Who is responsible for Uganda’s apparent decay?

After WWI scholars, politicians and civil society actors sat down and apportioned responsibility for the war. Various actors were apportioned responsibility but Germany took the biggest blame. Good governance in Post independence Uganda has remained a mirage. Uganda has been run down by people who ironically participated in protracted struggles to liberate us. If what they brought was liberation, then surely, personally I don’t need liberation. But who is responsible for the slump and washout of the once christened pearl of Africa?
To me the answer is not Museveni or his cronies. It is the young people most of who have been eaten up by arrivalism syndrome. Arrivalism had its roots in Makerere University whereby students especially male students coined the 1,2,3,4 term which represents one wife, two children, a three-bedroom house and a 4 Wheel Drive vehicle and after attaining those, they would have arrived. This mentality is still with many of us especially the elites. However, this is a narrow vision. Museveni and his allies had a long-range vision albeit for self-aggrandisement. They started fighting for power in the late 1960s and early 1970s when they were youthful. Today, when you talk about politics to young people, they look at you with disdain and some will tell you out rightly that you bore them.
Before he was killed, Socrates taught his students to always raise debates, ask questions and search for answers to these questions. I am sure that is the raison d’être for all intellectuals. We have no think-tanks and we are not in any way organised to hold our leaders to account. Yet it is clear that the current regime has created a small clique of extremely rich people who suck the blood out of the poor and the majority Ugandans including university graduates have been rendered extremely poor and powerless. And voila, we have chosen to fold our hands and cross our legs as if things are normal and all is well.
It’s shameful that this can happen at a time when we have unlimited access to the internet, phones, twitter, face book, blogs, television, radios and newspapers. By all standards, Museveni mobilised his ilk without all these technological facilities. Today, virtually in every household there’s a mobile phone and radio. Have we inadvertently failed or we have deliberately refused to use this information technological advancement to mobilise the masses to shun the corrupt and demand accountability from their leaders?
Our parents sent us to school so that we can have better lives. Ironically, many of us today have no land because our parents sold it to have us educated, have no jobs, have no money and have chosen to adopt the crooked means of survival. Kampala these days is full of con-artists and most of them are university graduates. We are not poor because we have no resources but because the rapacious members of the topmost leadership loot our resources with impunity. Instead of using national resources to create jobs for our citizens, the “visionary leaders” use the hard earned taxpayers’ money to buy fighter jets to fight imaginary enemies while the real enemies – corruption, unemployment and a failed social service delivery system are to remain with us. Personally, I have stopped calling some of these people Excellencies and Honourables because there is no excellence and no honour in what they do. We have leaders who have instead of building chosen to destroy; instead of healing they have chosen to wound; instead of instilling hope they have become agents of despair.
Ironically, these people criticise us for being indolent when we bemoan poverty yet much as they are hard-working, their hard work is simply exploitative hence destructive. We must arise and reclaim our motherland. We must stop condemning politics as a dirty game. Rather, we must get interested in politics and extricate ourselves of dirty politicians rather than decrying politics as a dirty game. We must know that politics is neither a game to be played nor is it dirty. Politics is a calling for all of us to serve our society. Those who cannot participate as leaders must participate as voters and make sure they vote out the dirty politicians; if not demand accountability from the political leaders. Ultimately, we shall not remember the oppressive character and practices of our enemies but the silence of our friends. Ugandans who keep silent as they fold their hands and cross their legs at a time when we are exploited are the worst enemies.