Psychology of torture

The acting minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Muruli Mukasa, said midweek that torture is not used as a method of interrogation in Uganda.
As what he said raised eyebrows, the minister adjusted his spectacles and dug in.  
Speaking on the floor of Parliament, he added that it is not government policy to torture anyone. 
So if any public officer tortures a civilian, then that officer is acting on their own volition and not according to the dictates of the law. 
“Torture is not a policy of government nor is it even a method of interrogation. The law on this is very clear. The President has in his own words stated the position and policy of government,” Mr Mukasa noted.
He added that criminal offences are paralleled by laws which set in train procedures of arrest and practices with regard to the treatment of suspected offenders.
Mr Mukasa explained that one’s political affiliation or disaffiliation does not determine how one is viewed in the eyes of the law and so due process is for everyone, regardless of one’s political belief. 
It is clear that Mr Mukasa, a thoroughly pleasant person, was speaking on behalf of a government on the ropes from punching above its weight class on the subject of human rights. 
Mr Mukasa’s statement was provoked by what happened a week ago when Mr Mathias Mpuuga, the Leader of Opposition in Parliament, and several other Opposition Members of Parliament stormed out of the House in protest against the alleged torture of Ugandan citizens. 
The MPs then sat on the stairs, which serve as the approaches to Parliament chanting: “We want freedom” “Free our people”.
Government and the Opposition are reading from distinctly separate scripts, yet both have failed to read the runes. 
In view of the political and economic polarisation in the country, there is no equality except for torture itself. 
Indeed, torture is the nation’s great leveller since it dehumanises both the tortured and torturer. 
While the tortured is viewed as an object of curiosity and experimentation rather than as a human being, the torturer is dehumanised into a degenerate and a monster. 
When both of them are deprived of their humanity, we all lose touch with the best versions of ourselves as both torturer and tortured spiral into abysms of self-hate and self-denial. 
This is how we create the conditions for torture to become policy.
As our shared inhumanity takes hold, we start to see each other as representations of good and evil; no longer as human beings. 
This is why the State will continue torturing and the tortured will dream of the day they can turn the tables on their torturers by becoming the ones inflicting the pain and suffering they currently endure. 
As a result, we distance ourselves from any compromise and thus become complicit in stretching the social fabric of our nation to breaking point. 
This is why our politics are filled with the physical and psychological manipulations common with torture, leading to a collective apathy with what it means to be Ugandan. 
We no longer care as long we make money. Thereby devaluing ourselves to the sum of our parts: our material possessions. 
This preoccupation with money sweeps under the rug how we truly feel, and this is why we suffer more mental illnesses today. 
True, 35 percent of Ugandans suffer from mental disorder and 15 percent require treatment for it. 
These damning statistics shape a groundswell of intense rage, suicidal and homicidal ideas, alienation and the inability to trust. 
Which, in turn, underline a cultural masochism that embraces the country’s enduring pain, instead of its lasting potential.
Mr Matogo is a professional copywriter  
[email protected]