On the Occasion of the 5th Anniversary of the Covenant Nations Church (CNC) November 27, 2011 at Maaya Land, Mpigi district

I grew up with parents that walked with their savior and mentor Jesus Christ, read the word of God regularly and served diligently in their local church. They made an effort to put to work what the Bible and Holy Spirit taught them. These were values of honesty, forgiveness, integrity, love, cleanliness, growing food for the family and education for their children.

On my own, I reached a decision in my room in an apartment I was renting in Kololo, on November 12, 2000 on a Saturday morning, to walk with God fully as a born again Christian. But nothing of these two aspects of my life prepared me for what happened when this gathering that was later to be called CNC was born in August of 2006.

My idea of church was a traditional square building with men in cassocks, red, white and black filing into a Sunday service, choir singing hymns and people coming to see the priest with food and support for his family, the day before. I did not countenance us in this order or my wife being called “Pastor”. I was a businessman with a young family and I could not see how our home would become a service centre for people from all walks of life. I had security and health concerns for our children and my wife and I didn’t see how this would be sustainable in the long run.

I can tell you CNC begun at our worst of times. As a couple as were going through a terrible patch with our business and there was some form of financial indictment on our home and office. In between Sundays we would battle court bailiff’s letters for sale or creditors and banks calling their loans or the URA audit teams camped in our office.

A majority of our workers were departing in droves. In a year, we went from 25 employees in one of our key business to about 05 people. Many times, I would go home and sell our cows to come and pay debts, buy food and donate some funds to people. These combined with adverse publicity, was not the time, humanly speaking, to think of church. But these, as I found out later, are the moments that God uses as building blocks for a firm road back to Him.

The birth of CNC brought such a strong and radical shift in our conventional thinking and practice of church. It brought us to a new level to identify the tricks of the enemy by building a deeper relationship of trust with God. We moved from the surface to the deep. It brought us new revelation of the power in our hands given by the acceptance of the cross. It stabilized us from the terrible swings of the world. It gave us an anchor. For me it showed me how sinful I am yet He continued to welcome me home with forgiveness, like the prodigal son.

A 21^st century Christian has multiple attack centers by the enemy. One of these centers is world knowledge and how it is consumed and used. Knowledge of the world, science and your environment can sometimes be a weapon of the enemy to diminish our faith in the power of God.  It is easy to look to what we know not what we believe, for a solution. Poverty is another weapon. Poverty makes us, particularly in Africa, look to all who come bearing “gifts” as our provider. If they are from America, they must be good, we think. If we get a visa or be prayed for to go, we will find ‘salvation and blessings’ from poverty. We abandon the ground and power God has already given us and follow the flesh and inept teaching of the world. We are Christians without wisdom!

A 21^st century Christian; fights a war without a frontline. The theatre of his war with the devil is Television, Cinema, Fashion, and entertainment, social standing, all with a bent for lust of the flesh that the eye sees on the outside.

The tools of response (Faith, Hope, Love) have been diminished by overly interpreting them to suit our circumstances. We can literally justify anything to keep our lifestyle. I have done that several times too with a lot of pain on my conscience. Like tanks as cavalry replaced horses in the 1900s, we can’t fight the new tricks and channels of the enemy without ingeniously refreshed weapons of the Spirit.  You raise a standing army for a conventional war with the enemy but he uses Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and delivers surprise attacks on you. We got to sharpen new tools that will raise our capabilities in order to overwhelm the enemy. CNC for me has been a tool sharpener!

To fight, you need good intelligence gathering capability for how can you for example face witchcraft without wisdom and how do you tell you are on the right path if you are carnal? How come groups that seek to influence our thinking about life, income, health, beauty, smartness, and sexuality put a communication strategy in place, work with dedicated media channels and raise resources and make a plan and we don’t recognize this and respond appropriately? Sometimes we appear hopelessly out of depth in response yet we claim we are Christians!

The war against poverty for example is spiritual as it is physical. There is no way incomes of a nation can go up, even if we pour resources into people’s hands, unless there is an internal resolve and purpose that is higher than our present circumstances. Unless we seek the good for our communities based on His word, we are all selfish and incapable of redeeming our nation from poverty. We will have no sense of urgency to deliver our promises as leaders if we don’t do what we do as if we are doing it for God and not man.

 

 

CNC has taught us that the battle to stay positive and optimistic in the face of failure and doubt is also spiritual. Science shows us that people, who have a “working memory” of a goal, are associated with an ability to project the future and work for a better day. They simply wont live for now although they live in the now! This implies that achieving a goal requires keeping it in mind (renewing your mind daily) to face the new tricks of the enemy who wants to take our inheritance.

