Rodney Muhumuza
2 November 2008
column
Kampala — Source Opak is a veteran journalist who has also worked for the government, a retiree who understands the spirit of Teso better than most.
The official spokesman for the Iteso Cultural Union, the jolly Mr Opak spends his evenings humouring friends in the bars of Soroti Municipality. I never got to spend an evening with him, although he allowed me the opportunity, but I had an entire afternoon with him-- enough time to understand why the bearded Mr Opak does not know the curse of lonely evenings.
It was all in his face-and in his words. Mr Opak knew how to make a grim story sound interesting, even if it was being told from the inside of a rickety car speeding down the red dirt road from Soroti to Serere. "We used to be rich," Mr Opak told me as we headed to Serere, where I would meet the Emorimor of Teso, Augustine Osuban. "In the past, because we had a lot of cattle around this place, the driver would have had to slow down..."
The dusty journey to Serere took all of 30 minutes. The man behind the steering wheel never reduced speed. Mr Opak never kept quiet. I never stopped listening. "We think that the whole country wants to destroy us," Mr Opak said. "Teso is really under siege. We have gone through all the problems the Acholi have -and more."
Throughout my conversation with Mr Opak, who has been information minister in the Iteso Cultural Union since 1998, he came across as a man who spoke not just for the cultural institution but also for the broader Teso region. While he made no desperate attempt to align the interests of the cultural institution with those of the Iteso people, Mr Opak made no mistake of failing to trace the cultural institution's relevance to the region's troubled history.
The Iteso Cultural Union exists because the Iteso people need credible guidance, he argued, launching into a laboured explanation of the problems that still bedevil the region; troubles that made it possible for the Iteso Cultural Union to claim it had a place in the lives of the Iteso. But the Iteso people, at least those who care, did not get a proper cultural institution of their own until 2000, when Mr Osuban was enthroned as leader of the Iteso Cultural Union.
"We had always wanted to have one, because we realised that it was not good to be a leader-less society," Mr Opak said. "Even monkeys have leaders. But the most important reason that sparked off everything was the insurgency of the Uganda Peoples Army from 1987 to 1992. During that period, we lost all the cattle stock that we had. We had been the number one cattle keepers."
Peter Otai's rebellion brought misery to his own people, Mr Opak recalled, but it also invited scrutiny and hostility from a national army desperate to stamp out rebellious elements in the early years of the Museveni administration. According to Mr Opak, no one in Teso had the credibility, or even the guts, to tell the people that the rebellion should stop.
"People wanted the rebellion to end, but there was nobody who had the mandate to call them and tell them so," Mr Opak said. "There were [some] people who masqueraded as leaders of Teso; in fact, the politicians were claiming that leadership. It became impossible to resolve the war."
Mr Osuban's 2000 enthronement as Teso's second Emorimor was much less controversial than that of his predecessor, Paphras Imodot, in part because the government was now comfortable with the idea of a kingship of sorts in Teso. Mr Imodot had in 1996 been elected leader of the Iteso Cultural Union amid chaotic scenes that pitted government operatives against a section of Iteso people who were willing to lose their sanity to have their 'king' enthroned.
Although the 1995 Constitution allowed communities to unite under cultural institutions, and despite the fact that similar institutions were being revived in different parts of Uganda, the government had somehow found it unacceptable to let the Iteso have a cultural leader. "The government looked at the institution with suspicion," Mr Opak recalled. "They thought that [former president Milton] Obote was reorganising the Uganda People's Congress through the institution."
The cat-and-mouse game between security operatives and Emorimor enthusiasts was rich in pain and misery, but it had a spectacular ending. The ceremony during which Mr Imodot was elected to the forbidden position was a "five-minute thing" that had been contrived to beat the police at their own game. Yet it was also a ceremony that led to the emotional enthronement as Emorimor of a man whom many suspected would be disappointing.
As Mr Opak recalled, one elder, Ocuka L'Ourum, nominated Mr Imodot as the first Emorimor of Teso, and all the enthusiasts that afternoon "just lifted him up in the air, the old women ululating". The bogus ceremony had been an exercise in glorification of Iteso culture, but its practical impact was to embarrass the police, who arrived on the scene when it was useless to disperse the crowd.
