Have you ever been angry in your adult life? Do you still get angry sometimes? If your answer to either of these questions is “no”, please do not read any further. Call your doctor. Seek an urgent referral to a mental health specialist for professional evaluation and, if necessary, a treatment plan. Why, you ask? Because normal people get angry from time to time.
Throughout His ministry on Earth, Jesus Christ himself expressed anger on a few occasions. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus made a whip of cords and drove the merchants out of the temple in Jerusalem. At the end of his ministry, he returned to the temple and angrily drove out the merchants again and overturned their tables. In between these dramatic bookends to his earthly ministry, Jesus had other documented occasions to be manifestly angry.
So, anger is a normal healthy emotion that can be helpful in coping with or responding to injustice and other hurtful situations. However, we are called upon by God, and by civilised traditions, to control our anger, channelling it to positive purposes. We must never give room to aggression and violence. Whereas the Apostle Paul acknowledges the normality of anger, he teaches us in Ephesians 4:25-32 to be angry and do not sin, to not let the sun go down on our anger, to let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and slander be put away from us, and to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave us.
Last week’s episode, in which a member of the Ugandan Parliament physically assaulted his colleague, followed by multi-person brawl and chaos, reflected a pathological failure to tame one’s anger. We do not condone the hooliganism displayed by people whose brief is to engage in informed, civilised dialogue. We cannot justify the violence that would be unacceptable among primary school children. On the other hand, we do not condemn the violent MPs. They may well have mental illness. They need to seek help from psychiatrists.
This was not the first episode of its kind in Uganda’s Parliament. Physical fights, and very aggressive verbal altercations have become so common in that chamber that society is no longer shocked by the juvenile behaviour of people that call themselves “honourable” adults. Whereas unparliamentary behaviour in that chamber is as old as the building itself, video records of the modern bouts make them more scandalous than earlier displays of anger that were hardly noticed by the public.
The earliest documented reference to aggression in that chamber was recorded by Sir Edward Mutesa II, the Kabaka of Buganda and first President of Uganda. Narrating the events leading up to his election as president on October 1, 1963, Mutesa wrote in “Desecration of My Kingdom”, his autobiography, that Sir William Wilberforce Kadhumbula Nadiope, the Kyabazinga of Busoga, who was also the Vice-President of the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), had an altercation with Prime Minister Milton Obote. Nadiope was another candidate for the presidency of Uganda.
“Perhaps in an unguarded moment someone had made (Nadiope) some promise,” Mutesa wrote. “In any case, when time came for the election, he insisted on remaining in the National Assembly, though it was suggested that as an interested party it might be more tactful for him to leave. As he sensed things were not going his way, he rushed up to the Prime Minister, who feared a physical attack and backed round a table. They completed two or three circuits with Obote explaining at a safe distance that all would be well, and he must calm down. A special title of Vice-President was created for him, but I do not think he can have found his duties onerous.”
Incidentally, a similarly high-level but consequential altercation occurred in the precincts of the Kenyan Parliament in Nairobi in February 1965. Pio Gama Pinto, a Goan-Kenyan, who had suffered greatly in the struggle for independence, had become deeply disillusioned with his friend and hero President Jomo Kenyatta. Now an MP, Pio had gathered strong evidence to support his political case against Kenyatta whom he accused of massive land grabbing and betrayal of Kenyan people.
Mr. Fitz de Souza, another Goan-Kenyan, who was the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, reported in “Forward to Independence”, his memoirs, that he was urgently summoned to stop an altercation between Pio and Kenyatta. “I’ll fix you!’ Pio shouted at President Kenyatta. The latter shouted back at Pio.”
Fitz de Souza put his arms around Pio, trying to restrain him and calm him down. He warned him that he was a dispensable Muhindi (Indian) that could be easily dispatched with two bullets and forgotten. A few days later, on February 25, 1965, Pio Gama Pinto was assassinated, shot in his driveway, as he was attempting to go to work on behalf of Kenya. Nearly sixty years later, the “powers that be” that ordered and organized his assassination remain unknown.
Physical fights among politicians are a universal phenomenon. The violence in the Ugandan parliament is relatively tame compared to recent chaotic bloody battles that have occurred in the parliaments of Georgia, India, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Kosovo, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, and many others. Violence in the British House of Commons is a well-documented story, though the last physical fight there seems to have occurred in 1923. Those two red lines on the green carpet between the two sides in the House of Commons are not there for decorative purpose. They represent “two sword-lengths apart.” Members may not speak from the floor of the House between the red lines. The Brits have mastered the skills for keeping their anger under check.
They now excel at exchange of verbal artillery, delivered in sweet prose that camouflages anger that is the antecedent of fist fights in other places.
Why do MPs fight? This is a question that continues to exercise the minds of scholars in human psychology and social science. Cumulative evidence suggests that parliamentary violence is used as a public performance (showing the public that one is fighting for them) and a tactical strategy to ensure a desired outcome of the Bill before the House. Opposition MPs may use violence to delay or defeat the Bill. Ruling party MPs may use violence to impose their will on the chamber. In Uganda’s case, the ruling party has supplemented its violent efforts with security forces in plain clothes who have beaten and terrorized the people’s representatives.
Parliamentary brawling appears to reflect the state of democracy in the country. It is seen in countries that are neither very autocratic nor very democratic. It is a behaviour that signals the death of persuasion, and the rise of coercion. My wish is to see temperance and tolerance in Uganda’s politics, including inside parliament. However, the reality is that the politics of coercion will continue to be relied upon by the ruling regime, inside and outside parliament, for the foreseeable future. Pity.
© Muniini K. Mulera