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On 10 November 1963, Malcolm X talked about the parable of the “house and field Negro” at King Solomon Baptist Church, Detroit.
He said, “You have to go back to what was referred to as the house Negro and the field Negro back during slavery. There were two kinds of slaves, the house Negro and the field Negro. The house Negroes–they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food–what he left.
And if you came to the house Negro and said, “Let’s run away, let’s escape, let’s separate.” The house Negro would look at you and say, “Man, you crazy.”
On that same plantation, there was the field Negro. The field Negro, those were the masses. There was always more Negros in the field than there was Negros in the house. The Negro in the field caught hell. He ate leftovers. He wore cast-off clothes, and he hated his master. I say he hated his master.
When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try and put it out. That field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he’d die. If someone come to the field Negro and said, “Let’s separate, let’s run,” he didn’t say “Where we going?” He said, “Any place is better than here.”
Malcolm X’s words always shaped a diet of truth, because his message went straight to the gut.
To those who preferred lies, it was a message difficult to stomach. But to those who desired truth, his message was food for thought which fed a freedom fighter’s digest.
Uganda, like Malcolm X’s America, is divided against itself as half field and half house Negro.
In the field, the ghettoes are aswarm with poor folk whose air of injured innocence has left them feeling robbed of all hope.
With few skills and even fewer opportunities, their bank balances are in the red. And so, when they regard their wretched condition, they see red with People Powered intensity.
This would-be rose-colored vision manifests itself in the form of rage towards a gerontocracy (rule of the old) which seems to treat government like a retirement home.
This explains why Gen. Museveni and his fossilized junta are not about to leave the house to go into the field.
To them, being House Negros, it makes little sense to separate from the “masser” who comes in the shape vulturism, Fascism, tribalism, nepotism and militarism.
All the while, the youth (field Negros) are held at gunpoint.
Since 2020, the National Unity Platform (NUP), the party which defeated the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party at the last General Elections, has cried foul regarding missing supporters, some of whom they claim were jailed and kidnapped.
After the violence which characterised the General Elections of 2021, NUP says that parents and relatives of these missing and kidnapped supporters had gotten in touch with them.
NUP then published a list of 243 supporters who they said were missing. Later, the party revised this figure upwards to state that there were over 458 persons missing.
To date, many of these missing persons have not been found.
Tragically, the duality of these two Ugandas may lead to an Armageddon-like showdown. For we inhabit warring worlds, peopled by the haves and the have nots.
A gulf between the two has been widened to a chasm large enough to accommodate us all in a mass grave.
Before his death, Malcolm X joined forces with a man who he once called a “field Negro”: Martin Luther King Jr. Together, they sent a message to a divided world which stated that there are two kinds of slaves, but only one kind of bondage. The bondage of hate.
In Uganda’s case, this bondage has been wrought by the Museveni junta and Ugandans must unite to unshackle themselves of it.
