President Yoweri Museveni has said that there is a forged document doing rounds on social media, authored by people hell bent on sectarianism and sedition.
“Since the name of the Rt. Hon. Mbabazi, my young brother, has been featuring, in some of these stories, I decided to invite him, together with the Rt. Hon. Ruhakana Rugunda, for a meeting 6pm today so that I ask him whether himself or people associated with him are involved in distributing of these seditious, sectarian documents. We are due to have that meeting in one hour or so,” Mr Museveni wrote.
Well, it is nice and interesting to learn that these two men can still meet to deliberate on matters of national importance. Indeed, while we applaud them for the apparent statesmanship exhibited, we cannot turn a blind eye to the authors of the said document; they need to be restrained because, if their actions are allowed to flourish, they will plunge the country in chaos with severe consequences.
Encouraging discrimination or hatred against a person based on his tribe or any other dispensation is despicable and many communities world over have an anti-sectarian law on their legal books.
Uganda is no exception and has a law against sectarianism, first tabled before the National Resistance Council around 1986, when the National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to power.
At this time it was believed by the new NRM regime that the issue of tribes, political affiliation and religion had, like the proverbial knife, cut smoothly through the butter that was our society then.
The country needed healing and this law was deemed a panacea to achieving unity in diversification, after earlier regimes had sown the ‘seeds of destruction’.
But now, about 30 years later we are seeing traits of that backward thinking creeping in slowly, worst of all, on social media, a platform that has the effect of spreading like a wild bush fire.
So, as the country gears up for the elections next year, Ugandans should ensure they are not duped into acting irresponsibly by embracing sectarianism, an act which borders on disrupting an otherwise stable society.
