Mr Charles Onyango-Obbo
On November 30, President Yoweri Museveni made one of his increasingly rare trips abroad, attending an East African Community (EAC) summit in Arusha, Tanzania.
He did something else rare at the event; he arrived with a face mask, but he was sans mask at the formal meeting - although his aide-de-camp and his contingent were covered.
Coming off one of the longest Covid-19 lockdowns in the world and its most extensive pandemic school shutdown, Museveni is the last masked leader on Earth standing. In a few weeks, he will clock a record five years under a face mask.
Many a Ugandan child born during lockdown can now sketch, and some will probably make a sketch of a man with a wide-brimmed safari hat and face mask if asked to draw President Museveni.
The Covid-19 mask found a President Museveni who is a germophobe, allowing it to capture him as its most dedicated advocate. It has often left the President in very awkward situations because he occasionally appeared among other leaders and in audiences abroad without a face mask, but then returned to it, social distancing, and holding meetings in the open when he's back home. It is as if he is saying his country is disease-infested and more unhealthy than foreign lands. This raises the question of why he can't, after nearly 40 years in power, clean it up.
Museveni, who has done well for his political career projecting strength, now looks paranoid and weak behind a face mask in a post-Covid era. With many clamouring that at 82, he should retire and ride off to Rwakitura to pamper his cattle, the mask sometimes underscores his frailty because he looks like he is cowering.
It is also a wall between him and the people, suggesting he is truly detached from their reality and battles. Compare this with the Museveni of the 1996 presidential campaigns when a then 70-year-old Susan Namazzi carried the president on her back.
That episode, and of 69-year-old Sam Kitaka, who gave Museveni a grinding stone (olubengo) that he carried on his head, produced some of the most iconic moments of Ugandan political imagery. It is probably out of the question that a germophobic, mask-wearing Museveni would clamber on the back of an elderly, unsanitised peasant woman today.
One would also expect that a president who sees a world dangerous enough to need the armour of a face mask would have evolved into a gentler ruler who doesn't beat the opposition like snakes and imprison them as soon as they raise their hands. However, it seems like the mask has left a new bitterness in the president's mouth.
On balance, however, his mask serves the useful purpose of keeping the state of the country's healthcare front and centre. What is this state of health that the president's mask is focusing our attention on?
For one, Uganda has a big problem with child stunting and underweight, with 26 per cent of children aged 6-59 months being stunted and 10 per cent underweight, which are among the highest rates in Africa. Uganda has one of the lowest doctor-to-patient ratios in the world, with only one doctor available for every 25,000 people, far below the World Health Organisation's (WHO) recommendation of at least one doctor per 1,000 people.
Recent Ugandan government data said that 82 out of approximately 135 districts lack a public general hospital. Many sub-counties lack even a health centre III, with only 31 new ones under construction in 2024, leaving 488 sub-counties without these facilities.
There's a 96 per cent deficit of health specialists in government hospitals, and many facilities lack essential medical equipment
like ultrasounds or even basic supplies. The government has also starkly painted how high the mountain we have to climb to solve some of these problems is, with its estimate that it needs Shs6.7 trillion to construct and equip hospitals in underserved districts. That is 9.3 per cent of the Shs72.136 trillion.
However, Uganda has also won some healthcare battles. It has one of the highest vaccination coverages in Africa. It has managed to maintain high vaccination rates for diseases like measles and polio, with coverage rates often exceeding 90 per cent for key vaccines. And some glorious blasts from the past: despite dropping the ball in recent years, Uganda was one of the first African countries to significantly reduce HIV/Aids prevalence rates, from a peak of 30 per cent in the early 1990s to around 6.5 per cent by 2016.
If Museveni can sanitise Uganda enough for him to go into it without a face mask, surely the rest of us who have lower anti-septic standards would thrive big time. So, watch out for the day Museveni wades into Owino Market without a mask. It will be a turning point.
Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans.”
X (Twitter): @cobbo3
