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Letter to A Kampala Friend
By Muniini K. Mulera In Toronto |
Ghettoes, disease in post-NRM era
Oct 26, 2003 - Monitor
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Dear Tingasiga: Fundamental change. Third term. Two book ends of an eighteen-year story with a prologue of hope and great expectations, and an epilogue of shattered dreams and political despondency. When Mr Yoweri K. Museveni became Uganda's ninth head of state in January 1986, with a ringing promise of a fundamental change in the politics of our country, he did not need to do much to persuade a grateful and exhausted people that a new dawn was upon them. When he declared his non-alignment and confessed a bias in favour of exclusively serving African interests rather than those of the West or East, his people were giddy with hopeful joy at the prospect of real independence. At last Uganda was in the hands of a new breed of African leader who would not humiliate his people by figuratively kneeling before his colonial masters. And to a large extent it did. The army became less openly repressive and people breathed peace, unless you lived in Acholi, Lango, Teso or Kasese. The economy was liberalised and the country enjoyed an economic boom. Managers of the economy cheerfully announced mouth-watering economic growth figures and the total defeat of inflation. Palpable wealth was everywhere, except in Acholi and most of the rural villages and urban ghettoes where over 90 percent of the citizens lived. But we must not spoil the story with such details. Privatization of public enterprises turned economically challenged but politically well-connected folk into overnight dollar millionaires. People sold to themselves plum public properties at give-away prices, a small reward for their heroic contributions to the epic struggle against dictatorship, nepotism and corruption. To this day nobody really knows where the proceeds from these garage sales went. The president's own family led by example, transforming themselves into some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs on the continent. The exception was Lt. Gen. Salim Saleh, the president's brother, whose investments and corrupt dealings were part of many a dinner conversation. He even bought the country's largest commercial bank, a selfless attempt to keep the bank in the hands of Ugandans. Can there be a greater achievement than the promulgation of the country's fourth constitution on September 22, 1995? With complete unanimity, the Constituent Assembly Delegates recognised the central role the presidents of Uganda had played in the genesis of the country's terrible woes. Thus, they unanimously endorsed the people's wish for presidential term limits, a matter which President Museveni himself greeted with great enthusiasm. Article 105 (2), the one that limits a person elected under the 1995 constitution to hold office of president for a maximum of two terms, became the NRM's swan song. Gone were the days of the presidential monarchy. But in case this was not clear to some, the president went on record to state that he wanted to retire at the age of 55. He was born in 1944. Meanwhile, there was groundwork to be laid. Universal Primary Education Higher education became widely available, albeit hardly affordable except by the nouveau riche. Universities sprouted all over the place. Why, even my beloved Kabale, tiny though it maybe, became home to three universities by the time Museveni presented himself for his very last and final election in 2001. The list is long, Tingasiga. The achievements are there for all to see. However, I urge you to borrow a leaf from the power brokers of Washington and London and look only in the right places. You must avoid places like northern Uganda, especially Acholi, the land where a deeply traumatized population tells a story, without words, of death and despoliation, of despair and communal depression. Avoid the safe houses where the president's security men quizzed their prey with rather cruel methods, where people like the late Patrick Mamenero faced the rage of their protectors in a manner reminiscent of that which the South African police did to the late Steve Biko in 1977. Mamenero died of wounds sustained while in custody. Avoid the hospitals, where the unpatriotic doctors might show you lots of the living dead, some of whom spend their time fantasizing about a flight to Germany on a private jet in search of health care or even a simple childbirth. To be sure, you do not want to be shown the district hospitals and dispensaries, where the ordinary citizens go in search for medical help. You want to focus your attention on the more agreeable, albeit unaffordable, private hospitals that are dotted around Kampala. In your reading, please concentrate on the feel-good writings about the African success story and avoid factual reports about what is really happening on the ground. The kind of information to avoid, for example, is the excellent article by Dr A.K. Mbonye, which was published Scientific World Journal on August 19. Dr Mbonye's study, which assessed the prevalence of childhood illnesses and care-seeking practices for children with fever, diarrhoea, and upper respiratory tract infections [URTI] in the Sembabule district, home of Museveni, was triggered by the observation that the child health indicators had worsened despite intensified programme efforts by health care providers. The infant mortality rate had increased from 81 per 1,000 live births in 1995 to 88/1,000 in the year 2000. Dr Mbonye's study showed that most children with fever, diarrhoea, and URTI were treated at home and taken to health units only when they were at death's door. "This late referral to health units was complicated by high costs of care, long distances to health units, lack of drugs at health units, and limited involvement of fathers in the care of the children," Dr Mbonye wrote. Reading this sort of data has a way of deflating one's image of a great African success story, especially when one recalls that the cost of delivering the president's healthy grandchildren in Germany would have built a few health units in Sembabule. Tingasiga, you must also avoid talking to people like Justice Julie Ssebutinde and MP Miria Matembe unless you want to hear incredible tales of a level of corruption that has become the signature tune of the Museveni era. You do not want to know the stories behind the illusion of fighting corruption. And whatever you do, stay away from the villages and the ghettoes of Uganda where the wretched of the earth continue their hopeless mortal combat with poverty, disease and ignorance, too illiterate to read the lovely economic growth numbers spewed by the World Bank and IMF or the Western media reports about Africa's success story. In less than one generation, the Movement fundamentally changed from a beacon of hope to a fading light. By the time Museveni presented himself for the 2001 election, he was the Movement and the Movement was him. The new breed of African leader had become a common-garden presidential monarch, his eye firmly fixed on a fifth term on the throne. It is to the post-NRM era, the one in which you now live Tingasiga, that we shall turn next week. [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
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