Lost Cause

My great grandfather lost a limb and half his sanity in the war that liberated this country from Colonialism. He was one of those true black men to the core, dedicated and permanently enslaved by the quest for liberation of this Blackman’s country for the black man. Years after his dreams came to pass, he lived in Gulu in a modest country villa in Laroo-in the current day location of Gulu University. He spent many of his hours before he succumbed to Parkinson’s seated in his wheel chair under the only mango tree in the vast compound reading series after series of books from Robert Ludlum and Dan Brown. The last book he read before he passed on was Dan Brown’s The lost symbol. He was a man who had great potential in his youth and spent most of his prime exploiting this great potential in and out of jail. He said to my Father’s dad, “ we have lived like human being and sometimes like dogs so that you the young ones may take control of the affairs of this great state and live happily in the years preceding the turn of the millennium” The same quote that kept life in the veins of the freedom fighters during their day has over the years been passed on through our family for three generations now.
If my Great Grandfather came back to Uganda today, he would be appalled at how far we have receded from the master dream. Many of us today live illegally in this country. If you have an opinion and you are not afraid to express it openly, life for you is contraband. Democracy is a bootleg product that must be consumed in secrecy for you. Rights are concessions that the head of state and his aides will give to whoever they please at their own discretion. Back in the days of my father, you never needed to get permission to meet with three of your colleagues in the village square to discuss issues that affected the community. Today you need to beg the Police for permission to gather with concerned citizens to discuss issues affecting our errant community. The next time I visit his grave, I will give him the state of the nation update and I might hear him lament in his grave. He might say something in line with… “ I am a slave. A slave to the state, a corrupt, broken down state with no regard to the lives and welfare of its people. I am no more than a tool in a workshop for this regime. A tool they choose to use and discard whichever way they choose. I am nothing but just a door mat to them. They step and drag their feet all over me. They have bled my land clean of its wealth. We have been left poor. My people starve and others rot behind bars. All our tears, our sweat and blood laid to waste. They have made our worst nightmare come true. They have raped our land and they now organize elections to justify their crimes. May our blood soaked earth bubble with the rage of all our pains and consume all of them”
We have been overrun and we shall not sit back and do nothing. Go get you’re your national IDs all you Ugandans and let’s make a difference come February 2016. Let’s all vote and raise our voices to the skies. Let’s make it known that enough is enough and we shall be the change that we have so long needed. We shall form our own government, a government with the interests of its people at heart. Now is the time, now we rise. We have come too late to lose this time. We triumph now and we do this together!