winston Churchill who, speaking before the British Parliament on November 11, 1947, offered thus: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.

Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” A chaotic democracy, albeit still militarised, is a far better alternative to a formal military regime.

Dr Mulera is a Daily Monitor
columnist based in Canada.
muniinikmulera@aol.com

These are the men that matter in Uganda, the most important of them being Brig. Kainerugaba who would continue to be assisted by Col. Sabiiti Mzei and Maj. Don Nabaasa in his task of keeping his father in power.

Dear Tingasiga:
President Yoweri K. Museveni and Dr. Crispus Kiyonga, his defense minister, have reportedly expressed fear that the army may overthrow the government to “refocus the country’s future” if the “confusion in parliament persists.”

I have very good news for the president and his defense minister. The UPDF is a professional army that cannot be bothered by the annoying aspects of democracy. Therefore it cannot overthrow the government.

Professionalising the UPDF was the main reason why the president very reluctantly sought his second and last elected term in 2001.

The top agenda item in his 2001 re-election manifesto was to “consolidate the building of a professional army.”
By 2006, he was ready to launch his re-election campaign to his third and last term. Top on the new agenda for 2006 was “consolidating the building of a professional army.”

Fast-forward to 2011, and the president very, very reluctantly accepted the demand of the people that he must continue to rule them.
To do so, he sought re-election to his fourth and last term with a 241-page manifesto in which he confidently informed us on page 5 that “the earlier years of military coups, armed groups, human rights abuses, a failing state etc have (sic) now history.”
Gen. Museveni pointed out on page 24 that the peace and security that Ugandans were enjoying was “irreversible” “because of the maintenance of high professional standards by the security organisations.”

“The way forward” would include the maintenance of these high professional standards and investment in “defense diplomacy” that would contribute to peaceful resolution of conflicts internally, regionally and internationally.

Happily, the president also had a lot to say about the state of democracy in Uganda. On page 17 of the 2011 manifesto, he said the NRM was “committed to promoting democracy and good governance first as a core value, but also as a sine qua non for national transformation.”

The NRM was therefore diligently working for, among other things, “existence of constitutional democracy where there is a separation of powers between Executive, Legislature and Judiciary.” Implied in that statement was that Parliament would be left to do its thing, without interference from Rwakitura.

I am assuming, of course, that Gen. Museveni was the author of his election manifestos; that he read them and that he meant what he said. In case the manifestos were mpewo (hot air) or kiwani (fake), then the president and his minister are right.

The military could overthrow the government, though such statements by the president and his defense minister are tantamount to treason or, at least, incitement to violence. We fully expect Gen. Kale Kayihura’s boys to show up to quiz Museveni and Kiyonga about their statements.

Yet Ugandans need not despair, for we have very good news for you as well. A military coup would not change anything. It would not affect your lives one bit. How so, you ask?

The newly installed military regime would be made up of Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni (president and commander-in-chief), his son Brigadier Muhoozi Kainerugaba (Commander of the Special Forces Command), Maj. Gen. Kale Kaihura (Inspector General of Police), Gen. Aronda Nyakeirima (Chief of Defence Forces) and Maj. Gen. Fred Mugisha (Joint Chief of Staff).

These are the men that matter in Uganda, the most important of them being Brig. Kainerugaba who would continue to be assisted by Col. Sabiiti Mzei and Maj. Don Nabaasa in his task of keeping his father in power.

To give the regime a semblance of civilian participation, the vice president would be Edward Ssekandi, with Amama Mbabazi as prime minister and Crispus Kiyonga as minister of defense.

So there would be no change, though any similarity to the current regime would be purely coincidental.

I end on another happy note. As Barack Obama takes his second oath as president of the United States today, we remember the declaration that he made in his inaugural address on January 20, 2009:
“To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
Although Obama embarks on his last term, with a most confused and troublesome legislature, there is no worry that the US army might step in to refocus America’s future.
Meanwhile, the Ugandan president continues to dress up MPs in military attire at compulsory Kyankwanzi retreats, reminiscent of Marshall Idi Amin’s treatment of his civilian ministers. He threatens to overthrow his own regime. He is clearly on the wrong side of history.

Dr Mulera is a Daily Monitor
columnist based in Canada.
muniinikmulera@aol.com

He was generous with his humour but serious with his professional career.

Dear Tingasiga:
Whereas I give most of the credit for my education and modest achievements in life to my mother and father, there are many others whose handiwork I am.

Among them was Yosiya Mafigiri, one of the young intellectuals from Mparo, Rukiga, Kigezi, who had a profound impact on me. He was bright and smart. He was confident but accessible.

He was generous with his humour but serious with his professional career.
Among the first boys from Rukiga to pursue a career in healthcare, he made it possible for us to dream.
Yosiya, who died on Thursday at 74, was still in the late afternoon of his life when he became weary, closed his eyelids still, and left us shivering in the cold and darkness of loss.

I mourn with the entire Mafigiri family and all whom Yosiya touched in his distinguished life.

Great men and women have roads named after them, but Yosiya built his own road to success in innumerable hearts and minds of those he inspired, taught and ministered to as one of the most able healers and teachers of medicine.

Those of us who had the great fortune to walk in his footsteps, from humble Mparo to Uganda’s highest centres of learning, had an example of a man who understood that there were no shortcuts to sustainable accomplishments.

From his perch at Kasangati Health Centre near Kampala, Yosiya taught us public health and imparted clinical skills and the best in the field.
How does one describe the experience of being taught in medical school by one whom one had grown up trying to emulate? It was the passing of the proverbial baton.

The pursuit of intellectual excellence is Yosiya’s legacy and monument, the imperishable wealth that he has bequeathed to us. It was this pursuit of excellence that transported him from colonial Mparo to peaks of honour and accomplishment.

Their accomplishments are testament to the sacrifice of their visionary parents, who not only imparted genes of genius to them but also set them on a course that would transform their family from ordinary peasantry to extraordinary citizens.

Whereas most of the wealthy and powerful names of my youth are already forgotten, the Mafigiri name continues to be synonymous with genius and high achievement.

Yosiya had four brothers and four sisters. His sisters have excelled beyond what was possible for most educated women of their generation.
At the time of her semi-retirement, Ms Erina Baingana was the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Public Service. Professor Joy Kwesiga is the Vice Chancellor of Kabale University.
Dr Grace Kalimugogo has had a very long and distinguished medical career at the OAU/AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, rising to the top echelons in the Directorate of Social Affairs.

Ms Jairesi Nsheka has had a long and successful career in management, now serving her country at the Uganda National Roads Authority. Their only surviving brother, Kezekia, is one of the pioneer Ugandan African engineers.

Yosiya was pre-deceased by his brothers Guy (Ephraim), David and Christopher, my childhood friends who were among the brightest boys I grew up with.

Guy and David were too bright to thrive in the constricting traditions of Ugandan education. So they never went beyond O-Level, not because they lacked the capacity, but because they were in a totally different league. Had they been born in America, they may well have been the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of their generation.

Where many of us struggled to get good grades, Christopher, the youngest Mafigiri, had a magnetic mind. From little known Kihanga Boys Primary School to King’s College Budo, then Makerere Medical School, Topher sailed through school like a Tilapia navigating the waters of Lake Nnalubaale (Victoria), always on top of his class.