Uganda’s healthcare crisis is not an accident. It is not “underfunding” or “poor management.” It is the inevitable product of capitalism’s violence—a political betrayal in service of an extractive, neoliberal, neocolonial order that exists to enrich a few while draining the lifeblood of the working majority.
In the early 1990s, Museveni acted as the perfect comprador for global capital, welcoming the IMF and World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) with open arms.
These were not “reforms.” They were the tools of imperialism: dismantling public ownership, cutting social spending, privatizing what the people had built, and reducing the Ugandan state to a manager for foreign creditors and corporate profiteers. Healthcare, education, transportation—all were sacrificed on the altar of profit.
The result? Uganda’s hospitals are death traps for the working poor and ticking time bombs for anyone outside the ruling clique. Class determines survival, and political loyalty determines whether wealth can buy life.
Sam Kutesa could fly to Germany for first-class cancer treatment because he is part of the comprador elite, a loyal servant of the system. He returned healthy, preaching gratitude and building a church—a performance of piety masking the raw power of privilege.
Meanwhile, the late Mr. Garuga, a wealthy businessman and former FDC politician, was denied a UK visa for treatment. He died here. His independence from the regime was his death sentence.
This is neoliberalism’s real face: even the local bourgeoisie are disposable if they refuse to kneel before the political-economic order. For the working class, the reality is absolute dispossession—we can barely afford food, let alone visas, flights, and the extortionate costs of imperial medical facilities.
And our politicians? They are junior partners in the same class project. Every manifesto repeats the same neoliberal catechism, genuflecting before the IMF and World Bank as if they were divine authorities. None call for expropriating stolen wealth to rebuild public healthcare. None demand breaking from the global capitalist chains that keep Uganda a site of extraction and cheap labor.
Uganda’s healthcare collapse is not “mismanagement.” It is capitalist class warfare. Museveni signed away our sovereignty, the IMF and World Bank set the terms, and every politician who refuses to break with this order is an accomplice in mass death.
If we will not dismantle this system root and branch, we should stop pretending to be shocked when the bodies pile up. The deaths are not collateral damage. They are the plan.
The author is a rural peasant who rejects imperialism in all its forms and dreams of a sovereign, united socialist Africa.
