Nightmare country

Abstract

David Kihazo is in his early 30s. He became an undergraduate student of English literature at Makerere University in 1971, the year in which Idi Amin seized power. His closest mentor was David Rubadiri, poet and academic, who as a Malawian found his position increasingly untenable and finally had to go into exile from Uganda'. David Kihazo has been a secondary school teacher and a Makerere Fellow in Creative Writing, when he was able to develop his talent for and interest in drama. He is at present Editor (correspondence courses) in the University's Centre for Continuing Education. The problem for him and for many other members of staff at Makerere is that, in their perception, the expectation of improvement in their own condition and the condition of the country after the defeat of the Amin regime has not been realised. The solidarity of Makerere staff has collapsed now that the pressures remembered in this article have gone and other types of pressure (ethnic and religious) have appeared, leading to fission and new demoralisation in the university community. Despondency among younger staff such as Kihazo has been increased by economic hardship. An assistant lecturer's salary for a month will buy one bunch of matoke (plantain), the staple foodstuff; this will last for about a week. Nothing is left over for any other needs and under-nourishment leads to further lowering of spirits. Makerere staff spend much time hunting for money to live on (a professor will use his old car as a taxi, a woman lecturer spends spare time at the market) and many take refuge in alcohol as the quickest way out of their predicament. There is also cynicism among young intellectuals at the sight of former exiles now mysteriously wealthy. Kihazo himself feels he is in a dead-end, rather mechanical job. The typical ‘qualification inflation’ of the Third World means that his talents and background are not enough to secure him an academic post (for that, he needs a Master's degree and the university has no money for staff development for persons who are not already in an academic post). He is still valiantly creative; both in spoken and written words, but he and his friends constantly explore the question: ‘What went wrong?’ The trauma suffered under Amin is still vividly with them and they necessarily continue to explore it and the intellectual listlessness and apathy which seem to have followed. The author has had a collection of his poems published in Uganda and some have been anthologised internationally.