The years of CNC have taught us that the enemy can be put to flight but not be completely defeated. It is like hitting a snake’s back and avoid the head for fear of being beaten. It will lie in wait and heal and return. Like wise, the enemy will return in disease, money, and lust and in fights among the brethren and dissensions and rumors. To unceasingly battle the enemy, we need training and full 24/7/367 day preparation; we need discipline, we need the belt of truth always, the body amour of righteousness that protects and grows our muscles to resist, the shield of faith that covers our head, the helmet of salvation that protects our thinking and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God as a daily dose. In Runyankore, the word for UNCEASINGLY fighting is ‘OKUSIRIBYA’. It is a name given to those who battle the enemy till the sunset, till the end, till they declare victory!

When we do this over time, we develop endurance that gives us accumulated knowledge about the enemy’s tricks. That we call WISDOM. Wisdom will make us more RESPONSE-ABLE in our actions. That word RESPONSIBILITY assumes that I am not at the mercy of whatever the devil has thrown at me. I have an ability to shape my future, particularly with the word of GOD, I am unmovable!

 

 

CNC has also taught us that compromise never maintains lasting peace. Co-existence means you offer space to each other and it depends on who is committed to influence the other, one will at some point yield ground. This is so with sin too. To be a believer and still pursue certain pleasures you had before, makes you neither hot nor cold. You are lukewarm and you know what the word of God says about Lukewarmness! I pray for forgiveness everyday for this kind of childishness in facing sin.

Many nations in turmoil in Africa made some political compromises in order to avoid full-scale war. It sounded wise at Independence but these same nations haven’t had peace fully and they occasionally have flare-ups that threaten stability. Sometimes you need a full war to win and establish a new order and so it is in the spiritual realm. Something has to die in order for a new one to be born without compromises. The Bible shows us that even those situations that have died and are stinking, can be used to create a sense of freshness and newness that nobody would have imagined. See the story of Lazarus for this.

Without my knowledge, the birth of CNC was a turning point in my family and my nation. I notice that over the years, He is using it to change our thinking, our institutions and our doctrines; things that have kept us in spiritual slavery.

I am honored to have been there on day one. I am honored that my children are growing up seeing this and they will know that it was not in our power at all to birth this. That we simply accepted to move by faith and the world changed!

I thank my wife for being consistent with this vision. She confirms the saying that ’no steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No part of River Nile can be turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows until it is focused, dedicated and disciplined’.

She shows me everyday in her dedication to the word that we have to run so fast in order to stand still. That to sustain the pace, we will need to work harder and smarter to improve our standing in the spirit and in the natural.

I am so grateful to all our friends whose true friendship showed itself real in this realm of church and faith. This is the most difficult realm to maintain friendships in, as it requires to not tell a lie to each other; to speak the way you see and feel. Those who have survived the turbulence, God is maturing all of us for a new battle. The battle for Africa’s soul.

“Didn’t I tell you that you would see the Glory of the Lord if you believe” John 11:40

EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS- Monuments of NOTHINGNESS!

I was in Cairo early this year for a meeting and took time off to visit the famous Pyramids of Ancient Egyptian kings in the city of El-Giza, 45 minutes outside main town Cairo. The pyramids make a beautiful backdrop of the city towering above all life as you make the final approach to the valley. At their foot, the pyramids are so monstrously ugly and dizzying to look at in the hot sun.

In all, 98 pyramids have been found in the ancient Egyptiancity of Memphis, chosen by the third and fourth dynasties, 2800 BC, which built these structures to bury their god-kings. The pyramid of Pharaoh Cheops, the tallest at El-Giza and one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is a fantastic piece of architecture, highly sophisticated for the people of 5000 years ago.

According to Herodotus, one of the writers of ancient Egyptian history, this particular pyramid took 20 years to complete, 200,000 workers were engaged; it occupies approximately 50,000 square meters and towers about 146meters high. Each of the stones used weighs two and a half (2,500 kilograms) tones. These stones are placed so neatly together that you can hardly pass a piece of thread in between. This was all done with no concrete or adhesives. How these stones were lifted and placed into position without modern day loading cranes is a wonder for any visitor.

Inside the pyramid, there are three chambers at different heights all perfectly done. At the end of a long narrow passage there is an 80-meter ramp leading to the tomb. The irony is that the tomb is too small (2m by 5m) for the kind of structure it is set in. The walls are overlaid with granite and there are narrow air inlets to allow the “ba” or “vital breath” of the Pharaoh having transcended to another world.

Outside this pyramid in 1954, remains of five boats were excavated, each measuring about 43 meters long. The wood was the cedars of Lebanon. The boats were meant to transport the funerary furniture of the dead Pharaoh so that he can use them in the next world!

