One year ago, when a local leading daily ran with their cover headline boldly reading, “14 MILLION UGANDANS MENTALLY SICK”, many Ugandans rubbished the story as just another case of the media sensationalizing a relatively trivial issue. The elite content creators made intelligent jokes as to the hyperbolical context of the damning headline.
Today, exactly one year and just a few days since that story first ran, a quick look at the country’s headlines over the past month alone paints a rather grim picture of the actual sanity of the majority of the Ugandan population.
The wave of gun violence, accidents, and unexplained deaths that have claimed Ugandans from all walks of life, from politician to blogger, from prince to pauper, and from clergyman to atheist, are a valid reason for Ugandans to feel a cold shiver down their spines.
In the past few weeks alone, the number of Ugandans who have fallen victim to gun violence points to a much bigger problem than we probably care to admit. Ugandans are sick. We are unwell, and if we do not seek alternative solutions to curb the spread of this deadly affliction, the consequences will be seismically apocalyptic.
You see, the most dangerous aspect of the illness plaguing Ugandans is that it remains invisible to the naked eye. On the face of it, Uganda is a happy nation. Ugandans are enthusiastic, filling stadiums, festivals, bars, and entertainment arenas.
Unlike, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic, where one looks at a victim’s runny nose or coughing spate pointed to impending disaster, or unlike the early HIV/AIDS scourge whose signs and symptoms were always on display for all and sundry, the latest malady on our nation’s long list of diseases is a silent, asymptomatic killer.
It creeps up on its victims like a thief in the night, quietly, in no rush to devour its prey in one greedy gulp. Instead, taking their time to eat away at the fabric of their minds, infect their thoughts and darken their spirit. It will stalk its target for as long as necessary, waiting for the ideal moment to strike, and the victim won’t even see it coming.
Once this deadly killer sets up residence in its host, it will slowly chip away at them until the now-bamboozled sufferer has no choice but to heed the demands of the voices in his head. That man has lost himself to a greater force over which he retains almost no control. Beyond this point, that man is capable of anything.
Look in the news, read a few tweets, chat up a few ordinary Ugandans, and you will meet many citizens on the cusp of tipping over. Of becoming that man who has lost himself to the sickness that continues to wreak havoc on all of us, some as direct victims of the actions of the sick individuals; bodies lying on the sidewalks or squashed between car seats while others are affected indirectly, jobless because the boss was gunned down or orphaned because of a father who won’t be returning home.
Believe it or not, we are all victims of this scourge or will be sooner rather than later. After all, a Ugandan life recklessly lost is a blood stain on all our hands. We are our brothers’ keepers, or at least should be.
Your Excellency, the man who contracts HIV requires a quick test to confirm it, and then intensive treatment can begin. The treatment guidelines are clear, the doctors are available, and those who can’t access these services or do not want to bear the ridicule associated with the illness can self-medicate and adopt lifestyle changes with significant chances of success at a semblance of recovery.
In contrast, if the same man starts a battle with demons of depression and mental breakdown, the signs are subtle and almost impossible to detect, even for the victim. The doctors are in scarcity, and the diagnosis is even scarcer. As for the treatment, your guess is as good as anyone’s.
Now, we have stressed, angry, depressed, frustrated, hungry, sick, and damaged men wielding guns, sitting behind steering wheels ferrying hundreds of innocent Ugandan passengers or attempting deadly maneuvers on two-wheelers on our already congested streets. The signs are ominous. Unless we experience a radical shift in the status quo, we are heading for even grimmer incidents, the scale of mass shootings that have rocked nations with better security systems than our own.
Shall we then accept the blame? Say we saw it coming and did nothing? That we allowed our citizens to slide into the dark abyss of mental meltdowns and filled our coffers while we watched. Shall we tell ourselves that we did enough to stop the slide?
Crime rarely happens in a vacuum. It is usually the climax of tensions built up over a significant period of time, an expression of frustration at unmet expectations. Criminals are ordinary men pushed beyond a certain edge. Every wake man reaches a certain tipping point beyond which he becomes a danger to himself and all around him.
This point varies from man to man, never the same in two different men or on two encounters with the same man. Such is this point’s deadliness, its utter and complete unpredictability. The recent wave of violence in the country, and not just any form of violence but particularly gun violence, should send a gust of fear ripping through Ugandan hearts because unhinged men with access to arms have been the destruction of nations since the dawn of time.
In 2022 alone, Uganda recorded an average of 56 accidents per day across the year, and those numbers only consider the cases documented by police, which we all know might represent less than half of the actual figures, but that’s unimportant now. For a country keen on achieving middle-income status, to have the nation’s resources committed to 56 accidents every single day of the year is terrifying. One can only imagine the strain this puts on an already ailing health system.
While we love to call road accidents “accidents,” they are hardly ever accidental. They are usually a product of one or a combination of ignorance, carelessness, and in some rare incidents, mechanical failure, which are more often than not attributed to the first two. We can fight ignorance with information; carelessness can be slowly eradicated with guidelines, as seen with traffic officers and lights, and two will tactically eliminate the third.
However, the rate at which Uganda loses citizens to “accidents” should be questioned. Unless there’s an open declaration that we are deliberately making a blood sacrifice to the gods, it should be declared unacceptable.
We give due credit to the existing systems; after all, who knows what the numbers would be without them? We’d probably be falling by the hundreds daily. Yet the question on everyone’s lips should be, have we done enough? We have allowed sick men to sit behind the wheel and guide deadly machines, ramming them into innocent citizens by the day, leaving a bloody trail of orphans and widows in their wake.
Families are broken and changed for life. Mothers’ cute little worlds are shattered for the rest of their harrowing lives as they bury their prematurely deceased sons and daughters. Fathers are left clutching on violently vanquished promises of prosperous offspring.
We must do better. Most importantly, we must do differently. The adage goes that the beginning of any solution to a problem is the admission of its existence. Ugandans are hurting.
They say when birds learn to fly without perching, men must learn to shoot without missing.
A word to the wise.
