1. To what extent is famine in Africa a result of human factors?
2. 'All citizens are equal before the law and should enjoy the same rights'. How far true is this statement in relation to women in Uganda?
3. What is the role of art in your community?
4. 'a one - party political system is more suitable for Uganda than a multi - party system. Discuss.
5. What are the most significant refugee problems in your country?
6. To what extent has religion improved morals in your society?
SECTION B
Answer one question from this section.
7. Study the following information carefully and answer the questions which follow:
Zoom land, a recently independent country, is in the throes of a constitutional crisis. It had, by independence, a well established and reasonably efficient parliamentary system of two political parties. Proponents of this system argue that this is the only effective system, since it virtually ensures that one party will have a working majority in the house, thus ensuring good government and representation of the views of the voters, since the larger party in the house enjoyed greater support among the voters.
Soon after independence, and increasingly since, growing dissatisfaction and criticism have been leveled against the two - party system. Much of this stems from the voters finding themselves more and more at odds with the polices of both major parties. Even within these parties groups of members have broken away and formed rival parties. These remain small, but the number of supporters is steadily increasing.
Demands are now being made these "splinter - parties" for the reforms of parliament on the following lines:
i) As things stand the two major parties win enough votes in all the constituencies to win all the seats; thus the views of minority groups are not represented in any way.
ii) To remedy this present system, whereby deputes in parliament are chosen by individual consistencies whose interests they represent, should be scrapped.
iii) All voters will cast their votes not for candidates but for the party they support.
iv) The total number of votes for each party countrywide will be counted and announced.
v) Seats in the house will be allotted to parties in proportion to their national totals of votes.
vi) Seats in the house will be given by the parties to deputies according to a national list of candidates issued by each party. This will ensure that only the best candidates will obtain seats.
vii) No party which fails to win at least 5% of the national total votes will be allotted any seats.
In a recent election, party A won 55 seats and party B won 35. No other party won any seat. In the election the actual percentages of votes won by the parties contesting the election were as follows:
| Party | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J |
| Percentage | 28 | 22 | 12 | 10 | 7 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
Parties D, F and G are bitter opponents of party B; parties C, E, H, I and J are opponents of party A.
Questions:a) Do you think that government of the country would be helped or hindered by the suggested changes? Give your reasons.
b) Under the proposed system [(I) - (vii) above] which parties would have gained seats and which, if any, would have won none?
c) What would be the simplest and fairest way to allocate the seats to the different parties and how would the allocation work out?
d) Would party A by itself now have a working majority in the House? If not, how would it set about creating such a majority? (Assume that a majority of eight would be workable.)
e) What difficulties can you see for the party governing the country for a five year term of office under such a system?
8. Read the passage below and then answer the questions which follow, using your own words wherever possible.
The catholic bishops of America recently issued a statement in which they said that the catholic and bewildered state of the modern world is due to man's loss of faith, his abandonment of God and religion. For my part I believe in no religion at all. Yet I entirely agree with the bishops. It is no doubt an oversimplification to speak of the cause of so complex a state of affairs as the tortured condition of the world today. Its causes are doubtless multitudinous. Yet allowing for some element of oversimplification, I say that the bishops' assertion is substantially true.
m. Jean - Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, labels himself an atheist. Yet his views seem to me plainly to support the statement of the bishops. So long as there was believed to be a God in the sky, he says, men could regard him as the source of their moral ideals. The universe, created and governed by a fatherly God, was a friendly habitation for man. We could be sure that, however great the evil in the world, good in the end would triumph and the forces of evil would be routed. With the disappearance of God from the sky all this has changed. Since the world is not ruled by a spiritual being, but rather by blind forces, there cannot be any ideals, moral or otherwise, in the universe outside us. Our ideals. Therefore, must proceed only from our own minds; they are our own inventions. Thus the world which surrounds us is nothing but an immense spiritual emptiness. It is a dead universe. We do not live in a universe which is on the side of our values. It is completely indifferent to them.
Years ago Mr. Bertrand Russell, in his essay A Free Man's Worship, said much the same thing.
"Such in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home......... Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day;......to worship at the shrine his own hands have built;.........to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power."
It is true that Mr. Russell's personal attitude to the disappearance of religion is quite different from that of M. Sarte or the bishops or myself. The bishops think it's a calamity. So do I. M.Sartre finds it "very distressing." And he berates as shallow the attitude of those who think that without God the world can go on just the same as before, as if nothing had happened. This creates for mankind, he thinks, a terrible crisis. And in this I agree with him. Mr. Russell, on other hand, seems to believe that religion has done more harm than good in the world, and that its disappearance will be a blessing. But his picture of the world, and of the modern mind, is the same as that of M. Sartre. He stresses the purposelessness of the universe, the facts that man's ideals are his own creations, that the universe outside him in no way supports them, that man is alone and friendless in the world.
Mr. Russell notes that it is science which has produced this situation. There is no doubt that this is correct. But the way in which it has come about is not generally understood. There is a popular belief that some particular scientific discoveries or theories, such as the Darwinian theory of evolution, or the views of geologists about the age of the earth, or a series of such discoveries, have done the damage. It would be foolish to deny that these discoveries have had a great effect in undermining religious dogmas. But this account does not at all go to the root of the matter. Religion can probably outlive any scientific discoveries which could be made. It can accommodate itself to them. The root cause of the decay of faith has not been any particular discovery of science, but rather the general spirit of science and certain basic assumptions upon which modern science, from the seventeenth century onwards has proceeded.
Questions:
a) What does the writer mean by "........an oversimplification to speak of the cause of so complex a state of affairs as the tortured condition of the world today"? (line 4 - 6)
b) What according to M.Jean - Paul Sarte, has caused this state of the modern world?
c) What is the difference between Russell's opinion about religion and that of the others?
d) In not more than 100 words explain what, in the passage, is believed to have caused the problems of the modern world.
e) Explain the meanings of the following words and phrases as used in the passage.
i) Bewildered (line 2)
ii) Substantially (line 7
iii) Existentialist (line 8)
iv) Atheist (line 9)
v) Spiritual emptiness (line 18)
vi) Omnipotent (line 26)
vii) Lofty (line 29)
viii) Berates (line 36)
ix) Dogmas (line 51)