By Boy Fidel Leon
Since all we can do is talk, as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, the Makerere Debate Union pulled a few strings, scrapped off their week’s planned debate topic, and put the topic “ The Russian Ukraine invasion” as their discussion topic of the week.
Most Ugandans ran to Twitter to vent and fill the app with tweets of an upcoming world war, making it a trending hashtag. The intellects thought to do it differently, so they held a debate. Like perfect timing, Russia invaded Ukraine on the same day the Union had the debate. Coincidence, maybe.
Like any of their usual weekly debates, this one was held on a Thursday, 24th of February from 5-7 pm in Mary Stuart Hall of residence.
The crowd, a few hungry debaters filled the seats in Mary Stuart as the handler took through the discussion talking about the history of the two states (Ukraine and Russia), our predicament, and even if it was right or wrong for Russia to invade Ukraine.
“Shall we allow Russia to continue with its expansion policies that are reckless …?” A question was born through the audience and the debate began.
“Is Africa even going to be affected? Or we are just about to poke our noses in things we aren’t supposed to?” The debate sprang on as a lad noted. This statement came through with a lot of back clashes as majority of people claimed that one way or another Africa would be greatly affected.
There was for a minute a wave of laughter when someone claimed that Africa would benefit from the war. “We have gold that will be highly valuable during the war,” they claimed.
The debate ended prematurely, but what was clear was, Africa has no authority to do much but will or might get affected amidst the crossfire. Students agreed that much as they sit down and debate or fill media with tweets, the livelihoods of people in Ukraine depend on superpower leaders and we (Uganda) barely have a say in the matter.
“If I was Biden I wouldn’t take on this one, as callus as it might stand.” Another student said.
Students left the debate grounds greener than they had walked in, millions of questions pondering still like drums thinking about how Putin might “get away with murder”.
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