PEACE/CHAOS
Most of the accolades that poured during the NRM so-called
liberation celebration spoke of the NRM as the inventors of peace in Uganda. The
investment in peace is not an end to itself, but a means towards stability of any
community and for the common good of society. Peace should not be merely
itemized and priced. Neither should it be a sub-culture experienced by a few.
Peace should be part of the dominant culture and should be evenly distributed
in society.
To catalogue the occurrence of peaceful situation as a political
achievement or agenda is ideologically self defeating. Society naturally
strives to exist in peace with itself, first and foremost. When we invest in
means of coercion and continuously perpetuate violence instead of peace at
various layers of society, we commit serious crime of contradiction.
Ironically, the NRM have become custodians of our peace even
when they profess violent ideologies. They continue to apportion and trade
peace in manners that have transformed the experience of peace as a lifelong
dream for others.
For a group of people to claim custodianship of peace, does this
mean that generally they are more peaceful than others and are desirous of
peace than the majority of Ugandans? Doesn’t it mean that they are more chaotic
by nature and are therefore capable of disrupting peace? On the flip side,
would it mean that the society is generally constituted of barbaric tribal
elements and individuals who are naturally chaotic? Are members of this society
in such a dire strait that they must be policed heavily with Mambas, over
50,000 armed soldiers and about 50,000 members of the police force armed to the
teeth?
This article argues that
the prevailing dominant ideology in our society is inherently a chaotic one
whose desire is to rule by force and use peace disproportionately as a token of
appeasement. It uses and relies on theory of chaos to subjugate and itemize
peace. It has undressed the population of its peace veils and itemized as a
politically expedient pursuit. This confirms that those who are now tendering
to our peace, are actually the perpetrators of commotion that we experience.
Our traditional societies are generally peaceful and had
cultural institutions that mediated social disequilibrium. Peace was the
penultimate objective of these communities and every community worked hard to
secure peace with its neighbours. They did this through means of reciprocity
such as marriages, rites of passage, seasonal festivities, trades, funerals,
community development, harvesting, local courts and so forth. These
institutions were incorruptible and served to mediate social harmony, unlike
the current state institutions.
The real culture of violence in our midst results from the
violent nature of the ruling elite. These avaricious people repress and
suppress human liberties, violate human rights, perpetuate impunity and above
all function by means of corruption to retain status quo.
It is therefore worthy rejecting the thesis that NRM brought
peace to the communities. Peace is irreducible, but a condition that always
finds equilibrium after it has been displaced.
Peace is also embedded at every level of human discourse, depending on
the experience of social space and social location; peace can mean many states
of being.
If we are to explain peace as merely the absence of war or
violence, then we limit ourselves enormously. Peace of the mind is above all,
the most important. When the mind is unsettled, the perception of peace is
displaced. In our common daily living, the lack of basic human needs provides
the first sense of insecurity. When a man cannot feed himself or his
dependents, then by any measure of things, such a man is not in peace with
himself or his conditions.
In our situation, this form of insecurity is the biggest and
most proximal threat to our peace. To solve this proximal insecurity, we do not
need mambas, machine guns, teargas, jetfighter and colored poisonous liquids.
The society needs to be invested in peaceful means through which production and
products of labour can get equitably distributed.
To contextualize our experiences of peace we must invest in
civil our mannerism. Peace is a pre-requisite for economic and social
transformation. But this peace should remain a cultural competency and
expectancy accepted and practiced by all, not merely a political item. The
failure of this society is to assume that we can reinforce peace by coercive means.
Conceptualization of peace ensues through our spaces and in real time; people
must be comfortable with this process and the outcome, to enable them build
social and cultural capitals out of it, in the absence of a domineering systems
of chaos.
END.
No comments:
Post a Comment