The Observer (Kampala)
James Magode Ikuya
8 July 2009
opinion
From ancient times, epilepsy was a feared mysterious condition associated with wicked spirits and demons.
Modern science has established its root as an electrical lapse in the brain that causes disruptions of impulses and coordination of the bodily system. The seizure results in violent convulsions and spasm rendering the body prostrate.
Most of us who are lay people in the sphere of medicine find it difficult to judge why epilepsy is classified as a disease rather than just a disability. Usually, a disease is known to be the debilitation of the health of an organic system by hostile causes such as microbes, worms or defects, restoration of which necessitates medical control and intervention. Disability on its part is simply a benign handicap, a deformity in performing to the optimum. It may be due to disease, injury or some natural defect.
The many years of brutalisation in Uganda made our society suffer both political violence and social neglect. This raised extreme disharmony in the country and the stigmatisation of different social groups. PWDs became the lowest of the low.
This is why the NRM announced the policy of affirmative action to bring into mainstream life the hitherto marginalised groups. PWDs were accorded special status in electing their representatives in the various structures of the political machinery. But there is no evidence that any one from amongst the epileptics has been so far elected to represent the PWDs.
It confirms that either the epileptics are still a marginalised stratum, even amongst the PWDs, or they do not patently fall within the prescribed definition of PWDs.
Representation is not an event or ritual of merely being voted. It is the embodiment of the interests, values and principles of a social group or body in a programme to be realised by one elected or appointed to do so. Hence, those who are spokespersons in a marriage introduction ceremony usually are not themselves the love-birds seeking to be married.
The way people relate in obtaining the necessities of their lives usually affects their preferences and tastes. A cattle keeper is attached to his herd while a butcher craves for the abattoir. These different life-styles cascade into varied standpoints in politics, culture, friendship and many other fields which in turn influence, modify or skew an individual's sense of appeal.
Society relies upon individuals for representation on the basis of their over-all aptitudes, the level at which they encapsulate the experience and insight of vital interests in society. Different interests demand different types of representatives.
Ancient society expressed wealth and well-being in terms of basic security in satisfying biological needs such as of food, shelter and family progression. Their simple organisation to meet common needs produced uniformity in social values which still affect us up to this day. Over the ages, this olden society developed economic values to new articles of life and luxury. The wearing of the skin and grass attire, previously intended primarily for body protection against the elements, shifted to the world of fashion, colour and the mannequin.
But, the real means to procure the acquired taste of elegance and luxury which are our new craze have not changed from the ancient level of scratching the ground with the hoe. This situation marks the limits of the new wealth that can be attainable by individuals in our society, leading to the luxury of a few people and the obscene poverty of the majority of the citizenry.
From this very scenario, more and more people stampede in the search to get out of their contemptible existence. They become bivouacked in any activity of okulembeka [tapping water]. Some peddle love potions; others settle for lotteries and gaming bets. Between crime and economic activity lies a very thin curtain of a difference.
It is in this suffocating economy that politics is also transformed from its supposedly representative character to a mere bill of fare, a ticket of safe passage. Politics becomes fully a profession of the masterly art of changing colours and the colouring of falsehoods for dodging one's poverty. In many respects, even the NRM looses representation as much as the PWDs. Some of those who profess to be NRM shamelessly do so without having the slightest pedigree of what ought to have been its tenets.
If today there was to be a special slot for the epileptics in elections, the gold rush would be frenetic. Some perfectly normal people would find no remorse in feigning fits purposively to join the accolade for the office space.
When the NRM struggle was first raised, we proclaimed that politics ought to be about advancing genuine social interests.
Now that politics is about self-survival, we ought to be asking: where is the country heading?
The author is a member of NEC (NRM) representing historicals
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