Dr. Sam Kisekka: A life of great leadership

PROFILE      OBITUARY   

KAMPALA - One of the first health workers in post-independence Uganda, Dr. Samson Kisekka was also Prime Minister (1986-1991) and Vice President from 1991 to 1994. He died in London on October 25, 1999 at the age of 87.

At the time of his passing, he was a retired Senior Presidential Advisor. On the 20th anniversary of his death, we reproduce excerpts of an obituary that was published in The New Vision on October 26, 1999:
 

The great doctor is gone

"86 years is not enough. There is still a lot for me to accomplish," Mzee Samson Kisekka told The New Vision last year. When, on his sickbed, he heard that Africa's statesman was dead, Kisekka said Nyerere at 77 had died "a young boy".

As much as  Mwalimu loved to be called the teacher, Kisekka loved to be called Omusawo Omutendeke, which means ‘the trained doctor'. But the young people at his modern country house called him Jaja mwami.

In the late 1980s and early 90s, Kisekka's voice blared on radio every Tuesday. He told the people to stop drinking, till the land and fight poverty. On one occasion, he assured Ugandans that nobody is rich in Uganda. He asked if any Ugandan compared to Ford in wealth.

 
Kisekka took to task the people in Namuwongo for the slummy conditions under which they lived.

There was a near public uproar when he called upon people in Kampala to go back to the village and dig. In a way, he won farming some prestige. It is not surprising, therefore, that when he set up his Temangalo farm, he opened it to the public as a model."

In 1946 Kisekka could not understand why the people in Moyo still went virtually naked. "I asked friends at Makerere why they could not have their ladies dress the way Baganda girls did. They told me it was expensive," he recalled.

The Vice President Dr. Samson Kisekka auctioning a portrait of Pope John Paul II during a luncheon at Kampala Sheraton Hotel in 1992 to raise funds for the Popal visit early February

 
A son of a chief, born in the prestigious Mpologoma (Lion) clan of Buganda. If lions are proud, then so was Kisekka. If they are courageous, so was the old man.

Mzee Kisekka took to church activities with rare fervor. He was a devout Seventh Day Adventist.

When he graduated from university, Kisekka, married Mary a girl he had seen at Gayaza School on February 3, 1940. Together they had sixteen children

As a youthful medical practitioner, Kisekka worked in Masaka, Bombo, Bubulo, Moyo, Mubende. He served and lived in many parts of Uganda. When he felt the colonial government was unfair to the black civil servants, Kisekka resigned his job and took to fish mongering. With a friend, he went to Mwanza, picked up fish, and brought it to Uganda.

 
Kisekka fled the country when the Obote government started closing in on his activities with the (National Resistance Army) rebels.

He camped in Nairobi and took charge of the NRA external arm during the bush war. When the NRA took power, he was appointed Premier and Minister of Internal Affairs. That was before he was promoted to the office of Vice President.

He did not like anybody who considered him a politician. He preferred to be called a social worker. All you had to do to see his angry side was get drunk in his vicinity. He hated drunkards most.
 
Tales that run through 80 years are rare to come by. Such was the life and times of Samson Kisekka.

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