Gen Kainerugaba’s Presidential Ambitions are Infantile and Oedipal

 

Gen. MUHOOZI KAINERUGABA

I can bet with confidence, in this article, that Gen MK will neither be on the ballot as a presidential candidate nor a president-elect in 2026 unless he executes the oedipal method.

Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s (MK) train of presidential ambition has been fired up by tweets and seems now ominously unstoppable. Will he be the first person to depose a dictator over Twitter?

 But wait a minute, has Gen Museveni, the father, a lifelong president, and Gen MK’s Commander-in-Chief declared a position on succession or transition?

The characteristic actions of the President on this matter of succession speak louder than the rancor of Gen MK and his overzealously opportunistic supporters. Clearly, Gen MK’s expectation to replace his father in 2026 is simply infantile, diversionary, and at most, oedipal.

The question that this article raises, is not about the materiality of Gen Museveni handing over power to his cub. This which concerns the conscience of the nation is that with this steam of succession politics, have we, as a country rationalized institutional chauvinism and discarded the foundational ideology that fosters nationalism? Can we state, unequivocally, that the NRM-O and its leaders have arrived at the end-point of their ideological evolution?

I may not have answers to all the above questions myself, however, what is clear is that each time we indulge in this succession debate, the chauvinistic element of Chwezism emerges. The most logical justification of this succession debate is situated in reinventing a Chwezi “historical” might over the East African region.

This chauvinistic tendency is ingrained in the tweets such as the ambitions of capturing Nairobi, the prospects of caving a Chwezi empire to include Eastern DRC, or praises for uncle this and uncle that, including fabricating relationships with Egyptians, Ethiopians and exalting the Russians.

These tweets are not random. They must illuminate repressed knowledge or myth that resulted from being exposed to the power and how that power is mobilized and sustained. Far from those who may dismiss the General’s tweets as misgivings of inebriation, I see in them a pattern of premonition rooted in his father’s myth.

Additionally, the succession discussions feed into the ambiguous theme of transition that Hon. Norbert Mao fronts to justify his transition from opposition to the government. Like Gen MK’s false hope of becoming President in 2026, Mao is also “being driven like a wheelbarrow” to cultivate a false public narrative of a non-existent transition that is otherwise possible only upon God’s beckons.

Previous trends have shown that Gen Museveni says only things he has no intention of doing and effectively does only things he never says in public. For instance, in 1986, he promised never to cling to power, now he is one of the longest-serving presidents. In 1986, he was totally averse to corruption and vowed to end poverty in Uganda, now corruption and poverty, and two leading tourist attractions to Uganda. Somewhere, he promised the return to constitutionalism, rule of law, and securing persons and property, now the constitution is worthless, kondoism is back, everyone is insecure and private properties are being vandalized or appropriated under gunpoint.

Precisely, the contradictions of Gen. Museveni are our motivation to empathize with his son. If his goal is to become President in honor of his mother, then he may as well execute the Oedipal method and we move on!

END

Historia: Musevenism and puppet politics

The claim that opposition leaders strive to become western puppets has pervaded the current Uganda election landscape. Mr. Kaboggoza Kibudde, in the DM of December 20, 2020, penned an article titled: We need leaders who will not be Western puppets”. The article was strange and exposed the author to scrutiny. Mr. Kaboggoza took a swipe at Dr. Kizza Besigye and Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi for seeking and mobilizing foreign support in their effort to ouster the lifelong western darling, dictator Museveni from power.

For purposes of convenience, Mr. Kaboggoza cherry-picked facts and distorted history to support his arguments. First, Mr. Kaboggoza compares Dr. Kiiza’s claims to have won elections that were rigged to the bogus claims that outgoing US president, Trump is making. This is typically comparing oranges with stones.

Mr. Kaboggoza should know that Mr. Donald Trump is an incumbent president who lost an election.

The election that Trump lost was within precincts of a functional democratic institution operated by people of great integrity, the same system which made Trump President.

Incidentally, most of the prominent elected officials in the Trump contested states are Republicans, most of whom Trump recommended for those positions. Mr. Kaboggoza’s comparisons are as fake as Trump’s own litany of cases which have failed to progress in court for lack of evidence.

