Well, well, well. It appears the chaps in Kampala have decided that democracy is a bit too noisy and have therefore pulled the plug on the press. General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda’s army chief and arguably the man with the most aggressively magnificent moustache in the Great Lakes region, has ordered the shutdown of several media outlets. The reason? Pick a card, any card. Perhaps it was the relentless coverage of his father’s 38-year reign. Perhaps it was a particularly cheeky editorial about the price of Rolexes in the presidential palace. Or perhaps, and I’m just spitballing here, the general simply woke up and thought: “You know what this country needs? Less information.”
The UK Foreign Office, never one to miss an opportunity for ponderous pronouncements, has condemned the assault on press freedom. “We are deeply concerned,” they said, in the kind of tone usually reserved for discovering a hair in your Earl Grey. But let’s be honest: what are they going to do? Send a strongly worded letter? Dispatch a squadron of corgis? The Foreign Office’s idea of a robust response is to tut loudly and adjust their spectacles.
Ah, but the sheer absurdity of it all. Here we have a general who, if the rumours are true, once challenged a journalist to a fistfight over a poorly lit photograph. And now he’s shutting down entire news organisations. It’s like setting fire to a library because you didn’t like the colour of the carpet. The man has the temperament of a constipated rhino and the media savvy of a potato.
And what of the journalists? They are, as we speak, likely huddled in dark rooms, tapping away on encrypted laptops, or perhaps simply enjoying an enforced holiday. The brave ones will find a way. The cynical ones will find a new country. The rest will write their memoirs, which will inevitably be banned.
But let us not forget the role of the great British taxpayer in all this. We pour millions into “aid” and “development” and “capacity building” for African media, only to have some moustachioed martinet turn off the tap. It’s like paying for a child’s piano lessons and then watching them smash the piano with a sledgehammer.
In the end, this is not about Uganda. It is about the eternal struggle between the truth and the bloviating blowhards who fear it. The general thinks he can silence the press with a decree. History suggests otherwise. But in the meantime, I’ll raise a glass of gin to the brave men and women of the Ugandan press. May their sources remain secret, their encrypted chats stay encrypted, and their moustaches ever be less ridiculous than those of their oppressors.
