I
can shake off everything as i write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is
reborn—Anne Frank.
Over
the years, for a while now, I have written expletives on social media: very insightful,
informative and educative; this statement is limited to those who pay attention.
Like the people that inspire my life of Activism: Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes,
Toni Morrison, Albert Camus, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, Ellie Wiesel,
Maya Angelou, Anne Frank, Michelle Alexander, Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama,
Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton & Hillary Clinton among others. From these
people I have learned innumerable lessons, they have been instrumental
especially in charting the road ahead and who I have turned out to be today.
The words from one of my literal mentors C. Joybell. C,
can best tell how and why my audacity of hope
is always shinning anew every day of my life: “I have come to accept the feelings of not knowing where I am going. And
I have trained myself to love it.Because it is only when we are suspended in
mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas
begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to.
But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you
are going, but know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry
you”. |
| SOURCE |
The
truth is, there is nobody who will ever notice you if you don’t notice
yourself—your story and who you are and want to be in this cruel world begins
with the zeal and determination to do good, not for just the rewards but for
the right cause [I learned that from Dr.King’s Drum Major instinct]: I cannot lay claim that I am perfect in this area
but I am trying. Yes, I have failed several times to make it but I have never
considered giving up as an option, especially on something I care about, in
earnest; I don’t construct witty digs on a subject I don’t care about—I learned
from J.K.Rowling [another
literal mentor of mine] very important lessons, as I wrote earlier and for purposes of this article,
this: “why do I talk about failure? Simply
because it means the stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to
myself that I was anything other than what I was, and I began to direct all my
energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me”.
If
you ask me, the far-most important thing in writing my legacy for the few or
many years I have; if I am to have my name engraved upon the marble of history,
it is that I shared with the world something that healed someone other than
myself—shaped someone’s outlook from the little smatterings of hope to the
audacity of hope, that’s what I am working so hard to do and as I have often said,
as long as I have life; nothing will stop me.I love to say I have been blessed by the internet through the years (2) and for so many reasons I don’t just take that
for granted, it means I am not chasing after the wind: I am going to get grades
way above waving a futile flag, the internet didn’t look for me; I looked for
it and I know without a shadow of a doubt ‘we are stronger together’.
I write to give myself strength. I
write to be the characters i am not. I write to explore all the things I’m
afraid of—Joss Whedon
It’s
not a secret that being in this, doing this, has boosted
my self-confidence in ways than I have ever imagined. From writing on local
Politics to international Politics, I can now slide in my commentaries and endorse
without cowering; because: I try to study hard before I write about things, I
don’t slide in just as a pen-monger, that’s not what my writing career is
about. Some weeks ago, in the last letter
I wrote to Mr.Museveni of Uganda, I noted
with concern some things that I want to keep here for future reference:
OPEN LETTER, LISTEN NOW.
“Dear
President Museveni & General Kale,
I
greet you with respect. I want to begin by calling you to drop the tired
argument that Dr.Besigye is a violent man; because he isn’t .He said it, even
during the debates and he has incessantly
said it, even today morning on NBS TV, he aint looking at violence as a means
to change then regime; because he did it with Museveni earlier and they didn’t
get what they had intended.
I
am sure you know why he left you. I will
leave a link for you in the comments. I
had a chance of reading the Hippocratic Oath for
physicians and translating it into the political sphere would do us miracles, “I
will not be ashamed to say that I know not, nor will I fail to call in my
colleagues when the skills of the doctor are needed for the patient’s recovery”
Uganda
is the patient and needs help from this man, Dr.Besigye that
people love enormously, please stop thwarting the will of the people. I think
as you see, his sister visited him in Luzira and he told her that all will be well,
indeed he is another Mandela: ‘It
always seems impossible until it is one”
Quoting
Zora Neale Houston: “If you are silent about your pain,
they will kill you and say that you enjoyed”, we don’t enjoy the misery
you put us through, please stop. The political fakery you
have drawn this country to stinks, lets draw the lines to inclusive leadership.
