Ntare hailed for bridging

regional cultural divide

 

H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s speech

at Ntare School’s Golden Jubilee on September 30, 2006.

Our brother, H.E. Paul Kagame, Old boy of Ntare School and President of Rwanda;
The Headmaster of the School;
The Chairperson of the Board;
The Chairperson of the Parents Association;
The old boys and all the visitors here today;
As you heard, Ntare had three characteristics:
-one characteristic was non-sectarianism;
-the second characteristic was non-authoritarianism;
-the third characteristic was academic and extra curricula excellence.

Therefore, when you talk of Ntare, you are just talking about these three things.
You could also add a fourth one which is a consequence of the other three.
-The character formation of the student.

When we are here celebrating the 50 years, therefore, we are celebrating 50 years of a successful education package. This was a very good package. No wonder the alumni of this school have travelled far and wide in different fields, in terms of achievement. I would, therefore, invite the school authorities in Uganda to study a bit more this philosophy of education -an all round philosophy of education.

Presidents Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame

of Rwanda having a chat at Ntare, last week

I remember in 1965 when we had a show, here in the school hall, between Mr. Crichton and Prime Minister Obote. Mr. Crichton read a speech where he put forward the theory that you educate the mind, you educate the body then after educate the spirit. When Obote stood up to speak, he attacked him. (Those speeches are there. You can go and refer to them).

Obote was advocating authoritarianism: that you do not develop the spirit of somebody -you suppress it. The Ministry of Education, therefore, could really study a bit more -because this was a new experiment by the way.

In 1956 when this school started, this was a new experience. For instance, there was no bullying here at Ntare. As part of building the character of non- authoritarianism, Crichton banned bullying. When I came to Ntare, I was coming from Mbarara High School. In Mbarara High School when you are coming as a new boy, you had to have a protector (a senior boy who would protect you against the boys who would bully you). Here in Ntare, however, there was no bullying; it was stopped completely, there was total freedom. Crichton had a habit; if you were escaping from school, he would see you escaping and pretend that he has not seen you; and yet he would have seen you. Out of your own guilt, you would never escape again.

In the case of Uganda, as you know we started this Universal Primary Education (UPE) which has been a big success. We used to have 2.5 million children in Primary Schools; when we started UPE, it jumped to 7.7 million children. This coming year, we are going to start Universal Secondary Education (USE). You will recall that I promised you in the campaigns that we would start Universal Secondary Education; the other groups were saying that Museveni is telling lies. However, Universal Secondary Education is going to start next year.

As you heard from the minister, we have 850 Government secondary schools in the whole of Uganda. There is another 4,000 privately run secondary schools. The Universal Secondary Education, therefore, would be for the government run secondary schools, not private schools. I think what will happen, will be that the children of the poor people will go to the government schools; while the ones of the rich ones not wanting overcrowding would be the ones of the private sector. This is good division of labour: let the private sector educate the children of the rich and the government educate the children of the poor.

As part of the USE we are going to expand secondary school infrastructure. You remember we want every sub-county to have at least one government secondary school. You now hear that we have 850 government secondary schools; however, they are not all properly distributed. You find some concentrated in a few sub-counties. The sub-counties in Uganda are about 1,000; when I last checked, I think 700 sub-counties already had secondary schools. These 850 I am talking about are distributed among the 700 sub-counties out of the 1000. We are, therefore, remaining with the debt of building another 300 or so secondary schools as well as rehabilitating the old ones like this one. We have been talking with the Ministry of education about this and we are going to announce in detail how this will be done.

Generally speaking, we prefer day schools to boarding schools. Why? This is because you spend less money on accommodation and feeding and so on and you concentrate on education -on classrooms, on libraries, on laboratories for science and laboratory for ICT. In the rural areas, therefore, we would want to emphasise this: let us concentrate on teaching and leave the non-teaching aspects for somebody else to deal with like the families. We shall, however, keep some of the boarding schools like this one. As to the memorial which we are building, we shall contribute as usual.

King Ntare (1870-1895) was interesting; his mother Kibooga was from Busongora; she had been captured in a raid in Makara, in Congo (Makara was put in Congo by the colonial borders). That is where she was captured in a raid, around 1840-1848 or there about. When she came here she got married to the king of Ankole Mutambuka, then produced this Ntare. You normally talk about Ntare but you don’t know which Ntare you are talking about; so it is important for you to know that history.

I am very grateful that H.E. Paul Kagame came from Rwanda to attend this day. When I spoke to H.E. Paul Kagame, he was going to New York to attend the UN General Assembly; that is why we postponed the function. We agreed that we hold it towards the end of September. I am very glad he came; and he came with a big delegation from Rwanda.

The people of Rwanda and the people of East Africa are very close people. The languages are quite close. If a munyarwanda thinks he can backbite me, he is wasting his time, because I will know what he is saying. Just a few words are different. For instance, they see an old woman and they say she is omugore but the Banyankore say but that woman is old.

How can you call her a mugore! Omugore, according to the Banyankore, is a newly wed. However, you can see it is the same essence -a woman. The languages, therefore, are very close. The cultures of the people are close; geographically we are very close.

Cooperation, therefore, has always characterised our people. For instance when our people in Rwanda run away from bad government there, they came they joined these schools. I remember the first Banyarwanda boys were Kainamura (who is here now), Munyangabi and Mazimpaka -they were three. Mazimpaka, however, was younger. Others came afterwards. Because of that non-discrimination you see how they became very useful citizens in their own countries.

Recently when people run to Bunyoro because of the troubles in Congo, some of the politicians were saying: “We must send back these Congolese”. I said: “No. How will you send them back? What sort of Congolese are they?” They said: “They are Alurs”. So I said: “Now how are you going to tell an Alur of Uganda and an Alur of Congo? Let these people take refuge some where, when their country stabilises they will go back”.

The Africans do not see far. We are talking about uniting Africa and then you find people xenophobic. Now, those Congolese whom they wanted to send back some of them are here in Semliki. They are now going back; their country will stabilise and you will be going there to do business. So you are making friendships.

I am therefore happy to see that Ntare played that role of bridging the people of this region, bringing us together.

I wish you many more years of happiness beyond 50. My grandchildren will come for the centenary.

With these few words, I will invite His Excellency Paul Kagame to come and greet you and give you some words of advice.

Thank you very much.