 

Let’s just put the numbers together to see how much estimated cost went into this: 20 years mean that this pyramid took 7300 days to build. At 12 hours of daily slave labour, each worker at least used 87,000 man-hours, meaning that the total number of hours for all the workers is slightly over 17 billion. If we estimate at least a conservative modern wage of USD$2 per worker per hour in today’s rate, excluding supervisory time and fees, you have a mind boggling USD$34bn for this just one gravesite!

Emerging out of that steaming hot chamber, I felt the weight of our history as Africans while at the same time, I wanted to be disassociated with this so-called achievement of great knowledge of the Africans of 5000 years ago. The experience also brought home to me, why we stagnated as a continent yet we had a great start leading the world in civilization.

Egypt was ahead of the world in the development of writing; some sort of engraving on papyrus reeds, called “Hieroglyphic”. This was so advanced that it tells a lot about today about the everyday life in ancient Egypt- farming, sports and festivals. It was a mixture of pictograms and ideograms with a three-letter alphabet.

If we talk of scale and intensity in modern times, the pyramids are an expression of a high form of culture and knowledge but iam sorry to say, not much wisdom. A mind that was able to engineer this complex architecture was an extremely developed mind, able to think beyond survival and set pace for firm development of humans. Why a peopleof this caliber concentrated their best resources on burying a dead man than advance the frontiers of human development, I count figure out.

This made me feel that these monuments good as they are for history and tourism today,they are an act in nothingness!

Every instrument man builds must have a purpose. The inventor of an atomic bomber was a clever man but what purpose was it for? How can the reason for monstrous mountains be just to bury a man with property and people? Why would you mystify death so much that you would have to carry wealth that would ideally help thosewho would stay behind?How can you be so intelligent and foolish at the same time?

 

 

It could not have been that these kings had enormous resources. Most of the stones and artifacts used on the pyramids were transported long distances from the southwhen the Nile waters were high in order to carry heavy cargo. The Nile valley is only 4% of the total Egyptian landmass occupied by over 80% of the population. This explains why all civilization begun here and long the Euphrates (present day Iraq)

The technology to grow food in the desert would have been developed if the kings exerted themselves on things of priority than the preoccupation with burying themselves with riches. What if the intensity and scale of these monstrous pyramids had been devoted to developing medicine or weapons of defense, where would Africa now be in terms of development?

Because Egyptian kings misled their people into ignorance and focused on things that didn’t matter, an Eastern group in 1630BC called the Hyksons who created a dynasty in Egypt and started a civil war, destroying the early achievements of the Pharaohs, invaded the country.

This invasion opened the door to many future attacks from Persia, the Ottomans, Napoleon, Britain and the final destruction of the early civilization of Africa. The Pharaohs denied Africa a chance to stand early and lead the world. Africa was so developed that the descendants of Abraham had to cross from present day Iraq and settle as slaves in our borders.

Apparently the Hyksons who defeated the Egyptians came with “strange war machines- the horse drawn chariots and bronze spears”.

I found it laughable that for a people that had achieved the feat of engineering the pyramids are, to not know horse drawn chariot technology at the time. It shows the leadership was completely bankrupt and intoxicated with power, doing a self-serving enterprise than advance the frontiers of civilization. Those pyramids are an expression of selfishness on the part of the kings of the time.

 

Africa’s preoccupation with adoration of leaders I guess stems from this. Our lack of priorities too begins here. This is why we buy brand new four-wheel drives for ministers when our hospitals are rotting with no medicine and we drive by them taking patients to Europe!

It isn’t any different from the 19^th century African kings exchanging their people for mirrors and chocolate! Is it any different from African leaders who shop for weapons all over the world and stifle internal capacity to develop even the very prototypes of those weapons so that they can manufacture their own spares in times of trouble? Importation of things is much easier than thinking through self-reliance in Africa.

A Dutch psychologist, Geert Hofsteede said cultures are judged on three principles: whether the individual members of a society make independent decisions and expect no one but them to be held accountable; how well a culture tolerates ambiguity and what attitude a society holds towards hierarchy and those in power.

If a society worships those in power rather than hold them to account, it expresses the failure of a people to challenge leadership for better services. When those societies collapse like we have in Somalia, both the led and the leaders should take the blame for wasted opportunities to lay a firm foundation when the time is right.

The Egyptian pyramids left a bad taste in my mouth and expressed Africa’s failure than the wonder and success people associate with the history of the pyramids.

END

Remarks at the Opening of the first UYC, Makerere University, Kampala, August 9 2010

A member of the planning committee for this convention was with me in a TV studio this week, for a live show taping in preparation for this day. We both thought we would appear but unfortunately, the show host had space for one person and it had to be me. I was looking forward that my friend would take the heat and I would wait and watch. When we I got home, he sent me a message, late in the night, which inspired me.

