The great paradigm shift

In the movie The Great Debaters, when James Farmer, Sr. (Forest Whitaker) asks his son James Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) what the greatest weakness of man is, the answer is prompt: "Not believing; doubt" – that’s man’s greatest weakness.

In high school, I witnessed first-hand how doubt can be debilitating even to students with first-rate intelligence. All my classmates that used to say with a tinge of resignation in their voices that Makerere University was a reserve of students from schools like Kings College Budo sure did not make it to the "Ivory Tower" on government sponsorship while those who refused to be infused with self-doubt did.

I had forgotten how lack of faith in our ability to deliver in the hour of need still affects us as a people until Zambia left Uganda heartbroken following the October 13 showdown at Namboole Stadium. Our lack of faith was evident even way before the match. Everybody was looking for two goals. And when they did not come, we moaned what a "cursed" nation we are. Sports scribe Fred Kaweesi was the winner: "It seems Uganda needs some sort of ritual cleansing to overcome a jinx that has now become legendary," he wrote.

No, man! What you and I, and indeed what this nation needs is to aim for the sky. There's nowhere we are going without great ambition and the tenacity by which extraordinary stuff happen. It is said that in his heyday, Mike Tyson "hit with bad intentions" – it’s what got him into record books as the youngest heavy-weight boxing champion of the world at the age of 20. Similarly, American boxer Rocky Marciano was at 187 pounds a man of "diminutive" physical stature’ compared to most of his opponents yet he retired from heavy-weight boxing in 1956 with 49 wins and no losses, because he would never allow the thought of defeat to cross his mind.

That is the faith we need. No one is jinxed. Uganda has the most brilliant brains and the most gifted people but rarely do we let our "light shine." When James Farmer, Sr. says we must do all we have to do so we can do what we need to do, he’s talking about the great paradigm shift in our thinking, approach and practicability as the only cure to this averageness from which we have failed to awaken.

To put it simply, extraordinary ambition and extraordinary belief is all we need to touch the sky.