Africa-Press – Uganda. Following the hiking of hospital costs to treat Covid-19, Ugandan elites have woken up from their slumber asking for government intervention!
Whereas I sympathise with the victims and condemn the health facilities that have put wealth above health, I celebrate the fact that the elites have had an equal share of injustice in our country! Whereas I may sound immoral, I am not apologetic for I mean what I say!
I concur with Dr Kizza Besigye who said the elites are the most useless people in Uganda. His words are inspired by Napoleon’s quote that the world suffers a lot not because of the violence by the bad people but the silence of the good people.
Many Ugandans live hand to mouth, majority of these have suffered in many ways! They walk miles to access health centres that have no drugs! They sell their gardens before harvest to pay medical bills while their children drop out of school because of lack of sanitary pads!
The Ugandan elites never talk about such issues! You hear them organising a car wash campaign to raise millions to treat a cancer patient abroad instead of demanding government to fund Uganda Cancer Institute, neither will they raise resources to buy sanitary pads for girls dropping out of school!
They will criticise Bobi Wine for failing to articulate fiscal policy, accuse Dr Besigye for overstaying in Opposition leadership or Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu for being too good for Uganda’s politics, but they can’t form better political alternatives! They can’t join those parties to improve them or fund their activities!
A certain Ugandan asked me to invite Gen Muntu to officiate as a chief guest as he entered his new mansion! Later when Gen Muntu was set to visit his district, I called him, asking him to contribute a tent and he told me, the most stupid thing he could do was to fund a politician!
Imagine such an elite, he would feel honored for a top politician to attend a party at his home which would raise his social capital but he can’t invest even a penny in a struggle to which this politician subscribes!
Our elites are actually the worst illiterates. Intellectual dishonesty and delusion defines their lives. And like a German scholar Bertolt Brenht once said: “The worst illiterate is a political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participate in political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, price of beans, fish, flour, rent, shoes and medicine, all depends on political decisions. He is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies”.
Majority of the elites hold influential positions, but do they care about the country? They run banks but do they champion policies that give people affordable credit. They run brief case organisations which they use to swindle money instead of supporting communities! They work as policy analysts but they don’t initiate policies that help common people!
Whatever mess our country has gone through, has happened with the watch or aid of the elites. The shoddy works on public infrastructure, stealing drugs from public hospitals, aiding electoral fraud, stealing public resources, supply of substandard goods and services to government etc.
Majority of them don’t even vote, they claim that voting is useless! They don’t join politics claiming it’s a dirty game, who do they think should clean it? When demonstrations are organised they go into hibernation, they want to watch others on TV, shouting “fight for us,” who will die for you when you can’t fight for yourselves?
Some will even tell you how they can’t talk because they want to protect their jobs or how they have young families as if those they push to speak don’t have families! You can’t vote, you can’t demonstrate, you can’t raise funds, you can’t organise, but you want a well-managed country, will it come from heaven? But now because elites have been touched, the insurance companies that make them feel like first class citizens can’t pay the huge costs, they are crying crocodile tears expecting us to sympathise with them!
Unless they wake up out of their slumber and struggle for a country where all of us can live dignified lives, no Ugandan will join their chorus and they will carry their cross!
George Muhimbise
