THE GENEALOGY OF CONFLICT

Chapter two.

THE INTOXINATION OF POWER

 ( the psycho-analysis)

Okay let’s try this the therapeutic way and see if it works. Am urrr………okay, lets not start with my position in my father’s family; I really don’t have proper facts to back that one up. What about who I think myself to be? Now let’s give this therapy a good starting point.

            I was born in Kenya; I spent most of my childhood with both my loving parents. My father, to be honest, I didn’t have the slightest idea of how he earned his living. We were a middle class though in exile. We lived in a flat, at the top last floor in the midst of Nairobi a lovely city. I remember how beautiful Hilton hotel looked like at night with most of its floors lite up. The white and red streams of lights from automobiles traversing along the neat streets of Nairobi. The musical like sounds from hooting cars mixed with millions of conversations and laughter. Heavy roaring sounds from different car engines, sometimes sirens from some police cars or Ambulance rushing through the traffic with urgency.

I still remember the sweet spiced smell rising from different city restaurants filling the air mixed with a pollution of engine exhaust gases. I can see myself sited at the balcony wearing a sweater mother had knitted for me, staring at the strange but wonderful and amusing city life in those days!!!! My Dad (I like to call him Dad here, its like kind of hypnotic…….. Daaaad…) would buy us  lots of toys and sweets. Yeah, good question about the “us” I’ve just used. Of course I had siblings who I don’t think have any relevance to you! Remember this is my show. Otherwise, we were a happy family. Then things started to change. I was so young to know the cause but, change was surely evident. Things like loud landlords demanding their rent then followed by some sort of short eviction notices. Days then followed without Dad at home, you know, all those rubbish words our neighbors had to say. The kind of house arrest our mother would declare to us to stay close to her without this time going outside to the balcony and enjoy our routine. No, no. things were even uglier!!
We were evicted! Here, I must warn you, my mother is so tough that we highly suspect her to be a GI Jane. You know those types who look straight in the eyes of danger and just find reason to laugh!! All the weight time seemed to be casting on her shoulder; she just carried it throughout the storm with a smile on her face and her hands not ceasing to make bread to her family. She’s a hero of our times.
And still you don’t see cause of the “hang” that has driven us this far? Okay, I’ve felt that a trillion times too. Let’s dig deeper.

THE DEVIL’S ENGINEERS

Today to what I’ve come to know, and only what I know not what I think, some politicians had engaged my father into their evil, dirty and rotten rackets, and whenever my mind reaches this point of creating imaginary pictures of those I feel were responsible for our family’s plight, these are the images I see;

A basement floor of some secret building in the heart of Nairobi, it is probably a parking lot turned into an intelligence analysis pool or for short, interrogation room. It’s dimly lite with scattered lights dim lights meant to amplify shadows that mask its morally corrupt occupants who availed themselves this building for their dirty operations. The loneliness of this place and the echoes of their deep voices, seem to multiply their presence but a haunting effect of tens of thousands of innocent citizens that were liquidated in its  confines is evident. I can see grotesque figures entering from a far tunnel way that stands cohesive between the sane world and this hell. They are clad in Kaunda suits with lazily burning cigarettes idly placed at the corners of their mouths. One of these alien beings living in human bodies is holding a large volume of insinuating documents. I can see my father strapped naked on a metallic rusty chair, hands backward. They begin their innuendos by soaking mercilessly my father’s naked body into iced water!!! My father’s body goes into a violent shiver from cold and fear of being the only human being left on this planet earth after aliens invaded his home governments and successively conquered them. They disgustingly spit into his lovely and innocent face, baton him, kick, slap, punch him around for fun, pitch his body, pull hair off his freezing body!!! All is done without a single question asked but just hateful torture. Do you really want to go through all this inhuman rubbish? I thought so.

Okay, bottom line is they pull their rotten stunts on him, but don’t seem to have proper authorization to end his dear life as they usually do to their victims. One of them, a slim angry bastard, picks up a phone and dials. He waits for the call to go through then murmurs rapidly gibberish into the mouth piece. He places it down after a rapid nod, then, they all walk away and disappear into the tunnel entrance.

Ferment at home.

