Earlier this week as we went about our normal course of business in class, one of our lecturers suddenly stopped and posed this question to us. "What is that one thing that we as Ugandans identify ourselves with, the value that we all stand for as a country?" As I rummaged through my mind searching for the answer, it suddenly hit me hard that there actually was none. As a follow-up to his question he implored us to stop and think about our people right from the president. "The problem with this country is that everyone is a liar, right from the president", he went on to say. Immediately my mind begun recollecting the various unfulfilled promises and pledges he had publicly made key among them being in 2001 when he expressly stated that what he was seeking for then was the last term in office but 15 years on, the status quo remains. I also stopped to think about the alternatives that we have been offered as a country, the most pronounced being Dr Kiiza Besigye. The two seem to have been cut from the same cloth for the story is no different. That is only a tip of the iceberg for we are now used to the constant screaming headlines about loss of billions of shillings, it is now part of us to expect a story about rape, about defilement, about robbery, this has come to define the society we live in.
But have you ever stopped and asked yourself what the problem is. We boast of a Christian populace of more than 80%, with at least a church in every neighborhood but is this what is propagated in our churches today? Certainly not! Our churches seem to be breeding very many Christians but without any Christianity, it is little wonder that we have very many sprouting churches based on material gaining. I for one think that first of all the moral fabric of our society has completely been eroded, we have degenerated our society to a point where morality plays second fiddle. If we are to re-instill values that we once stood for then that should be our starter. No society in the world boasts of values that they stand for without morals. Our grandparents continuously remind us of a time in their era when a man was always taken for his word. When it came to selling of land for example, you didn't need to sign anywhere as acknowledgment of sale but your word was your word, today they look back at those times with nostalgic feelings. Am at pains to admit the fact that today we have people who can sale their land to multiple buyers with each being given an assurance that he was the only holder of that land, today we have people who lie to make a living. In other words we have a people who cannot be trusted. Such is what our society has been relegated to. George Orwell once said that in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. What we crave for now as a country are more revolutionary acts from our people.
A society whose moral fabric has broken down needs to be rebuilt by simply going back to the drawing board, to ask for those things that our ancestors did to preserve the standards of their society. If for example it needs people to be reminded that it takes a society to raise a child, that it requires a mother to be by her child as she moves through her stages of growth then that should be done. These are the simple things that we have continuously absconded from and believe me or not they continue to haunt our very being. We have children who grow up in a house as opposed to children being brought up in a home. Perhaps we need to know the difference between a house and a home, growing up and being brought up to know why we are the way we are!!
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