Central message

Ever since Independence sixty years ago, Uganda has been led by people who have the fatal characteristics of Willy Loman, the failed and eventually suicidal salesman in Arthur Miller’s drama DEATH OF A SALESMAN. Jacob Oulanyah, the late Speaker of Uganda’s Parliament, led a life that tragically paralleled that of Willy Loman. Through the lens of Oulanyah’s tragically truncated political parody, one can also observe the national tragi-comedy that is being acted-out by the nation’s President and his entourage of opportunistic and survivalistic and hangers-on. All the characters mentioned are people who have a blind faith in a stunted, helter-skelter version of the world in which they live, who they are in the grand scheme of things, what is expected of them, their abilities and capacities, and what they are capable of achieving. The supposed leaders and those around them have, in turn, easily lost their identity and dignity in the issuing deluge of confusions, failures and fears and paranoias that their myopia has generated. They also have stopped seeing, recognising and valuing the identity and dignity of others, especially those who do not line up with their views, designs and plans. Because, like Willy Loman, they have next to no respect, regard, care or empathy for themselves or for others, they have created a dog-eat-dog culture of a callous and violent country in which the ends, nor matter how selfish and short-sighted they are, justify the means.

Bbuye lya Mukanga

08 October 2022

 Willy Loman had all the wrong dreams, all, all wrong, he never knew who he was! ~~ Quite serendipitously, I recently happened to be re-reading Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman. I had first read the play almost fifty years ago while studying Agriculture and Economics in the USA. It is the tragic story of Willy Loman, a man who devoted his whole life to the pursuit of “the American dream”. Willy’s version of the American dream was to achieve money, fame, and happiness as a traveling salesperson. He decided that the way to achieve his dream was to be attractive and well-liked and to accumulate material and financial wealth.

Contrary to his pursuit, Willy is not a good salesperson, is not popular and is not well-liked. In spite of his obvious failure to meet his very poorly chosen life goals, he clings to a fierce belief in the American dream. He disguises his profound insecurity, anxiety, and self-doubt with extreme arrogance. He ended up dying a lonely, alienated, and pathetic failure. Before dying, Willy desperately tries to bully his sons who are attractive and well-liked into becoming salespeople. It is a desperate attempt by Willy to vicariously live through his sons. The sons reject any possibility of taking on the mantle of their father’s delusionary path through life. In the most remembered and talked-about line in the play, Biff Loman summarises his father’s life in these words: "He had all the wrong dreams, all, all wrong, he never knew who he was!"

Jacob Oulanyah left behind a country that had been ‘poisoned’ ~~ It was purely coincidental that the backdrop within which I revisited Arthur Miller’s masterful piece of literature was the recent illness, overseas hospitalisation and death, repatriation of remains, and state funeral and burial of the Speaker of the Uganda National Assembly, Jacob Oulanyah. Oulanyah’s slow-motion exit from the stage of Uganda’s tragicomedy was interspersed with allegations that his death had been a political assassination using poison. “Poisoned” is likely the wrong hypothesis for explaining the colourful Speaker’s exit. But “poisoned” aptly describes the state of the country that Jacob Oulanyah left behind.

Jacob Oulanyah was bearer of a dictator’s poisoned chalice of a violent culture. ~~ One cannot help seeing that, like Willie Loman, Jacob Oulanyah had also lived a life that had the wrong dreams. Jacob Oulanyah decided that the way to political power and riches was to betray his conscience, his family and friends, his electorate, and his country by hitching his wagon to that of the nihilistically brutal, oppressive, and repressive President of Uganda. It is this President that, for more than a decade, presided over a genocidal scorched earth campaign of destruction in Northern Uganda and Teso. It is this President that has for almost 40 years ruled Uganda through a life-time regimen of looting, extortion, kidnapping, mayhem, torture, and murder.

The President masquerades his violent misrule behind decorative veneers of falsehoods that include enforced constitutional changes, rigged elections, purported containment of terrorism, and investment promotion while actually grabbing land and raiding the national coffers, and other Trojan hobbyhorses and artful manoeuvres. Metaphorically, for a considerable time, Oulanyah became one of the cupbearers of the poisoned chalice of the culture of violence that the President and others before and alongside him have foisted on Uganda for the past 60 years of its post-colonial existence. At the end of the day, Oulanyah went away empty handed. He had nothing to show for his cozying up to the President of Uganda and for the violent rule, exploitation, and underdevelopment that he, by commission and by omission, willingly helped to perpetuate on Uganda as a crony of the President.

Willy Loman and Speaker Oulanyah were like the legendary six blindmen.” ~~ What Biff said of his father’s achievement and how Speaker Oulanyah decided to expend his considerable talent can be reconstructed into two distinct and yet mutually synergizing meanings. The first meaning is that both Willie Loman and Speaker Oulanyah defined success incorrectly. The second meaning is that both Willie Loman and Speaker Oulanyah lived their lives while denying the facts around them. They lived in illusions and sleepwalked themselves into realities that were much worse than the ones that they were imagining or living in. Metaphorically, both Willy and Speaker Oulanyah got a-hold of the wrong end of the stick. Willy Loman and Speaker Oulanyah were like the legendary six blindmen who, in turn, misidentified the elephant’s trunk as a snake, the tusk as a spear, the ear as a fan, the leg as a tree, the stomach as a wall and the tail as a rope! As a result, Willy Loman and Speaker Oulanyah had all the wrong kinds of goals for themselves. In the case of Oulanyah, his decisions can be consequential and strongly impact not only on him and his family and immediate friends, but also on his nation.

