Mr President, as you celebrated 26 years in power this week, I spent the day thinking about my country and what should make me a proud Ugandan, but went to bed with a disturbed mind.
Every time I hear the aching beauty with which the military band sings the National Anthem, tears emerge in the corners of my eyes. I look at the little National Flag on my desk and I’m saddened at how its significance has been reduced to a mockery by the actions of the regime. What happened to the good intentions that led you to the bush?
Mr President, the sanity you ushered in, in 1986 has transmogrified into insanity. You have betrayed “all those combatants who shed their blood in the struggle to make Uganda a better country” in whose memory Maj. Gen. Pecos Kutesa’s book, Uganda’s Revolution 1979-1986: How I Saw It, is dedicated.
The walk-to-work protests, the strikes from teachers, doctors, traders, the drugless hospitals and health centres, the gaping ditches in the centre of our roads, the cancerous poverty, the corruption, the power blackouts, the bullets your soldiers aim at peaceful protesters, the lives that have been lost, (the list is endless) are conspicuous reflections of how miserably your regime has failed.
You have also betrayed the civilians without whose support the struggle would not have been a success in a record five years (1981-1986). These are the rugged men and women that today spend their days in the blistering sun breaking the dry earth with small hoes, drenched in sweat, but still struggle to afford a bar of soap. I’m a country boy and I know what I’m talking about.
All they are told about is the peace you brought. But you know what, that peace song echoes in their ears like a bogus dirge. They too want their children to attain quality education and get jobs on meritocracy; they too want to get decent housing and to drink sugared tea. It’s very painful, Mr President, to watch them smirched by the grime of need; sleeping hungry while your incriminated top officials are scot-free; busy rearing potbellies.
Beware, Mr President. The despair of these masses, manifesting in form of street protests, could explode and send you down the precipice, unless you begin seriously loving the most unloved woman whose name is Uganda. She has suffered enough, she needs love.
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| You have betrayed us, Mr. President |
Mr President, the sanity you ushered in, in 1986 has transmogrified into insanity. You have betrayed “all those combatants who shed their blood in the struggle to make Uganda a better country” in whose memory Maj. Gen. Pecos Kutesa’s book, Uganda’s Revolution 1979-1986: How I Saw It, is dedicated.
The walk-to-work protests, the strikes from teachers, doctors, traders, the drugless hospitals and health centres, the gaping ditches in the centre of our roads, the cancerous poverty, the corruption, the power blackouts, the bullets your soldiers aim at peaceful protesters, the lives that have been lost, (the list is endless) are conspicuous reflections of how miserably your regime has failed.
You have also betrayed the civilians without whose support the struggle would not have been a success in a record five years (1981-1986). These are the rugged men and women that today spend their days in the blistering sun breaking the dry earth with small hoes, drenched in sweat, but still struggle to afford a bar of soap. I’m a country boy and I know what I’m talking about.
All they are told about is the peace you brought. But you know what, that peace song echoes in their ears like a bogus dirge. They too want their children to attain quality education and get jobs on meritocracy; they too want to get decent housing and to drink sugared tea. It’s very painful, Mr President, to watch them smirched by the grime of need; sleeping hungry while your incriminated top officials are scot-free; busy rearing potbellies.
Beware, Mr President. The despair of these masses, manifesting in form of street protests, could explode and send you down the precipice, unless you begin seriously loving the most unloved woman whose name is Uganda. She has suffered enough, she needs love.
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