Age is a very sensitive subject both to men and women depending on the context.
Well, I need not to be the one to lecture to all and sundry on the fact that meaning and the reading of it all are context specific.
It is Africa after all and so many illustrations and examples are the means by which we have all come to understand most things.
Have we not all learned a thing or two by way of stories that have depict popular animals speaking?
Even when a man falls in love ( it always amuses me that love is an accident and this surely is the only reason why falling is used in its relation) with a lady older than him, to call him young would offend him.
Too many African customs and ceremonies including one of the most painful ones: circumcision is around the idea that one has gained age and matured.
In Africa, being young is one of those things that an accountant would definitely post on the side of liabilities and definitely not assets.
If age then is associated with wisdom and we all love to grow and live long, a reason we mourn those to whom death pays a dreaded visit in their very youth, why is it a problem to Ugandans if the age limit of a presidential candidate is lifted well above 75?
Ugandans are not stupid in the sense that they need to be taught long and hard that a person beyond 75 is good enough to run a country.
In my opinion, whether our country is the most difficult to manage is a subject we can discuss till those animals cherished in Karamoja and Ankole return home.
After all we have been run by even Idi Amin for a whole eight years and that debate on whether he was really that bad or not has never been closed in many circles.
The more Mr.Museveni has stayed around, the more the Obotes and Amins have regained a glory that they had lost in the early years.
So Mr.Museveni has made this age limit removal issue go to the dogs the way it has in many ways.
He failed to plan early to do the things that would have made him immortal.
How can one run a nation for 30 years and after such a time he still has to spend so much money in convincing the same people how good he is beats my understanding.
I have never understood how you can be in a marriage thirty years and you need a campaign with posters as well as billions of shillings (let’s leave the source of those for the sake of peace for now) to tell that woman that you are a good husband.
Something does not add up somewhere.
The problem about this whole age removal campaign is not about President Museveni’s age.
His health has been very good for a very long time and I envy how healthy the man is given how demanding the job he took is.
I have played squash with a man his age when I was in my twenties and that chap was really hard to beat on a demanding squash game. So men that age can be very strong and sharp.
What Ugandans are against is not Mr.Museveni I am convinced they like him.
They just don’t like how he has gone about the business of his job and should he convince them that he plans to run this nation differently from what they have seen, you may be caught by surprise what their response may be.
The thing is move away from talking about peace and days before 1968 and 80 percent of the population does not know and does not want to know and talk about what you have done in the thirty years.
Ugandans want things they see not figures and GDP ratios they will never understand.
Get something tangible and fix it. Kampala can and should be made a lovely city to visit a talk of the whole continent then Ugandans will be proud of the fixer.
Mr.Museveni may see himself as a fixer but it is becoming too many who see him as a destroyer and that is not very good for him.
I am sure he can turn this but I also know it is not easy because this demands a philosophical shift of paradigms and that is a very hard thing to get done at the age where he is because then one has learned too much fear of the unknown to change…
Let me leave this and return to my base see you soon. Please send my warmest regards to Mr Mutabazi.