Yet it was also too late to cancel Mr Imodot's new appointment as Teso's top elder. He got the job, cracked the whip, and earned himself enough enemies to eventually be shown the exit. "He had inordinate ambition," Mr Opak said. "What we had always suspected was that he had no capacity to run the institution. He proved in a very short time that he could not handle. We had to give the institution the dignity it deserves [by finding another Emorimor]."
I met Mr Opak on the afternoon of October 12, nearly seven months after I first contacted him for an interview with his boss, the Emorimor. The cultural leader would be glad to meet me that day, I was told, but not before Mr Opak had given me a window into the soul of the Iteso Cultural Union. Emorimor Osuban, a deeply private septuagenarian, spends most of his time at his country home in Serere, far removed from the hustle of Soroti Municipality.
The day before I met Mr Osuban, he had organised a cultural gala in celebration of Iteso culture, a well-attended event that reminded him that "the people are really interested in what the institution is all about", he said. What I really wanted to know was if, nearly nine years after this enthronement, Mr Osuban thinks he has built the credibility to unite his people, some of whom still look at his institution with righteous ridicule.
"I would say that the institution has been accepted," he said. "That was the first thing we did. The idea of the institution was to unite the Iteso wherever they are." When I told Mr Osuban that some of his subjects had alleged that he is out of touch with reality, the cultural leader insisted it was "a complaint that has been around for some time".
Yet it is a complaint that was also raised by one of his ministers, who told me that he had interacted with several people who were concerned by Mr Osuban's lack of presence in the community. "He is not on the ground," the minister said, requesting anonymity in case his comments ruffled any feathers. "He needs to be visible."
Mr Osuban did not deny this allegation levelled against him, but that was only because he did not find it valid. "We have organs, we have parish committees, we have a cabinet, we have a council," he said. "These are organs covering all the areas where the Iteso live. So, the question of me not being down there does not arise. I can go whenever I can." Mr Osuban's philosophy, he told me, is that in the absence of resources to fight poverty in Teso, every individual (including the Emorimor himself) has to work hard enough.
He spoke of a sad scenario in which his impoverished subjects look to him for survival as much as he looks to them to keep the institution in existence. But, Mr Osuban said, poverty or not, the important thing is for the Iteso people not to forget their true identity.
"We feared that the tribe was going to disappear," he said, noting that the values that his forbears taught-humility, obedience, honesty and self-reliance-are slowly being eroded in an increasingly ruthless society. "The older generation of the Iteso know these values," he said. "Those are the things we cherish, and we want our children to continue cherishing them. That's what we (Iteso Cultural Union) are trying to emphasise to the people. And they appreciate."
Still, Mr Osuban said he was aware that the Iteso Cultural Union is expected to invest "in the wellbeing" of his people. Only that his institution, like several of its kind around Uganda, is broke and without a budget. "In the beginning, people's expectations of the institution were very high," he said. "But they are getting to understand [the harsh reality]...I don't claim to know everything; [my people] give me ideas."
Mr Opak, who sat through my conversation with Mr Osuban, had carried a set of documents that projected the goals of the cultural institution. These documents contained the ideas that the Iteso Cultural Union would hope to invest in, ideas that Mr Osuban could not readily recount as passionately as he would have liked. One of the documents was a transcript of a 2007 speech given by Mr Opak at Katine Catholic Mission.
In calling upon the people of Katine, Tubur and Oculoi parishes to stop wallowing in shame, Mr Opak spoke of God's gifts to Teso, ambitiously challenging his people to rediscover their inner resourcefulness.
"Tell me, has this grieving improved our situation at any one time?" he asked, wondering why "our young men have resorted to riding bodabodas, leaving the land like a beautiful wife left alone in a house by a thoughtless or impotent husband". It is difficult to tell whether the speech inspired Mr Opak's congregation. But it must have left the crowd tantalised.
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