By BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI

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Grand corruption and greed, the decaying health system, abuse of power and impunity, political violence, broken promises by politicians, nepotism, and undemocratic practices afflict the Ugandan society, but few comment about them better than the artist and activist Jimmy Spire Ssentongo.

And social media has provided the columnist and editorial cartoonist at The Observer newspaper in Kampala a new, wider platform for his protest caricature and activism against the poor delivery of public services, poor leadership and corruption.

His most memorable social media campaigns on X, formerly Twitter, are around the mess that is the Kampala roads, which he dubbed "Kampala Pothole Exhibition," and poor management of public hospitals.

In the "Kampala Pothole Exhibition", he encouraged the public to post Kampala pothole photos tagging @KCCAUG, @UNRA_UG, @NRMOnline, and @GenWamala with the location of the potholes (pond hole), age of the pothole, estimated size, and a note of thanks.

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The results were hilarious, though depressing.

The other campaign, under the hashtag #UgandaHealthExhition, highlighted the poor state of Uganda’s healthcare system, with members of the public sharing pictures about the poor conditions of hospitals and clinics.

Some pictures showed doctors treating patients on the floors of hospitals dues to a lack of beds. They also brought forth allegations of theft of drugs, abuse of patients, understaffing and absenteeism, extortion and bribery.

Spire’s cartoon depicting Uganda’s iron sheets scandal that involved a number of cabinet ministers in 2023. ILLUSTRATION | JIMMY SPIRE SSENTONGO

Spire says these “exhibitions” on X were well received by the public.

“There is so much desperation in society. It was evident that people are desperately looking for anything that can give them hope. Plus, of course, the exhibitions were their chance to ridicule their oppressors.”

Social media users widely share his works, and use them as “triggers” for debate.

“Everything goes back to governance,” he says. “Some have argued that it speaks about the entire society, from which the leaders emerge, but I do not entirely agree with that. The broken society that we witness today has come to where it is due to lapses in governance,” Spire told The EastAfrican.

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“If you have been in power for 37 years, and you as well lament about society being corrupt, what does that signify? Good leadership can fix a broken society. That’s what we lack. Instead, the leadership takes advantage of the brokenness. That’s what explains the breakdown in service delivery, and the unprecedented levels of corruption,” he said.

“Some simply laugh, as they feel that it is all they can do now. The laughter helps them to remain sane in the midst of insanity.”

Some of his campaigns have borne some fruit.

“At times you may not tell what has triggered the outcomes. We could say that the cartoons reinforce the other initiatives” he says.
For his efforts, he has received some “subtle” threats from the authorities.

“Some are communicated through other people as cautions, including some I have discerned to be real," he said.

But he was once summoned by the police on the grounds that someone had reported a case of cyber stalking against him.

“When I sent my lawyer, they told him I would instead be charged with ‘inciting violence’ or ‘promoting hatred.’ Eventually, following social media noise, they abandoned the said cases.”

He did not set out to do activism on social media; he first opened a Facebook account for his cartoons (Spire Cartoons). It is still active and has a huge following, especially from diaspora Ugandans. When Facebook was blocked in Uganda in 2021, many Ugandans moved to, or added, Twitter and that is how he became more active on Twitter.

“Compared to the newspaper, social media circulates the cartoons wider and attracts more responses that I can access. Social media has tremendously boosted the visibility of the cartoons,” he said.

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During the Covid lockdowns in 2020, Spire published an account of his 24-day quarantine in a centre in the book Quarantined: My Ordeal in Uganda’s Covid-19 Isolation Centres. He was returning from UK, only to be quarantined at the Central Inn.

Quarantined, a 94-page book published by Ubuntu Reading Group in 2021, is an account of the difficult times, its anxieties, humour, and the panicky response of the government of Uganda. While the disease was new across the globe, and the Covid-19 pandemic era was characterised by official trial-and-error — the story of how the preventive measures were handled in Uganda raises many ethical, scientific, and governance questions.

Some people have said the cartoons he drew about the Covid restrictions freed him from the quarantine centre in Entebbe, but he refutes that.

One cartoon depicted the minister of health stepping on his head as he doubled down in a helpless pose. On the side there were result slips of three negative tests for Covid, but she was still insisting on him being a risk.

