Our wickedness has hit rock bottom. The recent events surrounding the send-off of the fallen King of Tooro, Oyo Kabamba Iguru, exposed mixed feelings, evoked deep-seated anger, and revealed a worrying trend of inflicting more pain on those already in vulnerable situations. At the risk of sounding like a moralist, which I cannot claim to be, that is not what King Oyo deserved to witness, in presence or in absence.
I concur with someone on social media who said that the departed King was simply too good to be among us. We must carry the cross and admit that we failed him at a certain point. We tainted his send-off with denigration and turned it into an exchange of accusations, whether true or false.
We all know those drunken mourners who turn up at late-night funerals spilling truths, half-truths, and sometimes outright falsehoods about the dead. That is what many of us became, with the only difference being that sobriety was on our side.
Some of us turned into judges, delivered half-baked judgments and, worst of all, replaced empathy with sentiment. The lowest we could sink was to turn on Queen Mother Best Kemigisa and demoralize her in her hour of grief. This was not only surreal, but it revealed how deep our wickedness has sunk.
This is not a proclamation that the Queen Mother is without fault. It is, however, a poignant reminder that grief itself is burden enough and should not be worsened by other bruises, all in the name of airing our often-uncalled-for opinions. At least, as many observed, while the entire kingdom mourned a King and the world mourned its youngest monarch, the Queen Mother mourned a son.
Her pain is inexplicable to anyone except a mother who has been through a similar loss. The least she deserved was empathy, for there will still be enough time for the other battles, as we have all seen in the media. For a renowned scribe like Andrew Mwenda, he should have known better than to unleash his diatribe against the Queen Mother under such circumstances.
Mwenda’s diatribe showed little to no empathy for a mother in grief. A woman whose strongest chapter had just closed. A woman who had little left to hold onto in that moment. And above all, a woman who needed no assurance that we understood what she was going through — because truly, no one did. The truth is, the Queen Mother needed, and still needs, our empathy as she navigates a new chapter without her dear son.
For sure, empathy feels abstract until it becomes your only need in a moment of need. And denying it to those who need it can cost you dearly. This reminds me of the story of the late South African photojournalist Kevin Carter. He shot the infamous photograph of a famine-stricken child stalked by a vulture.
In the short term, it demonstrated his ability to take a powerful picture. In the long term, that same picture exposed his lack of empathy, as he could not explain what happened to the little girl after he took the shot. Unable to live with the guilt, Carter took his own life and today he remains a sobering reminder that our personal interests should never overshadow our empathy for those in vulnerable situations.
This may sound unrelated to an intelligent man like Mwenda, but time will tell. A day may come when all the powerful contacts he wields will count for nothing — in an uninvited moment that bows to no power, no money, only empathy.
The author Mr. Badru Walusansa is a socio-political analyst
The post BADRU WALUSANSA: In Her Deepest Grief, Best Kemigisa Deserved Empathy, Not A Diatribe appeared first on Watchdog Uganda.