BY PETER MWAYI
Born in 1986, as the National Resistance Army/Movement (NRA/M) shot their way into power, a young Gyaviira Ssemwanga two years later lost both his parents to the scourging HIV, leaving him and his siblings to fate. Gyaviira recalls growing up in a village in Rakai District, central Uganda, where he seemed to lose a relative, including a caretaker almost every passing day.
HIV had first been confirmed in Uganda in 1981 in Kasensero, a small fishing village in Rakai district. Residents attributed the disease to witchcraft, the fear that ensued sparked stigma. Relatives of those that contracted the disease abandoned them to die, alone and helpless in their homes. Children like Ssemwanga, as young as five found themselves taking care of their siblings.
Informed by the hard reality that many of his fellow bush war fighters had been diagnosed as HIV positive, NRA/M leader Yoweri Museveni took a bush war approach to stemming the further spread of the disease. The President became the first African leader to publicly acknowledge that HIV/Aids posed a serious public health challenge to Uganda, at a time when most African governments refused to even acknowledge the presence of the disease.
Reports indicate that Museveni’s openness on the issue helped make Uganda a success story in the fight against the epidemic. As care for the sick improved, so did the willingness to test, seek treatment and change behavior. Ssemwanga acknowledges this reality stating; “We owe it to President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni that he was the very first leader on the African continent to sound the alarm against this deadly scourge at the time leaders and people were afraid to openly talk about it. Maybe, if this alarm by the President had been sounded earlier, my parents and relatives would live a bit longer.”
The NRM Government rolled out the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme, and through this arrangement, I received education up to Primary Seven, when I sat my Primary Leaving Examinations.”
Gyaviira ssemwanga
He further narrates; “Nobody would imagine that I would live to tell my success story, late alone stand on the same podium with the great and mighty, basing on the horrid experience I have endured from the time I was born.
At the time he was growing up, under the difficult circumstances, attaining education was a far-fetched dream for Ssemwanga and most of his peers, due to the school fees problem. However, as Providence would have it, a Good Samaritan enrolled him for sponsorship under the Uganda Women Effort to Save Orphans (UWESO) programme which was initiated by First Lady Janet Museveni when he was Seven years old. That is how he managed to study from Primary One to Primary Three.
“Later on, the NRM Government rolled out the Universal Primary Education (UPE) programme, and through this arrangement, I received education up to Primary Seven, when I sat my Primary Leaving Examinations. I am proud to be a first product and beneficiary of UPE under the NRM agenda of socio-economic transformation,” he adds.
Many Ugandans Ssemwanga’s age and younger are beneficiaries of the current government’s deliberate policy targeted to increase the number of children getting a basic level primary education. Figures indicate that at the time the NRA took power, only about 300,000 children were enrolled. This triggered the government to think and in 1997 the UPE programme was rolled out. Later, government extended the same to secondary school level and has since devised other programmes for Ugandans to access tertiary education at no or minimal cost as Ssemwanga further narrates;
“God continued to smile on me when some humanitarian organisations furthered my education throughout Secondary. After Senior Six, I thought my luck had run out, but the NRM government introduced the Joint Admissions Board (JAB) under which I joined Makerere University to study for a degree in Development Studies.”
“Today, I share the same platform with the great as a Member of Parliament for Buyamba County, Rakai District,” he concludes proudly.