“I wanted to communicate the frustration we were going through under a quarantine that was senselessly being extended every other time and evidently being exploited by some for financial gain,” he said.

He says he uses his gift of illustration to give a voice to society.

“We are gifted and privileged differently. I use cartoons because I can draw them, but also because of my understanding of their power. I use satire because I can produce humour, and because I find it to be a widely appreciated form of communication in Uganda,” he says.

“In the face of situations that require our voice, we should use our talents and privileges to speak, including for those who might be unable to do so for one reason or the other. As a cartoonist, writer, and academic, I feel it is my responsibility to put my capacities to the improvement of my society. Also, seeing that the public appreciates it, I get encouraged to do more. I feel useful and more human.”

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Spire says that during the course of his work, some of his cartoons have annoyed some people in high office and run afoul of religion.

One was way back in 2008, a caricature of the Mufti Mubajje, during the days when land-related conflicts were at the peak among Muslims in Uganda. Sheikh Mubajje had said that he was guided by Allah in selling off the land he was accused of illegally disposing of.

In the cartoon, he drew an image of an old man with a long beard – the "regular" Christian depiction of God.

"Little did I know that this was blasphemy in Islam. I was to learn that Allah shouldn’t appear in any picture. A Muslim leader wrote to The Observer demanding an apology, 'or else...' The apology was made in the next issue.”

His political caricatures also draw insults from supporters of political formations, especially the opposition National Unity Platform of Bobi Wine, when he draws their leaders in ways they view as in bad taste.

Spire’s cartoon after the President of the National Unity Party (NUP), Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine asked NUP MPs to return the ‘handshake’ money which was token of appreciation from government for passing s supplementary budget, 2022. ILLUSTRATION | JIMMY SPIRE SSENTONGO

Some even accuse him of having been "bought" by the ruling National Resistant Movement regime.

In 2021, he published his first collection of his cartoons titled Uncomfortable Laughter in which he lampoons the mighty and powerful as well as the ordinary people for their various transgressions.

The 116-page collection that was published with support from Kuonyesha Art Fund contains more than 140 of his cartoons published in The Observer and elsewhere from 2016 to 2020.

“Laughter is one of the everyday forms of resistance,” Spire writes in Uncomfortable Laughter.

“Through facades of playfulness, strong messages are passed across. Boundaries of political censorship are tactfully crossed and wide audiences are reached through simple but loaded presentations whose appeal cuts across a wide spectrum of social and literacy levels. And, in this era of wide mobile phone coverage and social media use, it only takes minutes for an image to get everywhere," he writes.

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“It is not only about resistance and criticism, though, some of the cartoons you will find in here are simply for laughter’s sake. They are all based on real events and issues, but, in some cases, simply to make humour out of them. In all cases, though, context is very important for understanding why a particular cartoon spoke the way it did. Under different circumstances, it may mean something totally different, perhaps even not being funny at all,” Spire added.

He said cartoons usually carry no descriptive captions — for they are supposed to communicate on their own.

"But, considering that they usually address issues happening at the time, they may not be understood at different time without the memory of their particular temporal instance. It is for that reason that they are here captioned; and also to speak to those that may not be familiar with Uganda’s stories,” he said.

Spire says he is an academic — art is mostly a self-taught passion.

“I mostly studied in seminaries, where art was not taught. I only studied art in the last two terms of Senior 4. I was later briefly taught by a Ugandan artist called Leonard Kateete, based in Nairobi ,under the sponsorship of my uncle, Fr Ben Lutaaya. I studied for my first philosophy degree in Kenya.”

He is also a stand-up comedian. His debut was special show titled This Country Laughs a Lot held at the National Theatre in Kampala on March 24, 2023.

In the show, Spire took aim at the hypocrisy, rhetoric and empty promises of politicians who often take the public for granted.

Spire spiced up his comedy by involving and engaging the audience in the live sketching of the cartoons of his famous powerful personalities on his tablet and flip chart board.

He said his hobbies are drawing, writing, reading, building, and listening to (Caribbean) music.

As to how he unwinds after a hard day’s work, Spire said, “I hang out on social media. I rarely go out. I am a bit of a loner.”