Neither Dr. Kiiza nor Hon. Kyagulanyi have been Presidents, and none could survive the nexus of global forces in which Uganda must operate. Uganda has long been a victim of neocolonialism, in which Mr. Museveni is the most reliable puppet of the western powers in the region. No one in the African continent has curved in so fundamentally to the whims of the West as Mr. Museveni over the decades.

Mr. Kabogozza may e one of the bazukulus who hardly read history or was too young to have known the evolution of Mr. Museveni from 1986 to date. The Museveni who promised Ugandans a fundamental change in 1986 is not the same Museveni we have today. In 1986 Museveni spoke very spitefully of western powers and imperialism. He preached Pan Africanism and formed various economic blocs, such as the Preferential Trade Area (PTA), and later was instrumental in forming the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) with a view of enhancing Africa's autonomy and reducing dependence on Western Markets. The 1986 Museveni believed that Africans were cheated in global trades controlled by the industrial west. In fact, at one point, Museveni even proposed that Africa should resort to barter trade to undermine the influence of US dollars.

When Museveni came to government, Margaret Thatcher was in power in the UK from 1979 and Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in a US election on November 4, 1980. These two ultra-conservative leaders were ferocious in their single-minded promotion of the free-market economy. The two leaders enacted policies that ignited a wave of global neoliberalism as the solution to the post-1970s economic woes.

Museveni’s early Presidency was faced with mounting foreign debt repayment challenges and the country was faltering on all its debts. The World Bank and IMF were emphatic against such loan defaulters and urged these failed states to adopt a system that could reboot their economies to guarantee debt servicing.

In October of 1987, Museveni flew to an IMF/WB meeting and later met President Ronald Reagan. That meeting whitewashed the Marxist Guerilla in Museveni. Museveni returned a US and western puppet from that time. That visit prepared Uganda for the worst. Museveni was ideologically reorientated to the liberal free-market economy.

By 1990 we had devalued our currency and embarked on structural adjustment programs – retrenchment, radical disposal of national assets, and opening of the private sector while suppressing public service. The rest is history.

Over the years, Museveni has not denounced his links with Sweden, his dealings with lobbyists in Washington DC and the European Union, and the UK foreign office. Museveni’s friendship with Israel, Russia, China, North Korea, etc., remains public knowledge; his rental mercenary business in Somalia to the US and imperial control of DRC and Southern Sudan among others, have paved the way for the perpetual exploitation of resources by his western allies - a public knowledge too!

Mr. Kabogozza, if we are to talk about a western puppet amidst us, no African leader, other than Cameroon’s Biya, who literally lives in Switzerland, can challenge Museveni. For, Museveni’s very hold on power depends on his being an effective stooge managing neo-imperialist wars and a market economy in the region.

What is in Museveni’s logic of marginalizing Arts and Humanities?

 

    EPISTEMOLOGIES

Recently Mr. Museveni reignited the debate of marginalizing Arts in society by claiming that sciences are more important for national development. In one short video clip that I saw, Museveni asked a rhetorical question, something like, “How does reciting Shakespeare or Macbeth help a nation?”

I suspect that Museveni’s persistent marginalization of arts is borne out of fear for the evolution of new and attractive ideas for reimagining Uganda beyond him. Mr. Museveni understands that works of Art are what inspired his revolutionary mindset. The younger Yoweri was a staunch Marxist and inspired by thinkers like Fidel Castro, Franz Fanon, Machiavelli, European history, and the cultural history of the Bachwezi dynasty and recited their ideas for decades. I have never heard Museveni reciting the works of science other than the Luwero methods or military science!

If Arts did not matter, why was the younger Museveni and now the de facto lifelong president, not inspired by great scientists like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and others? Arts and science are siblings – one inspires the other and one cannot live without the other. The desire for wars and conquest led man to develop the war industry; the desire for food security led to the invention of hoes, farming industry, and seeds genetic sciences; the fear of plant diseases led to the science of developing disease-resistant crops. Science responds to material human fears communicated discursively and textually. Literacy is a requite for sciences!

Clearly, Mr. Museveni’s mission is as obscurantic as it can get and is steeped in averting national and civil consciousness arising from his distortion of history, material marginalization that Ugandans are experiencing, denial of space for the voice of reason and counter-reasoning, as well as the pervasive human rights violation which have become the landmark features of his administration.

