By Lukanga Samuel
In politics, why is it that elderly people always seem to think they are right without comprehending what is best for the younger generation? Older generations have always been on the wrong side of history in the past, what makes them think they got it right this time? Why do older generations fail to see the difference in opportunities between what they have and what is available to younger people today?
My father’s generation suffered a disastrous war and saw the death of loved ones and friends. Wars have deep psychological effects on people. While most of them participated in the NRA-led liberation war either as adults or child soldiers, others were too young, or, even, babies, and bore the brunt of the war as its unfortunate victims.
This bloody war affected mostly the people of the Luwero-Triangle region. I must respect their courage at that time and how they were able to pick up after that and, indeed, recover within an impressively short time, especially, after their wealth was decimated and they were handed a paltry amount of money by the NRM Government no matter the amount standing to the credit of the war-veteran holder of the account.
The story of a typical native of the Luwero Triangle is a story of inspiration and courage in the midst of adverse circumstances. One of my grouses with my father’s generation is that they have failed, either by default or design, to teach my generation about the NRA-led liberation War sufficiently.
No effort has been made to incorporate the War in educational curriculums so that my generation can learn what actually happened, its remote and immediate causes, the effects of the war; and how to prevent same from recurring. Instead, the War is covered with a blanket.
In Europe, people still visit major sites of WWI to lay wreaths etc. Remembrance Days are still observed. But, in Uganda, my father’s generation made no such plans.
They did well, though, in the evolution of meaningful highlife music which is still the best form of music that Uganda can offer. Their generation saw dedicated and responsible highlife musicians. They had a lot of great souls that the country might never have again who sang about a wide range of issues.
My father’s generation went to the universities in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. They got an education of a superlative quality. They were educated when Uganda’s value system and set of morals had not gone to the dogs or thrown out of the window. Those were the days when you dared not bribe a Headmaster. Most of them went to universities with scholarships, with every single thing paid for.
My generation is regaled by my father’s generation to the point of ennui of how their daily meals in the hostels were all of eggs and chicken parts and how their laundries were done by members of staff specially appointed for that particular assignment. It is an indictment on my father’s generation’s lack of foresight that the first student riot in the history of the Ugandan university system was in the 1970s over a matter as mundane as the reduction of chicken ration in their meals.
My father’s generation never sorted any lecturer; and they were taught by qualified, sometimes expatriate, other times foreign-trained Ugandan lecturers who were passionate about lecturing.
My father’s peers had options of where to work immediately after their studies. Most of them were besieged by companies on their graduation days, wooing them to come and work for them. Most had up to five choices of where to work.
Most of the universities then were of new facilities; they had good classrooms, and hostels; and the graduates faced little or no competition after the university. Ugandan educational institutions were so strong then, you dare not cheat in exams etc. Today, Ugandan Universities are suffering from a reversal of fortunes. Makerere University, for instance, then, was amongst the best ten in Africa. The same university today is the 35th in Africa according to the current Webometrics ranking of African universities.
My father’s generation never cared to sustain the quality of education they enjoyed for my generation. Today, they are the big professors of today, vice-chancellors, principals, headmasters etc. They are in charge of all sectors of our national polity. They never thought of maintaining the standard of education in these universities, secondary schools, primary schools, all of them. They never paused to wonder if my generation will enjoy the privilege of being accosted by prospective employers for jobs the same way they all got jobs the next day after graduation.
Most of them today are Principals, and have their schools being used as special centres during MOCK, UNEB and UBITEB exams.
Most of them who work in senior positions at the bodies that administer these exams are the ones who release these question papers through the backdoor to my own generation for financial gratification.
They are the professors and lecturers that my generation sorts today to get better grades. Worst of all, they never thought of population explosion and so have no safety net to cushion its dire consequences. They saw our value system die. They saw our set of morals die. They saw integrity deleted from our polity. They saw the facilities they enjoyed in the universities depreciating, never to be sustained.
While they went to the universities with scholarships in their days, today, we have nothing like that anymore. They saw everything got worse. They are the ones EFCC chases today. They are the ones who instituted corruption; practically taught us corruption; and saw most of our institutions die. They fuelled the decay of a lot of social services. They saw the military get corrupted. They saw the police get corrupted. They have been managing the affairs of the country for decades now.
- They rig elections and ask my generation to help them carry ballot boxes.
- They are the ones that give my generation money that we share with voters at polling booths.
- They are the chief district administrators who do not perform today.
- They are the ones that now send their children who are part of my generation abroad to enjoy education of global quality because education institutions here are pretty dead.
- They are the ones who boast of how many of their children they have sent abroad for quality education.
- They are the ones that widened the inequality gap in the country to a large degree.
- They are the ones who have fuelled the establishment of private universities as they watched the public ones die.
Today, these public schools are so dead, that they are basically for the poor people, and one cannot rely on the low quality of education that Ugandans get in most of them. Even with the enormous school fees paid in those private schools, the quality of education delivered there cannot be compared to what my father’s generation obtained at the public schools of their days.
I see too many people who should know better thinking that their role is to stand athwart history, yelling “Get off my lawn” to those kids who are congregating there. This is a particularly flawed view, given that after several years of drought the lawn isn’t such an inviting place. The kids just don’t have anywhere else to go.
The truth is that we our fatherly generation have failed the young generation. They’ve given us a bum deal and then proceeded to mock us for their plight. I frequently become enraged by the amount of scorn heaped upon the younger generation by too many older people who didn’t face the challenges that we as the young generation are currently facing. Apparently, it’s hilarious when people start life unemployed, while already facing the equivalent of a monthly mortgage payment.
The truth is, the kids are all right, and if they aren’t it’s because the old generation has failed them. They’re certainly a lot more knowledgeable and savvier than the elderly were back when they were slackers, going to graduate school and earning my Ph.D.
Remember, they carry the Internet around in their pockets. Knowledge is always at their fingertips. The old generation hasn’t done right by them, but that isn’t their fault. It’s ours.
Older people have spent years living on the planet, which gives them a sense of competence and confidence when they are selecting political representation. No one ever chooses a path or an action without believing in the good of that particular choice.
Being young does not guarantee a good outcome any more than being older does. We try, it works, or it does not. Most often the best option is what people choose. They do not expect perfection; they anticipate getting some things done.
The terrible outcomes are a result of believing in the wrong person. Everyone makes mistakes, and being involved in attempting to make a better world for everyone is what’s important.
We try not to be so hard on older people because we know we shall be older people one day; with good results, with mediocre results, and god-awful results evidenced within our past. It is being human. It is a process. It is living the mistakes of the past and the hopes of the future. Ideas and ideologies shift, they morph as society does. We’re history in the making try to make it an equanimous one with room for everyone’s opinion.
Every generation’s decisions can be thought to have had terrible consequences. Hindsight is 2020. It is far easier to see problems than it is to fix them without causing more. The same thing was thought of previous generations by the older generation and will be thought of about the younger generation by later ones. As a generation ages, it begins to realise its own mistakes. They see a younger generation thinking it can do no wrong and realize the flaw based on experience.
For God and my country, Uganda!
The writer is a Social Development Enthusiast and an Ambassador of Humanity. (+256 785717379 / [email protected])
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