{UAH} Worth reading!

By Olive Kobusingye 

"Africans sleep too much. I have never believed in dependency. Therefore, this unfortunate phenomenon where people have vaccines, and they say 'no, we must first vaccinate our own people'. That is unfortunate but I like it. Because it wakes you, you Africans.

Africans are a disgrace - to ourselves. Why do we have to depend on the outside for everything? This is a big shame for Africans.

You people, how can you sit here as if you are imbeciles? That we are dying, we are waiting for foreigners to come and save us. What sort of people are you? And you are trained. It is the orientation. It is a slave mentality.

How can this be? The slave trade went on for 400 years. These idiot chiefs were here just putting on monkey skins and so on. Looking like clowns." ******

What you just read is part of President Museveni's speech at the opening of the World Health Summit Regional meeting on 26 June 2021. He was addressing the who-is-who of global health – planners, funders, managers, the world's (and especially Africa's) top health academics and professionals, and heads of international organizations.

There are many disturbing things about the speech, not least that this outburst was directed at mostly the wrong people. 

President Museveni says he has never believed in dependency. Let us take a quick look at his record.

President Museveni came to power on the narrative of 'fundamental change' and building an independent self-sustaining economy. He and the army that he built waged a five-year guerrilla war, and they arrived in town with only the clothes on their backs – most of them rags, and guns.

While serving as president for every day of the last 35 years, his sharp business acumen has enabled him, in his few free hours from presidential duties, to build phenomenally successful farms and ranches. He does not know where his salary goes because he earns enough from his personal investments.

In 2013 President Museveni supported an Italian investor that was not known to have any experience with setting up specialized hospitals to come and construct such a hospital here. He then directed Parliament to quickly approve the money so that Ms. Pinetti could get on with the job. That saga is still unfolding, and we hope that one day the hospital will be completed.

The president could have put together a team of top Ugandan health professionals, engineers, and planners, and tasked them with constructing the hospital, if he were interested in independence.

In 2015 President Museveni directed that 60 acres of prime public land be gifted to the Aga Khan Foundation, one of the richest institutions in the world. This was to pave the way for the Aga Khan to build a state-of-the-art hospital, among other investments. While Uganda could use more high calibre hospitals, in addition to free land the Aga Khan was also exempt from all taxes, fees, duties – all of which would put Ugandan investors in the medical sector at a significant disadvantage.

Instead of seeking to empower Ugandans to build solid and profitable investments, President Museveni was inviting foreigners to come and take over the medical sector in the country. This for a country that was once the medical training center for the sub-region.

Then there are the loans. Under Museveni Uganda has taken on loans of unprecedented proportions. Every Ugandan is up to their eyeballs in debt, and unfortunately, we do not have much to show for it. We are still among the poorest countries in the world, and as of 2020, our debt burden went over the '50% of GDP' mark – a watershed point at which national debt is considered unsustainable.  

Now, the slave trade was a huge, global, sinister, and complex affair. Often, men with guns stormed African villages, set them on fire, rounded up the people, put them in chains, and led them off into an unknown future – brutal, dehumanizing, often ending in deaths during or shortly after transportation.

Museveni is not waiting for people to come and put us in chains. He is actively inviting them to enslave us. While the African chiefs of old who facilitated slave trade often did so under the barrel of a gun, Museveni rolls out the red carpet for the modern slave traders and owners. And they do not stop at this generation – future generations are going to be in chains as far into the future as we can see.

Since the pandemic started, we have added more chains. And the bulk of the money that has been borrowed has vanished, so to speak. Big chunks were allocated to State House as 'classified'. Big chains right there. No need for a chief in monkey skins.

The Ugandans that President Museveni calls imbeciles are mostly hard-working people who are doing their best to survive an exploitative regime. He is perhaps right because were we sharper we would have found ways to throw the regime off our backs. Instead, many are sending their children to go into slavery in the Middle East – the labor migration endorsed by our government.

The education system is in shambles, but the President would not know because his children attended foreign schools and universities, and his grandchildren are in international schools. He has entrusted the education of his children with the same countries that he seeks to be independent from.

The healthcare system is badly broken, but the President would not know because neither he nor anyone in his household uses it. They go to foreign countries for medical care – the same countries he hates to depend on. (When his daughters were ready to have their own children – you guessed it – they went to those same countries to have their babies delivered. No Ugandan obstetrician and hospital were good enough. Even after so many years, independence in something as natural as having a baby proved elusive.)

President Museveni learnt only the other day that UMEME is overcharging Ugandans for electricity – he is shielded from such inconveniences.

He is unaware of how horrible our roads are because when he needs to use the road, the rest of us are chased from the narrow tracks, so that his car can occupy the only usable part of the road. (Some of the roads have been paid for by the countries President Museveni hates to depend on – and the firms that his government contracts to build the roads are foreign firms too. In 35 years, he has not developed the capacity for credible Ugandan firms to build our roads.)

In his nearly four decades in power, he has not put in place policies and mechanisms to ensure that Uganda becomes a net exporter. We still import toilet paper and cars and everything in between. So – President Museveni really hates dependency.

But why have an outburst in front of a global audience? His listeners were very polite. Seeing a man that had been in power for as long as he has been, presiding over an impoverished people whose country has been mortgaged, and having the insensitivity to insult them to their faces – and somehow thinking he could impress the non-Africans in the audience as being the only enlightened African – not an imbecile, not a clown … it is a wonder some did not laugh out loud.

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