Cranes can make this Uganda’s year

My mother left this earth for a better place on this day twenty years ago. She is of course the greatest woman that ever lived, and I am afraid Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, Oprah Winfrey, Margaret Thatcher, Aung San Suu Kyi and the all-powerful African ensemble of Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Wangari Maathai pale in comparison.

All it took for me to reminisce yesterday was the DJ belting out Cyndi Lauper’s timeless classic ‘Time After Time’ on my car radio, consuming me with a strong urge to do something good in her memory. It is the year of anniversaries in Uganda, none bigger than the 50 years of Independence we mark today.

While we like to stand up to the adversities of our world, go off in single-minded pursuit of our life’s ambitions, be the men that our traditions, cultures and the pressures of society demand of us, we are only human and it is okay to let sentiment and emotion take over every once in a while.

A great many Ugandans are overjoyed at the significance of today, and yet many others are angry because of the issues that still surround our politics, economics and governance.

Either way the feelings stirred up by the occasion have evoked action, and even for the aloof (plenty here too trust me), a day like this at the very least causes reflection. Playing in what has inevitably taken over from previous others of similar magnitude as the biggest match in the country’s history, the Uganda Cranes would be best advised to use the moment as a powerful tool.

The irony has never been lost on me that the millions who crucified David Obua at the altar of patriotic rage were condemning him for having and showing feelings. The reality is that the players who step out at Namboole on Saturday have to wear their hearts on their sleeves and want this badly. As he ran we could not tell, but phrases like ‘did this for my country’, ‘even if I die now’ etc betrayed the emotions Stephen Kiprotich had used to break a 40-year hoodoo.

Saturday’s opponents Zambia used the painful memories of that 1993 plane crash to will themselves into the history books earlier this year, and it would be more than just ‘something good’ if the Cranes borrowed a leaf to put right 34 years of wrongs.

mmssali@yahoo.com
@markssali on twitter