(1980 Election)

The dictator Idi Amin has been kicked out of power, the transitional government is controlled from Dar el salaam. Godfrey Binaisa is heading this government as Tanzanian government looks for a more legal solution into fixing Uganda after its liberation form the dictator. A conclusion is quickly made, a free and fair election. But, the shadow of Dr. Apollo Milton Obote is looming over the whole process. It’s believed that he had been working restlessly in Tanzania and Zambia for a come back on the Ugandan political scene. Kenneth Kaunda, Julius Nyerere had been school mates with Dr. Milton Obote. These men came from the league of African scholars who had initiated the pursuit of liberating African states into independence in most British colonies. Literally they were the founding fathers of modern politics in east and central African regions. So, knowing the infancy of the state politics in Uganda after independence and the need to build a Nation, but mostly reflecting democracy in every step made in laying out a new Uganda after the disastrous phenomenon Amin; they devised means to go winner through elections. The means weren’t all that legal, but were necessary given the state of Uganda by the time. Later on it turned out that more greedy people were watching closely the presidential seat and were not ready to be convinced by any one or anything!

Like I said earlier, dirty politics was much played. During the independence, Sir Edward Muteesa the second was elected as first president of Uganda and Apollo Milton Obote the prime minister. The British had really tried as much as possible to balance the political equation. They were the charisma at the time. They molded Uganda’s politics using the same moulds that were successfully used in forming up the Great Britain where the queen was the symbolic background ruler invisible in state politics and the prime minister was the instrument that sealed the presence and order of the government.
All was in good faith except for one reason, Uganda wasn’t England.

Here I know how your heart is beating fast and your sweat soaking this page;
 but I will give you an example. Remember, this is just a therapy and people or rather patients are not supposed to collapse while in operational theatre. Take for example this article, if you took it to Oxford University to a grammar professor and tried to edit it with principles of the written English language, you’ll have to declare the article an abomination; but, here in Africa its great and no one seems to notice anything wrong with the grammar used. Reason being, this is the African version of English and feels more understandable and original to us Africans, and do I have to preach to you the whole gospel of the science behind evolution of civilizations. I thought so.
 So, just apply the same logic to the political puzzle the British were trying to fix and see if it works.

There was this issue of tribalism. The northern regions of Uganda had a collection of different groups who had been fighting way back in time among themselves. They had almost failed to set up some sort of governing bodies or kingdoms to serve and abide beneath. While, the southern and central regions were far more organized with leaderships or kingdoms. When the trumpet of freedom was finally sounded, tribes from the northern regions rushed and embraced the wise decision of uniting under one identity. In the south or the central region where leadership under kingdoms prevailed, specifically the Buganda Kingdom (for those of you who want facts), this move engineered by the Whiteman seemed to only carrying good intentions of widening boundaries of their kingdom. The Buganda kingdom earlier on had overwhelmed many small kingdoms around it thus widening its territories. Bunyoro Kitara kingdom, Busoga, Toro, Ankole were all under Buganda. Now even the rebellious barbarians of the northern regions were coming to submission!! Thought Buganda.
 The fame of this kingdom had gone as afar as England and the Arabian worlds. Many early explores or spies of the queen of England such as captain Speke and Grant, Vasco dagama had spread far the civilization they had found in Buganda. Trade and industry was booming. Arab traders had come in earlier than the British, at some moment they had converted the kabaka (king) into their Eastern beliefs. When the Brits came overwhelming the manipulative Arabs who were exchanging petty gifts for human slaves, the king again was converted to Christianity and wrote (through a translator) to the queen in England requesting for scholars to teach his subjects and hospitals where the sick would be treated in his kingdom. This letter requesting for a service from the British (is still kept in the Uganda museum) is solid evidence that acquits them of any wild accusation we might arise! They never came guns blazing and capturing kings and their subjects as the Americans did, no, they only availed themselves of the opportunity.
 They had guns and brains, so, they chose to use brains. I know now you’re calling me all sorts of names here, only don’t hurt yourself. This is only a piece of literature you can as well stop reading and spend the rest of your life alone and miserable. Its through educated insults like these, that our minds are liberated from the cords of ignorance. And I didn’t make that one up, maybe I did, who’s doing the writing anyway? The point is, these were two ego-centric groups who had ambitions. Failure to share their wealth invited in a crafty custodian, they dialogue and conclude with a need for common ground and mostly identity of brotherhoodliness. In other words, independence. Which the Brits didn’t have reason to deny.

In Africa, we have tendency of disvaluing our heritage and secondly, we are dangerously greedy!! We would kill; starve ourselves if we got pissed off in any kind of deal. Be it domestic to national affairs or political freedoms. The African continent was built on a foundation of Gold, Diamonds, Uranium and rivers of oil. Civilization had its roots here from ancient times while most of Europe lived in a barbarian age. In the far west, the USA wasn’t even there!!!!Their land was inhabited by Red Indians who enjoyed life as savages! But here in Africa, we had the Egyptian empire in the northern Africa while in the south of the continent was organized kingdoms too, like the Zulu.

So this brings us to the golden question, why  are we stuck in this mud of conflict?????