Uganda neyoha? We only fix what kills the famous

Why must a prominent man die for Uganda to remember that ordinary citizens are already dying in silence?

By Mukama Phillip Kahigiriza

There is a way Uganda bleeds that makes no noise. It is not gunfire in the streets. It is the mother in Owino who buys half a tomato and calls it stew. It is the graduate in Mukono who wakes every morning, irons his only shirt, sprays cologne and has nowhere to go. It is the boda rider in Bwaise who is robbed at 9pm, reports it and is told to come back tomorrow. We suffer in queues. We suffer in silence. We have learned to type RIP as though it were a national anthem. We mourn, we post, we move on. Must it remain that way?

The Banyankole have a proverb: “Owayiba ahekire biri aba nayerekyerera owahekire omumugongo” — one who steals while carrying a baby is teaching that baby to steal. Until when shall a coffin be our national development plan? Is this the foundation for the Vision 2040 we proclaim? Is this the transition we are modelling for the leaders and generations that follow?

I keep returning to July 2025, because that is where our shame began to show its true colour. His Majesty Oyo Nyimba Kabamba Iguru Rukidi IV, Omukama of Tooro, only 34, felt pain in his back and around his left rib. He assumed it was gym strain. He went to The Surgery Hospital in Naguru. An X-ray found nothing. Two weeks of physiotherapy followed. The pain persisted. An MRI at Ruby Hospital also failed to identify the problem. For months, a king walked among his people with aggressive cancer consuming him from within, and our machines could not see it.

Only after travelling to Nairobi did a PET scan at Aga Khan Hospital reveal angiosarcoma — a rare and brutal cancer. A PET scan does not simply photograph bones; it sees how cells breathe and burn. That technology did not exist here. From Nairobi he was flown to Thoraxklinik Heidelberg in Germany, then to Dallas in Texas. He died on 27 August 2026. He was 34. The government then announced the purchase of three PET scanners worth 180 billion shillings. A belated conscience. A fresh slap.

Consider that carefully. If a king — with a palace, presidential access and the ability to fly to Germany — could not be diagnosed in Kampala because this country of 47 million people had no public PET centre, where does a farmer in Kyegegwa go when his ribs start hurting? Where does a teacher in Nyarukiika go? We have been promising a PET centre since 2018. In that same period, we created more than 100 new districts.

Frantz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth that the wealth of imperial nations is also their hospitals, and the poverty of the colonised is also their absence of diagnosis. We chose the expensive funeral over the affordable scan. A PET scan in Nairobi costs roughly 1,200 dollars. A medical evacuation to Germany costs upwards of 80,000 dollars. But we love funerals because funerals permit speeches — not eulogies, just speeches.

Then came September 2026. At 5am on 24 September, Mzee Moses Matovu — Papa Moi, 77, the man who held Afrigo Band together for 50 years, who sang Jim and Afrigo Batuuse, who taught a country to love even when love was hard — was walking alongside a road when Kifeesi thugs struck him on the head. He bled heavily. He was rushed to Kibuli Hospital. He died. And we heard the familiar record: task team at the scene, efforts underway, case registered at Kabalagala. Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan that the first duty of a state is to protect life. Where it cannot, it is not a state — it is a gang with a flag.

Does a boda rider robbed every night in Kibuli not deserve the same urgency as Papa Moi? Does life only matter when it carries a hit song? The answer is not complicated. Light up Kibuli Market Zone B. Install CCTV to catch who strikes an old man walking to morning prayers, not to monitor who criticises the government online. Deploy officers who patrol at 5am, not those who arrive to collect bodies at 7am. A leader anticipates. A worker waits for a body.

Every week our roads consume us and we call it accident. It is not accident. It is murder by negligence. Traffic officers stand roadside not to enforce law but to collect 5,000-shilling bribes. Masaka Road is a mass grave. Mityana Road is a mass grave. Northern Bypass is a mass grave. In the past year, police recorded more than 4,500 Ugandans killed on roads. A taxi in Lyantonde — 15 dead. A bus in Kiryandongo — 22 dead. We remember roads only when a V8 crashes. When Hon. Sarah Mateke died in September 2024, suddenly we recalled that Mityana Road has no signage, no lights. Seneca said we learn by disaster rather than wisdom because we are too comfortable to learn by wisdom. We were too comfortable to install working speed governors before the buses killed. Too comfortable to fill a pothole before it swallowed a child.

Then there is the cruellest irony. On 23 September 2026, the Uganda National Examinations Board released timetables themed Advancing Excellence in Assessment. Perfect dates. Spotless excellence. For whom? The Uganda Bureau of Statistics tells us 41 per cent of our youth are NEET — not in employment, education or training. Every February we release 1.2 million young people carrying certificates and lacking skills, capital and hope. They become riders, betting attendants, housemaids in Dubai — and we call them lazy. We only began discussing Competency Based Curriculum after graduates were already jobless and restless. We broke a generation first, then started to reform. Paulo Freire said that education which teaches you to answer questions but not to question your reality trains you for obedience, not for life.

And then there is the silent bleeding that never reaches a press conference. Inflation does not begin at the Bank of Uganda. It begins in Nakasero, where a mother now needs 5,000 shillings for tomatoes that cost 2,000. It begins in Owino, where a second-hand shirt has become a luxury. The poor do not hold press conferences. They eat once and call it fasting. The government only panics when fuel hits 7,000 shillings and V8 owners complain on social media. Karl Marx warned that a society which values things above people will eventually end up with neither.

There is one more shame we have normalised — we only reward those who abandon us. Why must teachers first abandon classrooms to receive fair pay? Why must a doctor walk away from a dying patient to access a liveable wage? Every year we watch the same theatre. Teachers in Nyarukiika, Kyegegwa and Katakwi put down chalk — not because they hate our children, but because they love their own and cannot feed them with patriotism. A primary teacher earns less than 700,000 shillings monthly where Mbarara rent is 300,000 and a sack of posho costs 120,000. He teaches our children to dream while being denied the means to dream himself. Doctors in 2022 and 2023 slept in Mulago corridors with no pay and no accommodation. Must a mother die in Kiruddu with a baby stuck inside her before we remember that the doctor who should save her earns less than a district driver? James Baldwin warned us that you can tell a great deal about a country by how it treats its teachers and its nurses.

Uganda is tired. Not because Ugandans are lazy, but because this country is being managed by workers, not leaders. A worker waits for instructions. Waits for a death. A leader builds the PET centre before the king dies. Lights Kibuli before Papa Moi bleeds. Fills the pothole before the minister crashes. Chinua Achebe wrote that a man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body. Our rain began when we decided prevention was expensive and reaction was cheap.

Every Ugandan life matters. The king in Fort Portal who died because our machines could not see his cancer. The legend in Kibuli who died walking to morning prayers. The mother in Katakwi who died in labour because there was no blood. The boy in Karamoja who walks ten kilometres for water. The graduate in Mukono who is alive but dead inside.

We must stop governing by funerals. We must govern by conscience. Uganda neyoha, yes. But Uganda can still heal — if we decide that no one has to be famous to be worthy of living.

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