Case for inclusion: PWDs want say in new physical education and sports policy

At school, physical education (PE) was compulsory for all learners. But Aida Katushabe was excluded because both her legs were disabled.
The teachers didn’t know what to do for her; likewise she had no idea how to engage in PE activities without hurting her fragile limbs.

She changed schools but the situation did not change. “Even when it came to real sports, the best I could do was cheer on others, or stay in the dormitory,” says Katushabe, a final-year student of medicine and surgery at Makerere University.
Katushabe’s father played cricket for the disabled, but she thought he was able to because only one of his arms was deformed.
“I think I was in Senior Four when I started learning about disability sports opportunities.” Even then, it was hard convincing Katushabe to participate in a para-sport workshop in Rwanda in 2012.

“I had had multiple surgeries to fix my legs and I feared playing could retard my recovery,” she recalls. “But when I saw people [in Rwanda] with worse disabilities than mine yet happily playing sport, I was shocked and encouraged.” To her that event was a life-changer. Since then, Katushabe has represented the disability fraternity in several conferences abroad, and even when she was busy with her medical studies she was appointed USAID sports ambassador in 2018.

Retooling teachers
Katushabe feels a bit lucky but feels for the over two million children with disabilities in Uganda, according to recent official data. 
To try leveling the playing field for all children, she says, the framers of the new physical education and sports policy should prioritise grassroots training by first equipping teachers in integral skills like physical literacy. “That will enable them to create playing opportunities for every child regardless of their disabilities,” Katushabe says.

“The more you leave children with disabilities out of PE and sports activities, the more you’re sinking them into self-pity, killing their confidence and worsening their disability.” Without the exposure she got in Rwanda, Katushabe says she probably wouldn’t have managed to stand her ground, when a school refused to admit her at A’ Level or when university staff discouraged her from pursuing medicine and surgery because of her disability. Ali Waiswa, senior sports tutor at Kyambogo University, widens Katushabe’s view, adding that beyond teachers, the policy should target retooling coaches, umpires, managers in handling different aspects of inclusive sports at institutions.
“I was a PE teacher, but in our training we learnt general things; but nothing about handling PWDs,” says Waiswa, who drafted guidelines which the National Disability Sports Caucus sent to the Ministry Education and Sports to include in the policy.

Unfortunately, the task of training sports trainers of PWDs has mostly been left to individuals and non-governmental organisations like Para-sport Denmark, BlazeSports International (USA), GIZ (Germany), etc.
Beyond training handlers, Katushabe says, the disabled children too must be made aware of their right to play and how the games, field of play and equipment can be modified to include all without discrimination. “If the children [disabled] know what to do they can help their fellows and teachers to create an inclusive environment.”

Facilities for all
Collins Matovu, founder of Malta, Kukundakwe’s first swim club that nurtures more child-swimmers with disabilities, says if policymakers are targeting fundamental inclusion, the new policy must address the inaccessibility of all facilities.
Matovu, who trained disabled war veterans in Virginia, says one of his para-swimming trainees who has only one leg has a special toilet at school. “But that’s just one head-teacher’s initiative, not the school’s policy.”
But elsewhere, Matovu says, most hospitals, swimming pools and training facilities have stairs, no ramps, which makes life difficult for the physically handicapped children. 
Tonny Oyuku, of the Uganda National Association of the Deaf (UNAD), says they train deaf athletes in swimming, athletics, football, basketball, volleyball, rugby, pool table, cycling but without a facility where they can train and play matches for free, deaf sports cannot progress.
“If the government can dedicate a sports facility to PWDs, which we can use regularly and free, it will be one of the best sports policies in favour of PWDs needs.”  

Accessing a facility, a frustrated Oyuku adds, for their sports events costs them between Shs100,000 and Shs500,000 per day—too expensive for a group that neither receives public funding nor attracts private partnerships.
Waiswa, the sports tutor, says that even before establishing new stadiums, the government can gazette space in a facility like Namboole Stadium for PWD sports activities.
Likewise, he adds, such inclusive facilities should be encouraged at municipality, district, regional and national levels.
“Government can also rule that every school should have a sports facility to give every learner a chance to play.” Where it is hard, Waiswa adds, a communal sports facility should be established for all the surrounding schools.

“Children [with disabilities] need to become familiar with the sports environment right from the grassroots, otherwise they will struggle to adapt to the new things at national and international level.”
That’s what made things easier for para-swimmer Husnah Kukundakwe, according to her mother and manager Hashima Batamuriza.
Aged just 14, Kukundakwe became the youngest athlete at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics because despite being born without her lower right arm, she started swimming at about five, under the gifted hands of Collins Matovu, the then chief swimming trainer at Sir Apollo Kaggwa schools.

Besides the expensive trips her family have had to fund, with little government and corporate support, Kukundakwe has not faced serious career bottlenecks.
And almost whenever she dives into the waters she comes out with a better personal time. So, Kukudakwe’s mother suggests that the new policy must emphasise a special curriculum that emphasises adaptive sport and physical education for children of all disabilities to play different games as early as possible, throughout their academic lives to help them “be themselves and not feel discriminated against.”
This, she believes, will give them a sense of belonging. Otherwise, if they start sport at secondary school level they shall struggle to adapt.
Not all children will become elite athletes, but Batamuriza says those who aspire to if started early, by secondary school level they stand a higher chance to be spotted by clubs.

