Kony 2012 Is Hurting Uganda More Than It's Helping It

There haven’t been any Kony 2012 posts on my blog so far, despite the craze. Why?

Joseph Kony

Well, I watched the Invisible Children video the day it came out, just like everyone else. I was tempted to share, just like everyone else. But there was just something about the whole message, the whole video that left me feeling uncomfortable. Like there was something missing, like I wasn’t seeing the complete picture at all.

The reason I haven’t posted anything about Kony 2012 is that I’ve been doing a lot of research, reading and looking into the issue. Turns out I was right, and the Invisible Children video smelled fishy for a great number of reasons.


The Problem With Awareness

Let’s start with my first issue. People love being aware. The reason the IC Kony 2012 campaign was so succesful is because the online community draws a great deal of satisfaction from sharing awareness. It makes us feel like we’re contributing, or at the very least, letting our friends and followers know that we stay informed.

But awareness has a flipside: its so enticing because it involves very little else from us. In itself, awareness doesn’t accomplish one damn thing. I’m sure a lot of people would argue awareness represents that crucial first step in moving towards the resultion of a problem – after all, knowing is half the battle right? – but, call me a cynic, I feel that pretty much once the initial rush of „awareness” is gone, once the bandwagon has ceased its loud rattle, once the novelty is gone, not much is left. Just a bunch of „aware” people with a distinct lack of answers hoping that someone – not them, of course – takes the next step.

When someone does take that next step, our self-indulgence beckons us to follow up on our awareness raising and we make a second leap by showering that someone with praise, credit and even cash. We sign petitions, flood social media sites with links and heartfelt pledges, we spam YouTube videos with supportive comments, we parade our involvement even further by supporting that one remarkable someone who’s fighting injustice in our name.

Invisible Children of Uganda

After all, what more can we do? We’ve already raised awareness on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. What more can be expected of us, with our jobs, colleges to pay, lives to live and day-to-day struggles. We send that someone with our money and well-wishes, content that we’ve contributed to change.

Now let’s take one moment to think about Kony 2012 and whether or not it’s worth our support and our cash, and whether or not it’s actually helping the people of Uganda or not. I’ve wondered whether IC and their Kony 2012 campaign are doing the right thing, or if they at least paint the right picture about Uganda’s problems. Turns out, Kony 2012 may be hurting Uganada more than it’s helping it.

How Kony 2012 Is Hurting Uganda


First of all, there are a lot of questions ( link - I really recommend reading this one) regarding Invisible Children and their funding, their lack of transparency, their exaggeration and manipulation of facts, and their lack of accountability. A little research (link) into IC will reveal a few things about their Cayman Island account (not making this up). Keep in mind, financial records are prone to various interpretations (and IC have been accused of tampering with their records), but the hard facts are that IC spends more paying its employees and paying for film-making then it does actually helping anyone in Uganda, with a total of 33% of its revenue going to „direct services”, aka the helping people part of their charity. IC also openly suppport (link) the Ugandan Army, which are just as responsible for arrests, tortures and killings as Kony’s band. But wait – there’s more. 


They’ve also received heavy criticism for their emotional porn soapy approach to film-making and they’ve been accused of being a fund raising stunt (link) that uses lies to ilicit attention (link) for what is essentially a skewed point of view (some call it a myth). But my biggest issue with Kony 2012 is its stated goal of direct military intervention. Take a look at the picture below. That’s IC’s leadership posing with Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army, who were also responsible for using children as soldiers.

C’s leadership posing with Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army 

The People Of Uganda Hate This Film


But I’m not African, I’m European. My opinions may be skewed by my own cynicism, or suspicion, or upbringing. So I researched into what the people who actually live this drama think and feel about Kony. I think the opinion of the people of Uganda matters a hell of a lot more than anyone else's. So here it is.  Anywar Richard, the Director of Friends of Orphans, an Ugandan organization, wrote (link) that IC has no reputation or experience as a peace-keeping organization and that such inexperience is visibile in both their goals and methods. As I stated above, I disagree with IC’s solution of miltiary intervention: so does Richard, as well as TMS Ruge, the Ugandan founder of Project Diaspora, stating that „It is a slap in the face to so many of us who want to rise from the ashes of our tumultuous past and the noose of benevolent, paternalistic, aid-driven development memes”.