He said, “WE WILL PREVAIL”! That message was simple but loaded with meaning;it had much anticipation and reassurance in the same tone. It had a certain tone of urgency,duty and the confidence to succeed embedded. It kept me awake much of the night.

The process of putting this event together has been challenging, as it has been inspiring. This is as well because the agreement on the purpose for doing this was soul breaking and building at the same time. It brought the best out of young people that I have seen lately in my country.They refused to let the circumstances of organizational inadequacies determine their boundaries of dreaming.

Practically, with no resources in assets and time, I watched a group of young people coalesce around a core principle:  that we will travel in a complete new direction, endure criticism and doubt from peers on whether we will succeed, but we will stay the course because we believe Uganda needs this kind of commitment at this time.

The process made it so clear to me that that every generation has such a thing called a MANDATE,a sense of duty that defines and sets it apart from the one before it. No two people can do the same thing so well in a different space, time and history.

This process showed me that we have a choice: To carry out this mandate or pass it on. To pass it on is to tell the unborn that WE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO CONSTRUCT A BETTER COUNTRY BUT WE SHYED AWAY FROM DUTY!

Our generation has a MANDATE to build a constituency of young people that MUST move Uganda to the next level. We derive this authority from the sheer power of our energy, numbers and the yearning to lead.To do this we got to deal first with what afflicts a majority of us most: to earn an honest living through the gifts that God gave us and not to rely on anyone for our future.To earn respect of our peers and find meaning in what we do.

This constituency, well founded will become the springboard for dealing with other issues that affect our nation.

When we prevail, Africa will prevail because there are so many nations in Africa with young people struggling with similar issues and lacking an example on which to model their way out. This is why we can’t give up on our duty irrespective of our circumstances!

One of my favorite satirist who loved to present people with the absurdity of their conventional thinking, an Irish man called George Bernard Shaw said, “People always blame their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for circumstances they want, and if they cant find them, make them”

This convention is about young people learning to take responsibility for their destiny

It is about finding a medicine to the evil of unemployment that sends us into riots and allows our consciences to be abused by people who care nothing other than our votes.

It is about us deciding to chart a new course in building our towns and villages through hard work. It is about learning that life is an equalizer: It gives you back more when you put in more; that if we are willing to depart from the ways and thinking of our fore fathers that has held us down, we will reap a bountiful harvest of ‘stabler nation’.

It is about deciding if we will “prevail” as a generation and find meaning and purpose in our lives or whether we will sink under the torrent of blaming other people for what has gone wrong with us!

I ask you to use this convention to find context in your financial and spiritual lives. There is so much power in CONTEXT. It means that you have a base from which to spring. It means that you are planted firmly and, therefore, not shaken by small monies dangled at you during elections or homosexual groups selling their ideology, using your head and butt as their fertile ground.

Context gives confidence in one’s future and therefore, allows one to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. Context also gives us PERSPECTIVE or the ability to take a long-term view of things and have a big picture of how our world can be when we work at our circumstances relentlessly. Perspective teaches you to save and invest and learn and grow.

Without this we can never have any goal in life. Goals that are set and worked on are the seeds of long-term success in life. In fact, success is all about goals; all other things are just commentary!

These three days we will learn how to start and run an enterprise on no cash; we will find a new model on how to finance start-ups for youth. We will listen to a new kind of teaching on patriotism and nationalism in order to build the future Uganda we want, together.

I need you to decide today if Uganda will prevail by exercising your own personal leadership; by taking your generational mandate seriously and by shaping the nation you want your children to be proud of, when their time comes.

This convention is not about money; it is about long-term success for you and for your nation though hard work and learning the tools that will raise you so that you can punch above your weight. It is not about politics of the post of secretary General ship or presidency of NRM as I have heard rumors say here, for this is a small matter in the bigger scheme of things.

It is about the youths of Uganda finding their feet in a new and challenging world where an African’s identity and destiny is threatened because of lack of innovation and behavior that seeks comfort without understanding, a cultural infrastructure that sets us up to fail.

It is not about allowances, which are destroying a spirit of voluntarism, and eating away at our sense of duty; it is about creating a new constituency for young people with a philosophy of “I can do it myself” This is why anybody here for money is wasting their time and Uganda’s precious future!

I must conclude by introducing to you the young people behind this effort. These have outperformed their doubters, shamed pessimists and personally, taught me never to focus on the scars of a fight but the objective of it.

They have been a mirror image for me on what to correct when one is leading a no pay, stressful, painfulhard struggle to change the thinking of a generation. It is said if you change a policy, you are called a REFORMER; if you change a Mindset, You are REVOLUTIONARY! They have proved to me that it is good to dream things and ask why not.

