Uncategorized – Bwesigye Bwa-Mwesigire

They were making change. They were taking lessons from our past. They were aiming at shaping our future. They wanted to do this by avoiding things that happened in our pre-1986 past. They were the Constituent Assembly (CA). They were largely elected by the whole country, except a few. They were, for the most part, a crop that fought the 1981-1985 NRA/UNLA war that ousted the Lutwa government which had in turn overthrown the Obote II regime.

In putting the term-limits provision in the Constitution, the post-independence history of the country was in mind. Mind you, these people knew about the absence of a peaceful succession in our past, except probably the 1980 Muwanga to Obote succession. Succession in our post-independence history has been a matter of blood; they knew this very well. Well, they set out to prevent future possibilities of a bloody succession. Succession is smooth, with term-limits.

It was in 1995 when they did that. It was thirty three years after our independence. It excited the country that we had learnt our lessons well. It was a moment of joy, celebration and hope. It, however did not last for longer than a decade. It ended on the 30th of September, 2005. It was almost forty-three years of being independent when the hope died.

They changed the constitution. They removed the term-limits. They unlearnt. They talked of Britain, India and other countries that do not have term-limits. They talked about everything else than our own post-independence historical reality. They ignored whatever it was that in the first place that had led to the insertion of the term limits. They behaved as if they were operating on a clean slate. They forgot the bloody platter that had sobered the CA minds into term-limiting. They forgot too fast, or pretended to forget too fast. They unlearnt. They proved what academic Busingye Kabumba recently described as the illusion of the Constitution, as the illusion of power ever belonging to the people. They showed the world that Uganda’s future lies in the hands of one man, he who has ruled the country from 1986 to date.

But even then, they did not just unlearn without warning. Warning came from groups as Muwanga Kivumbi’s, the Parliamentary Advocacy Forum (PAFO) and others that described the delimiting project as a smokescreen for life presidency. Life presidency was not a new concept in our history. Our post-independence history’s notorious figure Idi Amin was open about it. It was even part of his many titles. Titles we would not wish any other Ugandan president to have.

It all did not matter. It was a matter of five million shillings that M.P Kahinda Otafiire said he drunk with his constituents. It was as easy as that. It was a drunken moment, let us say, that afternoon when the term limits were erased. It just happened. It became a foot note in our living history. It is not even considered as something that has shaped our post-independence era. It is just talked about, but never linked to the history, the historical reality from which it came. It is one of those political games. It has been resurrected with gusto in the year we are celebrating fifty years of independence. It is hoped that we are taking the relearning seriously. It is evident that there is blood written all over the ongoing succession politics. It is this that makes one plead with the country to relearn.

The games. Toddler-wedding games. Four or six years – thereabouts. We were that young. In those games, incest was no big deal. It was in fact no deal at all. Sister married brother. Sometimes boys dressed as brides/bridesmaids or girls as grooms/groomsmen in order to perfect the games. They were games. We ate, laughed, danced, cut cake, and did everything else they do on weddings. We would have a priest. A black banana fiber (ekyireere kyirikwiragura) would work for the priest’s cloak (engoro). Fun, fun and fun is what our weddings were.

Fast forward, we have grown. We are not exactly adults, but we are grown. We can’t vote yet, we still stay under our parents’ roofs, but we are not young. The girls do not have flat chests anymore; the boys’ voices have deepened. We are grown-ups. The ‘child’ tag is not appropriate anymore, we tell ourselves.

In this growing, we have gathered a granary of knowledge about adulthood. About what separates children from adults. We have seen some of our mates slip into adulthood. We know how they did it. It did not just happen. It was planned. Meticulously so. Daphne grew into an adult the day she was given away in a traditional ceremony; to a man older than her by so many seasons, some of his first children are the same age as herself. Maurice, our seventeen or eighteen year old neighbor became a man, an adult, when he brought Meresi, a primary six pupil then, into his hut.

We all want to grow. To be adults. But you see, some of us are taking long and longer to grow because of school. We are told that to grow, to marry, to wed, we must first finish school. By finishing school, they mean, we must finish university. Then we can grow. But it is not enough to finish school and university. Those who have indeed finished school and demanded to grow have been told to first make money; to secure a source of livelihood; before they can grow. Before they can marry; before they can wed; before they become adults.

That is how Yakobo and Sulayina outsmarted all of us. Born into well-off families, only mad people can dispute the fact that the couple’s well-being is secure for the next fifty or more years. They do not need education, we hear. They do not need to worry about a source of living, we so hear as well. And so, with those two things out of the way, we hear that they are planning to marry, to wed, to grow.

We laugh it off. See, while we played our games, Yakobo and Sulayina did not play such games. They were busy being brought up responsibly. So, when we hear that these teenagers are going to marry, to wed, we laugh off their late arrival to the scene of these games. To us, it is a game.

While Sulayina walks around heavy with Yakobo’s child in her tummy, we think she is perfecting the game, amending it, making it better. When some child rights officials from an NGO I forget make noise about teenage pregnancies, child marriages etc, we ignore the noise because to us, those things apply only when it is an old man marrying off, impregnating a young girl, the typical Daphne case. The Maurice-Meresi case is a success story, or should be. It is success achieved early, it is not a case for condemning, we tell ourselves.

We treat the Yakobo-Sulayina case as a joke, as a game. We prepare to be spectators on their wedding-game. But we do not see the day of the game. The day comes. But Sulayina does not see it. She dies the day before it comes. She dies of complications with the pregnancy. It does not matter that Yakobo is not as old as her father; it does not matter that the two regard education and wealth as irrelevant to their choices. Sulayina dies. Teenage pregnancies, teenage marriages involving only teenagers, with no force from elders turn the joke onto us. And guess what, the United States of America unites the world as it leads in statistics on teenage pregnancies. Clearly, the joke is on us. It is not just education or poverty. It is also what we think and say about marriage. How we cap out worldview to marriage as the alpha and omega of success, so many teenagers can’t wait to succeed. The expectations suggest there is a reward for being the youngest person to wed ever.

Category: Uncategorized

Learning, unlearning and relearning from fifty years of independence

The joke is on us