Pursuit of peace, progress after 60 years of self-rule

Today we are celebrating Independence Day.  The 61st Independence Day is being celebrated around the theme, ‘Sustaining a united and progressive nation: Taking charge of our nation as a free nation’. I will be patriotic today in line with the theme.

I only became aware of Independence Day as a matter of national importance in 1986. When the National Resistance Movement (NRM) captured power, we joined my maternal grandparents in Pakwach District. It is there that I would start my Primary One. The rest of the years have gone by very quickly.  I am now an old woman, with vague memories of January 26, 1986. It is often incredible to me, that old as I am, the only president I have known since I was in Primary One, is President Museveni. I imagine what it is like for those who came to join us after the 2000s.

Not long after starting school, there would be Alice Lakwena to worry about, and then Joseph Kony in the years after. As the years went by, sometimes, Kampala seemed like what the United States of America feels like for most Ugandans, with dreams of getting green cards to the purported land of opportunities today, so near yet so far.

Coming to Kampala was a dream of its own, an incentive to work hard and join Makerere University, for some. This Kampala most people ridicule for its annoying potholes and river size ponds when it rains, was the lifetime dream of some people from the periphery. Coming to Kampala, was like going to America.

The insecurity made travel to the capital city a nightmare, and people (our relatives) died through various ambushes in what we called then, “the park”.  The present day Karuma- Pakwach stretch was no place to breathe until you crossed Karuma Falls or River Nile on the other side.

When I tell my students today that when I was growing up, besides insecurity, we also had no electricity, no running water, and grinding machines and for the most part, had to spend some good time in the gardens and fetching firewood from faraway places rather than reading books, they think I come from a generation of the Middle Ages. That often amuses me.

I recently travelled to Nebbi District, driving alone late in the afternoon. I chose to go through that ‘park’, because I felt even late, there would be people moving and I could meet vehicles from time to time. Because sections of the Karuma – Pakwach road have been terrible, it is close to two years since I used it. Knowing that the road is being worked on gave me the assurance that it would not be so bad. I was wrong, ofcourse, and wished I had not gone there.

For as long as I remember, I have grudgingly supported government paying a fee to travel through the national park via Masindi District. It always feels like an injustice, to have to pay to visit my village.

The irony was not lost on me that day, that it seemed safe to go through the park, late in the evening. Whereas I arrived late and my car was in need of a major garage visit because the road had taken its toll on it, I found myself feeling grateful for peace.

The picture I paint of my growing up years, many of our students cannot relate with because they are children of urban affordances and products of one kind of privilege or another. They must think I am from a generation no longer found in this part of our world as a free nation matching to middle income and enjoying steady progress. In many ways, I see the social transformation that has come with electricity, running water and numerous grinding machines in our villages, now small towns.

Even I, looking back, now realise how much I was privileged in that environment, because my mother worked for the local government. There are many of my lot, who were better than I, who never got the opportunities I got. It always keeps me humble.

It must be the same for many young people in different parts of rural Uganda today. I had sort of forgotten that feeling, until last week I drove through different parts of Nebbi – and endured even worse roads, seeing the real villages I had imagined were behind me.

Suddenly, I wondered if the cost of this peace that now allows us to travel through what then was the park rather figuratively is going to last. It is a feeling of unease. To what extent can we say we are free and independent? Is this peace something we can sustain? How much are we willing to give up in order not to rock the boat, and keep the peace no matter what?

As usual, many questions in my head but let me keep them lest I sound less patriotic than intended today. This year’s Independence Day should remind us just how peace today, can be fragile, if we do not work towards sustaining it. How we sustain that should be our preoccupation.

Ms Maractho (PhD) is the director of Africa Policy Centre and senior lecturer at Uganda Christian University.                       [email protected]