Any scholar appreciates the role of arts or humanities, including social and political sciences, literature, and expressive Arts as well as imaginations, critical thinking, and creative ways of innovations. When you kill the arts, you stifle society’s imaginative minds and reconstitute a society trapped in valorizing the status quo, even when they are ensnared in its misery.

The young Yoweri used his knowledge of arts and humanities, mostly to question society and create space for new ideas for nation-building. Museveni has bragged about losing thirteen of his early years in fighting Amin’s and Obote’s governments. Once he ascended to power, Museveni embarked on fighting something strange (not imperialism for sure) under the auspices of Pan Africanism, as a cheerleader of global neoliberalism in the continent.

I have never heard a speech in which Museveni does not project an issue to an ideological realm. Infatuating with an idea for years and implementing is, constitutes sciences. If there is any success of Arts, Museveni and Nollywood are its truest revelation. However, as we know, the older Museveni is now rejecting the ideals of the younger Yoweri which was inspired by arts and humanities. I conclude, therefore, that this debate is not so much about marginalizing Arts, humanities, and their teachers – a great travesty in modern unequal society. This agenda is Museveni rejecting himself and projecting it onto arts teachers and people in the humanities. Is it a surprise that his actions follow restructuring and clumping down on civil society organizations? Undermining arts is an ideological ploy to suppress the emergence of new ideas that are critical to his rule and threaten to puncture his equilibrium!

While we recognize the imperatives of sciences in driving socio-cultural revolution – like the times of renaissance, sciences do not happen in a vacuum as an end to itself. Science is not a discrete happening. Good science is not an event of discovery and technology either. Science is a continuum of everyday social life and it becomes relevant when science is used to produce knowledge and utilities that are socially relevant. There is science in arts, for instance, the methods of inquiry in arts are scientific, methodological and knowledge from it is transferrable beyond geographies. Sciences is not limited to assembling boda-bodas and buses.

The science that is separated from the everyday social events becomes anathema to that society and so will be the scientists. Overemphasis on science will attract students who lack the skills and interests in the field, graduates who will later suffer in their career due to a mismatch of skills. Most of our young professionals already suffer in the job field because the education and the career choices or types are too limited. Added the vice of sectarianism in the workplaces, many people end up in jobs they have no clue about. This is where the debate should focus – how do we structure our education system to offer a wide range of career training programs?

I must remind Mr. Museveni that creating inequalities in the classroom is not a wise decision. Teachers with the same qualifications and years of services must be paid the same, whether they teach arts/humanities or sciences. People in the arts do pay taxes, raise their families, and run governments and businesses. They deserve the best and equally motivated teachers.

Our people in Uganda are dying from preventable causes

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEATHS

Most Ugandans die young and from preventable causes. The Ugandan Ministry of health claims in its 2016 report that Malaria is the top killer of Ugandans while the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the top funders of Uganda’s health care system claims that Neonatal disorders, HIV/AIDS, and Malaria in third place, are the three top causes of death in Uganda.

 Few people really write about death (mortality, rigor mortis, demise, fatalities, etc) until a prominent person dies. However, Ugandans have been dying at an acceptable rate for a young population. Only that no one cares except for the red soils that devour them. The red earth is feeding on us too!

 Deaths and funerals are very important social occasions in the Ugandan tradition. Many people are called to order the moment they are threatened to imagine how many people would gather on their graves during mourning when they pass on. The crowd that gathers at your funeral determines how resourced or important you were to your community in your lifetime.

 Sometimes, your reputation gathers for you the most important decision-makers from among your people, to mourn and eulogize you. Not these days anymore when the prospect of soda and food can attract anybody. Most funerals are attended by children yearning for sodas and meals anyway.

 The e-burials under the aegis of the coronavirus pandemic should have made dying even difficult for those obsessed with popularity at death. But a dead man is a dead man, anyway. Death is a neutralizer such that the dead offers nothing new except the material loss for those indebted to him or his recipients mourning for their lost source of livelihood. I doubt people these days mourn the dead as it was in the past! How else would you explain that widows marry the next week and widowers the next day?

