The Monitor (Kampala)
http://www.monitor.co.ug/
July 8, 2004
Posted to the web July 7, 2004
by Twesigye Morrison Rwakakamba
Kampala I read Ms Anne Mugisha's piece published June 9 titled, "Two Wrongs Have Never Made A Right". Her piece was more of a narration perhaps to those who did not watch the show (Voice of America's Straight Talk Africa) though most unfortunately she allowed her own prejudices to take over her observations. She reduced the entire show and the presentation of Mr Frank Tumwebaze the Special Presidential Assistant for Research and information to a mere fact that he was doing a defensive job for his boss, President Museveni.
I find this a deliberate distortion of Tumwebaze's presentation, which was rather precise and factual in content. In fact, her analysis reduced the whole show to as if the subject of debate was the Ugandan politics. It was not, and Tumwebaze despite the little time the moderator allocated to him, managed to adequately articulate the way forward for Africa.
I agreed with him most where he said that for Africa to be heard it was necessary to form one economic unit like the EU and thus fully achieve the economic integration it has been searching for instead of fragmented units of COMESA, EAC, IGAD, SADAC, ECOMOG, ECOWAS, and others.I thought this was an interesting point. Equally important, he talked about the issue of aid.
He argued that most African countries did not get aid to resist colonialism and match forward for their independence. He said that people who fought dictator Amin did not have aid. He would have probably added that Nelson Mandela and his allies like Uganda did not have aid to fight Apartheid rule.
Uganda and Rwanda did not have aid to stop the 1994 genocide and liberate the country, though I was extremely astonished by Mr Howard French who was the other guest on the show and whom Mugisha praised. He unashamedly stated that it was Uganda and the then Rwanda Patriotic Front that caused the genocide. How could that have been?
What did his country do (USA) to stop this genocide? When Africans are in danger, no companion from the West comes to their aid, but when things are progressing they pick interest so as to take the prize of the day.When President Museveni was openly confessing about the dangers of HIV/Aids for his country, the whole world watched in amazement, but today the same Uganda is a case study as opposed to being a laughing stock. Unfortunately, the Howard did not objectively look at these facts. He bases his writings on disputed and contested reports that did not give a hearing to the accused like the UN report on Uganda and Rwanda's alleged exploitation of DRC minerals, to write his book, which he calls the Tragedies and Hope for Africa.
I wish he knew where the hope for Africa lies! As well as what a tragedy it was for Uganda to suffer terrorism at the hands of the ADF terrorists when they burnt engineering students of Kicwamba Polytechnic College. To him, this is not an issue, but what is primary is to state that Uganda and Rwanda went to Congo to plunder its minerals.
Then what about other countries like Angola, Chad, and others who were also in the Congo? Was it also for exploitation?
French also disputed the fact that African countries did not struggle for their independence and that it was freely given to them at the wish and timing of their colonial masters. This is nothing else but a distortion of history.
I am surprised that the "famous" writer on African issues is ignorant of the various independence struggles like Mau Mau in Kenya, Maji Maji in Kenya and even the resistance fighters like the Kabelega of Bunyoro and Samora Toure of Uganda and central Africa, respectively.
Even Ethiopia, which was never colonised, was as a result of stiff competition. In fact, all conferences held between 1958 and 1963 like the Addis Ababa Summit passed resolutions in support of national liberation struggles on the African continent.
This pressure sent signals to the colonial powers in other countries where struggles for liberation had not been initiated that the same fate would soon catch up with them. There was nothing therefore like giving independence to the African states at will as Howard erroneously stated.The problem Africa faces, in addition to its other domestic issues, is prejudiced analysts and writers like Mugisha and French who replace facts with untruths. This game unfortunately, is quite expensive and unsustainable. As Edward R. Murrow, the former director of USIA once said, "that the truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; and to be credible we must be truthful".
It is as simple as that. The truth will come out however many lies are told. Mugisha has paid the price for working against this principle. That is why her global efforts to wash away the achievements of the Museveni presidency, especially the glaring ones like the fight against HIV/Aids have all never come to fruition.
Her effort to fail President Bush's visit to Uganda, as stopping the various awards to Museveni last year in the United States received no attention. She crusades against the recognition of the President's contribution to the Aids fight, alleging that he is insensitive to HIV patients and stigmatises them.
To the contrary, it is Museveni as Tumwebaze clearly explained on that programme, whose open talk made the population to change behaviour. The fact that the population quickly responded to the message is a vote of confidence and trust in the President and his government.
If Tumwebaze was defending the presidency of his boss, so it be. After all, the right of defence is a fundamental one to the accused. Mugisha intended to down grade, for propaganda purposes, the good presentation of Tumwebaze. Credit should be given where it is due.
Reproduced for fair use only from:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200407070911.html
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