I also struggle with the word gaslighting. It means leading someone to doubt what they can plainly see. In the article, I cannot find anyone claiming that Raymond's move is only a career step. What it describes is congratulations from people who know him, and congratulating a friend on a new job is not deception. Lawel asks that Raymond own what the move means politically. He will, over time, through what he does and what he refuses to do, and that record is a fairer basis for judgment than a statement made on day one.
By Michael Wadada
Lawel is a friend of mine, and that is why I am writing this instead of letting it pass. I read "Goodbye Raymond, but do not gaslight us" carefully. I agree with much of what drives it: the concern about how Uganda is governed, and the accounts of victims and their families that he has taken the trouble to gather. But I think his argument against Raymond Mujuni asks too much of one man's career choice, and I want to explain why.
I know Raymond as an astute journalist, and nothing more. We are not friends, so I can't claim to know him well as a person, and I won't speak for his reasons. What I do understand is his position, because many Ugandans face some version of it. A person has skills, a family to support, and a wish to see the country improve. The routes for using those skills are limited, and none of them is clean. Lawel acknowledges this himself when he says people have families and ambitions. Having admitted that the dilemma is real, he then treats one answer to it as the only honourable one.
Lawel says Raymond stands for a class of educated young Ugandans whose choices carry consequences beyond their own careers. That is true, and it is a reason to judge the choice carefully rather than quickly. A class is made of individuals, and each of them will do different things in different offices. Treating the whole group as one verdict removes the very thing that decides whether a public job is honourable, which is what the person actually does in it.
The comparison with apartheid South Africa and colonial Congo is where the argument weakens. If serving a state we object to makes someone a collaborator, the same judgment must apply to the nurse in a government hospital, the teacher on the public payroll and the engineer who approves a road. Lawel accepts that some state work is genuine public service, but he does not say how to tell that work from the rest. What a person does in a position has to count for more than who employs them or whom they once stood beside.
He is right that the government and state are separate in theory and hard to separate in practice after four decades under one organisation. But the same reality cuts the other way. If the government runs the machinery of the state, the people working inside it are the ones best placed to see where it fails. Distance gives criticism its passion. Proximity can give it evidence.
His point about intelligent people in government is also fair as far as it goes. Uganda has never lacked educated officials, and their degrees have not produced better governance. But that shows education is not enough. It does not show that decent people should stay out. If those with a conscience leave every public office to others, the institutions are left to people without one. Raymond will not change the system alone, and nobody is claiming he will. The more modest claim is that individuals inside an institution can still influence what gets written, questioned and decided.
I also struggle with the word gaslighting. It means leading someone to doubt what they can plainly see. In the article, I cannot find anyone claiming that Raymond's move is only a career step. What it describes is congratulations from people who know him, and congratulating a friend on a new job is not deception. Lawel asks that Raymond own what the move means politically. He will, over time, through what he does and what he refuses to do, and that record is a fairer basis for judgment than a statement made on day one.
Lawel also stresses Raymond's early role in People Power, as if it created a lasting obligation. Movements depend on people who change their minds, grow tired, or decide that change will come another way. A cause that treats leaving as betrayal ends up with members who stay out of fear of the cost, not out of belief.
None of this dismisses Lawel's central concern. He has spoken with victims, wives of political prisoners and children of missing parents, and that gives his warning real weight. I take that seriously, and so should anyone who reads him. He is also right that joining carries a moral cost and that competence should never replace conscience. If Raymond's work ends up serving abuse, he should be held to account for it, openly, by people like Lawel.
That is where the scrutiny belongs: on what Raymond does, not on the fact that he has joined. Lawel asks that we all be honest about our choices, and I agree. So, honestly, a capable man has taken a lawful job, and the case against him so far rests on association. Lawel, my friend, keep asking the hard questions, because the country needs them. But let the judgment follow the evidence. Raymond, I wish you well, and I hope your work earns a fair verdict.