By JOACHIM BUWEMBO

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Last week, some of the last child soldiers to escape from the dreadful Lord’s Resistance Army arrived in Gulu in northern Uganda, saying that the roaming rebel leader Joseph Kony now has a total of less than 100 soldiers.

In practical terms, the LRA, which was ejected from Uganda a decade ago and went marauding in Central Africa, is a finished force. This brings to an end a generation of destruction that retarded the development of most of northern Uganda for decades.

But would that lost generation have been enough to develop the area? Examples abound around the world.

The United Arab Emirates grew from a hopeless tract of desert in the early 1970s to a top shopping and holiday destination. South Korea rose from a hopeless place in the early ‘70s to the world's ninth-largest economy.

The other Asian Tigers also did it in one generation. Vietnam started later, emerging from the most brutal manifestation of the Cold War in 1986. A generation later, look where they are.

Incidentally, Uganda too emerged from its wars to a new era in 1986. But being a complex society without homogeneity among its 50 or so ethnic communities, mobilising Ugandans for development, it seems, is very difficult. (I need some excuse for our inexplicable retardation amid abundant natural and human resources.)

In which case, let us examine two geographical, ethnically homogeneous communities – Acholi and Buganda – that have obviously lost a generation.

A generation generally is the period from the birth of parents to the birth of their children, roughly thirty years. From 1986 when Uganda's "northern-dominated" armies were defeated, suppose the Acholi community had immersed themselves in hard work instead of rebellion and sending their educated folk to North American exile, would they be a South Korea today?

What about Buganda, whose people sighed with relief in 1986 when their "oppressors" were kicked out, and had their kingship restored in 1993?

On July 31, Baganda marked the silver jubilee of the restoration of the Kabaka. Without the conflict and disturbance that bedevilled Acholi, why hasn’t Buganda utilised the peaceful generation to transform economically?

Like all other Ugandan communities, neither Buganda nor Acholi has overcome poverty in the past 30 years; their youth are scampering to sell whatever they have and even what isn’t theirs to go and slave abroad in pitiful conditions. The older people remaining behind are busy inventing excuses for their societies remaining hopelessly poor.

In southwestern Uganda, they have a saying that a man who fails to make his wife pregnant blames their sleeping mat. The Acholi blame Kony’s conflict. Buganda blame Museveni’s peace (that since 1986, it makes them oversleep and not work).

It is the end of a generation, and time lost cannot be recovered. Ugandans born in 1986 are now 33, the age at which men generally start ageing. Those who were 33 in 1986 are now 65 and if they served in civil service, must have by law have retired a decade ago.

If half of the people aged from 33 to 65 do not have the basics such as access to health care through insurance or enough savings, then that generation has not only ended but also been lost. Let us come up with some more excuses…

Joachim Buwembo is a social and political commentator based in Kampala.