It seems that the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA ) and the Ugandan government are edging closer towards peace. It can't come soon enough for those in Northern Uganda, who have suffered the consequences of ruthless conflict for more than 2 decades. As LRA negotiators arrived in Kampala today, they released a dove, as a symbol of hope and of their commitment to the peace process. And so we must be hopeful too...
(This story presents an interesting contrast with that on the DRC rebels being tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which I posted a few days ago. The peace process in Uganda has been stalling, apparently, because LRA leaders are aware that the ICC wants to try them and they want a solution to the crisis that avoids this outcome... Hmm...)
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Day Twenty-One: cautious optimism in Uganda
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Any moves to end violenct conflict are to be welcomed, so the dove really does suggest that there are unreasons to be hopeful. Even the most embedded hatreds change through time. Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams must give hope to those in despair at the state of a world in which there is always, somewhere, violent conflict.
I have not been following events in Uganda. Like many Europeans, I see Africa as a mysterious place, another country and they do things differently there. Apart from several friendly Nigeraen Bank Managers who want to help me financially, I have little contact with things African. I know more about Africa from Heart of Darkness than from modern commentators. But Desmond Tutu bears out the Conradian version of European exploitation: “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”)
There seem to be a dialectical inevitability in the process from colonial domination, through rebellion and internecine strife to a new status quo. But that is viewed from a great distance.
My ignorance of Africa is not untypical of a European mind-set. It was nicely put by Milan Kundera when he was describing the "lightness of being". Life is a frail spark in the darkness (all the more to be celebrated and cherished for that) but, in the long view. its transitory nature is "unbearable". The image he uses to suggest this evokes soul-searing events, centuries ago, in a far-away land, which were writ in sand and have disappeared with the tide. Africa is his place of remoteness, it could be on the dark side of the moon (as it still is for many Europeans). What goes on there could be taking place in another realm of reality:
"The myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excrutiating torment."
Africa's difference has made it remote. When Africa moves into the digital wireless world perhaps it will come closer to Europe (and Europe to it).
Let's hope the new status quo will flourish in peace and more doves fly.
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