When they came for the arts
The media council of Uganda recently put a stop to a play going on at the National Theater called State Of The Nation. I haven't had a chance to see it myself but I can take a shot in the dark about what it could be about given it's subtle title. The news apparently is that the scripts had been reviewed by the council and they found some thing wrong and hence decided to put a halt to it.
Now there are many things wrong with this picture but first of all for me is that fact that a play wright has to submit his work to some sort of council to read through before their work can be presented to the masses. Since when is art the purview of the civil service?What's next, will chameleon have to submit the lyrics of his latest song to said council before we are allowed to shake out behinds to it?Will the next episode of the hostel require for it's set to not have any blue material lest it be deemed support for the opposition?How are we not weeping yet?
Perhaps you may think I'm blowing things out of proportion but as the old saying goes, "It's the little foxes that spoil the vineyard". It's because this seems to just be nothing more than the heavy handed manner in which the governors of our state continue to encroach on all areas of it's citizen's lives-like an overbearing parent that searches through their teenage child's room and monitors every conversation, every inch of said teen's life to the point of stifling any individuality or healthy independence.
Just a few months ago, the playwright of another controversial play, The river and the Mountain was detained and perhaps due to the melanin deficiency in said playwright's skin and the international beating it might receive from holding a person simply for exercising his right to free speech, the man was released later. I went to see this play and it wasn't anything earth shattering in any way- except for the fact that it involved a man coming out as gay and later being killed.
A few years ago, the less than honorable Nsaba Buturo who in my opinion has made a career out of being a professional whiny baby, self imposed defender of morality for the country and hall monitor denounced the staging of a production called the Vagina monologues*. To hear him, as Ethics minister talk about this production, you'd think giant female body parts were going to be presenting the show before having a full on orgy and later eating our children for fun in the parking lot. At the time, I felt that it was the right thing. But I was a kid and believed in blasphemy as a legitimate crime too at the time.
Since then my ideas have changed because I have learned that in a nation that holds itself up to be independent, it stands to reason that independence in thought and expression be an automatic right bestowed upon it's people. To stifle that is to show just how phony any ideas of freedom and control that we as a people have are.
As someone who regularly speaks about, writes and yes even makes music about all kinds of issues ranging from the ridiculous to the deadly serious, I hold fast to the freedom to spell out my ideas and to have them challenged not with force, or coercion or censorship but with other ideas, with criticism and that's how the best ideas get to hold their lace in society. But outlasting and taking on all comers. The truth has nothing to fear from inquiry or a difference of opinion. If anything, these differing and dissenting voices serve to lend credibility to the right ideas by illustrating just how far off the mark they are. Only bad ideas and weak ones require the use of armies and boots and jail cells and whatever else you may choose to pick of the Orwellian template for a totalitarian government.
This morning I heard news of a student who was arrested for writing a non too complimentary book about the president (Anti-Museveni). Also currently there is a court case over an a book currently taking up your tax money. We as Ugandans really do focus on the silly at times. But precisely because it seems so silly and we've been numbed by the issues of a flailing economy, corruption tsunamis and encouraging of fevers from Ebola to Marburg,makes this so dangerous. We may awake one day to find even our twitter accounts and other social media networks under the controlling eyes of those we entrust with shepherding us in the next great jubilee. 2012 is written as 1984!!
I for one hop that we won't go quietly into the night. That we will forsake the rhetoric about our generation being apathetic about our times and instead speak louder, speak louder, we may not be able to walk to work, our backs pampered by cushions and soft pillows unable to bear up against the policeman's baton our eyes too sensitive to take a dousing of tear gas..but by gosh, we can talk, we can tweet, text and blog. We can sing and shout and recite our words forever, we can ignite a fire that will lead us to not allow this idiocy to continue. We want our freedoms, we are going to have to fight for them.
