The making of a media system in uganda: A new vision and a revolutionary origin

Throughout the world, government pronouncements and legislation on the role of speech in society spring often not from international norms and Voltairean aphorisms but from complex histories of origin, particularly histories of national formation. In many places, it is in the harsh experiences of revolutionary warfare and guerrilla movements that leaders are shaped, ideologies hardened, and imaginings of future media systems created. In this chapter I focus on one such origins story, examining the changing approaches to the media within Uganda’s political system. Chronicling the roots of popular mobilization and the strategy of persuasion and participation that the National Resistance Movement (NRM) employed during its struggle and early days of its government in the 1980s, the chapter then goes on to explore the tensions between promoting the voices of citizens within the larger promise of ending violence against the backdrop of decades of instability that have plagued Uganda. At the heart of this history is one publication, the New Vision, founded in 1986 as the NRM’s first postliberation paper and one of the continent’s most unusual and interesting experiments in creating a popular government media outlet. By focusing on the New Vision, this chapter explores the impact early policies, driven by a unique political ideology, have had on the media system that has developed in postwar Uganda. Ultimately, one might ask whether the struggles for independence, decolonization, and subsequent liberation movements, in Africa produce alternate and useful ideas of the role of speech and society. When Yoweri Museveni first came to power after years of guerrilla struggle in 1986, he promised a new form of politics rooted in non-sectarianism. Peace and security, Museveni promised, would be the overriding concern. Soon after his inauguration, Museveni argued that “the problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power” (Tangri and Mwenda 2010, p. 32). For many observers, these words have sadly carried an unwanted prophetic weight for Museveni’s own long future in politics. At different times Museveni has been called a “new leader” representing democratic tendencies tempered by African realities (Connell and Smyth 1998; Ottaway 1999), a neo-populist (Carbone 2005), and, more recently, a competitive authoritarian (Kagoro 2015).