“Pointed in the wrong direction,
trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps because
their footprints had been swept away."
- Arundhati Roy (The
God of Small Things)
Every day, I walk into different human class spaces
in this country. Upper, middle, lower classes and, the forgotten class that we
only see when they stretch their hands seeking alms or when they pee on our
comfortable lives. The beauty is that as an anachronistic, I don’t blend, but I
learn. The lamentations are symmetrical. “Gosh! RB times were not bad at all;
Times are so rough now; We were cheated; PF lied; Where is the more money in our
pockets; How come we now seem to be a province in China”.
Yet when, I browse print and online media, glaring
discrepancies hit me in the face. The public media and the past newspaper,
seldom echo the lamentations that shriek in my ears lately. From these media
perspective all is well. “The economy has improved (so they should be more
money in our pocket); RB was a rogue, “alleged corrupt leader”; The Chinese are
sacrosanct; The Public Order Act has been relegated to the ashes of our colonial
history; The current Constitution is perfect; MMD was evil”.
This is, surely, a media that lives on Mars as
it seems they do not know that media freedoms are now under threat. Radio
stations, journalists are now and then asked to “pay an unsolicited visit” to some police station to answer some
frivolous questions on news likely to alarm the nation or some alleged theft of
a library book.
This is a media that is so closeted that it is
not aware that some opposition party leaders were “frog marched” from the very town were a ruling party official had
the “freedom of the town”; that some
gun-totting police officers raided an in-door meeting by some opposition party
leader; and indeed that some opposition party leader had to find a hole in the
roof to escape from some panga-wielding party cadres of some known party. It is
fortunate that the fellow is not dumbly fat, else he would not have fitted in
that hole in the roof.
With the most classic being that this media did
not see the military-type truck and hordes of police officers blocking a road
so that some opposition party leader does not pay respect to the King in some province
to the west of the country.
The rogue media (as it is governmentally
alleged), on the other hand, echo the lamentations that shriek in my ears.
The public media and the past newspaper is
however, not all that bad. At least, it was able to tell us of human rights
abuses in our country when some so-called eminent persons from some Western
embassies issued statements on the very observations that the rogue media have
consistently being communicating.
Rather absurd, that it is only when
hypocritical voices[1]
from the West say what is known that the public and past newspaper deem it
worth our news reading. And I thought the editors and journalists in these
media live in the same country as we do. Perhaps not. Could be their newsrooms
have now shifted to Washington DC. Sic.
About it all, the question that in the end
vexes me is: did the Patriotic Front lie
during their campaigns leading to September 20, 2011. With much thought and
reasoning, I have come to the conclusion that, perhaps, the PF did not lie after
all.
To understand whether the PF lied, we must
first unravel what the PF is as a party. From our knowledge, we know that the
PF is a wamuyayaya party, it has no defined
membership (well unless now it has) only followers, and has never had internal democracy.
Democratic values and practices are alien. This is a party that has had no impersonal
or neutral rules and procedures to avoid the arbitrary control of party
functioning and internal elections (if they occur) by individual leaders or
groups.
Critical of all, we knew and know that the PF is
founded on two paradigms of political domination and privilege-seeking. These
are patrimonialism and clientelism.
Patrimonialism is inbuilt in power relations
within one’s heritage, and is strengthened by an individual’s rhetorical or financial
prowess. Patrimonialism permits negation of rules, procedures and processes by the almighty leaders as the followers
or membership often tends to hero-worship them. Well, we knew it was more
rhetorical prowess. Could be we love folklore so much, that we seldom ask how
an impossibility can be possible.
Clientelism is when we close our ears and offer
our political loyalty to those we hero-worship for promises of material rewards
(more money in the pocket) and security
(donchi kubeba).
The PF is irretrievably soaked in patrimonialism
and clientelism. This we knew, and perhaps today we should accept to learn. We
can retrieve our footprints in the sands of democracy.
And this is because as Arundhati Roy writes in
“Not Again”, “Those of us who have only
ever known life in a democracy, however flawed, would find it hard to imagine
what living in a dictatorship and enduring the absolute loss of freedom really
means”.
To which end, the PF could only have lied if we
never devoured life in a democracy.
But we did, and gluttonously.
Hence, I argue here that the PF could only have
lied if we fail to muster our numbers and call them to account for their
political rhetoric, and the now evidenced numerous human rights abuses. And it
is not about making them account by not voting for them during elections. That
is inane, in part. It is now. Like Wilson Pondamali’s observes, “This is not the time to weep for mistakes
made three years ago, rather it is time to roll sleeves and get tough”.
Our PF members of parliament should be humbly and respectably questioned
whenever they meet us in our constituencies or in whatever forum, and even when
they are having dinner somewhere in public. Consistent and persistent questioning
for accountability by us the citizenry, in addition to groups like the Grand
Coalition, rogue media, and the Church, can to some extent lead to redress of
our legitimate lamentations.
We know, they will give us the dog-eared excuse
of “we are busy with infrastructure
development”. But say unto them that “but,
but.., the previous government was also doing that, anyway; or that why then
did you set up this and that commission”.
Let us humble them, for I believe there is some good in every human. They
surely should have a conscience. Sic.
Seeking accountability from our leaders is both
legitimate and legal. It is our right. That is what democracy demands of us. We
did not ink our thumbs at the ballot, drop it in the box and go home thinking
democracy, and more so the demand for
accountability is for those we voted for. Or did we?
Oh! And don’t forget to hold our church leaders
accountable too. They too, are political power wielders. In any case, God is a
just God.
Lastly, although, we know we were pointed in the wrong direction; we know
we are trapped outside own history (well mostly because of our deliberate
historic amnesia); we are able to retrace
our steps because our footprints have not been swept away. Ours are not footprints in the desert sands of
dictatorship. Ours are footprints in the white clear sands of democracy. We can
overcome, if we do not continue sitting under trees lamenting while sipping katata.
Ora
pro nobis.
[1] Take the case of the US government’s stance on gay laws in Uganda, and
yet such laws exist in oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE. Has
the US imposed sanctions on these countries?
