It is common and disheartening to see how our leaders and those intending to lead us rush to the UK, Europe and America to look for solutions on how to resolve a socio-political conflict within the Uganda in total disregard of the existing capabilities and mechanisms among our people who actually have 100% knowledge about the conflict and how it can be resolved.
We have seen how all those opposed to the regime in Kampala are always on the landing tarmacs of different western countries in a blind search for a solution to their differences with their political opponents in Kampala, as if there is a known memorandum of understanding with God that solutions to political problems in different countries lie with Europeans and Americans.
A conflict is a situation between at least two interdependent parties that is characterized by perceived differences and that the parties evaluate as negative. This often results in negative emotional states and behaviors intended to prevail.
Conflict is an inevitable and all -pervasive element in our society and in the world. Although conflicts may end up in destruction and even death, conflicts may also result in increased effectiveness, enhanced relationships, and further goal attainment. Indeed, in human terms conflict is one of the “engines of evolution” that allows us to learn, progress. Our goal is not to attempt to do away with conflict but rather to skillfully manage it to further its constructive potential. One wonders how we can tap into these positive outcomes of a conflict if all we do is seek foreign interventions that have never resolved any country`s political stalemate, but end up escalating further.
And that when we talk of conflict resolution which is a communication process for managing a conflict and negotiating a solution where managing the conflict involves defusing any strong emotion involved in the conflict and enabling the disputing parties to understand their differences and similarities and negotiation involves enabling the parties in the conflict to achieve an outcome with respect to their differences. So, by us always running to the west to look for solutions, we end up missing out on this noble ingredient of conflict resolution as solutions that we will get will always be short of comprehensive solutions since they were given by a party that does not have the slightest idea about the real root causes of the conflict.
A conflict situation exists when there are: at least two parties involved who are interdependent, who are experiencing strong emotions, who seemingly hold incompatible outcomes or beliefs, and at least one of the parties recognize the incompatibility and perceives this to be problematic.
In conflict, parties perceive themselves to have incompatible outcomes.
The word outcome in this context refers to what an individual want: their preferred solution or position. Underlying these positions are interests, the reasons an individual wants to achieve a specific outcome in the first place. Interests are an individual’s perceptions and feelings about what is desirable or useful. Interests are central to an individual’s behavior and are rooted in human needs and beliefs.
Therefore, you can see that a foreign solution is not the answer to our existing conflicts, the only thing we manage to do well is to put our differences in the open where they shouldn’t be in the first place and destroy not only our own credibility but that of our country as well. Of course those doing it are too blinded by hate to see how negatively their actions impact the country`s image and myopically imagine they are doing it a service, but deep inside the disguise a cowardly feeling well knowing that they are not strong enough to effectively engage with the other party and so, running to seemingly a strong and opposed party to the regime and convincing yourself and everyone else, that is where the real solution lies in shooting self in the foot, when the country`s image is destroyed and economy takes a nose dive, all of us including your relatives will share the aftermath of your selfish and cowardly acts in the name of exposing the rot by your opponent.
The solution to our differences, political or otherwise is effective if it comes from the warring parties, the third party where you run to may not help much and we have all seen the bitter results of an imposed foreign solution to a domestic conflict, the Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria scenarios to mention but a few is still fresh in our memories and attempting to undo all the efforts of 30 years and so.
The only tangible thing to do is to sit on around table as a nation and talk about these differences and come up with a working solution that will ensure a win-win solution– after all we are citizen of the same country and understand our differences better than where we ran to and so we can come up with a REAL solution for our differences.
For God and my Country