Jacob Waiswa,
Peace and Conflict
Program,
Makerere University,
Kampala, Uganda
In Uganda, there are endless conflicts between law enforcers and settlers, between developers and environment activities, and above all; between settlers and environment hazards like cholera. Those conditions represent the structural anomalies in the country, which amount to conflict, not just outburst or explosions into full-scale wars as some people say.
Conflict is rather an understanding of the root, growth processes, depth, nature, complexities, levels of occurrences, role-players and connectedness of conflict sources, multicultural, and multidisciplinary aspects of conflict explored, peace research, conflict prevention, and interventions designs and redress.
It is, therefore, wrong perception of conflict understand it as an end, rather than to attempt to grasp its initializing points, processes, parties, motivations, and strategies to address it.
In recent past, the president of Uganda, His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was quoted by the media suggesting to universities that a program on peace and conflict was irrelevant, having defeated Joseph Kony, the Lord’s Resistance Army in the north of the country.
Yet if the conditions, structural problems still stand, like disease pandemics, poor housing, poverty and unemployment, widespread prostitution of girls as young as 8 years, poor health services, remoteness, poor climate and starvation, and perception of unprivileged position compared to the south, then there is completely nothing to celebrate.
President Museveni cannot sit back and wait for the new Kony brand, but just to concentrate of transforming society for the better (peace). Conflicts in north are still worse, and if it blends with the rising structural concerns in the south, the country will be graced for a disaster.
Population explosion and its implications, for instance cannot be underestimated as agricultural production suffers serious setbacks, poor sanitation and disease pandemic become more vivid, unemployment and insecurity, encroachment on wetlands, which increases the natural incidences of flooding and destruction of lives and property, while congestion in the city puts pressure not only on the environment, but to city-dwellers themselves.
There is a lot of stress experienced through traffic jams characterized by headaches, aggressive driving, and accidents. Accidents have been very prominent in recent times, leading to scores of deaths.
And pollution, which is common in rapidly growing and congested areas, too, has adverse effects on health, in addition to the global impact of the resulting global warming as heat stress, general discomfort, moodiness, drought, famine, among others.
And once the freezing sociopolitical and socioeconomic trends and the miserable consequences are structured through the years, it becomes structured violence, and increases vulnerability to physical violence (physical confrontations).
Most people focus their attention at the crisis stage and ignore the crisis early development years. When commenting about the relevancy of some university programs, including peace and conflict, president Museveni castigated that program with a view that if Kony problem is over, its relevancy too ceases.
But many writers, as it can be realized by the simplest of the minds, have observed the situation in Uganda and labeled it a ‘time-bomb.’ Structural violence in the forms of vote-bribing, partial electioneering process, high inflation, food insecurity, global warming, break-down of the health care system, interfering with the work of the judiciary to influence court decisions, global warming on the persistent increase, and high population growth and unemployment constitute conflict awaiting transformation.
It is also important that government takes conscious steps to promote research, information sharing, and reading culture among the both elites and the general population. The president and other Ugandans, who think like him, ought to undo their position on the peace and conflict program said to be unable to meet national needs; that position is unfortunate, and a statement as that made such a senior citizen spills a lot about his own abilities as a leader and those associated to him. With them in powerful social positions, the future, now, brings lots of questions with no answers for the poor country, Uganda.