 I must assert myself here that deaths in Acholi regions are mostly preventable. it comes prematurely, and you know, the culture of not screening for ailments is partly to blame. Nonetheless, across Uganda, chauvinism kills more than diseases. The idea that you are not sick until you have pain, or that you are pretending of sickness to avoid chores, places many at risk of dying young.

 Cancer, for instance, is eating up people like the cow gobbing roughages. HIV/Aids has affected everyone and Ugandans no longer bother about it. They have accepted to live with it, and this has reduced stigma. With the advent of medicine, the viral load could be managed to an undetectable level and people are living to their full potentials.

 Malaria has been with us and seriously, I never knew of anyone who ever died of malaria, until I read in the media that malaria kills so many people. I have known of children who died of malaria and never an adult. I once told a Canadian friend that I suffered terrible bouts of malaria while in Uganda in 2017. The dude almost fainted. I had to explain that Malaria is not contagious – that some horny female Anopheles mosquito just flirts with your blood and deposits the protozoa that make a home in your liver for few days. Once you take an anti-malarial then hydrate, then it is gone! What I have failed to understand though, is why African governments spend so much money on weapons and not on research to combat malaria 

Deaths in Uganda have a political economy to it. The politically connected and powerful tend to have large unrestrained mourners attending to their funerals. We saw that with Lt. Gen. Lokech (RIP) and recently with BMK’s funeral. A humongous crowd seated skin-to-skin in total violation of the pandemic SOP of 2 meters apart. But they mourned, finished, and went home – no police disruption. Meanwhile, our schools are still closed until 2022, right? 

I have seen that people are fast and blissful at celebrating death and least enthusiastic at preventing it. In the many WhatsApp groups, I am enrolled, everyone is busy collecting money for funerals (Mabugo) and none collects money for health insurance schemes so that the ill can get the medical care they need and not die young. Some even innovatively begin to collect money to build a house for a dead man. People cash out of empathy and it is unconscionable, outright! Death has been used on occasions to reap money, and yet no one accounts for the fact that the deceased died from a preventable death. We are killing our people deliberately and that is social murder!

End.

Ugandan MP have become the "New Government"

"THE NEW GOVERNMENT"

For years, we have referenced the difference between “government” and “State”, terms that have been loosely used as synonyms. Discerning these terms is crucial for understanding public policy.

Using a simple explanation, the state is what already exists – the people, society/country, with its constitution, laws, tax systems, security apparatus, institutions, et cetra – such as the colonial and post-colonial states of Uganda. The government, on the other hand, is the interested group(s) that contend to impress its ideology upon the state - to control and steer it. Such as the Obote and Museveni governments. The state does not change much on its own but the government changes at every elective year or during coups, revolutions, death of a leader, and so forth. This change affects how the state operates or is operated. In the case of NRMO, the government has fused to become the state itself through dictatorial permanency!

The foregone analogy helps to understand an emerging phenomenon that defines the nature of governance in Uganda, today. This article argues that the slow death of local government has ceded the role of local governance to the Members of Parliament as the new governors.

The local government arrangement was a compromise for federalism as was popularly demanded in the CJ Odoki’s Constitutional Review Commission that resulted in the 1995 constitution. At the time, some Ugandans had desired Federal governance while Buganda clung on a less understood and historically divisive “Federo.”

For decades, local government flourished with the hope that it would unite Ugandans, bring services closer to the people, make people’s voices visible in decision making at the local levels, and make local government leaders to be accountable locally. The way Hon. Bidandi Ssali articulated local government was such that it is a bottom-up policy approach that made administration and governance truly pro-people.

The central government ceded much of the public service administration to the local government through the Local Government Act, 1997 (as amended). Schools, hospitals, education, water and sanitation, cultural ceremonies, local infrastructure (roads), urban planning, including security among others, became the responsibility of the local government. The central government would finance the districts through its ministry of finance and economic planning.

For decades, the balkanization of districts in Uganda as an entrenchment political strategy for the ruling NRM created more pseudo-districts that are not viable through their tax generation. Consequently, the quality of public service has generally declined instead of improving, and the people are more alienated from decision-making than intended. Rent-seeking has created self-assured “Thiefdoms” in these districts as opposed to broader accountability and transparent practices.  The operations of the local government have become enigmatic and its functions are simply paradoxical. The lapse in local districts' performance has caused a political crisis that gave now makes the high-earning Members of Parliament become the new government in the place of local government.

