ARE YOU KEEPING BUSY JUST TO STAY NUMB?

The first time I noticed how busy I kept was when my dear cousin Catherine noticed it. I was angry that night and because I couldn't reconcile it with my need to control...I went into a busy frenzy.

That night I re-organised my bedroom, cleaned up and folded all the clothes until I was exhausted and by that time, it was 5:00 am in the morning. But that was an exception in time. Eventually I noticed that in keeping busy, I was able to avoid the hard thoughts and maybe pending depression. The busy was a distraction from anything that needed to be addressed. As I look back it was a way of staying numb. Numb to the pain, heartache and to any emotional outburst that could have needed me to invest my very being.

In answering the question of why I was busy, I realized that I was trying to keep busy to avoid an emotional melt down. Lately, I sit in the quiet of my thoughts and let them take me on a wild chase for answers and a fill of the blanks. I indulge enough to come back and live and go on with life. I feel more melancholic than depressed these days. The sadness as an emotion no longer scares me with its ability to turn into depression. Maybe I am learning to embrace the things that I can't change. I have been found wanting on many things and learning to embrace the unthinkable has helped me find peace in the things that necessitated my busy.

No, I am no longer keeping busy  to stay numb. Whenever I feel numbness flowing in, I visited the one place where my emotions run raw and I deal with what is in the way.

IN DEFENSE OF VERNACULAR

Recently Ugandans on Twitter were divided on a tweet from Serbian-Ugandan PR guru Nada Andersen that said, “Luganda at the expense of English has set us back a century”

It opened a discussion on how Ugandan are we and how comfortable are we in embracing our culture and in speaking our languages.

Language is a uniting factor in many countries and while I wouldn’t want to ask Nada what the official language of Serbia is, we all know the answer to it.

 What this matter-of-fact opinion misses is the influence language has had on development and on many economies in the 20th century, especially for the Asian Tigers.

In the 1990s, the Asia miracle to development notes the influence of language in boosting the development strategy for the Asian Tigers. Chinese, Singaporeans and Koreans don’t speak English, they write and speak in their native languages. And this unity made it easy for them to forge a way forward for a development that embraced their culture wholly.

In learning from these Asian Tigers, one needs to note that Uganda in the 90s was way ahead of South Korean, the year is 2019, South Korean is many years ahead of Uganda.

Nada presents English as the panacea to our development, I beg to note that Scandinavian countries that are rated to have the highest indexes in human capital, health care, gender equality and are the epitome of happiness scales are either dutch speaking or Swedish speaking countries. Need I say, English is not the preferred language for these developed countries.

It has been posed that Uganda being multilingual is challenging as opposed to single lingual nations. Yet we have countries on the African continent that have developed in a multilingual dynamic.

Kenya is multilingual, and has made kiswahili thrive over English. One cannot overlook the strides they are making along the development scale. They have the Gikuyu, Luo, Luhya speaking their native languages alongside Kiswahili as the official language

South Africa is a blend of zulu, xhosa,Sotho,Venda,Swati,Tsonga and has over thirty five languages but I hear them make language part of speaking English. They speak their language in parliament and it is mandated on the speaker of the house to offer translation devices for those that don’t know the dialects. South Africa’s development is thriving in a blend of the native languages and English. And not a negation of one for the other.

Luganda and any other local language has not set us back as a country, I dare say, if we had developed in our native language we would be farther than we are.

To glorify English is some sort of colonial mindset. What has speaking Luganda got to do with our development in negation to our urgent reality of Autocratic leadership, corruption and core apathy. You risk sounding unschooled in the realities around you for a person who lives in Uganda.

We as a Nation are grappling with far worse issues than lingual. Albeit, a push for our local languages as official modes of communication would propel us farther than English would. Because I am certain, no country ever develops in a foreign language.

Tricia Gloria Nabaye

Research Fellow at Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies.

CIVIC EDUCATION IS NEEDED TO PREPARE UGANDANS FOR THE 2021 GENERAL ELECTION

CIVIC EDUCATION IS NEEDED TO PREPARE UGANDANS FOR THE 2021 GENERAL ELECTIONS.

Uganda has held four national general elections, but from the 2001 general elections, the elections have been characterised by cases of extreme violence, obscene use of money and the results have been contested in the courts of law. The recent highlight being the Amama Mbabazi Vs Museveni and Ors Presidential Petition No 1 of 2016 which ended with electoral reform recommendations that government needed to adopt in an effort to find solutions to the overarching issues in the electoral life of Uganda.

Ahead of the 2021 general elections key highlights need to be made on the heightened insecurity and an increased level of suspicion among Ugandans today. There is an increase in curtailing dissenting voices. The down spiral of the safety of Ugandans has heightened the levels of apathy and uncertainty in the democratic processes of Uganda and their role in fostering change for Ugandans.

It begs the question, what is the hope for democratic practises after the 2021 general elections? The 2016 general elections had 37% Ugandans who were first time voters, hopeful in participating in a free and fair election, a large number of Ugandans were left disappointed and skeptic of the ability of the vote to deliver change in governance. The 2016 general elections and by-elections were characterised by heavy military deployment, arbitrary arrests of opposition members and grave violence and death that has planted seeds of fear in the electorate.

The by-elections highlighted grave incidences of violence and deaths as witnessed in the Bugiri, Jinja and Arua by-elections. In view of the continued declined in the safety caps for Ugandans to fall back on within the constitution, with the removal of the term limits in 2005 and the age limit in 2018 it is no wonder that the hope of change through the ballot is illusionary in nature and in thought, I dare say.

 The Local Council elections brought a fall back in the forward movement of the electoral system of Uganda with the lining-up methodology of voting, a trend that had been removed in favour of the secret ballot which guarantees one’s safety in choosing their leaders.

Against such a back drop, democracy is on the litmus paper and it is the mandate of every Ugandan to protect the constitution, rule of law and democracy ahead of the 2021 general elections and going forward. We need to strike a balance in offering constructive criticism to the government and state actors without the fear of being witch-hunted, imprisoned or tortured. 

It is the mandate of the people to hold their leaders accountable and come to a place of common understanding on how their leadership is fostering change and development within society. Through voting, Ugandans can have a tool that can help them hold their leaders accountable and responsible in pushing for sustainable development within the communities. Therefore, if room for dialogue and criticisms continues to be curtailed, the anger that is building up and the continued lack of faith in the electoral systems and governance structures is going to suffer the democratic practises whose alternatives are not without a call for violence.

The role of civil society organisations and political leaders then, is to actively engage in civic education and prepare the masses ahead of the 2021 general elections and beyond, to rally the citizens to show up and vote but also to prepare for life after the 2021 general elections.

Civic engagement should also be rallied around the electoral reforms in order to have Ugandans voice their concerns on what the reforms should reflect. These should be the safety caps in offering people measures and remedies for fair electoral systems and processes 

Ugandans need to use the availed safe spaces to lobby for reforms that reflect the voice of the people. The Citizen’s Electoral Reform Agenda of 2011 and the Citizen’s Compact are such documents that were crafted after consultations from the citizenry and they are a reflection of the consensus of the people on what remedies would be pertinent for the electoral systems of Uganda.

Tricia Gloria Nabaye

Research Fellow: Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies