De‐Institutionalising, African Style

Extract

Some time ago, a television programme dealt with the state of affairs in Uganda—a country that has gripped the news media for a long time. It gave the impression that the army and police were instrumental in the horrors perpetrated against the population. The police and army were set up in Uganda, as in other countries, by the colonial powers to defend the population from violence and crime at home, and aggression from outside the country’s boundaries. In so doing, the colonial powers transplanted their own institution of social control.

What was intended to help the local population has become in fact in Uganda, for example, an institution of violence, aggression, crime and exploitation of the very people it was supposed to protect. Hopefully, Uganda is an extreme case but it is not the only country in Africa where governments act in a like manner. Thus one of our western institutions, established for the good of the community has become quite the opposite of what was really intended.

The army and police are not in fact the only ones to have gone this way. Throughout the years that I spent living and working in the rural areas of East Africa, I constantly came into contact with doctors, nurses and other members of the medical profession working in hospitals and clinics run by the Government or the missions. One constantly heard the same story from doctor or nurse, man or woman, black or white, government or mission employed that they were frustrated. Desperately sick patients would be brought to them only to die after a short period in hospital.