President Museveni throws his wife in at the deep end
No free and fair election in Zimbabwe - President Museveni
President Museveni Angered by Rumours That His Government Burnt Heritage Site
NUSAF II: Museveni launches the past
You Never Know Where, in the World You'd End Up at
Man, 90, Who Bludgeoned His Wife, 89, To Death, Gets 17 Plus Years In Jail
By Julius Barigaba
Kampala, Feb 20 2009
Karamoja, here comes God’s messenger; but what a job she has got on her hands!
Close to one million hungry, starving people, battered by many years of unrelenting drought and languishing in disease, poverty and misery, await Uganda’s First Lady Janet Museveni, who on the night of Monday, February 16 was a surprise inclusion in the cabinet list. Surprise, but not unexpected, since her husband runs the show, so it was always a matter of time before she made the cabinet line up.
The surprise though is her posting [deployment, in ruling party NRM parlance] to far-flung off Karamoja as State Minister for that region, arguably Uganda’s least civilised. The folks over there are not too bothered about clothing; a sheet of cloth thrown clumsily over the shoulder will do, but that is more like the exception than the rule. The norm is that they will be undressed for the most part, and if a small piece of clothing can be found to cover their private parts, so be it. Breasts out is no big deal.
President Yoweri Museveni could have chosen to appoint his wife to any of the juicy ministries to invite public furor directed at himself, but there is not much else that Ugandans would have done other than name calling. And the mater would end there. The President however chose to cast his wife 600 odd miles away from the capital and away from civilization, into a job that others posted there before have described in such unflattering nouns as “oblivion” or “dumping ground” or “next to nowhere”.
Whisper from God
We have no communication from the Ugandan leader why he did this for now, but we can be allowed to trace this decision from our recent history. It is possible that Mr. Museveni felt it was time to present the marginalized people of the region with the best possible gift. And who better than the one closest to his heart! Moreover one who professes to be sent by the Almighty to rock this land! But he might also have had other more pressing reasons, to which we will return later.
Look, did Mrs. Museveni not say in 2005 that God had whispered to her to venture into politics, and specifically, to rescue the people of Ruhama, her constituency? A woman on a mission! She ran for Parliament, against the then incumbent Augustine Ruzindana, and beat him. Four years later, it would appear, God’s plan was for the First Lady to travel north eastwards, and salvage instead, the people of Karamoja.
Basic indicators
Now, Her Excellency Honourable First Lady Mrs (oh, titles) Janet Museveni could use a few grim, if disturbing facts about her place of work. National data indicates that the population of Karamoja is about 1.1 million. Of this, the number of people who live on less that $1 a day (very very poor) is 82% against the national average of 31%, while illiteracy rates stand at 80%. Out of about 600,000 school going age children, only 38% are in school. One of the districts, Kotido, with a population of about 0.2 million, has latrine coverage of 1.2%. But this might well be the case for the other Districts in the region—Abim, Kaabong, Moroto and Nakapiripirit.
Teachers and health workers, despite bait of an extra $31 hardship allowance to work in this “desert” find neither the place, nor the money appealing enough. See, there are over 50,000 or so AK47s in this place. It’s illegal but kind of fashionable. So, security can be tricky, although the army is taking the guns away from the warriors slowly.
Shocking health facts
Health standards are the lowest, and Missionary Hospitals are overwhelmed with numbers of largely children, women and people suffering from malnutrition year in, year out. In June last year, I visited the region’s biggest health facility, St. Kizito Hospital Matany; majority of the people that were hospitalised at the time best reflected the crises that define Karamoja constantly: drought, hunger and poverty.
Medical records obtained from the hospital indicated a consistently rising number of patients in this forgotten part of Uganda. Cynics say the lifestyle there is yet to make 19th century standards.
Between January and March 2008, the average number of patients admitted with severe malnutrition was 25. But in April, it rose to 53, with a staggering death statistic, of 16 per cent, as opposed to 8 per cent that was recorded in 2007, which had a monthly patient average of 23. According to the records, a total of 405 marasmus and kwashiorkor patients had since late 2007 been admitted at the missionary hospital by June 2008, 63 of whom had died.
“We receive acute cases of children who are extremely malnourished. And the number has been rising in Moroto and Nakapiripirit Districts. It is now at 16 per cent, which according to World Health Organisation criteria means that this is already a crisis. The current death rates have also doubled compared to 2007,” Dr. James Lemukol, Matany Medical Superintendent told this reporter at the time.
Further north, Kaabong District was worse. Area legislator Father Simon Lokodo alleged that 28 people had died in just three weeks at Kaabong Hospital, a claim that elicited denial statements from government. Just days after the legislator made the astounding claims State Minister for Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru addressed a press conference, denying the claims of death due to famine related causes, but Fr. Lokodo, who now joins the cabinet, albeit in the portfolio of State for Industry remained adamant about his allegations. He has been presented with a better bickering platform, now that he will sit with Mrs. Museveni in cabinet.
