60 years have not taught us to preserve our imperfect history

One of the most dubious places I have ever conducted an interview in was in some kind of records room, store or pseudo library of the national broadcaster, which was celebrating 50 years at the time. It was like being in an attic of sorts, with all the old equipment, tapes and other forms of stored material all around us. I was there to see the librarian, one of several interviews I did for that commemoration. Among the things we eventually got to talk about was the shift of the UTV station from its original home on Nakasero Hill.

Without going into great detail, I will tell you that I was quite shocked how dangerously close we came to losing a big chunk of our national archives, but for the efforts of a dedicated librarian. This to me is merely one more illustration in the 60-year story of how we generally care very little to preserve our history.

Though once one combs through the patchwork of hope and disappointment that have coloured our past, one might be forgiven for wanting to forget swiftly and erase some chapters or rewrite others. For instance, if there was a way, some people would rip out the chapter on past leaders from this coffee table book titled 60 Years of Uganda in a rush to get rid of the ‘swine’.

Due to our great hatred for them, past leaders are a now a myth we hear about in oral tradition. Thrown off their seats and forced to board the nearest and fastest transport to escape being roasted for real and perceived sins, some of them actually left burning cities and palaces behind. We are always quick to erase them from living memory because, as we say, they were no good. Out of curiosity, when the regime falls, what happens to all those presidential portraits that everyone hangs all year round in their offices, shops and hotel lounges? Wherever that trash goes, so does much of our history. If we are lucky, there will be a former driver, cook or bodyguard who will crawl out of the woodwork after years of lying low and recall a few details from their time at State House. However, by then, we will have burned all the photos and thrown out any presidential collections along with their owners. Whenever we look back, all we see is a group of figures we hate, traces of whom must be wiped off our national slate by all means necessary. Our history books are full of leaders who returned in their caskets or who never made it back at all.

This chequered history is what makes us who we are—a melting pot of sober and not-so sober people in recovery from past traumatic episodes. If we throw it all away, we will lose the capacity to explain ourselves or for those who were not there to understand what we are going on about when we say things like ‘going to the bush’ and ‘1986’.

Independence Day is a time to reflect on our collective memory. Have we, for instance, learnt nothing from the days of State Research Bureau, Nile Mansions and Panda Gari? We should have curated those cars that were used to abduct people in the days of Idi Amin. Perhaps then, some among us would not have thought of upgrading the practice with Drones.

This 60-year celebration should be about dusting the cobwebs in the dark and dingy sections of our house, bringing out what remains of our history and hopefully learning from it in the next 60 years.

Ms Nampewo is a writer, editor and communications consultant    

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