Thinking about our collective futures

The start of the year is a time of resolutions and predictions! Some analysts or specialists attempt peering into the future, but the socio-political world is so stubbornly elusive such that predicting what comes ahead is often futile.

Social scientists are routinely flatfooted when major cataclysmic events unfold dramatically and unexpectedly. But while we cannot tell the future nor precisely and accurately predict tomorrow, the start of the year is a good time to deeply reflect on our shared aspirations and how to tackle collective problems.

For a country like ours, beloved Uganda, teeming with problems but also richly endowed, there is simply too much at stake. The problems we face just keep mounting even as our abilities to confront them remains abundant.

Our hallowed national capital, in fact our only true city – Kampala – is now a terrifying tragedy. It is tough making heads or tails of Kampala. With a shambolic road network and an appalling behaviour of motorists, Kampala’s roads are utterly chaotic and deeply disturbing, yet no one appears bothered enough as to work hard to arrest the problem.

As I have repeatedly underlined in this column, having our compatriots who ride passenger motorcycles, comfortably in the driving seat of shocking disregard of basic rules of the road, is one of the biggest failures of public administration and absence of bold leadership one can ever find.

I spent the festive season home in Bubulo. Upcountry life has always been sweet and serene away from the madness of the capital, yet the same vagaries of urbanising without planning and the rush to develop while doing so with the mind of poverty all are making the rural landscape a disaster of its own.

Even then, Uganda the special country keeps fighting on and living to the new year. The lash green and imposing natural environment in the countryside is priceless and an ever-powerful reminder of the incredible gift of a country we have.

When I drive through Kayunga to Jinja, Iganga through Tirinyi to get to the breathtaking arena of the Mount Elgon area that is my ancestral home, I marvel at the resilience of natural beauty despite humanity’s abuses and excesses.

Our land and environment have been subject to untold torture and egregious practices, but the green and beauty stubbornly stands firm! Will this last forever? Unlikely. The destructions of the environment that is so glaring, the mounting population pressures, the total disregard of basic planning and the knack for short-term, quick fixes all mean that we have a future ahead that will be precarious if not altogether catastrophic.

In all this though and despite (in fact because of) the deep-seated problems we face, we can imagine alternative futures and ruggedly work towards a desirable Uganda ahead. We all have a role to play and a job to do, collectively.

Societies are built on the strength of the collective energies of the people who inhabit them. Any nation’s most important resources is its people. It is not oil or gold, not coal or steel. This is something that even the rulers, who should know better, often fail to grasp as to be purposeful about investing in citizens.

If we do not seriously reflect on the road ahead, we are a country in peril. One only has to consider the runaway problem of population explosion that is flashing so brightly in our faces to see the stupendous problems that lie ahead.

If we cannot innovatively, and with an eye on the future, apply breaks on population expansion, we are doomed. The mass of young people that are all over what is a desperate and hopeless social setting will just provide the fuel for social disasters of different stripes, some already quite evident to a keen observer of our society. Things can only get worse in the years ahead unless we can muster a true social turnaround.

Investing in ourselves as a people requires that we rationalise both our human and natural resources to achieve a desirable quality of life. The world already entered a dangerous phase of human evolution where societies that continue depending on the goodness of nature even as they abuse are getting badly battered. This is already on display with unusual rains and flooding, excess heat and prolonged draught, among other weather extremes.

The year ahead could very well bring some great strides, and we can hope for the best, but for a cynic it is difficult to see how the current crop of public authorities can turnaround things.

Local governments that are supposed to engineer social transformation, bottom-up, have become little more than havens of localised thieving and utter abuse of the public good. For the rulership at the centre, it is now such a sad spectacle of sheer decay and dysfunction with stark replication at the local levels of government.

Happy New Year!

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