Tax-free equipment
In a consultative meeting last month, Mark Kalibala, of the Spinal Injuries Association (SIA), says his association has trouble acquiring equipment like wheelchairs, but the hardest are the boccia balls which are erroneously graded among hazardous materials like cigarettes, hence attracting heavy taxes. Waiswa wants tax exemptions made a priority in the guidelines he drafted for the policymakers because para-sport equipment are rare on the local market, yet those bought or received as donations from abroad face exorbitant taxes.
Hence, Waiswa echoes Kalibbala’s call that the new policy should remove all taxes on sports equipment acquired by sports associations and individuals.

Funding sports
In the 2017 national trials, about five para-athletes hit the qualifying mark for the World Para-Athletics Championships but only David Emong travelled to London because the Uganda Paralympic Committee (UPC) lacked funds. For the same reason the para-athletes missed the 2018 Commonwealth Games, which also required participation fees.
Last month, another batch of para-athletes missed the World Para-athletics Grand Prix in Dubai because again, UPC lacked funds. That virtually ended their chances for the Commonwealth Games coming in July.
Financial constraints have not only denied para-athletes potential to compete at international level but also crippled progress on the local scene.

Despite para-athletes winning medals at international level, the government through the National Council of Sports gives miserly hand-outs to the UPC, the umbrella body for all para-sport associations. No wonder it is the only para-sport body that’s literally functioning.
“You can’t reap what you didn’t sow, Waiswa says. “If government wants sustainable development in the sports sector, it must enrich the resource envelope.” That resource envelope, he says, should cater for all the rewards—cash, cars, houses—to all athletes who excel on the international level; salaries for those on national level and pension to those who retire, “instead of waiting for the President.”
Fortunately, the draft policy suggests the above in addition to a Provident Fund, which shall be contributed to by professional athletes and their employers to ensure livelihood sustenance for all who retire from professional sport.

End discrimination
Jennifer Nyakato struggles to communicate effectively with coaches, teammates and others around her.
Most can only write for her because they don’t understand sign language.
“But it’s not always that everyone has a paper or a pen. And I don’t have an interpreter during training and competition,” says the deaf sprinter who has won continental and international medals.
Probably, being the only deaf female athlete at Makerere University, Nyakato says, some officials were reluctant to select her for competitions abroad, even after showcasing her abilities against nondisabled athletes.

“But I proved them wrong by outcompeting the nondisabled athletes like at the 2018 All-Africa University Games in Ethiopia where I finished third in 800m and fifth in 1500m,” she says.
So a policy that compels academic institutions to select athletes according to their competitive abilities rather than their disabilities or one that gazettes a place for para-athletes, can close that gap.
Oyuku, of the deaf association, adds that the new policy sports should address the illogical levels of discrimination against PWDs. He cites a case of a famous football club in Kampala which asked the deaf for Shs300,000 per day to access their stadium, which they couldn’t afford.   But even when the Deaf Cranes—the national football team for the deaf— requested for a friendly match with the club’s reserve team, the club said their policy can’t permit such an arrangement.
“Which kind of policy is that? If it exists, it needs to be abolished because it’s too discriminatory.” Oyuku says the Deaf Cranes have won trophies in Kenya and Rwanda but still the government can’t recognise deaf sports. If such achievements can be overlooked as mere regional outings, Oyuku wonders, what about Nyakato’s, who won gold at the 2019 African Deaf Games in Nairobi and silver at the 2021 World Deaf Athletics 
Championships in Poland?
“She was Uganda’s only representative in Poland but the government didn’t even welcome her at Entebbe Airport, yet the non-deaf winners are welcomed by 20-car convoys...Why?” Oyuku wonders.

Matovu adds that a teacher who doesn’t understand sign language might struggle to attend to a child with hearing difficulty in a class of 50. He thus suggests that if equipping all teachers with in skills to handle special needs children is hard, yet many schools don’t admit children with conditions like autism, the government policy should consider establishing special schools where teachers are equipped to handle such cases. Meanwhile, in a consultative meeting at Fairway Hotel last week, Eng. Sulaiman Mayanja, president Uganda Wheelchair Basketball Association, led the group that strongly resisted the government’s proposal to develop and adopt a taxonomy of priority sports framework “to determine key sporting disciplines to be prioritised by Uganda.” 

Mayanja and others argued that that will further neglect and discriminate against the already struggling para-sports. Nobert Ssali, a policy analyst, who was the chief facilitator and Rev. Can. Duncans Mugumya, commissioner physical education and sports at the ministry, pledged to reconsider the proposal regarding the para-sport concerns.
Matovu’s biggest worry, though, is that designing a comprehensive policy that covers the wide and complex disability spectrum is one onerous task yet implementing it is quite another.

DISCRIMINATION  
End The Vice. Jennifer Nyakato struggles to communicate effectively with coaches, teammates and others around her.
Most can only write for her because they don’t understand sign language.
“But it’s not always that everyone has a paper or a pen. And I don’t have an interpreter during training and competition,” says the deaf sprinter who has won continental and international medals.

Probably, being the only deaf female athlete at Makerere University, Nyakato says, some officials were reluctant to select her for competitions abroad, even after showcasing her abilities against nondisabled athletes.
“But I proved them wrong by outcompeting the nondisabled athletes like at the 2018 All-Africa University Games in Ethiopia where I finished third in 800m and fifth in 1500m,” she says.