An open letter to the youth of Uganda

Dear beloved youth,

I have been listening to you complaining, whining, and blaming, your parents and other elders for your miserable state of affairs.

You rarely credit them for their contribution to your positive achievements. You blame them for not giving you a chance to have a go at the steering wheel. You forget they too never got it on a silver platter.

They grabbed it at a cost, a high one at that. By the way are you aware that your parents were much younger than you are today when they took the plunge?

Uganda’s game changers since time immemorial have been children or the youth. Few kings if any ascended the throne when they were adults. Few if any had their first offspring when they were above teenage.

Teenagers formed the backbone of all the country’s armies. How about the Uganda martyrs? How old were they when they decided to die for a cause they believed in?

Never mind the absence among martyrs of those adult men of God who converted them in the first place! Fresh in mind are the Budogo or Kadogos in Ugaspeak aka child soldiers. In their hundreds, they confronted a well equipped but ill prepared force, which they reduced to rubble.

Their manure is what enabled you the youth of today to grow up in a conducive atmosphere to the extent of developing a sense of entitlement unmatched hitherto.

When the elders in their youth realized their future was being threatened by bad governance they offered a solution. Where there was scarcity they created alternatives. Where there were no jobs, they created them.

Go to Katwe and Kikuubo, answers are waiting for you. It is that action that resulted into you growing up in an atmosphere with reduced life threatening incidents.

No jobs, No money, has become a refrain in your anthem. While you are busy playing a blame game remember time is not standing still. Many of you have started families others are planning to and the underage will have to when their time is ripe.

So what will you tell your children when they ask you why they cannot have quality education like you did? Why can’t they access affordable medical services like you did? Why can’t they speak up freely on ills like you did? Why are you not like their grandparents and grand someone’s?

Will you tell them that it is because your elders didn’t hand over to you the mantle or there were no jobs? Pray to God that none of them will have read these rantings of an old man, to know that it is your intellectual laziness to blame. Need I say more???…Over to you

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