Being an MP attracts a decent earning and in poor districts where there are four or more MPs, the collective monthly or annual income of their MPs outstrips such a district revenue collection. Further, districts like Kitgum has repeatedly failed to absorb central capitation grants. Consequently, the local people have abandoned seeking services from the local and central government only to turn their gaze of helplessness at their MPs.

Being an MP in Uganda today means running the everyday life of all constituents such as paying fees, acting as a husband to widows and father to orphans; being a health worker – providing ambulances and building health centers as well as pharmacies; being a chief mortician. paying for burials and body relocations; Being a chief witness at weddings and marriage counselor, a local conflict arbitrator,  a counselor of widowers and the terminally ill; agents of witchcraft, funder of flimsy business propositions, a chief mourner at funerals of people who die from purely preventable deaths, a transporter, teacher, priest, road builder, and even a cattle rustler in some districts!

The central government has reneged on its duties to fund local governments appropriately and the ministry of finance’s micro-management of local government accounts for some of these lapses. However, the central government has insisted on lavishing MPs with resources in ways that undermine the local government, and consequently, the MPs have gradually inherited much that local governments should do. This way, the MPS are constantly under duress from their insatiably needy constituents and their performance is judged not by the legislative requirement, rather by how they solve service gaps that the local and central government should have performed.

This also explains the rise in perpetual corruption, decline in legislative deliberations, and decline in the quality of leaders at all levels of governance. Additionally, the high commercialization of politics and its violent nature speaks to the level at which the MP transmits state tyranny, escapes credibility scrutiny, and evades accountability. In the end, when an MP is defeated at an election, they quickly depreciate physically, mentally, and financially. Most look up to a concession with the giver – Museveni – for fringe benefits or appointments.

The cost of public administration must be addressed to ease resources for local government to operate. The Ministry of finance should harmonize how it transmits funds to the local governments and ease up on micro-management which humiliates local leaders. Practically, the Parliament is bloated and needs reducing drastically. Districts that are impracticable need to be dissolved and a criterion to attain a district status be set based on the ability to collect taxes that can finance at least 60% of its operating costs. The MP should not be a “government.”

END

Museveni has Killed hopes for liberal democracy

AFRICAN DICTATORSHIP

I read with much consternation that Museveni’s regime suspended the operation of some civil society organizations in Uganda claiming that they have failed to oblige by the CSO standards and laws set by the dictatorship. Among the suspended CSOs is Chapter 4, a legal hub that offers pro-bono legal services to the most wretched of the earth.

Closing CSO is only one act of killing democracy. Not long ago, the last Parliament passed yet another draconian law that illegalizes same-sex relationships.  To mask all these retrogressive laws, Parliament also passed other bogus laws such as jailing, mostly, male sexual offenders for an incredibly harsh term only equivocated by a Taliban lawmaker. In this article, I wish to illuminate how Museveni’s regime has killed democracy and opened a door to a full military dictatorship – or perhaps, post-democracy parlance.

Civil society Organizations are very important in a developing liberal democracy. Civil Society Organizations are understood roughly as that space between the market and the state. It is not part of largely misunderstood political opposition. However, it can be mistaken as one depending on the level of democracy or tolerance of dissent in society.

The proliferation of Civil Society Organizations may demonstrate things – one, that the state is reneging on its duties such that a gap in service exists. Take for instance, CSOs that deal with human rights, or maternal-child mortality prevention shows that these gaps exist. Second, where the market becomes too dominant such that profit-making (high levels of commodification and stratification) trumps over social equity, CSOs may emerge to illuminate such social inequities. There emerges Anti-poverty coalitions, anti-corruption groups, pro-accountability groups etc. Third, in doing the latter two actions, CSO also helps provide employment in a society where a majority of the educated are unemployed or miseducated enough to spend time searching for white-collar jobs.

