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SILENCE OF THE LAMBS
Joseph Kabuleta’s Lockdown Diary
Sometime in the early 2000s, on one of my journalist travels, we were seated around the dinner table at a hotel in Dakar, Senegal, with several sports writers and broadcasters from across the continent.
Joseph Kabuleta’s Lockdown Diary
Sometime in the early 2000s, on one of my journalist travels, we were seated around the dinner table at a hotel in Dakar, Senegal, with several sports writers and broadcasters from across the continent.
I impassively listened as each scribe spoke glowingly of their home country; the Senegalese re-lived the wonders of their 2002 World Cup campaign, the Kenyans exulted in their first free election after Daniel Arap Moi’s long-haul, and how they supposedly produce the best beer
in Africa… blah blah.
In spite of my reticence, Uganda soon became the subject of the chitchat and nothing good was said. Kony was ravaging Northern Uganda and making news across the world, opposition leader Kiiza Besigye had escaped like a Ninja to exile in South Africa…
In spite of my reticence, Uganda soon became the subject of the chitchat and nothing good was said. Kony was ravaging Northern Uganda and making news across the world, opposition leader Kiiza Besigye had escaped like a Ninja to exile in South Africa…
He was looking in my direction because, apparently, we are the masters of internal conflict. “That’s because you are all wussies,” I shot back, eyes popped out. “It takes a nation of dummies like Cameroon to have a presidential election in which the incumbent is unopposed.
“Uganda has had its fair share of civil wars because we suffer no fools,” I continued. “We are firebrands. We refuse to be run over by despots who think the presidency is their inherent right. We once had a ‘life-president’ who is now exiled in Saudi Arabia…”
And so I continued expounding on the incendiary qualities of the Ugandan population. If you asked me if I said those things because I believed them or if I was just trying to win an argument, I would say it’s something in-between.
It’s sad that Ngonga passed on about ten years ago because I will never get the opportunity to apologize to him and confess that Uganda is also a nation of wussies.
Somewhere along the way we mellowed and can now take any crap and thank the king for his benevolence. The one-time firebrands became lambs, feeding on presidential ugali which we now know how to consume optimally, thanks to a ‘scientific’ experiment in State House.
As the lockdown is extended, and Ugandans continue to die from preventable causes because they cannot access medicine or simply cannot afford it, the president is having a time of his life.
And now he has turned ambiguity into an art-form. Anybody who thinks that Museveni’s directives are haphazard doesn’t know the man. The only reason his speeches cause confusion is because they are designed to do so.
Confusion sells. If his decrees were unequivocal we wouldn’t still be discussing them, and he wouldn’t be trending. Now he might come back tonight to give another three-hour speech clarifying on yesterday’s three-hour speech.
Left to his own devices he could extend this misery to December, and meek Ugandans would simply retreat to their safe spaces of Facebook and Twitter to vent, cry, share funny memes, bury themselves in sour humor and wait in hope.
The question for me is; how did we ever become such lambs?
The man even hinted on postponing elections and there was no outrage, not even on social media. It’s like we are resigned to our fate, whatever Museveni decides that is.
And the local media, having shared out sh10bn from government, have been complicit in this unending drama. Let me give you a few figures you probably haven’t heard.
The country with the most COVID-19 fatalities is the USA. The US State with most deaths is New York. In New York, the percentage deaths among ages 0-18 is zero. The category between 18-45 years has seen 10 deaths out of 100,000 (0.01 percent).
Now consider the fact that the median age of Africa is 18. The one for Uganda is between 15-16. So the average Ugandan is more likely to die of a lightning strike than of COVID-19.
Even in the worst hit countries ---- and these are certified statistics ---- COVID-19 is a threat mostly to the 60+ years category, which accounts for less than 3% of the Ugandan population.
Unfortunately, all decision-makers fall within that endangered category and so the 97% must suffer.
UNICEF estimates that measures taken against Ebola (a far more serious threat) in affected areas caused 5000 excess child deaths. And yet those measures did not include shutting down all systems. How many more will die this time? I will leave that to your imagination.
So when we lockdown we are making a deliberate choice to spare the lives of a few elderly people at the expense of the majority younger ones, especially children who are most vulnerable from hunger and malnutrition.
Stefan Swartling Peterson, the chief of health at UNICEF, was forthright enough in his conclusion.
“The difference to me is that COVID-19 (in Africa) can affect the people with power…the people who communicate, rather than the poor who have always been dying,” he said.
Would Ugandans be cowed in fear if the media had given us these stats? I doubt it
