The recent attacks in Kasese that left over 100 people dead sent shock waves across the country. But the shock was minimal awe, irritation, and discomfort.
Very few seemed outraged, repulsed, or disenchanted enough to condemn it. The gory pictures did not conjure up repugnant threshold for a street demonstration, or at least a strong reaction from cultural, religious, and civil society organisations.
Most interesting was the defence and justification mounted by the UPDF commander who demolished the Bakonzo palace and supervised the killings. How does this guy sleep at night? He actually shifted the blame of his use of excessive force onto Kasese politicians, many of whom defeated the regime’s protégés just in February.
What happened in Kasese did not surprise me, having lived long enough to realize how cruel this NRM regime is. What was shocking is that such could also happen in western Uganda.
When northern Uganda fried in the pan, the people in these regions thought war was the problem of northerners. The dominating and justifying propaganda was that northerners were killing themselves.
The NRA/UPDF was in northern Uganda to pacify the place as a mediator. Joseph Kony was the antagonist, a disorganised mystical religious fanatic with obsession for the trigger. Some even stated that Kony was getting assistance from Sudan to kill Acholi, not even UPDF.
As such, the LRA debacle was never an assault on the institution of Uganda. The regime reduced and devalued the northern Uganda conflict as an Acholi killing Acholis, and normalised it as such. That war, fought by a rag-tag army of religious fanatics or bandits, lasted twenty years!
That war claimed millions of lives and led to deportation of nearly two million Acholi people into squalid internment where preventable diseases killed tens of people every day! That silent annihilation of the people soiled the conscience of this nation and justified impunity.
Because of their success in annihilating northern Uganda, this regime can compartmentalise a region, totally annihilate it, and another region would not flinch. This is what Uganda has come to. The death of a citizen is the fault of the deceased and does not concern the rest of us.
The mother of all strangeness is that no treason charge has been preferred in the Kasese situation. Possession of weapons, recruitment, training, and using a militia to attack a government institution should tantamount to treason. Surprisingly, Rwenzururu King Charles Mumbere was charged with murder that purportedly occurred in March 2016.
The truth about Kasese may never emerge, but what we know is that this was only an episode for today, a test case.
Morris Komakech,
Concerned Ugandan.
The Bible is consistent, easy to memorize
There are no other books that I have read to this day that I can readily remember word for word like the Bible. The Bible is the only book that readily stands out in my mind and heart. Its words are like they are glued to my memory.
I am sure millions will share the same view. The Bible is pure in its reasoning and clear in its intent. How men interpret it is a whole different thing.
The Bible is an ever-giving source which cannot be exhausted – you read one verse a thousand times and something inspiring will jump out at you, and you will wonder why you did not see that in the thousand times you had read it.
Ronald Dennis Bukomba,
0704329097.
Letter to DP boss Mao
Dear Democratic Party president general Norbert Mao, the public awaits your word on LC-I and LC-II elections for January 2017. We want to know the capable party candidates and prepare them to avoid the past mistakes of seeking for the best in other parties.
Other parties are laying strategies of how to win these elections. Mr President General, we need your guidance if we want to conquer the baseline for the presidency in 2021. Our party has capacity to take this country forward, not to remain a nursery bed for other political parties as most people see it now.
Information from the top party administration to the bottom is at its poorest, dominated by egoism and selfishness. We are tired of seeing our party being equated to briefcase political parties.
Mr President General, we know that a lot is not right with the current political arrangement but we need your brave leadership if we stand any chance of remaining relevant.
The other political parties are seriously engulfing us, aware that our members are either the party’s rebels or the lost sheep. Through you, Mr President General, we can harmonise these differences and become great again, starting with LC-I elections.
Timothy Kitasse,
0775 852 575.
The enormous cost of wetland destruction
I read an article in The Observer of December 9 titled “UIA touts natural waste treatment” and found it quite intriguing! It rotates around the use of artificial wetlands for wastewater treatment.
I was intrigued because for years, environmentalists have been beseeching the powers that be not to let Nakivubo wetland be degraded by developers. This call fell on deaf ears to the extent that the wetland is now merely a ghost of its former self; having been taken over by industries, residences and other developments at various points along its course.
In the 1990s, one expatriate (Lucy Emerton) and three Ugandans (Lucy Lyango, Phoebe Luwum and Andrew Malinga) undertook a study of Nakivubo wetland and showed that it was highly-valuable, much as it was being sacrificed to what I would call senseless greed.
For example, in their 1998 report, they showed that adjacent dwellers obtained Shs 263m in terms of resource utilization and waste treatment per year. National Water and Sewerage Corporation, on the other hand, saved Shs 1.5 billion per year in wastewater treatment costs.
At the same time, it saved over Shs 2.6 billion per year in water purification expenditures. Now that most of the wetland is gone, residents of Kampala and surrounding areas are charged higher prices for piped water than they would otherwise pay because wastewater treatment costs as well as water purification costs have escalated.
Murchison Bay, where we get our water from, is slowly being turned into a giant sewer, thanks to developers of Nakivubo wetland!
Panta Kasoma,
Kampala.
When Kadaga left Mao with egg on face
I was amused when I saw DP president-general deliver a petition to Speaker Rebecca Kadaga, and passionately appealing to her and the parliamentary appointments committee to halt the vetting and eventual approval of the new Electoral Commission nominees.
Mao reasoned that the country should first have broad bipartisan consultations on electoral reforms.
In this move, Mao wanted to demonstrate to Ugandans that DP uses civilized means as a mode of agitation. Kadaga listened sympathetically; but reading her body language, she really pitied Mao in the sense that she had no power to disown the president’s nominees. Mao could not read this and possibly hoped for public sympathy.
Shortly after, Kadaga met with her committee members and locked out journalists during the vetting process. Unsurprisingly, they unanimously approved all the nominees, leaving Mao with a rotten egg on face.
Perhaps Mao now understands why some opposition bigwigs do not have to sing lullaby to Kadaga, the NRM blue-eyed girl – they go to the streets and suffer physical abuse to seek redress. Mao’s boardroom diplomatic nicety only applies in civilized democracies.
Emma Namagembe,
Kampala.
letters@observer.ug