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Spire: This is how I overcame my fears
Jimmy Spire Ssentongo
What you need to know:
- After winning the EU Human Rights Defenders’ Award 2024, Jimmy Spire Ssentongo, a Ugandan academic, activist and cartoonist, has vowed not to take the foot off the gas pedal.
- The award is given annually by the European Union and Norway to recognise an outstanding contribution by a human rights defender in Uganda.
- Ssentongo was feted for his courageous work to expose corruption in public life in Uganda.
What does winning this award mean to you?
[It] means the work I do: the cartoons I draw, the articles I write, and what I use to engage on social media is going to be more visible. It is going to have more engagement given that this expands the scope of people able to see my work, the scope of people able to get to know who Spire is or that I even exist.
In any way or the other, it adds to amplifying the voice to what I have already been doing. But it is also good to know that there are people who are standing behind you because sometimes this work gets lonely or it gets too scary. And for every activist, there is always that point when you feel like giving up. There is that point when you feel like ‘Well I have done all that I can, but to what effect?’ You feel or maybe the change or impact is coming very slowly. But when you get to know that there are people who are standing with you, supporting what you are doing, and being appreciative of what you do, it helps you to collect yourself and move on.
Do you ever fear for your life when your body of work holds leaders accountable?
Whoever says he or she doesn’t have any fear, that person has a problem. Fear is a natural thing, it is part of our instinct for self-preservation. We always have to protect ourselves to ensure we live on. That is an instinct for any living being. But our triumph or what it means partly to be human is to be able to overcome that fear for the sake of other goals; other ideals that you think are equally very important. You don’t overcome it in the sense that you start taking unnecessary risks.
So whatever I do, I always have that fear but I just control or come on top of it to ensure in the end, it does not dehumanise me because fear can also be very dehumanising. For instance, will you be able to watch or stand by when someone else is being violated and you can’t say a thing, you can’t comment out of fear.
That means fear has dehumanised you by taking away your heart, taking away the sensibility. It is the conscience that will be telling you that at such points or such observations where people are being deprived of what they deserve or what rightfully is theirs or when they are at the margins of survival because someone else is oppressing them. That is inhuman for someone to keep quiet.
So if any situation puts you in such a circumstance where you have to keep quiet, I find that to be dehumanising. I live with fear, but I just find a way of overcoming the fear to do what I think I am supposed to do. Yes, the threats have been there and I know they will always be there. Sometimes they worsen, and sometimes they reduce, but I think it is not something that is going to totally stop me.
Do you plan to continue with your activism?
Certainly, I will continue with the activism. Like I have been doing over the years, sometimes I choose to change the form.
There are moments when the cartoons are more visible, there are moments when I have been doing a lot of writing, and at times just tweeting or engaging through other means. So, the activism itself will continue.
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