By Ian Ortega
Dear Charles Parkes, I read with dismay, your article in the Huffington Post titled; “A Lost Generation: Uganda’s Disillusioned Youth.” It makes a good read for a fiction book, and it does also make a good read to serve the interests of the oppressor. South African activist, Steven Biko said; “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” By presenting the Ugandan youths as helpless, weak and immobile, you successfully served the interests of the oppressor, and yet at the same time, continued to cast the Western World as superior, at whose hands of intervention, only Ugandan youths can be saved from the abyss they find themselves in.
Whereas you position yourself as sympathetic in your writing, you unknowingly despise Ugandans. We are not as helpless as you have erroneously stated. True, there could be some elements who are disillusioned but those are half of the story, not the whole story. If you had cared enough to avoid your confirmation bias, you would have learned of thousands of daily stories of Ugandan youths fighting for causes they believe in.
You would have learned of Barefoot Lawyers, a social enterprise venture that was started by a Ugandan youth to deliver free legal information, support and guidance. You would have read about the Jobless brotherhood activist, Norman Tumuhimbise, who’s constantly given the authorities headache in his fight against the status-quo. Are you also trying to insinuate that the millions of Ugandan youths in different opposition parties and organizations are all helpless and need your help to be saved from the jaws and claws of President Museveni?
If there is one favour you could offer to the “suffering” Ugandan youths, it is to let them tell their own story. Your story about the Ugandan youths is nothing but a product of the social contempt, the Western world has for the African populace. Yes, there are weaknesses in our governance, but we are not resigned to that fate; your narrative aims at driving us towards acute defeatism. If there’s a story about Ugandan youths to be told, it shall be told by us. Give us a chance to write our own history, to define our own struggles and to be the architects of the causes we believe in.
If you had bothered to see Ugandan youths in clearer glasses, you would have come across “The Zeitgeist”, an online media platform that was founded by the Ugandan youths to nurture the spirit of an engaging and accountable citizenry.
You disrespect, demobilize, and demoralize the Ugandan youths when you tell them that Museveni is an all-powerful dictator against whom they have no chance. Had Museveni had the same spirit of defeatism against the Obote II or the Idi Amin governments, would he have waged a war against them? Wouldn’t we still have been under the chains of those governments? But he didn’t, and no one told him that he was weak or disillusioned; it was the worst a good friend could tell him in that moment.
Yes, the work of the oppressor is to protect his privileges and that should be expected of Museveni. But that doesn’t imply that Ugandan youths are resigned to their fate. Daily, they are standing up to fight. Whether through politics or through entrepreneurship, the youths in Uganda are indirectly involved in the struggle for the change they want.
Please Charles, do the Ugandan youths a favour and allow us to author our stories. Don’t assume superiority by choosing to write our story, if there’s any story about Ugandan youths to be written, it shall be written by those youths that make up almost 80 percent of the population.
Finally, you should separate Museveni from “Musevenism”. Just because some Ugandan youths are not actively fighting Museveni doesn’t mean that they are not fighting “Musevenism”. Musevenism can be described as corruption and nepotism. Many Ugandan youths are rejecting those practices on a daily basis. To base your description of the characters of Ugandan youths on whether or not they are participating in elections, the rituals of democracy is to suppose that there’s nothing upon which to judge these youths beyond their participation in elections. The fight for change comes disguised in many robes, in the sixties in America, it was disguised in the counter-culture revolution, in Burkina Faso, it was disguised in the protests led by the youths. There is no one-size-fits-all story, as you want to suppose, upon which you can use to tell a disillusioned youths from one that’s not.
Your story about the Ugandan youths is an insult to the many youths in Uganda waking up every day and struggling to make things better on a macro-scale. Your story also supposes that every Ugandan youth would love to see Museveni leave power, that’s another fallacy. Whereas there are many who are against his leadership, there are some who are in support, and another number who see no better alternative from the choices that have presented themselves. Yes, to some youths, Museveni is not as bad as he’s been cast. He’s ensured the longest stability ever in the history of independent Uganda. In his regime, education services have reached larger numbers of the citizenry, the road and energy infrastructure has registered gains. Perhaps then, if he’s still in power, then he’s doing something right. Yet, your contempt and your assumption of superiority over these Ugandan youths blind you to all these possibilities.
In the long view of things, your story like many others authored by Western Journalists aims at setting ground for the need of interventionism. Do us a favour, don’t intervene in the affairs of the Ugandan youths, we shall write our own story, we shall define our own paths. The best you can do, is to mind the business of the suffering black youths in America, they need your help more than we need it.
To paraphrase the words of President Paul Kagame; The Ugandan youths may not have the power of wealth, of military strength or technology but they have the power of the spirit. They have the power that comes from anger of being held in contempt. They have the power that comes from anger of being insulted by countless articles such as yours that present them as disillusioned. They have the power that comes from being pushed against the wall. We shall always build on that spirit and come back with full strength, we have the power that derives from the anger of the attempt of your narrative to present us as weaklings, but we refuse to accept that story. You may think that story puts us down, but it’ll never take us out. We as Ugandan youths must and we will prevail.