POLITICALLY INCORRECT: Why Africa’s Cities Are The Dirtiest In The World, And ‘City Peasants’ Make For Lousy Town Folk (How It Will End)

YESTERDAY in “Politically Incorrect: Why Africa’s Cities Are The Dirtiest In The World, And ‘Village Food’ Is Bad For Towns (How It Began)”, we examined the controversial view expounded by Uganda’s sharp-tongued former Vice President Dr Specioza Kazibwe that the conventional toilet and garbage collecting trucks in African cities cannot cope with the fall-out from the “village” African’s eating habits.

The Mob’s Voluntary Ignorance and KONY2012

11 Mar

This is how a typical mob operates. An opinion leader throws around bits of exaggerated, inaccurate and misleading information. He/She identifies a target and prescribes punishment of that target as the solution to the problem. The mob follows the orders of this leader religiously. The mob does not question the credibility of the leader, the accuracy of the information, the suitability of the solution and even whether there is a problem in the first place. The mob moves according to emotion. It is the drive of emotion that separates a mob from a movement. Reason is not a tool for a mob. It is also because of the power and irrationality of emotion that the mob is powerfully united and committed. The mob’s passion does not give an opportunity to consider that it might be misled. The frenzy drowns any suggestion that mob justice is ‘mob’ injustice.

The support crowd around the KONY2012 video has all the elements of a mob. The leader is Jason Russell and Invisible Children. The 30 minute video is full of half-truths inciting the emotionally vulnerable crowd into action – the target is Kony. Arrest him, the video says. Try him before the International Criminal court (ICC) when you have him in your hands. Problem solved. The world has been saved from a dangerous war criminal who eats human flesh that is hunted for him by children, some of whom he uses as sex slaves. The mob is at work already. More than fifty million views of the video, the topic was trending on Twitter and Facebook. The way mobs operate does not allow debate. The language of mobs is of chants, noises, chatters and uncoordinated shouting, aiming at the identified target. The mob draws blood itself, it administers the punishment itself. Where the leader of the mob says that we shall arrest the target and apprehend him before court by forcibly hunting him down, he means that we shall eliminate him. Mobs are not patient enough to see elaborate court proceedings that have guarantees as the presumption of innocence, fair trial guarantees which apply to all people, even war criminals. Mobs think such things are signs of impunity.

KONY2012 says that the United States of America (US) should militarily intervene in Central Africa (they say Uganda is in Central Africa, like DRC and CAR) to hunt down Kony. The video says the US should give more support that it is already giving to the military forces of the Ugandan government (not the DRC and CAR governments). These details of who should be aided and how should the US intervene are not things that the mob wants to bother itself with. “Arrest the mothaf****”, they chant.

You will find Bush and Blair in the same bracket as Joseph Kony if you go into the legal definitions of war crimes, crimes against humanity but the mob does not go into those details. People like Joseph Kony, Bush and Blair (for the atrocity that the Iraq war was and is and speaking of the scales of victims) are indefensible. But the mob is focused on what the leader has identified as the problem and the solution.

Someone may be uncomfortable with the modus operandi of the mob in arresting Kony. Someone may have questions to ask. Someone may be interested in showing the other half of the truths to the mob, more than Russell is giving. In other words, someone is struggling to wrestle the leadership of the mob from Russell so that the mob can get a balance of ‘story’. But this person did not set up the mob, this person did not invite the mob. Where do they get the moral authority to seek to guide it? The mob is already under the guidance of Russell, who like the mob is naive and sentimental and thinks in sentimentality lies a solution to a complex conflict. Meanwhile, the mob will make the person who seeks to give some context a sub-target. Whenever this person tells the mob that what they think is justice is actually injustice, the mob makes the person part and parcel of the main target. The person becomes a sub-Kony of sorts!

But wait a minute, within the mob are people who have small scores to settle with the sub-targets, however unconnected those scores are to the KONY2012 business. This becomes the opportunity to settle those small scores. Those people within the mob will use the frenzy to hit at these sub-targets. The mob provides a shield for them to pay back for small scores they ordinarily would not have settled. The mob becomes a conduit for all sorts of battles, some unknown to Russell himself.

So, in this KONY 2012 debacle, we have seen condescending attitude holders who, hiding behind and within the mob are keen to send a message that Africans are helpless, do not deserve mention as solving their problems, in fact they are not solving their problems and they should not claim space to tell their stories, because when their stories are not told by whites, they are invalid. We have seen people say that nothing was being said about the war for more than two decades, of course despite the tonnes and tonnes of paper on which stories, news, analysis, petitions and other writings by Africans on the war have been written. Such well-meaning attitude holders will not talk about their efforts to ensure that Blair and Bush are indicted for the crimes committed in Iraq. They will not talk about Gaza. They do not know about Syria. To them, war stories are only about Africa and if about other places, then those are ‘political’ stories which they are un-bothered about. When the same stories are from Africa, they are issues for PITY, not ‘political’ issues.

