The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
By Joan Akello
What is perfect happiness to you?
When you are at peace with yourself and your neighbours; it comes with harmony within and around you.
When and where were you happiest?
As a child, playing with my friends in muddy water.
What about your wedding day?
When I was getting married I could have had a moment happiness between me and with my partner but certainly not with what was happening around us. It was misery; I was being threatened with court martial and therefore with such misery everywhere, you are only happy as a child.
Any misperceptions the public has about you?
That I’m always angry looking and bitter; I’m always happy not bitter against anyone or anything. Many think I’m seeking for power. My struggle is for liberation not personal power and; there is a cultivated perception that I am rich.
But people were seeing you as FDC party president traverse the country and also organize workshops yet you say you were not paid
One of the responsibilities of party leadership is fundraising. You have to raise funds from your supporters, well-wishers, fraternal organisations.
What trait do you most deplore in yourself?
My soft heart and helping people to get loans or into power that has turned against me.
What trait do you most deplore in others?
I’ m incensed by acts of injustice against me or anyone like a husband beating his wife or somebody beating a child.
What made a medical doctor join politics?
A doctor does social work and wellbeing of others and it’s in the same line with political work which is about popular welfare. I had never had a calling into politics; it was fatalistic. If I had not been arrested and tortured in 1981, I doubt I would have gone to the bush or into politics for that matter.
What is your greatest fear?
It is not personal but societal; I worry a lot about where our society is heading. I see a spiral of decay that is across the board whether it’s religious or political people.
Don’t you fear that the tsunami you promised years ago will never come?
I wish it never comes but unfortunately the way things are happening , a mass of frustrated , marginalised, dehumanised people in the same place that you have a few opulent, overfed people having everything and also increasingly arrogant, spiteful of those many desperate people; that is the very situation that creates a tsunami. All the mass of frustration is slowly whirling around, gathering momentum; it’s a huge wind that will consume the country unfortunately. As I said, I wish it never comes. But I cannot see it being averted.
Will you stand in 2016?
As I have said, there is a lot of space to watch before 2016.
