"If social Intelligence is the ability to get along well with others and get them to cooperate with you, then power and influence have to be part of the equation."
Violance is not the answer!
On the rector scale of Buganda's political upheavals, the 9/11/09 eruptions have been minor! The last such upheaval saw the dissolution of the Buganda kingdom and eventual unfortunate death in exile of King Ronald Muwenda Mutebi's father.
This eruption is unlikely to end the same way. The times are different and there is some level of tolerance and room for reconciliations for such eruptions in Africa, as the examples of Kenya and Zimbabwe have recently shown.
The political amalgam in Buganda might lay dormant again and everyone will go about their business; but unless the underlying lingering problems like poverty, unemployment among the the large numbers of disaffected urban youths are addressed, such eruptions are more likely than not to reoccur.
In the preface to his book Social Intelligence ( SI ), the author Karl Albrecht describes SI as: " ... the ability to get along with others and to get them to cooperate with you."
In today's world, the ability to connect with people is a crucial success skill. According to Dr. Karl Albrecht,
"More people have lost jobs, friends, marriages and mates as a result of poor interpersonal skills than for all other reasons combined. The simple fact is that people who have a highly developed sense of social intelligence have more friends, better relationships, more successful careers and happier lives than those who lack those skills."
If you carefully analyze the core root of these recent riots, the ability for the antagonists to connect with each other was missing!
Dr. Albercht goes on to describe: two extremes of SI as "very low and very high - in metaphoric terms as either "toxic" or "nourishing"
Toxic behaviors by his definition "are those that cause others to feel devalued, inadequate, intimidated, angry, frustrated, or guilty."
Nourishing behaviors cause others to feel valued, capable, loved, respected, and appreciated."
The extremes of SI combined to set the stage for the the unfortunate riots in Kampala!
One amazing section from this book needs to be quoted here: pages 224-225
"How the Worst Bastards on the Planet Get and Keep Power"
"Totalitarian leaders like Genghis Khan, Attila, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao Tze-Tung, Pol pot, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein certainly could not kill thousands or millions of human beings single-handedly. They had to find ways to leverage the violence of others by acquiring power and projecting that power through various levels of their dynastic structures.
Typically, power accumulators - even those who have little or no evil intent - operate in approximately the same way. They generally follow a stage-wise process of building their power and influence over time. Studying some of the worst despots in history, we can readily observe four key phases:"
1. Networking
2. Coalition Building
3. Taking Over
4, Unrelenting Consolidaion
"Many people forget - or never knew - that Adolph Hitler came to power as a result of free and open elections. But once he got to the center of the ruling coalition, the National Socialist party, he moved quickly and ruthlessly to consolidate his power. The take-over phase usually involves a significant risk and requires that the would-be ruler act aggressively in order to acquire position power in the minds of the other members of the coalition. Many aspiring despots fail at this phase, either because their rivals manage to dilute their influence, because the followers see an evil side of them that they don't like, or because the timing and circumstances don't offer the right set of imperatives to get behind an aggressive leader. The aspiring despot who succeeds in the take-over phase reaches a tipping point of influence. after which he has a more or less official entitlement in the eyes of others to decide, direct, control, reward, and punish."
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Ugandans demonstrate against M7 at the UN headquarters in NY September 23, 2009!
