The triple heritage is a sociological and cultural theory coined by the renowned scholar Dr Ali A. Mazrui. It posits that modern African identity and society are the result of the complex interplay and synthesis of three distinct cultural, political, and historical forces. Namely, the indigenous African heritage, Islamic heritage and Western heritage. In Uganda, this triad heritage does apply in dribs and drabs. It is the product of political socialisation or the lifelong process by which individuals acquire their political beliefs, values, and ideologies. This process is evidenced by the fortunes and faculties of three distinct generations.
At independence, my father’s generation was known as the silent generation (sometimes referred to as traditionalists), which is generally defined as the demographic cohort born between 1928 and 1945. All our former presidents belong to this generation, too. This demographic was democratic insofar as democracy guaranteed their freedom and its related liberties. They were idealists, trained by the colonialists to uphold governance standards and reflect the cultural values the colonial system of divide and rule bequeathed them.
Their silence was broken, as it were, in 1966. When Uganda’s military forces, acting on the orders of Prime Minister Apollo Milton Obote and commanded by Idi Amin, attacked the Lubiri (Kabaka’s Palace) in Mengo, Kampala, on May 24, 1966. After that, they were conflicted by their allegiance to a unified Uganda and the place it in for Buganda Kingdom. They were cured of this somewhat schizophrenic state when Mr Obote effectively turned Uganda into a one-party State between 1966 and 1969. Following a violent 1966 constitutional crisis, Obote’s Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) officially outlawed all Opposition political parties in 1969, consolidating his absolute rule. The daggers were drawn.
In these heady times, Gen Amin overthrew President Obote in a military coup on January 25, 1971. The coup took place while Obote was out of the country attending a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Singapore. Subsequently, guerilla warfare was introduced to our political culture by forces ranged against Amin. They felt he had gone back on undertakings given to a democratic promise at Independence. A twenty-year war erupted, and the children of these resisters were force-fed on the Dark Times which came to the light in 1986.
We were told by our parents that if we did not follow our parents’ advice, Uganda would be placed on a greasy pole. Which is exactly what certain elements from the North of Uganda felt when Mr. Museveni took power in 1986. The north and east took up arms, believing the country had gone south; literally and metaphorically. Consequently, my generation was not taught to exercise its rights; it was taught to guard them. Thus, our thinking paralleled our parents’ thinking until the former devolved into a survivalist ethic. This ethic foreshadowed the unbridled greed we see today.
After we survived Obote’s return, something that was used as a spook story to keep us in line, we tried to survive period. We are Generation X or the Star Wars Generation. Our idealism in coma, owing to our belief that opposition to the status quo doesn’t win unless the government loses. Our children were now caught in the headlights of an uncertain future as they adopted the Silent and Generation X’s principles, along with the third heritage of social media. This Triple Heritage ensured they had more heat than light to their political thinking, due to the friction between the three heritages.
Out of this, a dialectic between the heritages could take on the essential feature of a democracy designed to protect minority rights and ensure stable laws.