In what can only be described as a national betrayal of intellect and justice, the corrupt and visionless Museveni regime—fronted by the hopelessly incompetent Minister of Education, Janet Kataaha Museveni—has driven Uganda’s secondary school arts teachers to the brink of rebellion. Come June 6, 2025, thousands of humanities educators will rightfully abandon the chalkboard and take to the streets, not out of greed, but sheer desperation. After three years of empty promises, staged meetings, and insufferable lies, the government still dares to treat arts teachers like disposable garbage while blindly worshipping the altar of science.
Let’s be brutally honest: this is not just a strike. This is a reckoning. The Uganda Professional Humanities Teachers Union (UPHTU) has finally had enough of Janet’s Bible-thumping hypocrisy, empty prayers, and useless “patience sermons” while their own children sleep hungry and walk barefoot to schools they can’t even afford. How dare a regime that splashes billions on luxury cars, State House opulence, and military extravagance turn around and tell teachers there’s “no money” for education?
The injustice is as loud as a thunderclap: while a graduate science teacher earns a ridiculous Shs4 million per month, a fellow arts teacher is expected to survive on crumbs, barely managing to afford rent or transport. This insultingly skewed pay structure is not only discriminatory but criminal. It is institutionalised theft, wrapped in lies and ministerial incompetence.
And who is at the helm of this madness? Janet Museveni—an unqualified, handpicked propagandist with neither the academic background nor the intellectual stamina to understand the education sector. Her portfolio is not built on merit but on her marital bed to the eternal dictator. Under her reign, the Ministry of Education has become a cemetery of talent, where arts teachers are buried alive in poverty while being asked to smile and “trust the process.”
The so-called “phased salary increment” is a shameless joke. Three years later, not even a whiff of change has been smelt. Arts teachers have been reduced to professional beggars, pleading for what should be rightfully theirs. And when they demand dignity, the government responds with tired threats and manipulative language. No more!
This looming strike is the product of a government that eats its own children, that rewards silence and punishes knowledge. Uganda’s leaders are obsessed with militarism and mechanised science, yet they forget that without history, literature, and civic thought, a nation collapses into barbarism. The regime is deliberately killing critical thought—because a thinking population is dangerous to tyranny.
Let it be known: the battle lines are drawn. The strike will cripple the academic calendar, and it will be deserved. If this government continues to play games with the livelihoods of educators, they will soon find themselves with an illiterate, angry generation—ready to rewrite Uganda’s future with fire and fury.
Increase our salaries or face the storm.
Discussion about this post