I was born in Uganda and I live here in Uganda, I have witnessed quite a number of things in this country. There is a lot to write about and too much to think about as there is to talk about. On Monday 3rd of March 2017, Uganda lost a legend by the names Joash Mayanja Nkagi. To be honest, when I was growing up in Bugolobi, I only knew three political heads: Amanya Mushega, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, and Joash Mayanja Nkangi.
I was talking to my friend and he reminded me of George Cosmos Adyebo, who always featured in our examination papers. As I speak today, Uganda has a population of 73% young people (30 years and below). In a sense then, the old and senior people are phasing out one by one. This wouldn’t have been a problem if we all understood what we lose as they die.
When a man like Joash Mayanja Nkagi, a man who is cultured and seasoned, a man who has been involved in national affairs since he was 14 years, eleven times minister on record, a man who loves his ethnic group (Baganda), a man who worked so hard to defend his identity, a man who applied his youthful days to education and applied his knowledge to defend the defenseless, a moral pillar, and a symbol of integrity, an icon, dies, we have not lost a person but people like us whose history is faint and whose future is complex have lost a campus in such a senior citizen.
When such old credible men like Mayanja Nkangi, Bonney Katatumba, and the rest die, we have lost more than an eye can meet. When senior people who have seen more than we have seen die and leave us in this jungle, we get lost in our ignorance and half-information creeds.
When such a generation dies-off, the generation gap widens and goes to lengths we cannot recover. There is a way these old sober men see things that is different from the vibrant youths or other leaders whose influence is basically survival. When such men die, what hurts people like us is that it goes with all the wisdom. When such a man like Mayanja Nkanji die and leaves no young successors of his caliber and leaves no book in which he has documented and shared his experiences, it looks like a national library with classified books and documents caught fire and we were unable to save a thing.
The death of such men among us is an exit of a sober generation just to usher in another immature, unstable, unqualified, and unrefined generation like that of us. We all know or at least have heard of stories of rich old men who die and leave a 30-year dynasty of wealth to their children and within a short while, it is no more. This is the problem of the death of these old men. These old men in such a world of turmoil, agitation and conflict function as bearings and neutralizers. They calm the storm, advise our emotions and train us through the tough experiences they have gone through.
If you looked close at this government, you will realize the power of an old man in the highest office of this nation, and you and I can imagine the state of this nation if a young impulsive man like me were in that office. It is a pity that people like Mayanja Nkangi are leaving us in this Uganda. We cannot mourn them since they have lived a successful life, we can only celebrate them, woe unto us who are left to live in a country without them.
Well, you and I know that seniority in age does not necessarily materialize to wisdom. I live in a country where old men in high offices have kissed music artists on stage. I am in a country where professional academicians have undressed before media cameras. It is in my Uganda where old men fight with young men over girls to marry. A lot has happened. It is just like that, that the immoral don’t die sooner than the moral senior citizens. It is just like that, that we are left by the good ones and we are left in the hands of the misguided.
Uganda lacks a culture, that has an awareness of its core problem and one that has a discernment of what matters when and where. For a person like Mayanja Nkangi to die at the age of 80yrs and having worked in government with all the access to national coffers and he leaves no corruption scandal with his name involved, then this is a result of two factors:
1. This man was guided and helped by God himself and therefore there was a fear of God in his entire life. Perhaps before he made any choice he did not look at the sides alone but also looked up to see what God would want him to do. He referred to God as opposed to people. I think our leaders and us need to understand this.
2. This man was a typical nurtured Muganda. Who transferred his ethnic allegiance to the national level. He loved his ethnicity and the entire nation from which his ethnic group operated. The problem we suffer today is people who are so focused on developing and working towards the success of a particular group of people at the expense of others neighboring them.
This is the very problem that America is addressing through the leadership of Trump. The immigrants they are fighting are the very people they abused in the past and actually continuing wars. When you focus so much on yourself at the expense of your neighbors, those very neighbors turn into thieves or a certain threatening opposition to your welfare. The concepts of Banyankore Kweterana, Buganda Kuntiko, etc, are a danger to us as a nation.
Mayanja served all governments, those that were friendly to his tribe and others which were hostile to his ethnic group. This demonstrates how, in his core belief system, the nation of Uganda mattered more than anything.
We must understand that death of these men is a terrible exit of a sober generation. When such senior wisdom-filled men die, the center that holds breaks. I am not sure of the materialistic wealth of this man who has served Uganda since its inception as a nation, but I am sure he was not that wealthy. The problem with us young men is that we do not emulate men for who they are, we rather emulate them for what they have. 97% of young men involved in national matters today have a financial agenda but not a country agenda.
All this is due to the fact that they have been misguided by poor senior leaders who have incited them due to their selfish desires. They don’t help them become better leaders, they don’t mentor them, and they instead manipulate and use them to their ends as they serve them with left-overs.
As this sober generation wipes out, and trust me more senior citizens are winding up, I fear that the scripture in Judges 2:8-12 will apply to Uganda as it did to the nation of Isreal. The scripture says:
Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of a hundred and ten. And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger.
I just cannot say more to this. I am not a prophet of doom, but if we the current generation resist the values of the past generation and we ignore God in all that we do and we continue with our selfishness, Uganda will not be better even if you changed leaders.
God bless you: I Invoke TRUTH, WISDOM AND FAITH
Pr. I.T.WHITE
The Gospel Hawker
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 