We don’t need aid from the West, Museveni retorts while launching daughter’s book praising Christianity, a religion introduced to Africa by Western missionaries
The 461-page book, Jesus' Africa, was edited by Dr Matunda Nyachama from Nsemia Publishing in Kenya who described President Museveni as a leader and a thinker for Africa.
President Yoweri Museveni assured a congregation attending his daughter’s book launch at State House in Entebbe on Saturday that Africa has everything and should not be intimidated by those threatening to cut off aid.
“We don’t need aid. We have everything here! We don’t need anything from anybody. The only problem we have is the Edomite curse of selling our birthright,” the President said while launching First Daughter, Patience Museveni Rwabwogo’s book titled Jesus’ Africa.
In Biblical terms, Edomites refers to descendants of Esau who lived in Edom near ancient Israel – some people say Edom is present-day Jordan. And by selling his birthright, the Edomite curse was born.
“Therefore, I’m glad to see that young people are now coming up to see that the problem we have in Africa is the problem of the Edomite curse of selling our birthright,” the President said, castigating the chiefs who failed to fight off colonialists.
He added that the young people can do better to concretize what their grandfathers like Mzee Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere and others started, citing examples like the Pan Africanist Movement, the African National Congress of South Africa in 1912 and the resistance against Bismarck that defeated the colonialists.
He said: “If Africans did not give away their birthright, there was no way at that time the Europeans could have penetrated Africa because they didn’t have technology that was strong enough to defeat them.
“Yes, they had some guns but those guns were not very efficient and the Ethiopians defeated the Italians in 1896. So, the main problem was us, ourselves, especially the chiefs. So therefore, Patience is hitting the nail on the head, when she says that the problem is that we sold our birthright by being greedy and divided.
The President described Pastor Patience as the only priest in the family for the first time in 140 years since the arrival of Christianity in 1877 (Anglicans) and Catholics in 1879.
“For all that time, my family has never been involved either in the government or in the church. In the government, I was the first person to be involved and on the church side it is now my daughter who is now a priest. So, I thank patience for introducing our family to that line. She has shown us that you can be a cattle keeper but also a priest and I congratulate her for that,” the President noted.
On her part, Pastor Patience Rwabwogo told the gathering how she received a revelation from God in 2005 when she saw the vision of God’s redemptive purpose for Africa.
“That was the beginning of the revelation and over the last 17 years, the revelation has continued to grow. Like an onion, each revelation from God opens the door to the next, always going deeper and deeper into the council of God. God started revealing that we cannot move forward as a continent without dealing with the spiritual routes of two of the seminal events of African history; slavery and Colonialism,” Pastor Patience said.
She added that she was surprised by the revelation because she thought these were tragic historical events that are left in the past but, “God showed me that although the routes were in the past, the fruits were still present today and that unless we dealt with those routes we would never experience true freedom whether here in Africa or the diaspora.”
