the Humanist view

I am thinking we must retake control of the discourse that defines us.

Write our own narratives that are true to our first nations and live by them.

What has triggered this, you may wonder.

I remember being part of a mind blowing “Intellectual Study Group on Land and Natural Resources” session. The conversations at that session, for me, were myth-busters and paradigm shifters.

I found myself consciously confronted and interacting with terminology and concepts, such as:

• Epistemic certitude or epistemic certainty
• Epistemic violence
• Epistemic displacement

Understanding epistemic to mean “related to knowledge or how it is acquired.” I remember thinking about the lyrics of the Uganda National Anthem.

“Oh Uganda! the land that feeds us, by sun and fertile soil grown, for our own dear land, we’ll always stand, the pearl of Africa’s crown.” Third stanza of Uganda National Anthem.

I wonder, how many Ugandans truly genuinely perceive or think of Uganda as the “pearl of Africa’s crown.”

Reportedly, coinage of Uganda as the pearl of Africa is credited to a former Prime Minister of Britain (1940-1945), Winston Churchill. No doubt, he coined it from a voyeuristic perspective of a colonizer.

Am thinking how we, Ugandans, have come to accept narratives that make us invisible and disown us of our land.

Such as, case in point, the obnoxious view that has gained traction during the decades reign of our current President. That misinformation that plenty of our land is idle, not utilized, underutilized, inefficiently utilized, and the like.

A fallacy that sustains unchallenged within smokescreens of ‘development discourse’ – often framed our ways are backward and underdeveloped; and we need to adopt the ways of our colonizer as a marker of development.

Ironically, purveyors of that fallacy, unintentionally, often contradict it in policy documents. Perhaps the most common, is when they proclaim and acknowledge the backbone of Uganda’s economy is agriculture.

Agriculture is indeed the backbone of Uganda’s economy and by Ugandan smallholder farmers, who live and mostly own their land via customary tenure which gives them legally binding ownership via user rights.

So, where is the issue really? I am flummoxed.

What nurtures epistemic uncertainty among us and makes us uncertain of being the owners of our land?

I mean it is right their in the Uganda anthem and in the Uganda Constitution, that the land of Uganda, our land, belongs to us.

What then makes us accept that our land is idle and others of foreign origin know better how to use our land?

I mean we are living on it and using it to do agriculture, which is the backbone of our nation’s economy.

What is making us accept rape of our land in the name of ‘development’?

On a regular basis, we are made to sing our nation’s anthem; and we do. But do we truly understand it? I am wondering.

By the way, I am yet to hear of any first nation of Uganda singing a translated version of the national anthem in the language of its first nation.

These and many more questions such as these need to be asked and answered. Me thinks.

So, yes, this is my answer to today’s daily writing prompt, “What’s something you used to believe as a kid that seems ridiculous now?” I honestly believer the lyrics of our nation’s national anthem ridiculous.