Dear President,
Thanks for taking time off your busy schedule to respond to key issues in the country. I was particularly delighted with your response to the noise that followed the death of the late former Security Minister and army commander General Elly Tumwine. As you rightly pointed out Gen. Tumwine came from a humble background studied hard and attained qualifications before joining the liberation struggle, which saw him grow through the ranks to become one of the finest army commanders. Your excellence you also rightly pointed out that no one should celebrate the death of the other because as humans we shall all die at some point.
As a Muslim, I am constantly reminded of this fact. The holy Quran 21:34. “And We appointed immortality for no man before you. Then if you die, can they be immortal?” 35. “Every soul shall taste of death, and We try you with evil and good for a testing, and unto Us, you shall be returned.” In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad cautioned us against talking about the dead later on celebrating their death. In your write up Mr. president, you note that the issue of those who celebrated and cheered Gen. Tumwine’s death was brought to your attention by your handlers.
I don’t know whether it was by omission or deliberate that your handlers only chose to point out the celebration of Gen Tumwine’s death, but I want to tell your excellence this has been going on for some time, especially whenever a key government or any person believed to be closer to the regime dies.
We saw this during the death of former Deputy Inspector General of Police Paul Lokech, former UPDF Spokesperson, Shaban Bantariza, the Rt. Hon. Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Oulanyah, and my friend and father, Haji Nsereko Mutumba, the former Kayunga Resident District Commissioner to mention but a few. I have also seen videos or social media posts of people promising to host feasts at the news of your passing. From the above Mr. President, I can tell you without fear of hesitation or contradiction that the celebrations about the death of Gen. Tumwine were not about him as an individual or his utterances in connection to the November riots it is just an expression of the hopelessness among young Ugandans on the high levels of corruption, impunity, human rights violations and the indifference by key state actors. While Uganda is way better than you found it, there are a lot of things hurting Ugandans and pushing them to act the way they are behaving today.
Your government has spent huge sums of money on promoting patriotism among Ugandans. I want to thank you for your excellence in appointing my OB Mubarak Magomu to head that key task. However, all his efforts seem not to be yielding results because we see young Ugandans getting angrier by the day to the extent that even wish to dissociate from their mother country simply because our leaders are preaching water and taking milk. So your excellency my prayer is that you conduct some retrospection to find out what went wrong and how we can fix it. We can’t have a nation of angry people. It is very dangerous for each of us. I personally wouldn’t be celebrating anyone’s death not because I am not hurting inside, but because of my religious upbringing and family background. We don’t dance on the graves of those who hurt us.
Ahmed Wetaka
Journalist