As good religious people, we are enjoined to love our neighbours, even if sometimes it is not as we love ourselves.
We laugh with them when they are
happy, cry together when sad; admonish them when they do the most
stupid thing, or laud them for some great stuff they have done.
We wring our hands in
helplessness when we can do little about what they may be going through.
Sometimes we don’t know whether to laugh or cry or be angry. Other
times we look on in bewilderment at some inexplicable behaviour.
That’s what good neighbours do.
You go through a whole range of emotions. It has always been with our
neighbours to the...
north with whom we share a lot. We love them dearly
even when they have this habit of doing some terrible things to us.
Which they have done repeatedly
over the last few years and still expect us to love them for it. I
suppose neighbours also have the right to expect to be loved no matter
what.
The other day, our Ugandan
brothers had a change of heart and did one of those unexpected things.
They released from detention nine Rwandans out of dozens they are
holding. But that change did more than that; it also untied tongues.
You see these neighbours of ours
love talking. You can hardly get them to stop talking and listen.
Lately they had become strangely silent on some very important
neighbourly issues about which they would normally express strong
opinions, and vigorously too.
They immediately reverted to
type and began doing the customary thing but with the added eagerness of
someone who had not spoken for a while. It was clear that holding their
tongue, especially for those in the media, for any length of time must
be a very trying thing.
Anyway, they had been loosened
by what was called a goodwill gesture by grim-faced government
officials, with no trace of goodwill in their manner, who had invited
the media to witness that gesture. The neighbours in the media liked the
sound of it and happily repeated it for our benefit.
It seems when you have not been
speaking for a while words change meaning. Goodwill did. What was so
goodwill about releasing people from detention who shouldn’t have been
held in the first place?
Wasn’t this in any case supposed
to have happened much earlier according to some kind of understanding
between the two countries?
But the officials said it was
and the media repeated that message and both demanded that we believe
it. They even asked that we reciprocate the good gesture.
That is another word that seems
to have changed meaning: reciprocate. How do you reciprocate? Release
people you have never held? Arrest some and then set them free and so
return the gesture?
Well, there it was – a
bewildering use of words and an even more perplexing request that we
love them for it and follow suit. Of course we love them. They are our
neighbours, aren’t they?
But as good neighbours we also
found it sad that the media that once prided itself for its independence
had been reduced to merely carrying official statements. It used to
boast of being a thorn in the flesh of officialdom, of its acerbic
tongue and sharp barbs. Now here it was obediently lending its powerful
voice to it instead. What has happened?
These neighbours are reputed to
be intelligent, critical people. For some reason, they have allowed
themselves to be manipulated by official pronouncements. Why does this
happen?
Three things probably explain this.
One is a decades-old attitude
about Rwanda and its citizens formed when Rwandans were refugees and
labourers in Uganda. That attitude seems not to have changed even
though Rwanda has and there is ample evidence for it.
Many of those refugees have
since returned home. Not many people go to work in the tea, coffee and
sugar cane plantations or Kilembe Mine. The latter is long dead. Locals
would crowd them out of farm labour. In any case a better livelihood can
be earned at home.
But that’s the image of Rwanda
many Ugandans love to keep. Somehow it gives them a sense of
superiority, obviously false and misplaced.
Another side to this is that
they are in denial of the reality of Rwanda today. They simply cannot
come to terms with the idea of Rwanda as an independent nation, able to
choose and chart its own course and make progress, and with the means to
defend that choice.
Two, there is a misplaced sense
of love of country; that it is their patriotic duty to shut out your
neighbour when you disagree and support your country even when it is
obviously in the wrong.
Three, and the most regrettable,
is that they have been gagged by being stuffed with contents from the
famous brown envelopes they say their president readily hands out for
that very purpose.
Whatever the reasons for this
attitude, it has been in evidence for some time and all the authorities
have had to do is to cleverly manipulate it.
Back to the goodwill gesture our
neighbours have been trumpeting. Of course, release from any kind of
detention is a good thing. We can certainly be happy that nine of our
own are now free.
We could be even happier if the
others held in unknown and illegal places are also freed, and all those
other causes of tension are removed. We could then love our neighbours
even more.
Still, we love them as we are required, as neighbours should, and only ask that they reciprocate.
The views expressed in this article are of the author.
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