Uganda needs a ‘kacoke madit’
Author: Mr Nobert Mao. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- The term became popular as people of Acholi tried to end the conflict between LRA and govt.
Uganda is a country that is hurting. Since independence the country has never witnessed a peaceful change. Our country needs healing. At this critical moment when we are talking about transition, citizens still demand to see a peaceful change of government. We need a process of national reflection.
In that reflection we shall discuss the present, thus gaining insight into our present predicament. We shall also discuss the past, thereby gaining hindsight into our troubled past. Above all, we shall discuss the Uganda we want in the future. The hindsight and insight gained will give us the foresight to design a better future.
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To do all these things we need a meaningful dialogue process. In short, we need what in Luo is called a kacoke madit. The term became popular as the people of Acholi grappled with ways to end the armed conflict between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and government. A divided community turned on each other in a blame game as millions remained in internally displaced person’s camps, thousands of children abducted and thousands being killed.
According to the founding documents of the meetings, “A kacoke madit (KM) conference is an open forum for all sides of the conflict: Acholi people and community leaders, parliamentarians and traditional and religious leaders, government officials and civil servants, representatives of LRM/A, and overseas members of the Acholi diaspora. It is this inclusiveness, combined with a common concern to see that the conflict is brought to a peaceful end that gives KM an unusual role in promoting and building consensus for sustainable peace.”
With the death of former Speaker Jacob Oulanyah the moment of truth is upon us as a country. There’s discontent with the status quo and the discontent is not as unpopular as some may want us to believe.
What we have is not an aggrieved minority that can be ignored but a popular discontent that has to be channelled creatively. The violent expressions of discontent and the efforts to quell those expressions both traumatise the society. With every election cycle this trauma increases.
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Shall we let circumstances push us over a precipice into a new dispensation or shall we seize the reins and plan the future? Will the post-Museveni Uganda come through a plunge or through a plan? Shall we have change with responsibility or change with reckless abandon?
Every politician appeals to the most radical of their political bases. None makes an effort to appeal to the centre. Even the winner doesn’t appeal to the centre in governing. As a result, the country becomes more toxic and public discourse revolves around name calling, character assassination and stigmatisation.
We need to talk to each other. The last days and eventual death of Jacob Oulanyah L’okori has put a giant mirror before our very eyes. We now know exactly the fault lines of our polity.
The debate that overarches the tragic death of Oulanyah is the ever changing perceptions of the Museveni regime. For more than three decades the legitimacy of NRM was very high in the western and central regions, including Busoga. In the north and east (particularly Teso) the legitimacy of NRM was very low. The north opposed NRM but did not blame those who were supporting NRM.
They were angry with Museveni and NRM, not the Baganda, westerners and Basoga who formed the NRM’s bastion of support. NRM’s legitimacy in the south in its early days was because they were perceived as liberators who had ousted the terrible Anyanyas from power.
This was the dominant view, notwithstanding that supporters of the late UFM leader, Dr Andrew Kayiira and some Baganda monarchists aggrieved by perceived failure by Museveni to honour bush deals with Buganda, opposed Museveni and viewed him as illegitimate.
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The people of the north, however, saw the NRM regime as illegitimate because in their view it was dominated by Banyarwanda refugees who passed themselves off as Banyankole or Ugandan Banyarwanda. They also believed that the regime had an agenda to marginalise and exterminate the northerners. This viewpoint persisted despite the fact that prominent northerners held high offices in government and did not agree with this viewpoint.
We have only two choices: dialogue or civil war. We need a national truth and reconciliation process to enable us deal with the cracks at the foundation of our nationhood. We need a kacoke madit!
