Author: Angella Nampewo. PHOTO/FILE
In 1973, during a bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden, four bank employees were taken captive in a hostage crisis that lasted six days. During their captivity, the bank employees became sympathetic to the robbers.
Some even refused to testify against the robbers and fundraised for their defence. In trying to explain the puzzling trend of events in our country, I found some expressions that sum up why, as a country, we are good at taking abuse from individuals and institutions and later praising them as if they just did us a favour. One of the words that I found was “learned helplessness”.
Those who have studied victims of the Stockholm syndrome seem to think the victim’s sympathetic feelings towards the captor seem to arise from a kind of gratitude that even though the captor initially threatened the captive’s life, they chose not to kill them.
It is like a bad relationship. A man or woman beats another half to death at night and then rushes out in the morning to buy flowers. H(s)e recites a colourful poetic apology and convinces the injured party that the neighbours are at fault for interfering in their love story. And all is well again until the next time the abuser strikes again. As members of our community are being tortured, we exhibit varying types of unnatural behaviour.
There are the bystanders/silent neighbours who watch victims being beaten and plug their ears to keep out the screams of the abused. We also have foolish champions of abuse. They justify violence by suggesting that the victims somehow asked for it; maybe they did something to provoke the almighty abuser. These cheerleaders of abuse not only justify but even hoist the abuser onto a pedestal for the rest of us to worship, praising them for having tamed the loudmouthed wiseacre.
Others cover their heads in the reassurance that their own families are sleeping soundly undisturbed at home. If a fire starts in your neighbour’s compound, you had better do something to put it out, not only because it is the neighbourly thing to do but also because your house is next.
When corrupt officials steal public funds, they are not short of praise singers reminding us that they are investing the stolen money in Uganda and sharing it with the village Saccos.
The downtrodden fellows who lose family members to a broken health system and bad roads have been boxed into the kind of recurring helplessness that makes them set aside their grievances to beg for scraps off the table of the corrupt. They even rush to secure and wipe front seats for them in church on Sunday.
Their well-off cousins, speaking from town offices, then tell their oppressed kin who dare to protest that they must be grateful they are even allowed to speak. We should be so lucky that we are even allowed to breathe.
Tragically, we have, especially, a growing army of young people who will even polish the oppressor’s shoes every morning when he goes on duty to deprive their uncles and grandmothers of the chance to live and thrive.
It is unfortunate to see a fellow man stripped down to nothing. Insult to injury is when a robber breaks into your house, disturbs your peace, beats you up, breaks your legs and takes your property but expects you to smile, say thank you and declare them a hero in the village square.
Sure, it can be done, but only by people in a zombie-like state of trauma who have nothing more to lose.
