Uganda: Ssemujju Nganda - Radio Closures Will Not End Discontent

According to an article posted on the Kenya-based Media Institute's website www.eastafricapress.net, 16 Ugandan journalists are on trial for media related offences.

Andrew Mwenda, Managing Editor of The Independent with four offences, has the highest number of cases before court. Two other journalists from The Independent, Charles Bichachi (editor) and John Njoroge, have since joined their boss in the dock.

At The Observer, three of us; James Tumusiime (Managing Editor), Robert Mukasa (Chief Sub-editor) and yours truly, are in court. At The Daily Monitor, Daniel Kalinaki (Managing Editor), Henry Ochieng (Sunday Editor), Emmanuel Gyezaho (Senior Reporter), are also in court.

Two former Managing Editors of Monitor: Bernard Tabaire and Joachim Buwembo left the publication but still have cases to answer. Kalundi Serumaga has also joined the queue. Red Pepper's Richard Tusiime (Editor-in-chief) and Francis Mutazindwa (News Editor) are also in court. The number is completed by Patrick Otim from Vision Group's Rupiny.

The above are charged mainly with sedition, promoting sectarianism and incitement to violence. All the cases, except one, have arisen in the current five-year term of His Excellency Gen. Yoweri Museveni.

For me, I accept that anger has eroded my impartiality and objectivity as a journalist, but what about the rest?

Again you can say that my articles and comments on radio are calculated to help me launch a political career, but what about the rest?

All the 16 of us, except maybe two, are university graduates and five have Master's degrees. There has been an argument that the media is full of uneducated people, the reason it criticises the ruling party. So weak is this argument that I will not labour on it any more.

So the September 10 closure of four radio stations, including CBS, had nothing to do with inciting violence perpetrated by unskilled presenters and journalists with political ambitions.

Closing radio stations, banning talk-shows and hosts is what strongmen have always historically resorted to when their popularity dipped to the lowest lows.

First, they try to manipulate the media to cover up their failures as it happened in Poland during the post-war period. Under Edward Gierek in the early 1980s, the media was supposed to propagate the government view. Journalists made a lot of money by censoring themselves and transmitting the message of the rulers.

Of course time came when the population no longer believed them. The media would tell the population that things were okay, yet they were lining up for basic supplies!

During the early days of NRM, the government didn't need to hire callers because it operated the only television and radio station in the country.

The government was not as corrupt as it is today and there was hope nepotism would be dealt with.

Today, the son of the President, who enlisted as a member of the Local Defence Unit, is the Commander of the Special Forces, the President's wife is a Minister of State, and his brother a Senior Presidential Advisor. Tens of relatives are also employed by the state and each relative helps another to get into the system.

And to sustain himself in power, His Excellency Yoweri Museveni has had to dole out public offices and services as gifts and handouts. Some of his ministers and public servants have failed to perform out of sheer incompetence. Others have turned public offices into personal estates and are swindling with impunity.

While it was possible to get rid of critical bush war heroes, with capacity to criticise excesses, it is proving difficult to sack loyal but corrupt individuals. It is not that His Excellency doesn't know them, but he needs them, maybe more than they need him. That is what has created impunity.

All these corrupt fellows have constructed housing estates for themselves and their children. Their children are educated in Nairobi and in European capitals. During the post election violence in Kenya, a Ugandan military helicopter made several trips to the neighbouring country, collecting children of our leaders.

Even the most outspoken NRM ideologue will find it difficult to persuade people not to be angry. His Excellency is even making matters worse by telling the country that revenue collection has risen from Shs44 billion in 1986 to over Shs4,000 billion today. When people who go without drugs in hospitals hear he has built himself a Shs70 billion official residence in Entebbe, they become incensed.

Using a whole Shs88 billion to buy the leader a comfortable jet yet Makerere University has to increase its tuition fees to educate the citizens' sons and daughters, is what breeds discontent. The matter ceases to be how much revenue is collected but what that revenue benefits me as a person, village or community.

It is sharing of this information through radios and newspapers that has become a problem. Everybody else in NRM is uncomfortable with these things, except the President and other beneficiaries. That is why it is only the President who can single-handedly articulate his achievements.

There are NRM sympathisers on all the programmes and radio stations he has now closed. And you can understand the frustration because it is humanly impossible for him to attend all the talk shows to defend himself. Because you cannot attend every talk show, you order for their closure!

That is what South African President, P.W. Botha, did in June 1986. He declared a state of emergency and initiated some of the most severe censorship laws in the world. Botha's Home Affairs minister was given powers to ban publications for three months and install resident censors who looked at articles for pre-publication approval.

Two black weeklies, The New Nation and South, as well as the most prominent white-run anti-apartheid newspaper, The Weekly Mail, were suspended in 1988. So, closure of radios is a long tested method dictators use when feeding their population on propaganda no longer works.

You all remember that Martin Abilu, Police's Regional Commander for Western Region, banned two talk-shows on Life FM in Fort Portal in January last year. The panelists were charged with incitement, defamation and sedition.

By the time he fell, Chile's strongman General Augusto Pinochet had enacted 34 laws restricting the press and dragged 34 journalists to court.

That is why Professor Stephen Holmes of Chicago University concluded in his essay, Liberal Constraints on Private Power, that the reason the media is suspended or closed is to stop the population from communicating.

He said: "A tyrant is most successful when, in divide-and-rule fashion, he can prevent his subjects from communicating effectively with one another. Independently operated newspapers paralyse a potential oppressor because they make disgruntled citizens aware of each other's disgruntlement and of their collective strength. As an open channel of communication, a free press can coordinate popular resistance."

The author is Political Editor of The Observer

Source: