A simple Note, to my Rwakitura friend.
Dear Buregyeya,
It has been long since I last wrote to you. So I have been thinking and having sleepless nights.
So this time I decided to cut my night shorter so that I can write to you about something I think is good for our country but it is being misused.
I personally know that Uganda has immense potential but we seem to be reluctant to take off.
The biggest reason for this is because most people seem not to understand the hidden treasures in this country, and there seems to be one man who has learnt and mastered Ugandans and Uganda.
And he has instituted strong grip on this pearl of Africa and is not about to go.
Recently, he donated money in down town and ghettos in Kampala; the latest is the donation of cars to Busoga Kingdom.
You may wish to remember that thousands of property titles were returned to Buganda in the recent years.
The same man has been deeply involved in the goings-on and formations of new cultural and traditional groups around the country.
He has done the same to almost all religious leaders and has them under his reign.
This makes the beneficiaries lose the moral authority to see properly into the future of the country.
Uganda’s problem is actually bigger than my other Rwakitura friend, and my disappointment is that my friend Justice J. Ogola, Dr. Maggie, and the IRC seem not to realize this because I had thought that the reason for the National Dialogue would be much bigger than political contestation and would better start from the grassroots.
Today I intended to write to you about the much awaited National Dialogue that is the talk on the streets these days.
And I am personally happy that we are talking about dialogue. Forget about those you have heard say we don’t need the dialogue because there is nothing that necessitates dialogue.
Dialogue in itself is not a bad idea. It is actually a brilliant idea and Uganda needs dialogue now, more than ever before, and if we have this dialogue in the near future, it will be more costly than it would be now.
In this note, I however would like to share with you a few reasons why I think we may lose this good fight as a nation, because we have prematurely aborted the hitherto good idea of the national dialogue, causes being very obvious to you and any other Ugandan above 18 years of age, but I will still highlight these here.
To begin with, Uganda being a developing and young nation, our problems cut across economic, political, social and strategic spheres of the nation.
Just to give you a hint, economically, we have challenges financing our own national budget amidst immense natural resource potential, we have high costs of doing business, not so strong entrepreneurship and money culture, and the most recent being the chaos in the banking sector (involving our own Central Bank) yet these are the guys who control our money (I will talk about this in my Investment Magazine in the near future).
Politically, we have a political culture that is commercialized, polarized, tokenized, patronized, misguided, devoid of strategic direction, personalized, to mention but a few.
Socially, we have mushrooming religious cults, led by people claiming to be speaking to God, and there seems to be no one seeking to make an effort to protect the unsuspecting populace (I hope that the Inter-religious council is thinking about this since they are part of the conveners of this dialogue).
The biggest challenge to me however is that, as a nation we still have not yet (and I am not sure whether we are about to, given the state of reality at hand), secured a national DREAM that would be our pride.
Just like the Americans have the American dream into which every American aspires to fit.
We need to appreciate that there must be a national story, that each Ugandan fits their individual stories.
And this is where I want to fault the framers of the National Dialogue.
My assessment of our operations in Public sector, civil society, Private sector, and of course in politics, is that we have a tendency of scheming.
There is too much love for quick fixes (for lack of a better word). People want to do only that that can make them survive for today, and tomorrow will take care of itself.
The element of strategic planning and direction is honestly missing.
And I see this national dialogue falling victim of the same even before its launch.
I see the event coming and passing just like that and without any reasonable impact on the current state of affairs.
The question that keeps clear in my mind though is “why must we abort the idea before it can mature?”
As a father of three, I know for sure that these ideas are like children. When one conceives, it takes a period of 9 months to get a baby from what were a sperm and an egg.
Just like a baby, ideas too have maturity period and the maturity period for an ideas of a national dialogue, could even be 50 years.
The same is for business ideas, you don’t conceive an idea today and start tomorrow and you think you have good chances of building a big business (and I have written a whole 154 paged book on How to start a BUSINESS for this purpose to enable people follow the process of starting). The same is for politicians.
Someone just has to have a disagreement with an incumbent and that’s reason enough for them to make an effort to remove the incumbent.
My question however is “When shall we ever learn to purposively do things especially at national level?”
In my opinion, the purported conveners of the National Dialogue idea should not rush.
They should first of all understand that the reason for holding a national dialogue should not be about two political leaders fighting.
Neither should it be a ceremonial event to go down in history that we had a national dialogue.
I think we could do better if we allowed the idea to mature. We could start by mobilizing the grassroots and have a series of dialogues at that level, so that it grows and some day, we can have the national dialogue.
We already have local government structures that are well laid up to village level.
Why can’t we launch the national dialogue and allow it to start at that level?
Then through that kind of dialoguing, why don’t we craft a National DREAM, towards which we should seek the support of all Ugandans to come together and dream together?
It will make sense when we sit every month in our villages to talk about “this ideal Uganda” and how we can get there so that each and every Ugandan has a responsibility to make a contribution towards the ideal Uganda for better future generations.
My friend, and all Ugandans, lets claim our responsibility to develop our nation, lets save the good idea from those who are busy scheming to abort it before its maturity because as of now, it is in the hands of individuals who are looking at what they can easily run away with and this kind of schemes may not help this nation.
As usual, this is my humble note, until next time.
Greetings from Kigarama!
Mr. Kyokwijuka Alexander is a citizen from Kigarama and Executive Director at Youth Aid Africa. kyokwijuka.ug@gmail.com