Uganda: People Resigned to Their Fate
Morris Komakech
13 April 2011
opinion
Recently, some Ugandans, especially from the north, were bold enough to vote to retain the presidency of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in exchange for peace.
This means that by 2016, the NRM regime will have been in power for thirty years since it forcefully took power in 1986. Those who voted for the regime may be conditioned to do so for many reasons, but most of us who oppose it do so with convincing reasons.
For starters, Uganda should belong to every Ugandan and, therefore, every Ugandan should have the opportunity to freely participate in deciding the future of the country. For a long time, this has not been the case because Museveni prefers to use the military to subdue dissenting views and a bogus electoral system to manipulate elections and retain power.
A government constituted from fraud usually sustains itself in power at an abnormally high cost. This might include the use of political bribery, social terrorism and brutality. But what is very particular with the Museveni regime is its ability to blend economic coercion with military repression to disenfranchise the masses.
Those who have once been kidnapped, tortured, mutilated and lived to tell the tale would agree with me, but those who have died are just history. And it's not because these do not form the majority, but because their torture, kidnap, humiliation and mutilation or even death signifie the state brutality and help immobilise any forms of dissent from the largely disgruntled majority.
So, in public, ordinary Ugandans could talk very well of the regime, but in private, they spill out venom and curse the NRM regime with such incurable vitriol, yet they are at the same time enslaved within the very system.
One of my major disagreements with the Museveni government is in line with the death of the healthcare system. Not because the Government of Uganda, or the ministry of Health in particular, does not have an end-of-life policy for the terminally ill, or for their dependants whose lives are turned upside down when sickness strikes their sole family breadwinners; no.
I take issue with the fact that the government has failed to put in place a proper healthcare institution that should support the masses to eliminate child and maternal deaths or treat malaria and tuberculosis.
Recently at a Global Health symposium in Toronto, I illustrated the decay in our healthcare system. I chose the sub-county health units and described them as merely structures for convenience that offer no healthcare but health concerns instead. What I also proved was that the Museveni health kiosks are synonymous with the lack of Aspirin and Chloroquine (or Metakelfin).
What happens in Ugandan villages is, indeed, a universal concern for many. A Canadian medical doctor who once worked in Odek sub-county in Gulu narrated to the audience how her organisation (I shall not mention the name) was shocked that the locals there responded to government health programmes with such contempt.
When this NGO camped at Odek, they took over the healthcare management and people came to seek care. When they left, all those who were to continue with treatment quietly discharged themselves and retreated to their villages, to rely on herbal remedies while the viruses and bacteria gnawed away at their organs and systems.
This example illustrates two fundamental failures of government; that the overemphasis placed on the growth of the private sector by the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), coupled with corruption, has ensured that the regular Ugandan has been deprived of basic social services and amenities of life, especially in places where NGOs have no access.
It also shows that where NGOs have established roles, they have taken over government social responsibilities and, therefore, limiting the capability of government to develop sustaining structure and internal capacity.
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What is also true from these observations is that when government has no structure in place, monitoring and evaluation of the activities and ethical standards of the private sector become problematic due to the lack of verifying mechanisms.
Finally, whenever the locals engage the government, they are confronted with potholes, power load shedding, poorly equipped and understaffed institutions, mostly rude public servants and police/military brutality.
All these stark realities that the common man faces in their daily endeavours as ordinary citizens get ignored by an indifferent regime. The end result is apathy to a bullying government and eventually surrendering to fate. That's when programmes to teach patriotism become an imperative!
The author is a Ugandan social critic based in Toronto, Canada.
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