It is a tragic twist of fate. Three men named Sam — a retired Ugandan police officer, a former minister, and a British tourist — have, in strikingly different ways, revealed the gaping wounds of Uganda’s priorities.
Sam Omara, once a feared enforcer of state repression, died in Mulago hospital after a long, painful battle with cancer.
Sam Kutesa, the former foreign affairs minister entangled in corruption scandals, beat his own cancer in the comfort of German hospitals and built a church to boot.
And Samuel Leeds, a young British investor who almost died after a fall on the River Nile, ended up building a 64-bed hospital ward to save others from the broken system that once saved him.
Their intertwined fates offer a powerful indictment of a nation where the powerful flee abroad for treatment, the ordinary are left to rot in crumbling hospitals, and the rare foreigner shows more charity than those who claim to serve.
Omara’s last days were a grim reminder of what awaits even the once-mighty when the system they helped prop up eventually turns its back.
In his prime, Omara symbolised brute force, commanding crackdowns against protesters with ruthless efficiency.
But as cancer hollowed him out, he found himself abandoned in the very public hospital corridors where the powerless have always suffered.
In years past, the Besigyes had dated to step up and demand a better health sector for all Ugandans. Omara stood in their way with preventive arrest.
Omara learned too late the the Kutesas who deployed him to curtail those demands for better service delivery, were another Sam altogether via level. He might have shared a name with Sam but one could afford to get treated from Germany, his best option was Mulago, the very facility he stopped Besigye and others from advocating for.
Once powerful, he ended up reliant on the very system he had defended with brutal devotion — and the system, for the most part, turned its back on him.
In stark contrast, Kutesa, one of Uganda’s most powerful political figures, quietly slipped off to Germany when diagnosed with throat cancer in November 2022.
There, Kutesa spent six months undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy, later thanking God for his recovery and pledging to build a church — not a hospital — in gratitude.
He declared, "After surviving that difficult experience, I made a promise to build a church for God in His honor."
God forbid he falls ill again; it will be the first-class medical suites of Europe, not the pews of his newly built church, that will be called upon.
Kutesa’s choices are unsurprising for a man dogged by allegations of corruption, including accusations of taking bribes in a scandal involving a Chinese company at the United Nations.
In a country where public hospitals are starved while officials funnel resources into private wealth, the powerful rarely suffer with the masses.
Then there is the third Sam — Samuel Leeds, a British property investor who had no political history in Uganda, but whose life became entwined with the country’s healthcare reality.
After surviving a boating accident on the Nile that left him severely injured, Leeds was treated at a modest hospital in Jinja, one of the few facilities with an orthopaedic surgeon on duty.
Grateful for the care he received despite the grim conditions, Leeds decided to fund the construction of a new 64-bed ward.
"They said it would take years and cost billions," he recalled.
Instead, he built it in seven months, at a cost of about Shs1 billion — the price of a single Lamborghini.
Unlike the Sams who fled or fell victim to the broken system, Leeds stayed and mended it. His ward now houses doctors, nurses, and resident surgeons.
His commitment to Uganda did not stop there: he has also opened a school in the country and is working with the Ministry of Education to introduce financial literacy courses, hoping to shape a new generation.
Meanwhile, the first Sam — Omara — was a man who lived and died believing he had "saved this government" through repression, only to find that loyalty meant little in the corridors of power once his usefulness expired.
After his forced retirement at 60, he drifted into obscurity, nursing grievances over betrayal.
He lamented being sidelined by the police force he had defended with unflinching zeal, claiming even to have turned down a Shs200 million bribe from an opposition figure during the Walk-to-Work protests — a claim that raised more eyebrows than sympathies.
In his final years, Omara found brief respite working for Arrow Security Services, thanks to former minister Captain Mike Mukula, who openly said he hired Omara to "save" him from the temptation of crime in post-police life.
Yet, it was a far cry from the glory he had once imagined his sacrifices would secure.
Bitter to the end, Omara publicly complained about threats to his life from corrupt police elements, and even flirted with a political career that never materialised.
His was a fall from power as brutal as the methods he once used to enforce it.
Uganda’s health sector, hollowed by decades of neglect and corruption, stood as a silent witness to these fates.
The public hospitals are overcrowded, underequipped, and understaffed. Leaders like Kutesa ensure their survival by looking abroad, while citizens — and once-feared men like Omara — are left to battle disease in crumbling wards.
Kutesa might feel he needs salvation more than earthly things now that he is in the twilight of his life but the Sam him would have served the nation that gave him his all by building a hospital or equipping a health facility.
The three Sams form a portrait of a broken society: the enforcer discarded, the politician escaping, and the stranger giving back.
In the end, it is not the uniform, the office, or the wealth that writes the final chapter — but the system one serves, flees, or chooses to mend.