Without their commitment and sacrifice, we would not be here today.

Eleanor Namara: Straight from school, no experience in the field of organization, she has held out strong amid stress of managing people of different temperaments. The future belongs to the patient and those who seek to understand.

Sharad Karia: A few months out of business school and from a family that is founded on business, he has endured the pressure of raising funds and stopping unnecessary consumption pressures from all of us on the committee. He is barely 24.

Richard Kawesa: A singer who uses his voice for entrepreneurial pursuit; he has a large heart for Uganda. I identified him six years ago when our company made an attempt at branding Uganda. He is a factory of ideas on how Uganda could look like if we all raise together to honour and work for it.

Charlotte Ampaire: A journalist with the Media centre who literally has set aside her work and joined the activism of the Youth Convention for the cause of young people in Uganda.

A little argumentative just like all the Rukungiri people I meet, she is sharp and focused with so much energy and zeal. She is our spokesperson and the one you probably have spoken to most on telephone to confirm your attendance.

ORPamela Ankunda: Work is her life and I think the ideal of building an organization and attention to detail tirelessly, is her strength. She is quite easy to throw work at because she will turn out results any time of day!

Phillip Odoki: If there are difficult lawyers to deal with, he is one of them. We have been lucky that he is on our side. His curiosity and sometimes doubt of every step of the detail, has kept us on a good path. We haven’t fallen over our heads because he is out there showing us how “doubtful” our premises are!

Kin Kariisa:  An accomplished self made entrepreneur, I met him in 1999 and asked him to help run the website of the president’s campaign.  In less than a year, he had raised to the rank of IT advisor and moving on to become the President’s IT specialist. I throw a lot on his plate and he takes it willingly

PradipKaria: A down to earth successful entrepreneur in real estate, he humbles himself and spends the nights with young people debating the way forward for Uganda. He has supported us with his heart, his wallet and his family. He is also one of the best parents I have met, instructing by example his own children and inducting them into the social and business life of this nation.

Chris Bagambe: An army officer who likes to debate and win that debate too. I met him recently and he never ceases to amaze me by how much involved he is in the social political life of the country. He takes care of the security aspects of our team.

Mike Sebalu: An East African legislator who we stood on opposing sides in 1994 to soon after my school, to bring the first representation of young people to parliament. He finds time to come and debate with us the future of our country and the issues of East Africa.

OfwonoOpondo: The NRM spokesman, who many people love to hate, has been my personal friend since 1993. Well groomed politically with a sharp mind and tongue, he is good to be with because he shoots down conventional thinking.

AwelUwihangye:  The young man trying to get young people feel good about their inventions by awarding their successes.

David Mukholi: The quiet researcher who challenges all our opinions and turns down our conventional thinking on its head. He never shies away from responsibility and has been a professional and business friend since 1995

Fred Opolot:  The quiet gentleman who likes to resolve all differences with understanding and a step-back-to understand approach. He is the Director of the Media Centre and he has been key in the publicity of the convention and most importantly in negotiating the availability of this venue to us.

Guma Muganda: A diplomat who enjoys discussion about ideaology and the future of our country. He makes time and a point to apologize if he won’t make it to our meetings. He has been key in getting some of the key speakers here.

Hudu Hussein: A young man helping at the NRM communications bureau and aspiring to lead the youth of his area into parliament, Hudu has a yearning to learn that which will help Uganda.

Robert Kabushenga: Our very discerning guide in debate and supporter of the youth and NRM cause.

 

Let me now close this with an END in mind! Our summary chart!

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What Kind of Leadership does Africa need?

 

 

Speech at the Inauguration of the next leadership for Africa: For Hon. Frank Tumwebaze, MP Kamwenge County, Kibale District, at Protea hotel, July 24 2010, 18hrs.

‘The More things a Man is ashamed of,

the More respectable He is’

George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950

I am honored today to speak at what I call an inauguration into a new level of leadership for Uganda by being in attendance as Frank Tumwebaze ask us for support for his second term to represent the people of Kamwenge.

It is a little assuming to use this kind of approach to describe the reason we are here tonight. Tumwebaze is doing an ordinary Politician’s job to gather us here and ask us for a hand to return to Parliament. Many of us had better things to do this weekend and certainly a lot more of us might have the faintest of interest in parliament. But we are here any way!

My use of the phrase “New Leadership” at this event is simply symbolic. I want to draw the attention of this audience to the urgent need for a new attitude towards leadership, particularly for Africa and to begin to see ourselves as causative FACTORS of the consequences emanating from conventional and casual approach towards leadership.

