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The felled tree and dearth of critical thinking abilities
Author, Musaazi Namiti. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- From a cultural perspective, opposing the felling of the tree made a great deal of sense. Societies are identified by their cultures and need to preserve them. The problem is with Mr Katamba’s demonstrably false claim that spirits need money.
On March 11, an excavator belonging to a Chinese road construction firm terminated the life of a tree that had been, according to folklore, standing for 200 years and had been in the news for some time.
The felling of the tree, named Nabukalu and home to the spirits of the Lugave clan, followed a legal battle.
The tree’s caretaker, Hussein Katamba, had opposed its removal to pave the way for the construction of the Busega-Mpigi Expressway.
He went to court, demanding a preposterously high compensation sum of Shs500 million if the Uganda National Roads Authority went ahead and removed the tree.
Mr Katamba rejected the money government had offered him as compensation, saying it was not enough to appease the spirits.
The court eventually ruled that he deserved Shs4.6 million only because the judge could not find any justification for hundreds of millions of shillings he had demanded.
From a cultural perspective, opposing the felling of the tree made a great deal of sense. Societies are identified by their cultures and need to preserve them. The problem is with Mr Katamba’s demonstrably false claim that spirits need money.
We are a deeply superstitious country on a deeply superstitious continent. If we do not change the way we look at life and start to teach our children to think critically, we are going to have generations and generations that are governed by superstition.
We seem to lack the ability to reflect deeply and soberly on our own claims and of others without emotion, prejudice and subjectivity in order to better evaluate them for their truth, reasonableness and validity. Even good, solid education has not given us this ability.
Let me cite a few examples to drive my point home. Many people in the village where Nabukalu stood believed that uprooting a tree that accommodates spirits can cause problems.
Villagers respected a mere tree more than they respect people. But since Nabukalu was uprooted, there has not been a single report of trouble.
Items that had been lying under the tree — including spears, bark cloth, pots, gourds, animal skins and white clothes — were destroyed.
There were onlookers anxiously waiting to see how Nabukalu would react. She did not. She is dead — and the road construction project will not stop.
A well-known traditional healer named Maama Fiina was interviewed on TV about Nabukalu, and she seemed to suggest that the caretaker was right to demand compensation of Shs500 million.
In Uganda, like in other countries, thieves steal anything from smartphones to laptops, TVs and cars. If our juju and evil spirits worked, as millions of Ugandans believe, we would deploy them to deal with thieves. Nobody would be reporting cases of theft to the police.
Some of us think superstition in the form of religion is acceptable, but we are wrong. We need to question everything that does not make sense even if it belongs to religion. And we should teach our children to do the same.
If a book is said to be holy but it is replete with verses that show contempt for women, question that, think about it. And reject it if it does not make sense.
Mr Namiti is a journalist and former Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk
@kazbuk
