Address campaign trail conflict through mutual understanding

In Summary

By rushing to condemn and threaten to arrest “the militia moving with Mbabazi,” Police Chief, Gen Kale Kayihura, is not managing conflict well;

Those tae kwon do-style kicks TV recently brought to our living rooms all the way from Ntungamo District in western Uganda should push us to strive to understand the dangers and values of conflict to our society. Only then can we be able to manage conflict properly.
Viewed in the context of the Ntungamo fight, conflict is simply a struggle that arises when the goal-oriented behaviour of one group – in this case the one aligned to President Museveni – blocks or tries to block the goal-oriented behaviour of another group, the one rooting for JPAM. That per se is not a bad thing. In fact behavioural theorists argue that conflict is not necessarily a manifestation of abnormal societal behaviour. Yes, conflict can destroy a society. And yes it is also capable of building a society. So get this, people: conflict has both good and bad effects.

If there is no conflict, it means there is no change. A society that cannot change cannot adapt to changing times. And if a society does not adapt, it is finished or irredeemably broken. Kaput! So, behavioural theorists believe that conflict leads to change, change leads to adaptation and adaptation leads to better survival of a society. In other words, conflict allows a society to move forward. (Forget it JPAM, I am not rooting for you.)
Let us tone down the accusations and counter-accusations over what happened in Ntungamo and other places where there have been tensions between different political camps. The challenge is for security agencies, politicians and you and I to view conflict differently.

There are basically three ways of viewing conflict. The first one that seems to be dominant in our society right now when political temperatures are rising rapidly, is the pessimistic view.
It is the pessimistic view that not only tells us that conflicts are permanent and inevitable, but also breeds in our mind the either-we-win-or-they-lose mentality. This kind of attitude misguides us into thinking that one group can win only at the expense of another.

This darn attitude is encouraged by the perceived rules of the much hyped game that this race to 2016 elections represents; the declared winner will take all there is to take. (The more subtle but more deleterious manifestation of conflict in our society – one that hardly makes headlines – is the one that suggests that for someone to get richer, somebody else has to get poorer.)
But there is another way of looking at these things. We need to cultivate the optimistic view of conflict to appreciate the fact that our society is made up of many parts – tribes, ethnic groups and different political persuasions – that need to interrelate to all fit in this map we call Uganda.

Difficult as it may sound, these parts can be interdependent in a systemic fashion. Only then can we see conflict as transient.
We should disagree on details but we must not take our eyes off the fact that we are one people, one Uganda as Dr Kizza Besigye keeps reminding us. Only people who hate this country will persist with the we-are-right-they-are-wrong line. A third way we can try to understand conflict is to take the faint-bit-of-hope view. This is the view that holds that although conflict may be inevitable in a society it is possible to minimise it through planned intervention.

The thing is: for as long as we hold different political opinions, there is bound to be conflict. But if different groups are aware of the need for some cooperation for the sake of the health of our society then there should be a desire lurking in the minds of our people to resolve conflicts in a properly planned and managed manner.
By rushing to condemn and threaten to arrest “the militia moving with Mbabazi,” Police Chief, Gen Kale Kayihura, is not managing conflict well; in fact his partiality in the barbed NRM/Opposition relations is as prominent as the pips on his shoulders. It’s not acceptable.

Dr Okodan is a lecturer at Kampala International University.