I chose George Bernard Shaw’s satirical remark to jolt us into some new thinking about Leadership.

First let me mention that in 1998, I had been visiting some youth cells I had set up in 1993/94; cells that I had used in my failed bid to represent the central Uganda Youth in parliament but I had maintained as sources of information and publicity channels for the Movement.

I had been in Mbarara to meet some of them and I was introduced to a light skinned, lanky fellow who I was told had done mathematics at the University but was now, besides teaching, engaged in Movement work. This young man was Frank Tumwebaze.

That day, when the group begun a session in which I was teaching them how to use the media to affirm Movement work in the districts using statistics, Frank was the most adaptive to the talk and had a deep yearning in his eyes to learn more. In 1999, I took him and others to the President at his Rwakitura home to affirm the work they were doing on their own. In 2001, Frank was appointed Deputy RDC Iganga and soon after, Presidential Assistant. Next I heard him running for Parliament and here we are to celebrate that growth in leadership, stature and influence and to support him for a new term.

I thank God for the opportunity to impart into Frank, albeit in a very minimal way, those early deposits of the yearning to serve others without pay by which is the foundation of the leadership of his community today.

In order to clearly prescribe a type of medicine, a doctor must do a thorough diagnosis or at least he is assumed to over the patient. The question of what has gone wrong with Africa troubles and sometimes destabilizes my thought process and challenges me. Why is it that we easily fall prey to basic things and avoid the hard road to growth and personal change? Why are our societies so easily fragmented over narrow issues as tribe and clan and can’t hold together in the face of a fast changing world? Why are our leaders irresponsible dismissing criticism and shrugging off all internal voices to do change and do good?

This search has taken me places on our continent where I have found much similarity in outlook and behavior of both the leaders and the led; I spoken to many people, searched far and wide for answers. I must admit I am not close to the answers than when I begun. I have, however, found some in SCIENCE that I want to share with you today. These answers are so basic that they shocked me at first by their simplicity: They are founded in our upbringing and they are a clarion call to focus on our families and our children as the future of a better Africa!

I want to begin these three key answers with an example:

Sometime in 2006, I challenged President Yoweri Museveni to a contest to establish his knowledge of the past and his love for what he claims is his best possession: cows.

I asked him to recite 25 praise names of his cows that he remembers through the times.

In the first 5 minutes, 10 names came out of his mouth so sharp and easy like soldiers on a parade falling in line. In another 30 minutes, he passed the 25 mark and recited 50 Praise names. Some have stuck on my mind that I love their cultural context and construction.

(KYAKYA RUKURINGANA RUTONGANA OMWANYA GWA NYINAYO, KASHURE KA KYA KYA MBANGARI RURENZYA EBIGUNGIRO, RUTAHANZYA NA BIKADE NA MUKURU WAAYO)

I left wondering how a mind that thinks about Uganda, Africa, trade, army, taxes, global politics, could unlock something learnt 50 years ago and bring it out as fresh as when it was first registered in the mind.

 

 

MYELINATION

This is the answer: In the brain of a human being, God put a wonderful turbo engine run on cells called the Neurons. This, the brain has over 3bn of them. This neuron has a fatty insulation that peaks in our 20s and then declines progressively. Some say it continues to grow in some people up to age 50. This insulation is called MYELIN and it allows electrical signals to travel through the brain very quickly and efficiently. The progressive loss of this element means that it takes longer to put a face to a name or a book to an author.

The name for this syndrome is common to all of us: FORGETFULNESS! The loss of Myelin or the retardation of a process called MYELINATION makes the brain like a radio no longer tuned to a station and it takes the brain more effort to find the signal. Just to emphasize, the process of Myelination is hindered by intoxicants and alcohol is top of these!

New research however, show us that MYELINATION seems to occur in specific parts of the Neuron, the PART RESPONSIBLE FOR LEARNING NEW THINGS. The part for long-term memory shows NO LOSS AT ALL! The parts that remember, “Where did I drop my car keys” degenerate FAST as the zone that remembers what you saw or heard when you were 5 or 7 stabilizes and shows no recession!

 

In my opinion this means that to deal with Africans and why we are so conventional about life and the failure to exert ourselves against nature, we must understand our construction and our early days in our own homes. It explains why we dress up so well yet our back yards and cities are dirty and we expect someone to clean them for us. (Kampala is dirty because we are all collectively Dirty!)

It explains why we think public goods are nobody’s and deserve to be destroyed as long as we who destroy them look good to our friends and relatives. It makes us look at responsibility as a given to put down whenever it doesn’t suit

Most importantly, the lesson about MYELINATION for me was that we must be careful what we teach or show our children as they grow up. They register so early and so deeply and these lessons are hard to unlearn. It is hard to teach us to grow food or construct a car when we can easily pick food from a hotel or simply drive a car. (The example of Sudan and WFP!) It is easy to drive a car and not to bother about its construction because the latter is a process, the former is easy!

