A Letter to President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. President of the Republic of Uganda.
🇺🇬 From a Disgruntled Youth
Dear Mr. President,
It is with utmost pleasure and mixed emotions that I write this letter to you. I am not a politician, although I am interested in the affairs of the country. I find it hard to write this letter without shedding tears, without feeling heartbroken, with a lot of anguish about what the country has become.
I appreciate your endless efforts to come out and encourage us the youth to work, to become entrepreneurs, to help in all possible ways and boost the economy of the country, since we are the majority population. Your excellency, I will not go into statistics, for those have been given to you countless times, but allow me tell you what we face out here. The common man “omuntu wa wansi” as we are commonly referred to in this our beloved country, has seen endless suffering. This suffering is made worse when we fail to access medical attention because of the lack of drugs in many hospitals. This suffering is doubled when we are heavily taxed and then the taxes are spent on things other than those benefitting the Ugandans. The suffering we face is even worse now that we are burying a woman or women every now and then. When people are gunned down in broad day light but culprits are never apprehended, we continue to suffer.
The rate of unemployment makes us suffer even more. When it comes to veterans, those from Iraq, Somalia etc., the majority come back home to become jobless. They end up killing people because of frustration, as we always see the news reporting. I don’t know if the government is doing enough follow up on such people to know how they are fairing and or find out if they are formally employed.
The economy is becoming something else, failing on a daily basis, making the common man suffer even more. It is the root cause of all the evil happening in the country. The corruption scandals we read about in the papers on a daily basis make us question the future of our motherland. The fact that many of the culprits of this dangerous vice have never been brought to book is very discouraging, discouraging and dispiriting.
The lecturers, doctors, teachers and other public servants who are ever threatening to riot and strike because of poor payments leave me wondering where we are headed. The students get demotivated because they see unemployed graduates all over. Education was in the past looked at as a key to success, but when the educated fellows cannot even take care of their lives and provide basic needs to themselves, just how are the young ones going to think of education as the deliverer? The rate at which girls are dropping out of school because of the lack of sanitary towels, even when you yourself promised to provide them is alarming! I keep wondering and asking my self whether you, as the father of this country see and know what is happening in your home? How do you feel when the statistics are read to you about all those girls who have been denied a chance to have an education when you have the authority and mandate to see that this happens?
Marriages are breaking down because men fear the high cost of leaving. Do you know what this means Mr. President? It means very soon the marriage and family institution which is the backbone of every nation is going to crumble. When this happens, you are going to have a nation with no morals, no scruples, no ethics. I don’t have to tell you how dangerous this is. Robbery, terrorism, corruption, murder, among other vices will escalate even more than it is now. I don’t think you will ever be happy to have more prisoners than free people in your own country, during your own regime.
When it comes to the newly implemented taxes on social media and mobile money, I fail to even get words to write. The very President encouraging us to work, to be entrepreneurs, is the very one denying us a favorable environment. Did you and your ministers think about the number of people who use these services to make a living? I design graphics and have to use social media to show case my work. I have friends who are computational linguists and they need the internet. My other friends were making a living through mobile money. The taxes are making it harder for us to even save a penny to make improve our standards of living. Widening the tax base is very good, as it is from these taxes that the services we demand will be availed. But then again, the fact that corruption is on an increase, and it is I the omuntu wa wansi who is affected mostly makes me think that these taxes should be revised. “Taxes can’t raise any money if they kill the economy.”
Mr. President, a lot is happening in our country. This is not the time to get defensive, this is the time to look for evil and uproot it. This is the time to get back on your drawing board and see how to make things better, for this is becoming too much on us. It is unbearable, it is increasingly burdening us. We need your intervention. Not as a President of the country, but as a fellow Ugandan, who wishes to leave the county better than you found it. Until then, I remain yours sincerely,
Disgruntled youth.