Killing the messenger

In his previous life, veteran Ugandan politician Al Hajj Ali Kirunda Kivejinja of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party published a newspaper, The Weekly Topic, which he co-owned with Kintu Musoke and Jaberi Bidandi Ssali.

This newspaper, though apparently heavily censured, grew in influence and size to become a daily, before it folded up after some of its most senior journalists like Wafula Oguttu, Charles Onyango-Obbo and Ogen Kevin Aliro (RIP) jumped ship to launch The Monitor newspaper.

Today, Mr. Kivejinja is Uganda’s third deputy prime minister and minister of information and national guidance. Having swapped his media hat for a government one, the good minister is now at the centre of an alleged plot to muzzle media freedom.

Since President Museveni and his National Resistance Army (NRA) guerrillas shot their way to power in January 1986, Ugandan media has gained considerable wriggling room. That room was not gained on the cheap though as a number of journalists and media houses have paid heavy prices, but the reality is that Museveni’s government was continuously conceding ground.

When Mr. Kivejinja was put at the helm of the information and national guidance ministry after the 2006 general elections therefore, it seemed as if Museveni had finally appointed one of us. But Mr. Kivejinja has, since taking up his appointment, run his office like a man who knows which side of his bread is buttered.

Since President Museveni made his now famous outburst in Kololo in 2005, while mourning his employees who had died with South Sudan President Dr. John Garang that he would sort out the media, many functionaries in his government have been trying to outdo themselves in showing their boss that they doing his bidding.

Mr. Kivejinja seems to have done little to change his boss’ thinking. It is under his watch, after all, that nearly every independent print media house in Uganda has at least two journalists before the Ugandan courts battling cases brought against them by the state, and – in scenes reminiscent of the raid on The Monitor newspaper in October 2003 – another newspaper, the fledgling Independent, was raided by security operatives.

But the worst is not yet over. Recent reports seem to indicate that the government is raising the stakes in their quest to clampdown on the media. On May 21, cabinet constituted a powerful special sub-committee to investigate radios and newspapers accused of giving bad publicity to the NRM government.

This seven-man committee, comprising two deputy prime ministers, the ministers of security and of internal affairs, as well as the Attorney General, sends strong signals that the NRM government is determined to swing the whip hard.

Mr. Kivejinja has argued that this move by cabinet is not aimed at clamping down on the media, but a well-meaning attempt by the government to guide the media to do “responsible reporting”.

“For now over 2 years I have been studying the performance of both our electronic and print media and the legal framework under which they have been functioning. As you all know, I have taken time off to talk to fellow practicing journalists either individually or collectively and even visited most of the major Media Houses with the intention of breaking barriers that might be created between the media and government,” Mr. Kivejinja said during a press conference he called on May 22.

“My main objective has been to look for best practices that would enable our media to play a vibrant role and be one of the pillars of governance in our society,” he added.

This would all have been fine, was it not for the fact that the NRM takes most criticism of its failings as a political effort to malign it before the electorate, treats many media houses that host members of the political opposition as enemies, and perceives any critical views of the way that the country is being run as negative publicity against the ruling NRM party.

With the Uganda government intent on “fixing the press”, one would have expected that a siege mentality, if nothing else, would galvanise the journalists. Sadly, the attack on the media is coming at a time when our own house is not in order.

Early this week, information came through that the Uganda Journalists Association (UJA) – which is affiliated to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) – was holding a General Assembly on May 24 in which a new executive was to be elected. This information had been sent by the outgoing President of UJA, Mr. Ahmed Kateregga.

On May 22, the outgoing Secretary General of UJA, Mr Stephen Ouma Bwire, sent out a communication of his own, calling the meeting that had been called and organised by Mr. Kateregga “illegal”. Mr. Ouma says UJA “has never convened anywhere and at any date to propose, discuss and resolve to hold its General Assembly on May 24, 2008”.

“The purported meeting with forged backdated list of Executive Committee participants, resolutions is being “cooked” up by outgoing President Ahmed Kateregga to present at his solely convened General Assembly this Saturday,” argued Mr. Ouma.

He added: “Ahmed Kateregga should produce minutes of the Executive Committee, where it convened, the agenda and resolutions before he thinks of convening a General Assembly of his own making. Kateregga must take note, if he has never read, understood and internalised the UJA Constitution.”

The UJA Constitution says that General Assembly shall be convened by the associations’ Secretary General by giving a notice of at least 14 days before the scheduled meeting. And that the notice shall include the date, venue and agenda for the Assembly. Mr. Ouma says he, as the Secretary General, has never circulated such a notice.

Mr. Ouma’s letter raises several other allegations (to which Mr. Kateregga was yet to reply by 12pm on May 23) that highlight the level of infighting and intrigue in an association that is supposed to unite Ugandan journalists. For instance, Mr. Ouma claims that his President is running UJA like a personal business and has organised an assembly at short notice so his team elect an executive loyal to him.

Besides exposing the fact that the journalists’ body is not being run professionally, this latest squabble brings to light a more fundamental issue. The rat race for readers seems to have divided the media to such a state that practitioners in the country see each other as adversaries more than as partners.

As a result, the associations that are supposed to unite Uganda scribes and fight for their cause have largely been left to journeymen journalists like Mr. Ouma and Mr. Kateregga whose main interest are the foreign trips and other such freebies that they occasionally receive from international organisations.

At a time like this when the media is under siege, one can’t help but feel that while the government is going all out to hang the media, it is the media industry – through its own internal shortcomings – that is actually providing the rope.