That thinking keeps the African uncreative, conventional and stationary in a changing world and threatens him to extinction.  A society raised in this manner produces leaders who think and act this way too and, therefore, we have change of musical chairs and not real heart and soul change whenever we hold an election. This explains why a significant increase in the number of leaders all over Uganda since 1994 when we had the CA, has not led to an increase in quality decision making or real growth in the type of leadership we got in 1986. It has instead had an inverse relationship. Thieves now hide in politics and criminals take positions of responsibility to seek protection in the “Big man” mentality. This is a return to impunity of sorts. (Example of the DEO of Sembabule)

This is why the Bible in the book of Proverbs says: “Teach a child the way they should behave and when they grow, they will not depart from it”

The second lesson science gives us is related to the first one. It is to do with the EYE as the entry point of many of the things we register in our minds.

 

PERCEPTUAL SPAN

Scientists have a concept with the eye they call PERCEPTUAL SPAN. It means that when we read, if we care to (remember they say that if you want something hidden from an African, put it in a book. These days I see Nigerian Movies shamelessly played out in offices during working hours by senior people in Government), we are only able to take one key word and may be four characters, chew on them and try to make sense before we move on to the next sentence or paragraph. We jump from one chunk of letters to another not taking the whole page in one go. That is how our mind learns too, one idea at a time.

The reason we do this is because God wired our eyes with sensors called RECEPTORS. These are clustered in one region of the retina called FOVEA. It means that for us to read and understand, we MUST focus this FOVEA on a shape or letters or a cluster of colors doing what I would call SCANNING and ASSIMILATING.

This means that what you scan, you STORE in one of the pages of the brain either in your deep Sub conscious that returns in your dreams or in your active conscious.

Television advertising is based on this concept. Advertisers focus on the centre of the screen to tap the scanning of the FOVEA for good memorization. This is why TV is addictive with its drama, bright lights, loud and funny noises, talking heads, quick editing cuts, zooming in and out and exaggerated action.

Let me emphasize therefore that the eye as scanner is a deep ‘scaler’ of what we see and therefore what we store. What we store is not easy to un-store unless we make a deep conscious effort to release, dump and learn new concepts.

We easily think what we have seen on the outside is what is real on the inside and we ignore the age-old saying that NOT ALL THAT GLITTERS IS GOLD. What are you showing your children therefore? Is it Money, Beer, cigarettes, slapping your wife, stealing, rumors, oversleeping and a deep disdain for work?

This, the FOVEA stores them deeply and if they don’t go against this conditioning, they can easily become a slave of it as they grow. That way you have denied Africa a chance of a generation to redeem itself. To change leadership, we got to raise a new generation of leaders with new thinking and new heights. It starts today in our homes and our hearts.

 

 

 

 LANGUAGE

The third and final lesson comes from Social science and though it is a bit of a departure from the two I have mentioned it has the strongest connection to our daily life. It is called LANGUAGE: OUR MEDIUM OF TRANSMISSION OF IDEAS!

The memory span of a language or person is governed by the time it takes to pronounce words or numbers. There is a correlation between the time it takes a speaker of a language to pronounce numbers or words and the memory span of that speaker.

Languages with short words and descriptive versions of numbers tend to have a certain level of easiness in learning. Psychologists for example say, Cantonese, the Chinese language has short words and numbers. The word Seven is pronounced: QI and Four is: SI. Eleven in China is counted, as TEN ONE, twenty four is TWO TENS OF FOUR. (Concepts not numbers)

This language count is so logical to a young mind that it is easy to learn counting pretty fast and early in life and makes mathematics part of daily life, not an isolated, far off numbering that doesn’t match language. Our languages promote certain idioms and concepts that naturally gravitate against work and learning and trying new things.

For example the exclamations: ai, ai, Nakaba!!!!” is against hard work. When my late Father grew food and left the tradition of only milk for Banyankore children, he was ostracized as a strange man, a difficult character, anti-tradition and all sorts of names, yet the same people would come to him to buy food during famines.  The Banyankore say: OWABINGA IBIRI, ZIMUTSIGA ZOMBI. So you should be afraid of trying something new. The Banyoro of say: AHAANGA IBIRI TANYAATA! Kabalega’s people had a sense of effort and trying!