I have received stupid threats that I will be imprisoned if I keep writing,
well; I don’t fear at all. Quoting a great writer, Arundhati
Ray, “years of imprisoning writers and beheading them has never succeeded in
shutting them up”
I
have said it overtime that I learned from Dr.King that ‘Freedom is never voluntarily
given by the oppressor; it is demanded by the oppressed”—those who
think it’s okay to be bystanders to the wrongs(several of them) happening in
society are not only terrible and cruel human beings but also implicitly and
explicitly colluding with the
oppressor(s) at once: the mistakes of History and lessons of History are very
much alive, it’s just about us to realize that without appreciating what History
teaches we are bound to re-engineer the very mistakes known to us:
“The
poles succeeded in their non-violent struggle when they lost their fear of
their communist tyrants. In 1981, the soviets put General Wojciech Jaruzelski in charge to crack down on solidarity,
a non-communist controlled trade union established a year ago.Jaruzelski
immediately declared martial law and arrested thousands of solidarity members,
often in the middle of the night including union leader Lech Walesa.Jaruzelski
flooded the streets of Warsaw, Gdansk and elsewhere in Poland with police who
shot, beat and jailed strikers and protestors by tens of thousands. The crackdown
drove the opposition underground. Where the jailed union leaders left off,
others including priests, dissidents and journalists took over.
Unable
to meet in the streets, the people gathered in their churches, in the
restaurants and bars, offices, schools and associations. By 1988, Poland’s
economy was in shambles as prices for basic staples rose sharply and inflation soared.
In August of that year, Jaruzelski was ready to negotiate
with solidarity and met Walesa. In December 1990, Lelch
Walesa became the first popularly elected President of Polland.It took
nearly a decade to complete the polish non-violent revolution. When Poles
overcame their fears of Jaruzelski and his Soviet
Union backers and stood up to his secret police, spies, informants and blood
thirsty thugs, it was all over him and his iron fisted regime.
Non
Violent social change and political change came to many former Soviet republics
and post-communist countries in Eastern Europe through the so called “color
revolutions” (people wearing symbolic colors to show their demand for change)—PS:
[I have written earlier though saying, We are more than just the colors, We are one UGANDA,ONE PEOPLE], over the past decade.
InSerbia (2000) Georgia (“Rose Revolution” 2003), Ukraine (“Orange Revolution”
2004) and Kyrgyzstan (“Tulip Revolution” 2005), Ordinary people engaged in
defiant massive non-violent street protests which culminated in the removal of
oppressive and corrupt regimes. Not long ago, the “Arab Spring”dawned in the
Middle East when Ben Ali’s regime was swept
away in the “Jasmine Revolution”. The common element in the revolutions is that
they were led by the youth who had lost fear of their tyrannical oppressors”
The
challenge and struggle for liberty, equality and fraternity still goes on [PS: those are my catch words for my Presidential race run
2036],and we can only get along if we don’t make dress rehearsals for
giving up but rather for staying on course the more. In a very powerful
masterpiece, “the Ethics of Non-Violence”,
[2013 p.226), Robert
Holmes argues: “For Power dissolves when people lose their fear. You can
still kill people who no longer fear you, but you cannot control them. You
cannot control dead people. Walk through a cemetery with a bullhorn, if you like.
Command people to rise up, clean the streets, pay taxes, report for military duty,
and they will ignore you. Political Power requires obedience, which is fueled
by the fear of pain inflicted if you refuse to comply with the will of those
who control the elements of violence. That power evaporates when the people lose their fear”
You can make anything by
writing—C.S.Lewis
 |
| Grace Abaho Sr in Kanungu District his birthplace(2015) |
There
is an old African adage, “when the water
starts boiling; it is foolish to turn off the heat”, this is a very
profound statement that I admire so very much: this, entwined with what C.S.Lewis says, if I am to put it succinctly, have
molded my stay in the game. As I wrote earlier,
one of the things I learned from Colin Powel’s
memoir: [MY AMERICAN JOURNEY], is [p.35 (606)]:
“I learned that being in charge means making
decisions, no matter how unpleasant. If it is broke, fix it.When you do, you
win the gratitude of people who have been suffering under the bad situations. I
learned in a college drill competition that you can’t let the mission suffer or
let the majority pay to spare the feelings of an individual. Long afterward, I
kept a saying under the glass of my desk that made the point succinctly
inelegantly: being responsible sometimes means pissing some people off”.
