Prime
What we can learn from Paul Ssemogerere
Author: Phillip Matogo. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- ‘‘I do believe it is time our politics is elevated to the level of Ssemogerere’s sterling example.”
On Monday, President Museveni eulogised the late Democratic Party (DP) leader, Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, who was laid to rest at the family ancestral home in Nattale, Nkumba, in Wakiso District.
Museveni, in a written message read by Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja at the burial, said in spite of his and the late’s differences, Ssemogerere did not “disrupt” nor go “subversive”.
He hailed the late as an icon of peace.
It is true, Ssemogerere sought continuity over confrontation. In this sense, his politics gave expression to the notion that Uganda would continue beyond its petty rivalries.
Indeed, Ssemogerere’s legacy holds lessons for Opposition and government.
On the Opposition’s side of the political aisle, his career tacitly admonishes the politics of acrimony. We never heard Ssemogerere describe anyone as “stupid”, “a pig” or employ any other choice words effectively relegating our public affairs to the gutter.
It is not that he did not know these insults, his standpoint was just not articulated by the violence of the tongue.
He knew that we are all inherently flawed. Thus, he lived the good graces of a pontiff, if you will, instead of the hypocrisy of a pontificator.
By this token, his career characterised the words of poet Oscar Wilde: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Some may argue that such politics are too starry-eyed, and therefore out of joint with the anatomy of our politics. However, their positivist politics, which focuses on how things are, misses out on the normativist power on how things could be.
Besides, abuse and insults have never resolved a dispute. Instead, they protract conflict. That’s because if I call you stupid and you call me stupid, it’s a draw. And so, nobody wins.
Thereafter, we forget what we are both being stupid about as we are then locked in the intractability of uncompromising positions. This leads to polarisation and a breakdown in communication, the very precursors of war.
To government, Ssemogerere’s legacy speaks to succession. He led DP for 25 years, he then threw in the towel in 2005.
Certainly, he could have chosen to hold onto the DP presidency, warding off all pretenders and contenders to his throne. The government of President Museveni has gone in this very direction.
We see how President Museveni’s opponents in the National Resistance Movement (NRM) are subjected to a coronation instead of competition as he is continuously crowned party king.
This is why, in NRM, any talk of a successor is simply hot heir (pun intended).
Of course, this bodes ill for the country as a succession battle is surely going to be played out. Thereby ensuring that the ultimate legacy of Museveni’s rule is conflict, chaos.
As he eulogised Ssemogerere, Museveni said though he and his associates nurtured a third line of thinking that later crystallised into NRM, they admired DP’s principles on national unity as against the presumably divisive politics at Mengo and duplicity of the Uganda Peoples Congress, which always said one thing and did the other.
Surely, the President sees the contradiction in his monopoly of power and national unity. Similarly, he must also acknowledge that this monopoly and his words “the problem of Africa are leaders who overstay in power” are akin to saying one thing and doing the other.
I do believe it is time our politics is elevated to the level of Ssemogerere’s sterling example. Then, Opposition and government may work together to convert Uganda’s undoubted potentiality into actuality.