Willy Loman’s children walk away from their father’s failed life. ~~ There is at least one redeeming feature from the account of Willy Loman’s tragic life of blunders in The Death of a Salesman. The redeeming feature is that Loman’s oldest son Biff, recognised the mistakes that his father had made and that had led to ruinous consequences in the father’s life, family, and community. Biff rebuffs, completely rejects, and walks away from his father’s entreaties to follow in the latter’s footsteps. Biff invites his younger brother to also leave the toxic world that their father foisted.

Joseph Oulanyah’s children wrap themselves in the mantle of their father’s delusions. ~~  Sadly, sadly, there are no such redeeming morsels in the saga of Jacob Oulanyah. Before, his remains were even laid in the grave, Oulanyah’s children started jockeying for the position of heir to the Parliamentary seat of their father, and to their father’s dream of being Speaker of Parliament, and possibly occupying State House some day as leader of the country. Soon after Oulanyah’s burial, President of Uganda summoned his Party’s leadership in Omoro County and commanded them to ensure that one of Oulanyah’s children was elected to replace the latter in Parliament. Here are some of the President’s words, “…... Let one of Oulanyah’s children stand in for him and follow us (author’s emphasis) for the remaining four years (of Oulanyah’s term).” Jacob Oulanyah’s oldest son, Andrew Ojok, was duly nominated as the NRM candidate for the Omoro County by-election to take his father’s place in Parliament. He was duly elected on 27 May 2022 in an election that his opponents said was marred by irregularities, intimidation, kidnapping and unwarranted arresting of opposition candidates and their supporters. Before the nomination, during the election campaign and after he was elected, Andrew Ojok pledged to follow in his father’s footsteps, and as his father had faithfully done, to be unfailingly loyal to the President and the ruling NRM Party.

The phantom of the parable – President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. ~~ The parable of Willy Loman and Jacob Oulanyah would not be complete without throwing some light on the phantom character who makes appearances in the story in the form of the current President of Uganda. In Luganda and Runyankore, a phantom is the equivalent of “omusambwa.” A phantom is an evil ghost or spirit that takes on the form a human being and returns to Earth to haunt, corrupt, disrupt and destroy people’s lives and livelihoods – with impunity. In the parable of Willy Loman and Jacob Oulanyah, the President makes appearances as Jacob Oulanyah’s benefactor, a person of intimidating selfish power to whom Oulanyah and many others in his orbit are inextricably beholden.

Ironically, President Museveni also holds the office, as Head of State, that was apparently coveted by Jacob Oulanyah. Oulanyah coveted being Head of State of Uganda in spite of the fact that Oulanyah must have witnessed that many people who have ever expressed or were ever thought to have had any serious ambition to replace the current Presidenti as Head of State or had ever raised serious concerns and challenges about the President’s competence to be Head of State had been pulled down, brutalized and humiliated; and some people even died in circumstances that some people have termed “suspicious”. Prominent on this list are former allies or loyalists of the President like Andrew Kayiira (RIP), Kiiza Besigye, Noble Mayombo (RIP), Eriya Kategaya (RIP), Amama Mbabazi, and Aronda Nyakairima (RIP); and, also Bobby Wine Sentamu Kyagulanyi, the pop star who many believe was robbed of the 2021 Presidential Election.

Upon Jacob Oulanyah’s own death, albeit after a serious bout with cancer, the President makes cameo appearances in the story as the elder political leader who is the chief mourner of Jacob Oulanyah’s demise, and as the ever-present and generous benefactor and defender of the Oulanyah family and the Acholi people. He is the one who arm-twists and cajoles the local NRM Party leaders and sends his agents out to harass opposition candidates to ensure that one of Jacob Oulanyah’s sons is elected to replace the father in Parliament.

It is with that phantomic self-serving mix of crocodile tears, pseudo-wisdom, pretence of father-like concern and empathy, and brutally ruthless and lethal enforcement of his my-way-or-no-way sense of destiny that President Museveni has governed Uganda for the last thirty-seven years. That is, for 63% of the 60 years that Uganda has been independent, President Museveni has been the autocratic ruler of Uganda.

The bottom of the pit: when people become worth more when they are dead than when alive. The parable of two deluded losers addresses perhaps the most devastating characteristic of people who have a blind faith in a stunted version of the world in which they live, who they are in the scheme of things, their abilities and capacities, and what they capable of achieving. Unable to accept change within society and within themselves, such people lose their identity and dignity. In Arthur Millers play, Willy Loman lost his identity to the point of making the shocking statement that “a man is worth more dead than alive”, and then ending his own life.

Jacob Oulanyah lost his identity and dignity to the extent that at the time of his death from cancer, he was alienated from his roots as a fighter for social justice, alienated from his family, and alienated from the person who had made him Speaker of Parliament and first person in the line of succession to the Presidency of Uganda. Oulanyah’s children, including his heir Andrew Ojok, only saw value in being recognised as his children after he had died. Oulanyah also lost his identity and dignity in the sense that his main preoccupation while he was speaker was to wait for the President of Uganda to be incapacitated or to die. In other words, the President of Uganda, who was also supposedly Oulanyah’s mentor, was worth more to Oulanyah if he (the President) was dead than if he was alive.

There is no doubt that the President returned the same favour of ‘worth more dead than alive’ to Oulanyah. It is widely understood in Uganda that the incumbent President would like to be succeeded by his son. It is probably difficult for him to admit, but the incumbent President of Uganda has also lost identity and dignity in the sense that he views any potential successors to his position or disturbers of his plan to be succeeded by his son as worth more dead than alive. Thus, the principal occupation of the incumbent President of Uganda is not the promotion and protection of the development and welfare of the country and its citizens. It is instead the promotion and protection of his now life-time presidency and the promotion and protection of his plan to be succeeded by his son.