Stacy Long
AFA Journal staff writer
“At the door the student turned suddenly and his face was no longer empty but furious.
“‘Our whole country is in desolation,’ he cried. ‘Amin’s victims are everywhere. They are lying unburied in the streets and in the forests, and they are rotting before heaven.’
“In a few short years Uganda’s death toll would stand at over 300,000. … From the beginning, the primary target of Amin’s brutality was the Christian church. All of his victims suffered unspeakably. They were tortured and humiliated in front of their families and friends. They were dismembered, decapitated, made to eat their own flesh. … I became convinced that the regime of Idi Amin was not merely tyrannical but demonic.”
December 2014 – So F. Kefa Sempangi, Ugandan professor and pastor, writes in A Distant Grief as he tells of surviving the horrifying massacres that occurred throughout the 1970s.
Coffee possibilities
Troy Smith went to Uganda in 2012 on behalf of Kabum Coffee and found a land healing from the bloody interlude between its independence from Britain in 1962 and its current administration under President Yoweri Museveni, begun in 1986.
Kabum Coffee, a supplier to AFA’s Thomas Street Coffee, began working in Uganda as a means of sustaining indigenous Christian mission projects: schools, child sponsorships, clean water wells, business networks and other ventures. (See “Ministry passport,” AFA Journal, 7-8/13, and “Aid that Empowers,” AFA Journal, 2/14.) As director of business development for Kabum, Smith connects with native businesspeople and government representatives to build a better economy.
“In 2008, we started getting into coffee in Uganda,” he told AFA Journal. “It being a coffee growing region, we thought, ‘Why don’t we optimize their experience in coffee, give them better connections to the market, and help them produce coffee in a way that becomes more profitable?’ Thomas Street Coffee really has been a blessing because they help us move the coffee, and without these partners, our work becomes really difficult if not impossible.”
National repentance
Smith’s frequent trips – 11 in 30 months – between Uganda and his home in Sisters, Oregon, took him on an interesting road that ended at the Ugandan president’s Kisozi Ranch and dinner with President Museveni. As a result of that meeting, Smith began to give close attention to events surrounding the president. Most significant was Museveni’s public repentance and dedication of the nation to God in October 2012.
“This was in Uganda’s Year of Jubilee, celebrating 50 years of independence from British rule,” Smith said. “They wanted this Year of Jubilee to be filled with an intentional sequence of solemn prayer and fasting, organized through the different regions by the leaders of the nation. And it all culminated with Museveni’s public prayer.”
The president’s leadership in publicly confessing and repenting of specific sins as a nation represented a clean break from the evil committed by past leaders.
President Museveni’s speech read, “I stand here today to close the evil past.” He went on to name specific sins ranging from corruption and sexual immorality to the shedding of innocent blood and witchcraft, saying, “These sins and many others have characterized our past leadership, especially the last 50 years of our history.”
As Smith explained, witchcraft is prevalent in Africa and was likely embedded in the administrations of earlier leaders.
“I’ve heard from a lot of people that witchcraft had been brought into Uganda’s earlier government administrations,” he said. “I believe those ceremonies included human sacrifice. So the president felt that because of that past covenanting with darkness, and because the evil had been so serious and so deep, there needed to be a public repentance and dedication.”
The president’s speech finished with dedicating the nation to God:
We want to dedicate this nation to You so that You will be our God and guide. We want Uganda to be known as a nation that fears God and as a nation whose foundations are firmly rooted in righteousness and justice to fulfill what the Bible says in Psalm 33:12, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, a people You have chosen as Your own.”
I renounce all the evil foundations and covenants that were laid in idolatry and witchcraft. I renounce all the satanic influence on this nation. And I hereby covenant Uganda to You, to walk in Your ways and experience all Your blessings forever.
Dedication at work
Since declaring the public dedication of the nation to God, the president and his wife, Janet Museveni, have been spearheading initiatives that particularly focus on strengthening family and moral values.
“They have a population where 50% are under the age of 15,” Smith said. “Addressing the current generation will, of course, impact Uganda’s future. Twenty-two years ago, First Lady Janet Museveni started the Uganda Youth Forum, the purpose of which is to encourage positive development of youth and teach them how to stay away from things that would destroy their lives with disease or corruption.
“One of the primary goals was to address the impact of HIV/AIDS, which has killed 30% of their population,” Smith said. “Her program used the ABC method, which focuses on abstinence and being faithful in marriage, using condoms only as a last precaution.”
That campaign began in the 1990s after more than 6,000 AIDS cases had been reported in Uganda. According to Uganda’s Ministry of Health, the prevalence of AIDS cases dropped from 18% in 1992 to 6% by 2001. Uganda’s program was “one of the world’s earliest and most compelling AIDS prevention successes,” according to research from the National Institutes of Health, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The same study notes that this program also dramatically affected sexual behavior, with premarital sex among males aged 15-24 decreasing from 60% in 1989 to 23% in 1995.
Unfortunately, in more recent years the program drew criticism for its emphasis on reducing extramarital sexual activity, and Western involvement has somewhat handicapped the success of the program as it had been initially implemented.
Nevertheless, Uganda’s First Family continues working to protect their youth and their future. Specifically, sexual violence is one problem before them.
“Uganda frequently follows the British custom of sending children to live in a boarding school situation,” Smith explained. “There, a sexual offender could intimidate youth into sexual acts through threats, coercion or force. Specific incidents have happened. AIDS is also spread through what they call aggravated homosexuality.
“The president is now exploring options for addressing both of those issues,” he said. “But I believe most people would agree that offending someone sexually through a nonconsensual act – as well as spreading AIDS – should be punished, regardless of the gender of offender or victim and especially if the victim is under 18.”
Despite Western criticism, President Museveni and his administration continue the work begun at the dedication of the nation, as they seek the best course by which they may honor God, their people and their nation’s future. 
