Rev. Amos Kasibante.
Members of the Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC) may attribute the failure of the peace doves to fly, landing at the religious leaders’ feet to the pedigree of the birds themselves. They may try again with another set of doves.
Or, they may construe the failure as a symbolic, prophetic act: a statement that they may have chosen the easy way of campaigning and advocating for peace. In which case, the birds refused to play ball, thus turning them into objects of humorous laughter or outright ridicule.
Ugandan society is deeply divided and many people have been deeply hurt at all levels. But it has always been possible to wriggle out of the reality and rise to the top.
For instance, we could point to all the positive developments over the last two decades or more and accuse those who feel themselves to be left out of being ungrateful, negative, impatient, lacking a sense of initiative or the manufacturers of their own problems.
We might even detest the electoral campaigns and see them as drawing the worst out of people and can wish they are over and done with. We might fail to observe that the young people’s evident quest to vote is not borne out of fanaticism and ignorance but by the passion for democracy and change, and that they are seeking for agency, which they feel has been denied them.
Ugandans in positions of power and authority in both church/mosque and state are on a steep learning curve. The learning process has been reversed, as it were.
Where before the former have been the founts of wisdom, knowledge and ethical guidance, the latter are now urging the former to listen to their cry, their aspirations and their voices. And it’s just possible that the elder political and religious leaders may have done a bad job of listening.
There is going to be a time for social turbulence before there can be peace. Peace will then be sought more seriously, not only in the intentions of the heart, but in terms of spelling out in practical ways how the peace being sought is to be achieved. Peace must be done, not wished for.
