A question lurks in my mind about when and how often must national anthems be revised to match the tide of events and the new awarenesses that are now in our possession as nationals of our fast-developing countries. I am thinking about a certain line in our national anthem that may perhaps be rethought and duly revised. Think about the second line of our anthem, “we lay our future in thy hand”. Our beautiful and prayerful anthem clearly sets us on the right path in great trust and reverence to our God, that makes me ever thankful to its great composer and man of gravitas. However, there are times I have come to reflect on the second line deeper, and have had some concerns raised in my mind. My crucial point here is more about “lay”, the word used in this second line.
It does seem to me that the choice of the word, “lay” gives us a weak tool and a passive stance to what comes ahead of us regarding our nation. Come to think of it, “laying our future in Uganda’s hand seems profoundly passive and a kind of abdication of some level of responsibility for our future. I do understand that we may want to acknowledge and underline the primordial succourance of our nation, and to express our deep affection and gratitude for what this means for us, but words matter a lot and our choice of them should be deliberate and profoundly empowering.
The future is so precious a gift for us all, to just drop it, as it were, in Uganda’s hand and to march off to where I cannot fathom. I can envision Uganda calling us back to say, “hey son, hey daughter, what are we going to do with…? Are you going to work with me, are we working on this together?” And yet another question, “when are you coming back here?” I deign to mention too, that Uganda as a word remains an abstraction; this may pass for good poetry but it may not inspire us to take our nation in our hands. Calling upon Uganda, may just as well be like a gong sounding in the desert.
Here is the crux of the matter. We should not content ourselves by just laying our future in Uganda’s hand, or for that matter, in anyone else’s hands. I beg that you get me correctly. The word lay is mostly the bone of my contention. I believe God and Uganda expect us to do more than this. What if Uganda expects us to hold our future actively in our hands, joined with hers to plan with her, to creatively think about this future with her, to design, conjecture, carve, and envision the future with her. You see, the danger in just “laying” our future in Uganda’s hand is that we may forget it there, thus sitting and waiting to see the miracle she will perform with it. Many Ugandans harbour this miracle craze and it incapacitates us and renders us complacent and impotent just like the voter who calls on the President to fix the path to his/her dilapidated hut crying out, “tusaba Pulesidenti atuyambe”, that is, we ask and wait for the President’s help. We have learnt to totally abdicate our responsibility. What if we asked Ugandans, to join together actively, diligently, arduously, joyfully, and work to build our a great and potent future. The future is in our hands, it is all we have and we must give it our all, never ceding it to an abstraction like Uganda. Our God who has given us all we need to collaborate with him to remake the world and our nation.
The future remains our preoccupation today, as we think about our African continent in the tapestry of international development endeavours. We are paroled to profoundly understand that one major prerequisite of the social-economic, cultural, and spiritual development of our continent and its individual states, is the acumen and capabilities to look far ahead into the future and to decipher the realities therein in good space and time. In truth, our commitment and preoccupation with the future, diabolically makes the future transform into the “present”, or our today. We cannot therefore afford to lay our future anywhere, at any time!
The future has always been a preoccupation of olden folks of antiquity, beginning with ancient Mesopotamia, to the Indus valley civilisations around Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, among the Greeks and romans, the Incas, Mayas, Olmecs, Aztecs and toltecs, and all throughout the great semitic civilisations of Arabia, and other civilisations that have waxed and waned. Our memory is planted in the past in order to cast a long enough shadow into our future for our own survival. In taking thought for tomorrow, humans begin to create tomorrow and to transform it into the “present”, or our today. For any strong society today ensuring a strong future commits its populace to taking time to think, study, and find systems that help them read the workings and the anticipated realities in its future, that may have a strong bearing on what life must be today. Anything to do with the future cannot be laid down; it is both intrinsically and extrinsically active.
The Roman author Cicero curiously states: “I know of no people, whether they be learned and refined or barbaric and ignorant, that does not consider that future things are indicated by signs, and that it is possible for certain people to recognize those signs and predict what will happen” (Divination 1.2 in Johnston 2008: 3). The future is an active phenomenon that lives in the present and therefore, it cannot be laid anywhere, not even for a moment! The future calls us to so many activities that have led to a whole sphere of futuristic studies to help us collect, organise, evaluate, and disseminate predictive information of a world or a nation we envision. As I pen off, I really want to resound my concern, we cannot continue to talk about laying our future anywhere because the future is active, energetic, potent, and gestating of possibilities. We need to pick our future up, and work closely with God and each other to make the future happen. For God has no hands but ours to work with, and legs to walk for and into the future but ours. Uganda is an abstraction that is embodied in us all working as one. We cannot pitch the future back in our nation’s hand! Nor can we just lay our future in God’s hands, we must look for an active and empowering word in the stead of “lay”. And I am going to sing now, “working together as Ugandans, we take the future actively into our hands,” … for so many good things to come. Join me please!
Sr Dr Solome Najjuka – Lecturer and Researcher
Philosophy Centre – Jinja