I
have said it before; one of the things I can’t afford to do is say, ‘I will forever support a certain politician’, not
at all. The years I have been in Politics have turned me into a fair-weather supporter,
if the person I am vouching for begins to look at just his/her interests—and
those in the closest circle, I ditch them on the road and pick someone else,
that’s how it works in my world: I learned from Dr.King’s
letter from jail, where he quotes Bunyan,
“I will stay in prison all the days of my
life but I will never butcher my conscience”. The politics of today are so
ugly, highly polarized and monetized; there is no sober discourse anymore: I
personally have failed to get a job twice
because I don’t support the Museveni
government, which is telling.
Parker Palmer in a very great literary
masterpiece, “Mercy
Now”, writes: “If I want to find the words and actions that
might be life-giving and see the common good, I need to reclaim my true self
and recover my true voice, So I’ve been embracing the silence that has
descended upon me—experiencing it moment by moment as a kind of solidarity with
whose voices have been silenced forever”. About ten months ago, I read [the
book] and watched the Book Thief about how
Hitler used to burn down books and incarcerate people (the Jews), I felt so
heartbroken, actually as I was writing about America,
on Donald Trump’s asinine remarks, quoting Ellie
Wiesel’s Prayer in the days of Awe,
I emphatically slid in an extract from which I will pick the lines for purposes
of this masterpiece:
“Where were you God of kindness, in
Auschwitz? What was going on in Heaven, in the celestial tribunal, while your
children were marked by humiliation, isolation only because they were Jewish?
These questions have been haunting
me for more than five decades, you have vocal defenders, you know. Many
theological answers were given to me, such as: “God
is God. He alone knows what he is doing. One has no right to question Him or
His ways”. Or: Auschwitz was a punishment for European Jewry’s sin of
assimilation and/ or Zionism”. And: “Isn’t Israel the solution?”
I reject all these answers.
Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be neither
with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was unfair
with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came ready-made from Heaven.
It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was
to destroy not only us but you also. Ought we not think of your pain, too?
Watching your children suffer at the hands of the other children?”
 |
| Snapshot from Viktor Frankaal's book |
Books
other than anything else have shaped this grueling endeavor of my unfettered activism,
I have been so confident enough to claim my
universal citizenship: I am paying the rent for living here on earth
and like I told my friend a few days ago, ‘it is
through this that I will own an executive bathroom’ .From Man’s search for meaning, a book on the mass incarceration
of Jews in the prison camp of Auschwitz,
I learned very important lessons that everybody who claims to be an
activist/game changer ought to know [answering the
Questions Viktor Frankaal pauses, he provides answers as well] :
“We
can answer these questions from experience as well as on principle. The
experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were
enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy can be overcome,
irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom,
independence of mind, even in such conditions of psychic stress.
We who lived in concentration camps
can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away
their last piece of bread. They may have been few in numbers, but they offer
sufficient proof that everything can be taken from man but one thing:
the last of human freedoms, to choose
one’s way”.
You’re not so blind with patriotism
that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it—Malcolm X.
Many
times people get blinded into not calling out their leaders when they fall
short of what it really means to be a leader, that’s not okay at all, it
cripples the minds into a false notion of saints—which if not checked graduates
them [the leaders they have chosen to hold on a pedestal] into gods. I read a book last year,the Leader’s light or Shadow, it clearly settles it
all [p.2/38]:
“A leader is a person who has an unusual
degree of power to create conditions under which other people must live and
move and theirbeing, conditions that can neither be eliminating or shadowy as hell.
A leader must take special responsibility for what’s going on inside his or her
own self, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good. Political
leaders, parents, clergy have potential to cast as much shadow as they do light.
Refusing to face the dark side of leadership makes them abuse more likely. All
too often leaders ‘do not even know they’re making a choice, let alone how to
reflect on the choice of choosing’
Claremont
graduate professor Jean Lipman_Bluman uses
the term toxic leaders to describe those who engage in destructive behaviors
and those who engage in dysfunctional charateristics. At the same time; derailed
leaders act vs. the interests of the subordinates and the organization; they
bully, manipulate, deceive and harass followers; they may be stealing from the organization,
engaging in fraudulent activities and doing less than expected.
Constructive leaders, on the other hand,
care about subordinates and help the organization achieve its goals while using
its resources. Havard professor Barbara Kellerman believes
that limiting leadership solely to good leadership ignores the reality that a
great too many leaders engage in destructive behaviours. Overlooking that fact, Kellerman says, undermines our attempts to promote
good leadership not by ignoring bad leadership, nor by presuming that it is immutable,
but rather by attacking it as we would a disease that’s always pernicious and
sometimes deadly”
The
former President of the United States Thomas
Jefferson once said, ‘the
government should fear its citizens’ .Our government, on the contrary,
laughs at us. It raises enormous hand and says, ‘go to hell’.
