the Humanist view

When I rant and get if off my chest, it often improves my sleep I find.

When I author blogs such as this one, I kill the proverbial two birds with one blog. I get to be part of the conversation and it makes me feel good for being an active citizen. And I improve my sleep.

This here, my sample rant blog, I am certain will not take effect immediately, but I am reassured that I have made my views known. So here goes:

Subsistence Farmer Illusion

In official documents, our smallholder farmers, the majority of Uganda’s population, are often referred to in a derogatory manner as “peasants” and or “subsistence farmers.”

This is oxymoronic.

In the same official documents, it is often widely acknowledged that the backbone of Uganda’s economy is agriculture. And the actors who make that happen are our smallholder farmers.

How can they be the backbone of Uganda’s economy and at the same time be subsistence farmers?

Case in point:

“The highest participation in agriculture is in the Teso (87%) and Lango (83%) regions. The main crops grown include maize (49%), beans (44%), sweet potatoes (30%), and bananas (27%). (Source: Uganda Bureau of Statistics)”

Teso is my ancestral home and Lango is in the geographic area of where I work.

I know for certain that the main crops now grown by smallholder farmers in Teso and Lango are not among the tradition staple food of our people of Teso and Karamoja.

As supported by UBOS data, smallholder farmers in Teso and Lango mostly grow maize, for example. Maize is not a traditional staple food for Iteso and Lango. Traditionally, the main staple food in Teso and Lango is millet.

De facto, statistics from UBOS confirm the assertion that smallholder famers in Uganda now are rarely, if at all, subsistence farmers.

However:

“The misconception that smallholder farmers grow food purely to feed themselves and operate entirely outside the cash economy prevails. In reality, these farmers often sell a large portion of their staples immediately after harvest for quick cash, and are then forced to buy it back later at inflated prices.” Read more in UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) publication

Smallholder farmers, indeed, are the ones who feed our nation and beyond.

Why then do we continue to accept descriptions of us, such as “subsistence farmers” which falsely denigrate us?

Why do we continue to allow such derogatory terminology and concepts to be included in and to form the basis for official national plans and budgets?

Need For Decolonization Agenda

The voice needs to get stronger for detoxification of discourse in key fora and documents of formerly colonized nations, such as ours. Discourse in national planning instruments needs correction and realigning.

Admittedly, cries are getting increasingly louder to right wrongs of colonialism not previously identified as such. In particular, those wrongs that resulted from cultural imperialism.

Unfortunately, I am afraid, the damage caused by acceptance of terminology and concepts rooted in colonialism has not been adequately identified and acknowledged.

The continued use of “subsistence farmers” to describe our nation’s smallholder farmers lays the foundation for inappropriate policy, case in point.

Such as policy which destroys indigenous knowledge systems and promotes adoption of unsuitable exogenous knowledge systems.

Exogenous systems which prioritize, for example, smallholder famer dependence on corporations for seeds and other factors of production. Destroying our indigenous seed systems and our land, in some cases.

Exogenous knowledge which promotes dependence on debt for production is prioritized. The consequence, many smallholder farmers have instead lost their productive assets, in order to service loans and or when they have failed to do so.

This critique applies to other sectors as well and not only agriculture. There is a desperate and urgent need for genuine decolonization of our minds to be triggered and allowed to happen and the level of our policy makers.

Detoxifying our Landscape

The push for detoxifying formerly colonized nations of colonial monuments and names has gained traction, and I celebrate it.

Re-naming of physical infrastructure, such as changing street names from those of the colonialists to those of the first nations of Uganda, is overdue.

It makes no sense for our nature assets, such as rivers and lakes, to be named in honor of those who colonized us. We need to revert back to the names our assets were known prior to colonization.

When are we officially renaming “Lake Victoria” (named after the English Queen Victoria) back to “Enyanja Nnalubaale (home of the gods)?”

Our lake should be called its name in the language of the largest first nation of Uganda, the Baganda in whose territory a significant portion of the lake is domiciled?

There, I have said it. Today, I shall sleep well!