But we have also seen those who counter the thinking above. These ones are ignoring the reality of Kony and are just worked up because it is a white person that is highlighting the ‘problem’. The problem that these type of critics have with KONY2012 is the color of the skin of Russell. Make Russell black, brown and not white and they keep quiet. These types already had people of Russell’s color on their list of targets. This is just one of the many chances to attack their target. The mob is happy to see these types around. They will use these attacks to try and hide from legitimate concerns that undermine the credibility of Invisible Children. The legitimate concerns against Invisible Children are those that led to its being banned from one district in the region affected by the Northern Uganda conflict, until IC’s allies (the government of Uganda – accused of atrocities in the north too) stepped in to save.

Of course, there are those who do not know where to stand on this issue. They are caught up in the middle and when they finally find a reason to stand on any side they start making very loud and controversial statements, just to prove that they are also present in this debate. These ones, like the mob itself (and some actually join the mob and shout louder than the rest) lack context of the situation. They think 30 minutes is enough for them to understand the conflict. Some go beyond the 30 minutes and read a few blogs and then come and start preaching. They just make noise, and like empty tins, the loudest. They lack the humility to understand the issues up to their depth. Some of them are animated by small bones that they have to pick with their sub-targets.

All these aspects of the mob and sub-mobs exhibit a chronic lack of knowledge. A shortage of humility. Rarely will you find any of these mobs and their sub-mobs referring to voices from the affected region. Rarely will you hear them talking about the efforts of the victims of the war themselves. Indeed, the epitome of ignorance is when they say that no one is doing anything on the ground to find solutions, or no one has done anything in the past. That is where you realize that these people form a bunch of ignorance, coupled with arrogance that makes them a deadly and dangerous mob. They are high on an emotional binge and can’t listen. What is depressing is that they hold unchecked power – the power of the mob! What is more depressing is that their arrogance can’t allow them to accept that they have been emotionally manipulated and their thinking abilities lessened to those of Russell’s five-year old son. Their arrogance pushes them into a state of denial of the fact that they are indeed a misled, misguided and deadly mob!

Does it make sense to throw some drops of knowledge in this mob? Can we hope that a few of the individuals that make up this mob will outgrow their emotional breakdown and think? Just maybe.

Dear Mob;

Because of the relentless peace efforts of Ugandans, Sudanese, Mozambicans and other Africans in the early to the mid 2000s, a peace deal was negotiated between the Lords Resistance Army (LRA – Kony’s army) and the Ugandan government, under the mediation of Sudan’s Southern Peoples’ Liberation Army (SPLA) among others. Names like Riek Machar, Ruhakana Rugunda, Joachim Chissano and others should become basic knowledge for you. These negotiations led to a ceasefire agreement but with US backing, the Ugandan government army breached the ceasefire and bombed LRA back to the bush, away from the negotiating table. All this is in the archives of all Ugandan newspapers of the time.

Another thorn that the LRA could not suffer while on the negotiating table was the ICC arrest warrants. The locals in northern Uganda through their religious and cultural leaders also felt that the ICC was an unnecessary obstacle to progress. The Refugee Law Project, the Beyond Juba Project and other initiatives have written extensively on these issues and please be ready to read! Traditional justice mechanisms, amnesty, the War Crimes Division of the High Court and other terms should be required knowledge. You should be able to pronounce Mat Oput properly if you are speaking about Justice. The Amnesty Act that was passed into law in that period was a result of the work of the pressure from locals, civil society to see an end to the war. The ICC was the first sign of the building of a mob that Russell has come to lead. Insisting on the ICC led to the breakdown of peace talks. The deal was not signed.

By this time, the whole of northern Uganda was pacified, and Kony fleeing found new bases in southern Sudan, DRC and now CAR. It was because the peace talks failed that Uganda’s neighbors inherited this problem. Northern Uganda did not get peace because of the might of the military, but because people, locals, their cultural and religious leaders, the SPLA leadership talked about peace with the LRA.

Anyway, after the LRA fleeing to the Congo and CAR, the Ugandan military with heavy US support launched Operation Lightening and Thunder to hunt down Kony, dead or alive. A joke has since become part of Ugandan public discourse. That the UPDF (Ugandan army) could only capture Kony’s saucepans, guitars, clothes and even his old satellite phone but not him. By the way, these were shown to the media by the army. This Kony who in 2006 met with peace negotiators has since wrecked havoc elsewhere and military solutions have remained failures. Talking peace was the success that pacified Norther Uganda!

Dear Mob, northern Uganda got peace because Africans and local people talked peace with Kony’s army. The ICC talk of arrest warrants and the bombings of LRA bases by the UPDF during a ceasefire period foiled the ultimate success of the peace talks. Kony almost came home from the Juba peace talks under the arrangements of amnesty and Mat Oput. Try to think about how you can fit your ‘help’ within the tried and tested mechanisms of ending conflict. Try to learn lessons from the past. So, first know the past. Peace has worked before. Peace is cheaper than War. Peace ends War. Talk Peace. Stop the War Talk. Stop being a Mob!