By Daniel Kakuru.
Never before the 2020 Olympics had Uganda known how it felt to send a female sportsperson to the Olympic games and have her return with a medal. But thanks to a 22-year old Peruth Chemutai, the archaic malediction of Olympic medals eluding Ugandan female sportspersons can willfully be obliviated.
I watched the miracle unfold before my own eyes. I watched her, Peruth Chemutai, lay down her life and run like an antelope for the finish line. Gold it was, because she arrived first. I am not exactly an emotional person, but watching her wrap herself in a Uganda flag after the race; watching her baring her fangs so she could catch a breath; watching her wave at a mammoth crowd of white faces that never waved back at her reduced me to tears.
When Joshua Cheptegei also ran and captured a gold medal at the 2020 Olympic games, I was watching. His was a victory of destiny. He was the man we knew would win; he had to, and he did. When he paced the arena like a disoriented man and flashed unsolicited smiles at everything, it was not difficult to understand what was on his mind. Nothing could have been more rewarding that watching the world pause for the Ugandan flag to be hoisted, and the national anthem played.
Good news is a rarity in Uganda. We shall cast aside everything about Ssekitoleko’s story and confess that the Ugandan populace is happy about the results from the 2020 Olympics. We have a reason to smile because as I type this – and the games are still raging on – Uganda has collected at least five medals from the various genres of sport; whether gold; silver; wood; we don’t care. All we need is medals, and we seem to be getting on fairly well.
But how best shall we reward the people that are bringing these medals home? Looking back in time, we are not a country that has done enough to practically extol our sportspersons.
I was a toddler, the height of a bucket, when Dorcus Inzikuru conquered the world and made herself a household name in Uganda. Catapulted by the vehemence that came with winning bronze at the 2003 Afro-Asian games, she won a gold medal at the 2005 World Athletics finals. As if that had not been enough, she travelled to Finland in 2005 for the World Championships and returned with another gold medal. She was not done; she would shortly afterwards bring back gold from the 2006 Commonwealth games.
I did not quite seem to know what was going on in her life until July 2021, when she appeared in the news again. This time not because of winning yet another medal; a career in sports doesn’t last forever. Life happened and today, she is a mother probably weighing twice as much as she did when she was still an athlete running fast like lightning. For the victories she collected for Uganda, one of the rewards she was given is a house. Following a presidential directive, she moved into it about fifteen years ago. Sadly, the house sits on a plot of land whose title she was never given. A short time ago, local authorities approached her saying her house ought to be demolished and a road constructed in its place. That’s how she found herself knocking on the doors of the offices of different ministries and when they couldn’t do much about her predicament, she turned to the media for help.
In spite of having lived her past life covered in glory, poor Dorcus Inzikuru today finds herself on the verge of losing the house that was awarded to her by a presidential directive. That is obviously just a symptom of the demons she might be fighting behind the scenes.
John Akii Bua was Uganda’s first ever Olympic champion. He arrived in Munich for the 1972 Olympic games as an underdog. Hardly anybody knew his name. Hardly anybody expected him to leave with not only a gold medal, but also a record that would live for close to two decades. He was the first man to ever finish the 400m hurdles in under 48 seconds. The following year, he cemented his name among the all-time greats when he won another gold medal at the All-Africa games in Lagos.
Back home, the government of President Idi Amin declared him a national hero and pampered him. He was given a bungalow in the capital which he occupied with his nuclear family. Unfortunately, because of being from the Langi tribe which was being persecuted politically by Amin’s dictatorship, his stint in the limelight did not last long. As long as Idi Amin’s paranoia towards the Langi grew, John Akii Bua’s fall became imminent. Things happened very fast. Five of his siblings disappeared into thin air, one by one, and their bodies were found rotting away in swamps. In no time, he found himself fleeing the country into a refugee camp in Kenya. His pregnant wife, suffocated by the tragic living conditions in the camp, gave birth to a premature baby which did not live long enough to draw its first breath.
International journalists later stumbled upon him, a reputable world champion, living his life as a fugitive with no dignity. In 1997, he died in Mulago Hospital, a forgotten man in squalor and starvation.
Jimmy Kirunda’s story is no different from the rest. In spite of being one of the greatest football icons Uganda has ever produced, he died a pauper in 2020, at the age of 70.
His footballing career was glorious. On the pitch, he was a Kaiser (a German word for Chief). He played essentially as a centre back, and yet always offered the biggest threat going forward with set pieces. He was our own version of Franz Beckenbauer. Nobody in the history of the game has ever captained the Uganda Cranes longer than Jimmy Kirunda. He not only represented but also captained the Uganda Cranes in the 1974, 1976, and the 1978 African Cup Of Nations tournaments. Did I forget to mention that he single-handedly guided the national team to the 1978 AFCON final?
After retiring as a player, he returned and coached the Uganda Cranes for a good number of years, never mind that he was never as good a manager as he had been a player. The day he lost his job as Uganda Cranes head coach, his descent into oblivion started. It was slow and painful, spanning over more than twenty years, to the point of his death. He left behind huge outstanding debts which I remember President Museveni threatening to settle, but I doubt he did more than promise.
Ugandan retired footballers have the most painful stories. Reach out to people like Andrew Fimbo Mukasa, Obadiah Ssemakula, Issa Ssekatawa. Listen to them. The lives they’re currently leading after falling from football stardom will break your heart.
In the next few days, a team of the people who represented Uganda at the 2020 Olympic games will be returning. Some of them sold off their property to fund the trip to Tokyo. We should, as a people, ask how it is possible that Usain Bolt of Jamaica is insulated from poverty, several years after retirement. We should ask how it comes about that former football stars like David Beckham have bottomless pockets and our own stars like Fimbo Mukasa are getting suicidal. We should think about how best we can reward our own sports stars and change their lives forever.
About the author: Daniel Kakuru is a Ugandan social commentator. His articles have appeared in several publications in print and online. He writes under a Facebook hashtag #MugOfPorridge and blogs at danielkakuru.wordpress.com