*(The production" vagina monologues" is about women talking about experiences they have had where they've been abused, used and have used their sexuality in the modern world. It sounds painful as hell to watch but certainly no claim to being the moral Bane it was presented as. Perhaps the word vagina just makes men go crazy and stupid instead of crazy and happy)
Now there are many things wrong with this picture but first of all for me is that fact that a play wright has to submit his work to some sort of council to read through before their work can be presented to the masses. Since when is art the purview of the civil service?What's next, will chameleon have to submit the lyrics of his latest song to said council before we are allowed to shake out behinds to it?Will the next episode of the hostel require for it's set to not have any blue material lest it be deemed support for the opposition?How are we not weeping yet?
Perhaps you may think I'm blowing things out of proportion but as the old saying goes, "It's the little foxes that spoil the vineyard". It's because this seems to just be nothing more than the heavy handed manner in which the governors of our state continue to encroach on all areas of it's citizen's lives-like an overbearing parent that searches through their teenage child's room and monitors every conversation, every inch of said teen's life to the point of stifling any individuality or healthy independence.
Just a few months ago, the playwright of another controversial play, The river and the Mountain was detained and perhaps due to the melanin deficiency in said playwright's skin and the international beating it might receive from holding a person simply for exercising his right to free speech, the man was released later. I went to see this play and it wasn't anything earth shattering in any way- except for the fact that it involved a man coming out as gay and later being killed.
A few years ago, the less than honorable Nsaba Buturo who in my opinion has made a career out of being a professional whiny baby, self imposed defender of morality for the country and hall monitor denounced the staging of a production called the Vagina monologues*. To hear him, as Ethics minister talk about this production, you'd think giant female body parts were going to be presenting the show before having a full on orgy and later eating our children for fun in the parking lot. At the time, I felt that it was the right thing. But I was a kid and believed in blasphemy as a legitimate crime too at the time.
Since then my ideas have changed because I have learned that in a nation that holds itself up to be independent, it stands to reason that independence in thought and expression be an automatic right bestowed upon it's people. To stifle that is to show just how phony any ideas of freedom and control that we as a people have are.
As someone who regularly speaks about, writes and yes even makes music about all kinds of issues ranging from the ridiculous to the deadly serious, I hold fast to the freedom to spell out my ideas and to have them challenged not with force, or coercion or censorship but with other ideas, with criticism and that's how the best ideas get to hold their lace in society. But outlasting and taking on all comers. The truth has nothing to fear from inquiry or a difference of opinion. If anything, these differing and dissenting voices serve to lend credibility to the right ideas by illustrating just how far off the mark they are. Only bad ideas and weak ones require the use of armies and boots and jail cells and whatever else you may choose to pick of the Orwellian template for a totalitarian government.
This morning I heard news of a student who was arrested for writing a non too complimentary book about the president (Anti-Museveni). Also currently there is a court case over an a book currently taking up your tax money. We as Ugandans really do focus on the silly at times. But precisely because it seems so silly and we've been numbed by the issues of a flailing economy, corruption tsunamis and encouraging of fevers from Ebola to Marburg,makes this so dangerous. We may awake one day to find even our twitter accounts and other social media networks under the controlling eyes of those we entrust with shepherding us in the next great jubilee. 2012 is written as 1984!!
I for one hop that we won't go quietly into the night. That we will forsake the rhetoric about our generation being apathetic about our times and instead speak louder, speak louder, we may not be able to walk to work, our backs pampered by cushions and soft pillows unable to bear up against the policeman's baton our eyes too sensitive to take a dousing of tear gas..but by gosh, we can talk, we can tweet, text and blog. We can sing and shout and recite our words forever, we can ignite a fire that will lead us to not allow this idiocy to continue. We want our freedoms, we are going to have to fight for them.
*(The production" vagina monologues" is about women talking about experiences they have had where they've been abused, used and have used their sexuality in the modern world. It sounds painful as hell to watch but certainly no claim to being the moral Bane it was presented as. Perhaps the word vagina just makes men go crazy and stupid instead of crazy and happy)
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