Olivia LutaayaYou have probably already presumed from the title that I am about to gaslight everyone. The media, academia, human rights organisations, feminists, and others. There is certainly a temptation to do so. It is easy to believe that everyone else has failed while you alone have seen the truth. But every time I feel that temptation, I remind myself that we are all victims of the same society. Very few people are genuinely conscious, and even those who are often discover that the game is so deeply rigged that opening the eyes of an entire polity feels almost impossible. Perhaps consciousness begins not with believing you are better than everyone else, but with recognising how deeply you, too, have been shaped by the world you criticise. So, if I take what appears to be the moral high ground in this article, it is not because I think I am morally superior. It is because sometimes one has to assume that no one else will, and then have the courage to say it. I think Uganda has overlooked Olivia Lutaaya. I first met Olivia inside Luzira Prison. I had accompanied Agather Atuhaire, who by then had become a familiar face through her work with political prisoners. It was obvious that the two women knew each other well. They laughed like mischievous classmates who had perfected the art of communicating without drawing the teacher’s attention. They whispered constantly, careful not to allow prison warders to overhear. I was close enough to catch fragments of their conversation. What struck me was not what they were discussing. It was Olivia herself. She had already spent years behind prison walls, yet prison had not taken away her warmth. She smiled easily. She worried more about the people around her than about herself. There was no bitterness in her voice, only an exhausting uncertainty about when or whether the legal process would finally come to an end. Months later, I encountered her again during another visit to Luzira, along with Agather, Yunus Lubega, and others, we had gone to see the match to parliament participants, Ugandans that had been arrested and remanded during the protests. They spoke about Olivia with extraordinary affection. To them, she was the woman who welcomed new arrivals, cooked, comforted the frightened prisoners, and helped them make sense of this unfamiliar world. She gave other women a soft landing in a place designed to punish them. While doing all this, there was no camera capturing this or a newspaper reporting (pun intended). It made me wonder how many heroes we fail to recognise simply because they exist beyond the reach of public attention Olivia is not Dr. Stella Nyanzi, Winnie Mandela, or even Ingrid Turinawe. She never had the privilege of sitting in university lecture rooms. Better yet, in a classroom at all. She cannot read or comprehend a single English sentence. Before politics interrupted her life, she was simply a mother trying to earn a living through a small business in Namuwongo. In Marxist terminology, she would likely be classified as part of the lumpen proletariat. While the NUP recently celebrated six years of existence, Olivia has spent five of those years in detention. Pause and think about that. Five years. Five years separated from ordinary life. Five years that cannot be regained. That is about the same time as the NRM bush war. We remember Nelson Mandela’s 27 years. We remember Walter Sisulu. We remember Winnie Mandela’s bans and repeated detention. We remember Ken Saro-Wiwa’s sacrifice in Nigeria, and the nameless women and men who endured colonial prisons across Africa so that later generations could inherit freedom. I say history only remembers them because someone first decided they were worth remembering. But sometimes, and almost all the time, that decision is political, and it is deeply shaped by class. The people we celebrate are rarely just the bravest among us. They are often the most visible. The educated, the connected, the eloquent. The ones whose stories fit comfortably into our imagination of what greatness is supposed to look like. We admire degrees and titles. We admire influence. We admire wealth. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these things. The problem is that they have replaced sacrifice. Our children grow up knowing the names of celebrities, ministers, and successful entrepreneurs. How many will ever know the woman from Namuwongo who quietly surrendered years of her freedom because she believed Uganda deserved something better? French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argued that societies distribute recognition through what he called cultural capital. Some people possess the language, education, mannerisms, and social networks that make them immediately recognisable as important. Others, despite extraordinary courage, remain invisible because they lack those markers of prestige. This explains why we reserve our admiration for women who occupy Parliament for decades, accumulate influence, and become household names, while women whose greatest achievement is sacrifice disappear quietly into the background of history. Ask a random girl or boy who their role model is, and they will tell you some three women who have spent decades in parliament on affirmative action cards with little to show except corruption scandals and witchcraft allegations. This is not an argument against accomplished women. It is an argument about what we choose to celebrate. When we speak of role models, what exactly do we mean? Our society constantly tells us to pursue “service above self.” Some of you were members of interact club. What does that slogan actually mean if not this? What is service if not surrendering years of your freedom for convictions that offer no guarantee of reward? What is courage if not returning to the struggle after prison has already taken almost everything from you? The uncomfortable truth is that Olivia’s story exposes something about the rest of us. Most of us admire courage from a safe distance. We tweet. We write articles. We debate politics over a Jameson punched with a little Coca-Cola. Then we return to comfortable lives that demand very little sacrifice from us. Olivia reminds us that political conviction has a cost. And if we are honest, most of us are unwilling to pay it. Perhaps that is why we overlook her. Not because she lacks significance. But because recognising her would force us to confront our own cowardice. It would force us to admit that while we celebrate courage in theory, we often choose comfort in practice. This article is not an appeal for sympathy. Nor is it a plea for awards. I doubt that is why Olivia has endured what she has endured. It is a plea that we become more conscious of the values by which we measure greatness. That we stop confusing prominence with courage. That we stop mistaking wealth for contribution. That we stop believing history is only made by people with titles before their names. What I have learnt from following the people power movement is that the greatest heroes never stand behind podiums, receive honorary doctorates. Once in a while, they appear on front pages with crying images, and that’s all. Maybe pleading for their recognition is also my own false assumption that one ought to be recognised for them to become. I’m right, though. ‘Herodom’ is societally conferred, and so I insist that we should have the moral imagination to recognise our ‘ordinary’ heroes. Lawelfrayer#53@gmail.com The writer is a researcher with Agora Center for Research.The post Olivia Lutaaya isn’t the ‘hero’ she should be because she is poor appeared first on The Observer Media Ltd.