Do we know what independence means for those who fought for it?
With all due respect, if the government builds a fine road, please use it properly. Why should you create your own shortcuts instead and criss-cross everywhere? As we celebrate Uganda’s 57th independence anniversary, it is with a heavy heart that I ask that we should first try to understand what independence meant to those who struggled for it. This is in comparison to what it means to us and/or our leaders today. Even try to recall what was going on politically, socially and economically that needed to be changed, and find out how far have we gone today in effecting the socio-economic change and political liberation, plus the economic empowerment that we wanted for all Ugandans back then.
Are the independence heroes resting in peace as we speak, or are they turning in their graves with grief and disbelief at what we are doing to the country politically, socially and economically today? As long as we do not have the meaning of independence 57 years ago, then we do not know what we are talking about in regard to national independence. And as long as we do not know what Uganda they were fighting to have, then it also means that we do not know what ideal Uganda we should be heading towards.
How can we struggle to create what we do not know. What ideal nation is it that we should be building together for a better tomorrow. Uganda is a work in progress, but it is the milestones that we planned to achieve 57 years ago that should determine how and where we focus our efforts today. Therefore, let us know what we wanted at independence and compare it to where we have been diverted either by ourselves or by external interests and factors.
Independence is a good day to agree that Uganda did not start in 1966, 1971, 1980, or 1986. These are the dates of the start of all the main successive regime changes since independence. In fact, they are not the entire number since we had another five between 1979 and 1986 alone. But they all have one thing in common from 1966 to date - they all happened violently.
The 1966 date is crucial because that is the time Uganda lost its virginity of good governance just barely four years into puberty as a young adolescent nation. The year we lost the torch that we had won for ourselves at independence. Two independence leaders started fighting over who should be the one holding the torch of self-determination that was handed to us by Britain at independence. From that time onwards, Uganda has never returned on track. Otherwise, we would be having a ceremonial presidency as was the case from independence until 1966 rather than the executive presidency that the country has been having since then, and which everyone has since been fighting to become.
Though there was a struggle leading up to independence, the only change of government that happened institutionally and in an organised manner was when Uganda started in 1962 as a new independent nation.
Hussein Lumumba Amin,
[email protected]
