Talkative Polity - Florence Brisset-Foucault Cambridge Centre of African Studies Series

Скачать книгу

said is that speaking English remains linked with the possibility of attending school at a relatively high level. Thus, most informants who attended the debates at Club Obbligato were relatively well educated (most had been to secondary school). Nevertheless, some nuances must be taken into account, especially differences between spectators and orators: these will be investigated closely in chapter 9. Some members at Club Obbligato understood English but did not feel fluent enough to take the floor. In the ebimeeza in Luganda, it was possible that people who took the floor were very educated, even if generally the people who attended were less educated. The bottom line was that one could find members of the English-speaking Ekimeeza who had only some very basic education, whereas other participants in Luganda-language shows could be graduates from university.

      The questionnaires showed that there was a certain variety in terms of professions and important changes compared to the profile of the historicals in that regard. The original nucleus of wealthy businessmen was open to a more varied population of students and teachers, but also employees, security personnel, social workers, and so forth. It is also worth mentioning that the number of members whose parents both were farmers was very high in the case of the English-speaking Ekimeeza compared to the others (54.4 percent versus 33.6 percent for Mambo Bado on CBS and 19 percent for Simba): again, this goes against the widespread idea that the show in English was more “urban” than the ones in Luganda, or that “rural folks” preferred to frequent the shows in Luganda.

      The enlargement of the population and the relative disconnection of the ebimeeza from the original sociability practices that led to their emergence was illustrated by the fact that some members interviewed stated that they would not have frequented Club Obbligato if it had not been for the show, because of the price of the drinks, the presence of alcohol, or because they did not feel it was their place to be. These specific members, who came from more modest backgrounds, had different sociability practices and political heritages. The mere contrast between the locations where the interviews with different members of the ebimeeza took place was per se amazing and illustrated this social diversity. In the same day, interview locations ranged from the huge and luxurious offices of a business lawyer to an insalubrious small cabin in the slums of Naguru or Nakulabye.

      Despite the fact that they were presented as “People’s Parliaments,” the ebimeeza were not the reflection of the integration and diffusion of ideals of radical democracy. They were the offspring of practices of sociability and the representations of legitimate political action that were typical of the educated wealthy male circles of Kampala. After the discussions started being broadcast, the composition of the audience was enlarged: new generations of speakers appeared, especially students, party mobilizers, and Northerners, in the case of Club Obbligato. Although the Ekimeeza was still dominated by educated members of the Ugandan population, it did accommodate a wider spectrum of social and economic statuses. By reconstituting the early history of these discussions, however, we can get a better view of the ways in which the Ganda business class and the intellectual guerrillas of the West of Uganda became mutually interconnected after the violent military takeover in 1986, and together participated in the reinvention of an elitist sociability. As such, the ebimeeza can be seen as one of the sites where a “reciprocal assimilation of elites” occurred, to use Jean-François Bayart’s words.80 That is to say, a site where historically distinct components of the elite could together reinvent a political culture, reinvent the parameters of class domination, and, through their social and economic alliance, rebuild a sociopolitical order. It illustrates how the wealthy, liberal, and moderate Ganda elite class was able to socially materialize its alliance with the leftist military elite of the West, through a heterodox interpretation of the Movement revolution. Last, this elitist and intellectual heritage of the ebimeeza needs to be taken into account in order to understand how the new generation of speakers understood themselves and their part in the polity when they took the floor. As we will see in detail below, far from discarding this distinguished heritage, they embraced it.

      TWO

       The Political Economy of Radio Speech

      UNDERSTANDING THE EMERGENCE OF THE EBIMEEZA AND THE format they took also requires an exploration of the political economy and the sociology of the media within which they were produced. Historically the Ugandan press has been intrinsically linked to religious mobilization, party and faction politics, and of late has been dominated by university-educated intellectuals. By contrast, radio has a very different history. As we will see, the introduction of live political debate on the air was far from being a self-evident or straightforward process. In order to be politically acceptable, professionally valued by media workers, and economically viable, the programming of talk radio needed to take particular formats. Political speech and the opening of new avenues for popular expression cannot be understood in isolation from the ambivalent development of commercial radio within the private realm of the state, the importation of foreign entertainment and news formats, the economy of development and international aid, and the local heritages of a relatively long history of radio culture.

      The Liberalization of the Airwaves and the Invention of Private Radio

      The involvement of audiences in programming is a rather old phenomenon in Uganda, as in the rest of Africa. Radio clubs were initially launched during late colonialism, with the ambition of teaching “civic values” to colonial subjects.1 In Uganda, before the creation of a proper, official station in 1954 by the protectorate government, mobile broadcasting units “would shuttle between about twenty political rally venues in Kampala and the neighboring areas many times a week disseminating information. [. . . Then] the same broadcasting team would record questions from the audience and take them to the colonial masters for answering.”2 But in contrast with the vibrant and deeply political press of late colonialism, the British aimed at protecting the airwaves against open political controversy and debate.3 In the 1980s, before and after Museveni’s takeover, a program called You and Your Government encouraged people to send in questions by letter, which were then answered on the air.4

      Interactivity thus did not come with the liberalization of the airwaves, but it changed tremendously because of it, for when the first private radio stations were launched in 1993, and when the airwaves became the terrain of commercial competition, the logics of programming mutated. Before that, the state radio was the realm of teachers, carefully chosen ethnic entrepreneurs, and public servants whose careers oscillated between media production and administrative work in the Ministry of Information.5 They were broadcasters who understood their professional ethos as the fulfillment of a duty to report government and state decisions and activities without questioning them, not necessarily only as a result of constraint, terror, or guilty collaboration with violent regimes, but also because such an ethos corresponded to their training and their vision of what a public broadcaster should do.6 However, audiences had already developed a taste and habits of interacting with broadcasters ahead of the privatization of the airwaves.

      The liberalization of radio in 1993 was not the result of journalists’ liberal demands or a cause for political mobilization. It was the result of a petition from businessmen who considered the airwaves an investment opportunity and who were for the most part close to the Movement leadership.7 For the authorities, opening the airwaves was part of a wider policy of further embracing the market economy.8 William Pike, at the time editor in chief of the government newspaper the New Vision, was influential in the decision of the government to liberalize. He insists on the fact that it was a business move, and that radio stations were mainly expected to broadcast music and “not engage in political criticism,” or government propaganda for that matter, both considered a nuisance to business.9 According to Peter Mwesige, in the first two years after the liberalization, 80 percent of the programs were dedicated to music, not because of political constraint, but because it was profitable.10 As a journalist from the Monitor recalled:

      I think we had not at that time thought about it. . . . I don’t know, there was . . . It is true, a government radio is not enough, but there was no movement to push for opening the airwaves. [. . .] The journalists in the government media were

Скачать книгу