Obtaining from the popular culture of horror films, Daniel Drezner in his book: The theory of the Zombies, imagines a world overrun with zombies and he projects the eternal fear- in case the dead rose from the graves and started eating the living, as an existential threat to human existence.
For the sake of the innocent readers of this piece, a zombie can be understood as a fictional undead created through the reanimation of a human corpse. The understanding of this concept; may come along with some sort of frightening gestures, but, it is the harsh reality that we must comprehend, in order to fathom the basics of security dialectics that are construed with human survival.
To Drezner, a zombie, is always thirsty and hungry of human flesh and blood, and he goes on to anticipate a zombie apocalypse; as a widespread rise of zombies, hostile to human life engages in a general assault on civilization. On that regard, thus, zombies may become zombies themselves, if they are bitten by a zombie or if a zombie-creating virus travels by air, association, sexually or by water in others.
Then, how does Drezner’s works speak to Uganda’s security dynamics? In Uganda, there are a handful of threats that have undergone a complete metamorphosis to become zombies in all forms. These among others include; poverty, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, terrorism, ethnic rivalries, drug abuse, proliferation of expired and counterfeit drugs (for instance, Hepatitis B Vaccination drugs, as reported in the New vision dated 16th. March, 2018), the women killings (that claimed over 20 lives), the recent killings and kidnaps that have ravaged the country, and one that struck my back was when I read in the New vision (dated 28th.May,2018) that Johnson Baby Powder, the widely most used baby powder in Uganda, contains asbestos in its talcum baby powder that causes Mesothelioma, a form of cancer linked to asbestos exposure; you can imagine the magnitude of the danger, a country’s hope/future (the Children) they are exposed to, at their infancy!
This zombie-horde has not only robbed the Pearl of Africa of its human resource, but also distorted the social fabric of communities and brought low this civilized nation. In other words, there is an existential threat, that is, fear in the general populace due to this zombie-like infestation, thus, prompting a condition of ‘in-security dilemma’ to define our country in this 21st century competitive global economy.
Some of the threats would not have triumphed in our amidst; if it had not been the total breakdown of our social fabrics, erosion of Nation’s foundational values and withering away of the sophisticated African principles and ideals of ‘Ubuntu’. Many Ugandans have continued to individually expensively feed themselves and lavishly spent their lives, amidst their poorly fed, clothed and extremely poor counterparts; remember, it is this poor hungry neighbour that is soon becoming a living zombie only to go for your blood in order to quench his thirst in the pursuit of survival (since it is now, every man for himself and God for us all). Rich men have continued to heavily invest in building strong perimeter walls other than building strong communities-where all members have confidence and trust in each other. An HIV/AIDS infected rich man deliberately desires to infect many young beautiful girls, because he has money and riches-as gifts of exchanges, to woo these poor girls; do you see how the rich man becomes a living zombie thirsty of human blood, as he creates more zombies? In this game of the zombie effect, either the rich or the poor can be zombies, and this zombification spreads like wild fire.
Prescriptively, thus, given the individual flaws, the limitations of human reason and highly fluid situations; there is a need for all Ugandans to act in concert so as to correct the zombie gap in addressing the genuine but publicly unacknowledged fear of the ‘worst-case scenario’ that would arise of the likely zombie infestation; since the plague has no respecter of either the rich, educated, the fittest, the armed, leaders and politicians, the landlords or the poor.
It is of no doubt that the blend of the political will of our leaders-to invent and enforce holistic reliable rules and policies, and the general will of the populace-to implement the rules in good faith and the selfless natural instincts to ensure security in its entirety, by all and for all; embedded in the strongest universal values of Ubuntu, this envisaged zombie apocalypse would be defeated and pushed to a no-man’s land. But, the failure of which would turn the current nature of the state of Uganda, into a ‘state of nature’, where in the Hobbesian sense, life would be nasty, short and brutish. Needless to forget that, a zombie just like colonialism; blossoms in an ignorant and divided environment.
To our security organs, practitioners, advisers and experts; the time is ripe, to think outside-of-the-box threats, to get a cognitive grip on the ‘unknown unknowns’ both in human and national security dimensions. In other words, the national security policy should always look up to the worst-case scenario situations-for instance, the dead coming out of their graves and start eating the living human beings-to problematise what is normal, as a new framework to guide the security projections and policies.
The government should preside over the initiation of a National Zombie Organisation-with sufficient funding and sophisticated and nationalistic human resource; to awash the public with the information about the likely consequences of any zombie attack and to mobilse the public in form of micro-national units to rally against and pacify the likely threats. More so, a national portal on the Ministry of Security website or a fully-fledged secretariat to be introduced in the President’s Office/Ministry of security-where the academicians, security analysts, politicians, opinion leaders, religious leaders, cultural leaders and any other rational citizen with a foresight information on the likely emerging threats can be addressed, debated, assessed, analysed and forecast, thus, helping in making routine national security policies and frameworks-depending on the emerging dynamic security environment. Finally, a department or a Centre for Zombie Control and Prevention (CZCP) should be introduced in the President’s Office (under Internal Security Organisation) to contain and pre-empt any likely zombie genre through research, thorough intelligence gathering and other more innovative general public engagements that would precipitate a national character, values and principles and general consciousness on the need to build a free and secure nation, where everyone is a pillar and a winner.
I therefore reiterate that, these plagues have no respecter of either the rich or the poor! Together we must create a secure and a peaceful environment where everyone lives a decent life-with an indomitable enthusiasm to meet life expectations, as long we live; we must live cautiously and consciously-so as to plough the fields, with the multitudes of hope, for a sounding, richer and greater posterity.
