I am informed that President Tibuhaburwa Museveni has personally  shut down a popular radio station in Jinja, Busoga One, and that he made a direct intervention, not through anyone?!

If this is true, it is a bad pointer to freedom of the Press Freedom in the 21st century – now and in future.  It means that the president wants full control over the 4th Estate of the state. The offshoot of this action is that the Big Man of Uganda wants to control the collective thinking of the citizenry.

Like Big Brother in the George Orwell’s classical novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, has been trying and failing to subject Ugandans to Orwellian ‘Newspeak’ – government prescribed medium or language generated by the governing elite, with him at the summit as the master-trumpeter.

An undated review of the novel puts into perspective the ‘Newspeak’ Museveni wants to prescribe for Ugandans. In Newspeak a concept is expressed by a single; no synonyms. A deviation is tantamount to heresy. In Ugandan context, alternative ideas invite accusations of treason. It goes:

“In 1984, Britain (read Uganda) has been renamed Airstrip One (may Chwezi Empire) and is a province of Oceania (read Africa), a vast totalitarian superstate ruled by ‘the Party’ (read NRM), whose politics are described as Ingsoc (‘English Socialism’ – read Musevenism)). Big Brother (read President Tibuhaburwa Museveni) is the leader of the Party, which keeps its citizens in a perpetual state of fear and submission through a variety of means.

Surveillance is a key part of the novel’s world, with hidden microphones (which are found in the countryside as well as urban areas, and can identify not only what is said but also who says it) and two-way telescreen monitors being used to root out any dissidents, who disappear from society with all trace of their existence wiped out.

They become, in the language of Newspeak (the language used by people in the novel), ‘unpersons’. People are short of food, perpetually on the brink of starvation, and going about in fear for their lives.”

This is a microcosm of that is happening in Uganda today – by extension many other countries in Africa that routinely spit on constitutionalism.

It will be terrible for Uganda today and tomorrow if the shutting down of Busoga One is tied to politics. However, if the President found the Station ethically and morally right but politically wrong, then we should begin to shed tears for Uganda.

The country has no meaningful secure future if institutions – public and private – have to toe only the path the President considers correct. That would be the perfect path for building a closed, sterile, stagnant society.

Of course it is not the first time the print, electronic and social media have been shut down in Uganda, not for ethical and moral reasons but political reasons.

One time The Monitor Radio and The Monitor newspaper were shut and their premises militarily occupied for nearly two weeks. Some workers were thrown behind bars. I don’t know whether the once powerful Wafula Ogutu empire was opened because the leadership decided to toe “the correct line” or because Ogutu decided to sell his empire to Aga Khan.

Here is another juxtaposition of Musevenism in George Orwell’s novel:

“Nineteen Eighty-Four’s protagonist is Winston Smith (compares with Gen Muhoozi, Museveni son and head of army), who works at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting historical records so they are consistent with the state’s latest version of history. However, even though his day job involves doing the work of the Party, Winston longs to escape the oppressive control of the Party, hoping for a rebellion.

Winston meets the owner of an antique shop named Mr Charrington, from whom he buys a diary (maybe The Monitor, which is a daily record of events as newspaper do) in which he can record his true feelings towards the Party. Believing the working-class ‘proles’ (Uganda’s secret service) are the key to a revolution, Winston visits them, but is disappointed to find them wholly lacking in any political understanding.

Wafula Ogutu had been the editor of Topic, which was a pro-bush war newspaper during the Obote II regime between 1981-86. It is likely that Wafula Ogutu quit the media for politics because of the military action on his empire. He eventually became leader of Opposition in Parliament. Today he is one of the splinter FDC politicians who decided to seek registration of a new party – People’s Freedom Front (PFF). It sounds familiar in the context of Nineteen Eight-Four:

“Meanwhile, hearing of the existence of an underground resistance movement known as the Brotherhood, which has been formed by the rival of Big Brother, a man named Emmanuel Goldstein – Winston suspects that O’Brien (has hallmarks of former Inspector-General of Police, Gen Kale Kayihura), who also works with him, is involved with this resistance.

At lunch with another colleague, named Syme, Winston (sounds like Dr Kizza Besigye) learns that the English language is being rewritten as Newspeak so as to control and influence people’s thought, the idea being that if the word for an idea doesn’t exist in the language, people will be unable to think about it.

Winston meets a woman named Julia (well, this could be Winnie Byanyima’s shadow) who works for the Ministry of Truth, maintaining novel-writing machines, but believes she is a Party spy sent to watch him. But then Julia passes a clandestine love message to him and the two begin an affair – which is itself illicit since the Party decrees that sex is for reproduction alone, rather than pleasure.

But shortly after this, Winston and Julia are arrested, having been shopped to the authorities by Mr Charrington (whose flat above his shop they had been using for their illicit meetings). It turns out that both he and O’Brien work for the Thought Police, on behalf of the Party.

At the Ministry of Love, O’Brien tells Winston that Goldstein’s book was actually written by him and other Party members, and that the Brotherhood may not even exist. Winston endures torture and starvation in an attempt to grind him down so he will accept Big Brother.”

The press is usually nearer to the people than governments are. It articulates and clarifies issues for society and unearths hidden strategies of oppression, suppression and repression of the populace by governments. Sometimes it takes over from universities in building intellectual capital when they choose to emphasize academicism and scholasticism at the expense of intellectual growth and development. This way the press is a pillar of the struggle against ignorance, which governments prefer for perennial control of the people.

It is a saddening fact that President Tibuhaburwa Museveni who in the 1990s allowed free debates and exchange of ideas is now intolerant to any divergence from his choices. From the action on Busoga One just before the presidential and general elections, it stands out clear that the president will not tolerate Radio, TV and other centres of critical thinking and reasoning to stand in his way.

Therefore, if Ugandans thought that President Museveni by going to the Bushes of Luwero, he was pursuing genuine democratisation of Uganda and it’s society, they have to rethink not only him but also what kind of Uganda he want. To me it seems he wants a Uganda where everything begins and ends with him as everyone is shrouded in conspiracy of silence.

The cardinal Question is: Why does the president want a closed society, where young dynamic Ugandans are likely to flow out as slaves or victims of a mushrooming brain drain. We need to pray for the president so that he is not enemy number one of his own legacy.

We also need to pray for Uganda and Ugandans so that we are not victims of an unfolding tragedy of the commons politically and militarily down.

For God and My Country.

• A Tell report / By Oweyegha-Afunaduula / Environmental Historian and Conservationist Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA), Seeta, Mukono, Uganda.

About the Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis (CCTAA)

The CCTAA was innovated by Hyuha Mukwanason, Oweyegha-Afunaduula and Mahir Balunywa in 2019 to the rising decline in the capacity of graduates in Uganda and beyond to engage in critical thinking and reason coherently besides excellence in academics and academic production. The three scholars were convinced that after academic achievement the world outside the ivory tower needed graduates that can think critically and reason coherently towards making society and the environment better for human gratification. They reasoned between themselves and reached the conclusion that disciplinary education did not only narrow the thinking and reasoning of those exposed to it but restricted the opportunity to excel in critical thinking and reasoning, which are the ultimate aim of education. They were dismayed by the truism that the products of disciplinary education find it difficult to tick outside the boundaries of their disciplines; that when they provide solutions to problems that do not recognise the artificial boundaries between knowledges, their solutions become the new problems. They decided that the answer was a new and different medium of learning and innovating, which they characterised as “The Centre for Critical Thinking and Alternative Analysis” (CCTAA).