A chat with the local people who brought their malnourished children to the hospital underlines the poverty situation in Karamoja. There are no close government health services in most villages where they can obtain free medical services (remember 82% live on less than a dollar a day—according to a 2004 survey of government’s Northern Uganda Social Action Fund. So, even the $3 token fee to admit the patients at the Matany missionary hospital is way beyond the means of the average Karimojong. According to Dr. Lemukol, Matany charges the user fee because it is subsidised by government up to only 36% of its budget.
Because of the poverty situation, these cases are identified as acute quite early, but by the time they are brought to hospital, it is a case of too little too late: they get to hospital, all right, but they succumb to death.
“It is an issue of late presentation. I can tell you right now there are many more children out there whose condition already warrants them to be here but the parents can’t afford the cost of treatment, let alone transport,” said Dr. Lemukol.
And the records from Matany Hospital raise the eyebrows some more. Nearly 8% of the admitted patients usually escape from their wards before they are discharged. Chances are they escape because they are close to full recovery, but the health workers cannot rule out deterioration once the patients are out of hospital, since they cannot keep with appropriate treatment, in which case death is the most likely result.
The health providers are overwhelmed. Matany, for instance is built to accommodate 260 patients, but when we visited, it was bursting at the seams, with triple that number, many lying across the veranda, corridors or anywhere on the floor—particularly at the paediatric therapeutic ward. Government interventions were nowhere in sight. World Food Programme and Unicef were the only organisations that provided formula feeds and food supplies to the hospital.
HIV/Aids
In Kotido town alone, HIV/Aids prevalence rates are up to 33% against the national average of 6.4% according to District Health records. When it is market day, the women turn out in numbers ready to have sex in exchange for a bit of money. But the other factor fuelling the rates is that while in their traditional shelters (manyattas), women are forced into sex. Mrs. Museveni is a well known critic of condom use and instead favours “abstinence”. It will be interesting to see which approach she adapts in this HIV jungle zone.
Clearly, Karamoja is more in need of God’s messenger than is Ruhama, in western Uganda which has not known a crisis of any kind for decades. Karamoja is 10,550 sq miles of mostly dry semi arid land, representing 11 per cent of the entire country’s land mass. Ruhama, on the other hand is all green, boasts of the famous graceful long-horned cattle and unlike Karamoja, has real roads and other infrastructure.
Other plans, fears
Apparently, Mr. Museveni has a great plan for Karamoja. He directed that the region be zoned into agricultural areas for high yielding crops, to transform the people into producers of enough food and cash crops. But first, to produce these crops, they must have water. Where is the water, Mr. President? May be the missus brings the water to the North East.
But may be not. Mrs. Museveni’s deployment could be an induction course for the Ruhama legislator to prepare for even tougher assignments. It might not be “political purgatory” as we were meant to learn from previous appointees there—Tom Butime turned down an appointment to that office a few years ago, citing the office’s lack of a budget, or any of the clout that goes with ministerial appointments. On top of that Ministers for Karamoja are supposed to reside in the region, among the peppery warriors of Bokora, Matheniko, Jie, Dodoth and Labwor. Effectively, very good training ground for a person who, say, has their eyes on bigger things, the presidency, for instance.
Will this appointment work miracles? The local leaders have welcomed it, but Karamoja presents another disturbing scenario. Rich in minerals—gold, iron ore, phosphates and potassium—but there is a fear that “sons of the soil” are hardly appointed to this office and only “foreigners” keep coming to the region, “to grab the land and its minerals” according to Kotido Chief Administrative Officer Andrew Leru. Another resource, Kidepo Valley National Park, earns the country foreign exchange, but none of the tourism dollar is reinvested in the area. There are latent fears that the new minister is a forerunner for a bigger mission targeting the region’s minerals.
Of the six ministers that have held the Karamoja portfolio, only two have been Karimojong—Peter Lokeris and David Pulkol, but that was many years ago. The very fist occupant of this office Anthony Butele was an outsider and attracted critical remarks from Pulkol of “outsiders eating Karimojong cow dung”, a development that did not go down well with the President, prompting a reshuffle to that effect. The immediate outgoing ministers Butime (although this one turned down the job) and Aston Kajara are also non-Karimojong.
Conclusion
Since 1986, government has rolled out no less than six multi million programmes to lift Karamoja out of poverty, but you have to take a tour there to know one of two things. Either the money did not get there or the government simply lied to its own people. (In the case of the former, the money would have either found its way onto a politician’s bank account or diverted to other politically important projects that would keep government in power).
The money was meant to take care of basic things like access to water, education and health facilities, veterinary health, agricultural farm inputs like seeds, and eventually essential roads. There is no evidence of what the region got from the Northern Uganda Reconstruction Programme, nothing of the Northern Uganda Social Action Fund or even the Karamoja Development Agency. There is no indication either that new programmes Karamoja Integrated Disarmament and Development Plan the Peace Recovery Development Plan will change things.
The irony is that the region is very sympathetic to the ruling party when it comes to election time, but for all her great record in helping children orphaned by HIV/Aids, Mrs. Museveni has such an unenviable job.