A Dutch psychologist called Geert Hofsteede (The Hofsteede Dimensions) working with IBM in the 1960s dissected societies on a scale of growth that I find relevant for Africa today. He said societies can be distinguished based on three areas:

1) How a society expects individuals to look after themselves and not reliant on relatives or a social system. In other words how responsible are people for their own lives and decision-making? (Individualism versus Collectivism)

2) How well a culture tolerates ambiguity. Countries that rely on rules and plans are most likely to stick to procedure regardless of circumstances. In other words: “Iam not sure what iam doing or my leadership but any way it turns out, I guess its ok!” (Uncertainty avoidance scale)

3) How a society’s attitude in regard to hierarchy particularly how it views those in power and positions of responsibility and whether they disagree with them openly and seek to change them or sees them as kings and queens, untouchables! (The power Distance index) ( I recommend an Author called Malcolm Gladwell)

This is how you have Mitigated speech before authority/differential speech and sayings like these since we had kingdoms as precursors of the current nation state:

“EBYOKUGAMBIIRE OMUKAMA NIBYO OMUSHENGYESA REERO NGU AGUME NAKUHAKA!”

(The example of a wedding I attended and they all exonerated a certain minister for failure of roads, waterways that have dead ships at a time when we are one EAC market, Uganda airlines stripped alive and buried so we can travel KQ at the latter’s terms, trains that collapsed making roads the only form of transport when even the Colonialists had a functioning rail system etc saying it wasn’t him! It had been bad luck!)

Lack of personal responsibility and thinking those who take this responsibility are weak is within our history and must be UNLEARNED!

I need to tell you that change and growth is a function of culture. It isn’t how much money you pump in an economy or how many Phds are there in a country. If it were so, Palestinians who receive over USD$3bn in support from the world would have kept their small side of the bargain developed. Africa with over 100bn worth of aid since the 1960s would be a first class continent.

Development must be premised on a firm cultural belief that a people are committed to being the best at what they do. The good thing is that we can all change and we can build a new form of culture and we can renew ourselves too. God imbued man with this ability unlike other creatures.

So what kind of a leader then must we fight to produce in ourselves in order to take the NRM, Uganda and Africa forward?

I return to my theme for today:

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more potential for reform is in him.

 

 

 

 

1)   What are you therefore ashamed of? If you see nothing in our lives that need total change, you are a CONFORMIST and a cover up!  You won’t help Africa. If you see shameful things that have held us back, you will stand and be counted and do something within your power and means.

2)        If you are ashamed of language you will be tired of the word CAPACITY BUILDING, now changed to CAPACITATION that consumes USD$4b (ECA2006) in loans to Africa but keeps us so poor and feeds the people who give it to us and their cronies doing workshops and seminars. You will be ashamed that Africa lost USD$12bn (WHO) in man hours to malaria or 1.3% of its GDP and that Apac has the highest malaria concentration on earth, killing up to 320 people per day in Uganda and we keep laughing. Apac has a population of 500,000 people and half of these are in hospitals over malaria annually (Time Magazine, June 2010) Yet the cost of distributing one net is USD10 and the capacity for a remedy is within our wasted brains, wasted on alcohol and dressing up and traveling the world and denying where we come from!

3)        You will be ASHAMED that we still beg donors as a country (there is rampant individual begging by the peasants and others people from those who look better and the latter are happy to give instead of teaching) to balance our budgets yet as a nation, we have been rated by Fitch rating agency and authorized to go to the international Bond market and raise money to build roads, high ways etc at a lower interest.

We are afraid of venturing out and leveraging our status to raise money in a business manner and are content to be slapped in the face by those who have homosexual agendas and have kept us poor for 800 years since slave trade. You will be ashamed by a civil service happy to supplicate than to find solutions and lead the country out of a zombie spirit. You will be ashamed! You will be ashamed of a wedding industry so large that every day you will be in a wedding meeting raising funds but you have broken families and an increasing divorce rate among young couples failing to handle marriage after spending a fortune and left in debts.  You will be ashamed!

4)        If you are ashamed enough of all these and others; you will demand a higher personal accountability and responsibility to your country. If you seek to be an MP or a leader at any level, you have even a higher responsibility to be different from the crop that warms seats and passes laws that inhibit growth of our economy and look away when the cows come and they blame government!

As I end, let me re-state this: A leader Africa is looking for in the district, parliament, county is nurtured in the family first and today! If you use the terms I begun with: the MYLIENATION, PERCEPTUAL SPAN AND LANGUAGE you will know how hard it is to change behavior-learned young. It is time to create a new behavior for Africa! My best MP for the next leg will be a teacher, a cultural breaker and change agent, and a stand-alone warrior unashamed to take “unpopular stances”, willing to fight against what has enslaved us than perpetuate it further to the next generation. I will support that MP with my mouth and my wallet!

I thank you all, have a great evening and may the Lord bless your new effort to change Africa for better.

END