There are several instances where CSOs have been used and abused. Take, for instance, the fact that foreign interests may wish to inject an alien culture in society to create a consumer market. They make funding available to CSOs to promote that consumer culture. Scholars in this field view CSO as shock absorbers of corporate exploitation when they become recipients of corporate social responsibility activities.  I have previously made attempts to alert the nation that whatever cultural practices that Africans had, the anti-African cultural terrorists pay out people through NGOs to abandon it, only for them to reproduce and commercialize it. Take, for instance, vaginal and body adulterations or decorations. But this discussion is for another article.

The emphasis here is that Mr. Museveni and his minders have lost the cause of liberal democracy by tightening the noose on civil society organizations. Proponents of neoliberalism in Uganda should pay heed because a revolution is inevitable under these circumstances.

At the swearing-in ceremony in 2016, Museveni promised that by 2021, there would be no opposition. When Robert Kyagulanyi’s red-army movement sprung, it took Museveni by surprise because he thought he had succeeded in destroying the opposition. FDC, the strongest and most sober opposition political organization had splintered. Dr. Besigye, its main brand had been isolated using both soft and hard violence. The traditional parties, UPC, CP, and DP had become NRM allies or indulged in internal kitty-cat fights that crippled their effectiveness.

Democracy without an alternative school of thought is called a dictatorship. In the US, we can also say there is a dictatorship in their democracy that is dominated by the Republicans and Democrats. At least, it is a two-party dictatorship. In Uganda, it is a one-party military tyranny characterized by violence, voter bribery, and suppression of human rights as well as the civic space. Seen in another way, both Uganda and the USA are dictatorships. The difference being judicial independence and public participation in the US, while in Uganda, violence, suppression of human rights and liberties predominate.

The implication of closing the CSO space is that alternative spaces for social and political renewal have been quashed. Not long ago, we saw Museveni celebrating how Kyagulanyi and colleagues were brutalized in Arua. In another public appearance, he faked concern over the brutality visited on suspects under UPDF and Police custody. Above all, the bigger statements are seen in the policies of the regime and not the few verbal niceties that numb the mind of its tyranny. The US has demonstrated once again that it is no longer a champion of democracy if it can exploit Africa. No one cares about democracy anymore as everyone is economically strapped in the post-COVID-19 era. Harshly, we must think of a post-democracy world and contend with it!

END

 

 

 

 

 

How the Museveni's Regime is Committing Social Murder under COVID-19

  

SOCIAL MURDER

When COVID 19 first hit the world, it revealed that many societies had successfully obscured widespread social inequities. Towards the end of 2020 data confronted us from the US and UK that unveiled these outrageous inequities as COVID 19 struck had. COVID 19 made visible a form of embarrassing social inequities. But these were known as deliberate outcomes of public policies that had developed over centuries in capitalist countries.

The morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 among the disadvantaged population demonstrated a need to review the dominant policies that seek the production of health. The poor and less powerless section of the population, mostly people of color, immigrants, the elderly single mothers, and the elderly were the most exposed, contracted, and died from Covid-19.

Such morally objectionable differences between people that we can correct through a democratic and equity-oriented public policy became the defining moment for the developed industrial countries. Even superpowers were helpless in halting and reversing the onslaught of coronavirus.

Social inequities anywhere call for immediate action to address the structural and systemic facets that make them thrive. Specifically, the situation with COVID 19 called attention to the redistribution of social, cultural, economic, and political resources - all of which are determinants of health. It called for less commodification and stratification of society but more of decommodification and destratification. The pandemic response should have been driven by a unified global sense of urgency to save humanity from its indignation, suffering, encountering unnatural deaths, and not to entirely commercialize or profit from it!

The causes of social inequities in every society have their historical, structural, material, and power relations. Power and governance are key determinants of social inequities, especially under the neoliberalism capture.  How power is distributed determines which group gains or loses societal privileges to better services and/or social and economic resources to live a healthier life.

Those without power are deprived of the material conditions to live a fulfilling life in the same society, thereby creating a two-tiered nation – of the poor majority and a rich few. In Uganda, we saw how some people reaped big from the streams of COVID-19 prevention monies lavished to Uganda.