As it turns out, Ugandans resent the negative attention and the unflattering depiction of their country as seen in IC’s documentary, which they deem is one-sided and single-minded. Lonely planet placed Uganda among the top destinations for 2012, yet here we have a seemingly benevolent movement compromising all the efforts Uganda has made over the past decades, overshadowing the progress already made by Ugandans and threatening their tourism industry, one of the main opportunities for Ugandans to escape poverty (link). Ugandans and other Africans accuse Westerners of having the White Savior complex, which has nothing to do with justice or securing peace, but about our validation of priviledge via emotional gratification.

But surely, with all its flaws and backlash it has created, at least IC has painted a good picture of Kony and the threat he represents. Well, not really. That’s not to say he isn’t a horrible human being, but some of the information we were fed just isn’t accurate. But if everything you’ve read so far sounds like the buildup to a bad joke, here comes the punch line. Kony is a has been. His 25 year reign of terror, the cause of so many deaths and abductions, is more or less a thing of the past. His supposed 30,000 soldier army actually amounts to less than 500 (llink), and his entire rabble has been chased out of Uganda since 2002 – they aren’t there any more, and will probably never come back. They’re not harmless, of course, still menacing Congo and the CAR, but he’s more of an obsolete, crazy old man clinging to relevance.

The message of IC’s documentary is make Kony famous. Why is that a good thing? In his struggle to remain relevant, this may be exactly what Kony – and any other madman – wants. A second chance at infamy, an inflated and ego-stroking aura of menace, giving his dying organization artificial influence, giving him more grip than he’s had in years.

Rebuilding Uganda

Uganda’s own goverment considers the war over. Kony 2012 is misleading us by claiming that the war is still raging. Or that Kony’s crimes have been unknown to the Western world until IC crafted the documentary, even though Kony has been the top most wanted criminal in the UN’s watch list since 2005. It’s dangerous to stroke the ego of a criminal maniac, and this could put so many people in danger of military retaliation. IC’s agenda to bring war back to Uganda is misguided and dangerous, and irrelevant. Even more so, the Kony 2012 campaign has succeeded in giving credibility to its brutal military, which is responsible for war crimes, brutality, corruption and abuse of human rights. Not that I’m a big fan of conspiracy theories, but a strengthened alliance between the US and the Museveni administration is extremely advantageous right now to American oil interests (link).

So what’s my final verdict?

First of all, I support helping Uganda in some shape or form that its people want and need. Uganda has been trying on its own to come to terms with this horrible part of their past ever since, and they’ve been doing it peacefully (link). Ugandans themselves feel that there is no longer any need for such a campaign, especially one that may bring more violence to a country moving peacefully away from these scars. I wholeheartedly agree that military action is not the right thing to employ in order to solve this issue. This is one circumstance where you do not fight fire with fire.

IC's bracelets are constantly sold out, an indication of their campaign's reach

IC want us to give Kony an inflated sense of importance and influence. I will not contribute to that. IC wants us to flood our cities with Kony 2012 posters, getting us into trouble for littering and public posting without any sort of city council authorizations. I will not do that. When confronted with their documentary’s glossing over major aspects of Ugandan history and culture, IC told the New York times „No one wants a boring documentary on Africa. Maybe we have to make it pop, and we have to make it cool. We view ourself as the Pixar of human rights stories.” Yep. That’s what they said (link). 

These are people we’re talking about, not a light-hearted African animated feature. It’s a real place, with real suffering, and I don’t think IC’s views, values, goals and methods are the right way to go about this. By helping IC, we may be hurting Uganda a lot more than helping it, and paving the way for more suffering and very real consequences if KONY 2012 succeeded in convincing us that all it needs for a happy ending is the benevolent help of US troops.