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| The pen may be a mightier tool than the sword, but not when we’re using it to lobotomize ourselves - Douglas Rushkoff. |
By Moses Odokonyero
More than a decade ago, Teddy Ssezi Cheeye’s ‘atom splitting’ Uganda Confidential made a sudden U-turn and became a paper for ‘modernity’. But how did one of the most feared and resented government critics develop feet of clay? Were his soles cracking under the weight of pressure even before he threw in the towel? And who was exerting this pressure? These and more, are some of the questions that were ringing in many a reader’s mind.
But it wasn’t long before the answer came in. Uganda Confidential was a thin affair. But after embracing modernity, the vociferous newsletter suddenly grew obese, and twice or thrice published as many as 100 pages, mostly adverts from government.
To put it in perspective, let me state that ‘modernising’ Uganda was one of the reasons that Museveni cited in 1996 to justify why he thought he was best placed to continue as president.
I used to be an ardent reader of Andrew Mujuni Mwenda, the Managing Editor of the Independent magazine, as well as a fan of the writings of Charles Onyango Obbo, and Timothy Kalyegira. Mwenda while still at Makerere occasionally signed off his commentaries with ‘the writer is a student of contemporary politics’.
And it was Mwenda, then a firebrand, bullish, intelligent, confident know-it- all, who first raised the red flag about Cheeye’s abnormally obese newsletter with a screaming headling:‘Gov’t bribes the independent press,’ in The Monitor, now Daily Monitor. In that article, he questioned the logic of why government was spending millions of shillings advertising in a paper with such a low circulation, and concluded that the government was bribing Cheeye through adverts.
Before then, Mwenda and Cheeye had had a cat and mouse intellectual relationship, fighting several public battles on development economics, public policy and globalisation, among other topics.
In September this year, Cheeye lost his appeal in the Supreme Court and was carted back to Luzira to serve a ten-year prison sentence for causing a financial loss of 120 million shillings to the Global Fund. It was such a twist for a man who was once a fierce critic of corruption. Cheeye’s jailing deprived Mwenda of someone who had been a regular and willing sparring partner.
Coincidentally, Cheeye’s fall began about the same time that Mwenda’s was on the rise or fall (depending on who you ask). In December 2007, the bohemian journalist launched The Independent. He said the magazine would be Uganda’s equivalent of The Economist (it has not lived to that billing but neither has it been a complete failure).
But now, Mwenda finds himself in the same situation that Cheeye found himself more than a decade ago. The Independent gets millions in advertising deals from Rwanda just like the Uganda Confidential did from the Ugandan government after the owner embraced the NRM. So would Mwenda say that he has been bribed by Rwanda?
Responding recently to comments posted on the Uganda Journalists Facebook page about the numerous rumours against him, particularly the reasons why he did not publish the infamous oil documents when he claims he was the ‘first man’ in Uganda to receive the documents, Mwenda showed that a lot of water had flowed under the bridge since he accused Cheeye.
‘It is by balancing the conflicting interests of readers, advertisers, government and donors that a media house is able to survive. These pressures are not necessarily bad,’ he wrote.
‘If you lean too much on your advertisers or donors or government, you may lose your audience etc. Whether it is CNN, Sky or New York Times these challenges are delt(sic) with daily and independent and Mwenda therefore are not an exception,’ he added.
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| Andrew Mujuni Mwenda, Managing Editor, The Independent. |
In July when the Daily Monitor run a story that Mwenda’s sister and former Kabarole Woman MP. Margaret Muhanga and Information Minister Karoro Okurut were involved in a shady land deal, Mwenda responded with fire on Capital FM by throwing spiked jabs at a top executive at the Namuwongo based media house. But the victim of his virulent attack did not respond to his accusations, not publicly atleast. Or if he did, then I missed it. It would have been different story, had it been with Cheeye. The debate would have rumbled on for weeks.
Often times, on radio, one may be tempted to think that when Mwenda is speaking he’s competing against himself to finish whatever he wants to say in the allotted time( this is not communication). The radio host has to constantly peg him back lest he takes charge of the studio.
This could perhaps be a small indication that Mwenda misses his mate Cheeye. Whenever I hear Mwenda on the radio, I draw a mental picture of a boxer eagerly itching for a fight but without a willing opponent; and so the boxer concludes that he is the best fighter.
But in Mwenda, media trainers and journalists have a positive example from which to learn; that writing good essays alone does not make one a good journalist. Journalists need a firm grasp of the content that the essays are supposed to convey. This is a key requirement in public affairs reporting.
The writer is a post graduate student, in the department of Journalism and Communication at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