When Rudolf Virchow introduced the concept of social medicine in 1848 in his report entitled: "The report on the typhus epidemic in Upper Silesia", he had studied the developments in Upper Silesia that led to a frequent typhus epidemic and concluded that the people there were suffering because they lacked education, liberty, and democracy. Those people lacked civic engagement and decision-making power and were quite impoverished. Virchow recommended that the treatment of the typhus epidemic was not pharmaco-medicine, rather a "full and unlimited democracy".

It follows since then that there is a causal link between oppression on people with the overall standards of health of the oppressed. People who lack political or civil rights tend to be at a high risk of getting sick and dying young. This observation, which is beyond the scope of this article, has been an obsession of many social epidemiologists for decades.

In Uganda, the history and patterns of oppression are easily traced to how power is appropriated and maintained violently within a tribal cabal. Every post-colonial regime that ascended to power - except for Idi Amin - enacted its constitution as a procedural tool or standards by which to cling to power. Where the constitution is tested and fails, these regimes reverted to the strong arms of colonial laws to perpetuate oppression. The constitution has not served Ugandans beyond a regime. As such, there is no guarantee that subsequent grabbers of power will not oppress and exploit Ugandans.

The current regime's oppression is characteristically corrupted and violent. It is driving the young Ugandan population into various vulnerabilities leading to an early and unnatural death. Most are resigning too soon to fate while the desire to flee Uganda has peaked. Sizeable others are disinterested in matters of governance or accountability owing to the politicization of everyday social spaces complemented by crude violence – torture, deforming, humiliation, and death.

The monopoly of power has transformed this Museveni regime into the most reliable source of morbidity and mortality outside tropical diseases, epidemics, and pandemics. The regime kills Ugandans even more than the natural calamities such as landslides and El Nino rains.  

Someone may ask, how so?

I believe Friederich Engel referred to such unconscionable conduct of the regime in which the masses are led to die maliciously through deliberate policy decisions, as social murder.

Covid-19 has demonstrated that Uganda's health care system is far from its potential to contain a pandemic. Understandably, the colonialist and subsequent post-colonial governments did not design the healthcare system to handle pandemics. Rather, healthcare was part of the colonial social policy package designed to incentivize participants in the colonial rule and economy.

Subsequent post-colonial regimes maintained a healthcare system that would respond to the health needs of all Ugandans in line with the WHO 1946 constitution. The current regime has for decades, embarked on undermining and dismantling it. It prefers the proliferation of a predatory private health sector most accessible by regime loyalists in the same fashion as the colonialists’.

The violent repression, occasioned by a state-inspired corruption deprives Ugandans of the opportunity to seek accountability just as the people of Upper Silesia. Inevitably, the state’s neglect of the public healthcare system in Uganda is nothing short of social murder.

End.

CUT - Unedited

Access to a good healthcare system is not only a common good but a basic human right. This is proscribed in the WHO’s 1946 constitution of which Uganda is a signatory, demands "…the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right of every human being." According to the WHO, health as a human right creates a legal obligation on states to ensure access to timely, acceptable, and affordable health care of appropriate quality and allows addressing underlying determinants of health. At the moment majority of Ugandans cannot afford good quality healthcare.

The out-of-pocket costs in the private hospitals have come to bear on household expenditures and it has reached beyond what experts consider calamitous spending levels. Hospital bills averaging Shs 60m from a short stay in a private clinic or hospital, especially when the patient dies, leaves families highly indebted and immediately slides them into abject poverty, misery and early death.

Recently, I read Hon. Betty Nambooze's (Mukono Municipality MP) plea in a situation where a doctor who treated COVID 19 patients himself contracted the virus. Unfortunately, the doctor was rushed to a private hospital where he died after a short stay. The hospital held the corpse hostage pending payments of exorbitant hospital costs that the family, friends, and the clan combined, could not raise among them. The private hospital administrators suggested that the family sell off the deceased man's family house to recover the service costs from which he died. The doctor is only one such example as many people prefer to die from home for a decent burial than indebt their families.

Engel wrote in 1845 that

“…when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by sword or bullet…or forces them, through the strong arms of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues…it is murder!

Covid-19 has demonstrated a need for the government to rethink its policies on strengthening the public healthcare sector. A two-tier well-balanced healthcare system would still work to complement each other. The economic sense of this argument is that a healthy population is a prerequisite for a robust economy.

End.