Clean Kigali, Kenyan courtesy, how Nyerere walloped Gaddafi...

[nngu007]

By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

Monday, April 11 2011


These past two weeks, my faith in Uganda’s East African Community neighbours has been restored.

Starting with Rwanda, I flew into Kigali for a day’s work and was wowed by the cleanliness of the city.

Apparently, East Africans, Kampalans included, are not genetically coded to live like pigs.

The Rwandans who have less money than Uganda have taught us, if we are teachable, that we can actually have a clean capital.


The second reason I remembered to love my neighbours was given by Kenya Airways.


Frequent regional travellers are conversant with complaints that “The Pride of Africa” takes passengers for granted, acting like a bully who’s saying that you have little option but fly with them.


After my Rwanda trip, I witnessed extreme customer care on board the Kenya Airways flight from Kigali to Nairobi and when I forgot my spectacles on the plane, staff at the Jomo Kenyatta airport did their best to recover them before my connection, which was due in a matter of minutes.


A young lady among the officials manning Gate 4 on the afternoon of March 30 whisked me through several passages to a security office where my specs were promptly handed back to me.


And now as we mark the 32nd anniversary of the toppling of my former president Field Marshall Idi Amin on April 11, I recall the sacrifice Tanzania made for the liberation of Uganda from his military dictatorship.


I recall particularly Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s memorable three lines as he announced to his countrymen that he had decided to engage in a full-scale war against Idi Amin: “Uwezo wa kumpiga tunao; sababu ya kumpiga tunayo; na nia ya kumpiga tunayo.”


To translate these lines kills the flavour but since we Ugandans for some reason have dragged our feet in embracing Swahili, Mwalimu meant: “We have the capacity, the reason and the will to beat him.”


That was around October 1978. A couple of months later, if Nyerere had had to repeat his speech, he would have used the plural of “to beat” and said “kuwapiga” for there were now two enemies facing him: Field Marshall Idi Amin and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.


The latter had joined in and deployed thousands of troops and sophisticated military hardware in Uganda to beat back the enemies of Islam, which was what he had been told.


Now the Western media is awash with the huge war effort to tame Colonel Gaddafi as if he were some invincible force.


Those of us who witnessed his troops being mowed down like flies are not convinced.

I saw scores being buried near my former school along Entebbe Road.

The rest were rounded up and returned home with bowed heads.


It is said he wanted to pay huge sums for their return but Nyerere typically refused the money and assured him Tanzania did not trade in human beings.


After being walloped and then forgiven by Nyerere, Brother Gaddafi should have learnt some lessons in humility, magnanimity, the sanctity of life and the dignity of fellow humans including Libyans who may hold views contrary to his. Did he?

 

[RealMan]

Its a nice article only stunned to learn that Gaddafi wanted to part with a huge sum to redeem his captured soldiers fighting for H.E Idd Amin Dada.
Nyerere should have at least demanded for some kind of compensation not for the Libyan soldiers BUT for the massive loss Tanzania and Tanzanians suffered in terms of resources (both human and non-human) before and during the war whose effects have haunt the country these past three decades.
But again that was Nyerere - A true African!

 

[Elia]

Mwl Nyerere Baba wa Taifa, a tru leader