It isn’t even trying to pretend anymore—what I would hope, what I would call
for is a peaceful yet drastic change in how we function as citizens. We should
be utterly unforgiving of corruption and entrenched injustice and we should
make government officials guilty of such indiscretions pay dearly for it. The
renowned Ai
Wei Wei eloquently warns us that, “If you don’t act; the danger
becomes stronger”., this has been proven a thousand times every day of
our lives: things are not getting any better, it’s crazy when people instead
cheer on steady regress as steady progress, a very scary situation to be
bystanders to.
For
Politics, as Aristotle points out [P.51, Politics
of Aristotle], ‘is only one possible solution to the problem of order.
It is by no means the most usual. Tyranny is the most obvious alternative—the
rule of one strong man in his owninterest; and oligarchy is the most obvious
alternative—the method of rule of the tyrant and the oligarch is quite simply
to clobber, to coerce or overawe all or most other groups in their own
interest. The political method of rule is to listen to these other groups so as
to conciliate them as far as possible, and to give them a legal position, a
sense of security, some clear and reasonably safe means of articulation, by
which other groups can and will speak freely.Ideally Politics draws groups into
each other so that they each together can make a positive contribution towards
the general business of government, maintaining order”.
Eckhart
Tolle in his great book, A New Earth, [P.28-29/189]; tells a very important
story about the “Lost Ring” and
finally leaves with us very undeniable truths that can better us as human
siblings if we pay utmost attention to what he says, especially if we are to do
away with the bitterness and the cruel hinging unto power that’s common with
most African leaders (for purposes of this masterpiece,Museveni
as the case in point): “Whatever
the ego seeks and gets attached to are substitutes for the being that it cannot
feel. You can value and care for things, but whenever you get attached to then,
you will know its ego. And you are really never attached to a thing but a
thought that has “I”, ‘me’ or “mine in it.Whenever you completely accept loss,
you go beyond ego, and who you are, the‘I am’ which consciousness itself,
emerges”.
To
be honest, the raw fact is that if it weren’t because I am in this fight to the
end, I would have given up on it already—but I have a vision, I have a dream, I
want to do the little/much that I can and be the change I want to see in the world. The odds are great and have been
great, all through—the crass threats, the costly internet, buying reading
material and all there is to presenting all I have been able to accomplish;
but, I have soldiered through it all with the help of family and friends;
sometimes, I can never be more grateful: May the Lord richly bless you. I am
often asked whether I am afraid of Museveni
and his agents, I am not, not at all after this especially more—if anyone
attempts anything stupid on my life, whatever happens to me between now and
when I make my mark, I have written my legacy and not one single person will
take it away: that’s what we talk about when we talk about the power of the pen.
My very immediate big brother, Haven, sent me
a message this morning and it read(s): “Dreams are
not for individuals. They are gifts to the world. Go and make a difference”—thanks
again Haven, that’s what I am doing, and I am not done yet.
 |
| s |
Like
the legendary Tupac Skakur (inset),I
subscribe to the notion that ‘the change
we want to make is always just three feet in front of us’.—this should
question everyone else into the question, “what are
you doing to make the change you want to see in the world?”. I know
there are people out there who have bought themselves into the dumb rhetoric
that we aren’t going to win this, maybe you are right but if I am to be honest
with you, that’s for a little while—I can assure personally that your report
awaits you: you are certainly the real life equivalent of hecklers on a stage
undermining an artist’s beautiful piece of work, that you may never be able to
put up. Let me say this rather succinctly: “If you are going to wear blinders just to disagree with raw facts that
I present(speaking for myself),you will never able make a point in my world,
that’s just sheer ignorance that you are exuding—get back to your drawing board
and pick better lenses”. I could have been born at night but i want to
re-assure you that night is not yesterday night, I am not bribing you to agree
with me but beat this with a sound rebuttal, that’s all you can do to save
yourself embarasement.Between now and when I next write another masterpiece,
let sober discourse shape the narrative, see you again: “I cannot turn water into wine but I can turn words into money
and dope heads into responsible citizens of this universe”.
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