LITMIR.BIZ

       Introduction

      KAMPALA, AUGUST 2008: A CROWD WAS SQUEEZED TOGETHER under a large thatched roof. People were trying to better hear the speakers taking turns behind the microphone. The venue was Club Obbligato, one of the capital city’s most famous bars. The event was Radio One’s weekly outdoor talk show, Ekimeeza. Between 2000 and 2009, shows like this mushroomed in Uganda, especially in Kampala, where around ten might be held every weekend. All followed a similar pattern: a weekly debate organized in an open space and broadcast live on radio. Most of them were aired in vernacular languages; one of them was in English.

      Approximately three hundred people were gathered at the club that day. The topic was the attempt by several opposition political parties to create a common platform to put an end to the twenty-five years of rule by President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) at the following elections. The audience was seated in circles around a large table that gave its name to the show: in Luganda, the language spoken by the Baganda, the most numerous ethnic group in Kampala, ekimeeza means “a round table” at which people sit to discuss issues.¹

      Seated casually at the table was the chairman, James Wasula, who moderated the discussions and called the orators to the microphone. He was surrounded by familiar faces; many were young men in their late twenties who came every week to practice the art of convincing crowds. Dr. Kayondo, however, was a middle-aged medical doctor who was part of the group who had initiated the debates back in 2000. As usual, he was leaning back by the pool table and enjoying the flow of speech. Not far from him were K.M. and H.N., often the only women in the audience.² Seated next to the outside broadcasting van decorated with a large radio one logo, radio producer Lynn Najjemba was attentive to the reactions of the people in the audience. She was not the only one: famous or anonymous members of the Internal Security Organization (ISO), Uganda’s secret service, usually attended the show to monitor what was being said. Every weekend, political officials, and particularly members of Parliament (MPs), attended the debate. That day, John Ken Lukyamuzi, a former MP for Rubaga South, one of Kampala’s constituencies, and the president of the small opposition Conservative Party (CP), was seated at the table next to the chairman.

      After an hour of debate and a long speech from an opposition supporter, the chairman called to the floor B.T., a thirty-one-year-old teacher. He was one of the most successful orators of this ekimeeza. A staunch supporter of the regime, his interventions were always funny and witty. Most members of the audience, including those who disagreed with the government, appreciated his oratory talents. That day, he set his mind on mocking the endless quarrels between opposition parties and the reluctance of some members of the opposition, especially from the Democratic Party (DP), to join the coalition project:

      (Someone: shhhh) The cooperation [between parties] . . . The cooperation is very, very fine (laughs), and I want to appreciate the nature and the gut [with] which my colleague [the previous speaker] has established the moments of the [agreement] (laughs). [. . .] You are talking about bringing parties together, a cooperation. Mr. Chairman, a cooperation is very, very good. Even when a rat is fearing to cooperate with a cat (laughs), because that cooperation can lead either one to grow fat (laughs) or another one to die. . . . (laughs) In that cooperation, you can cooperate, but the people who are cooperating may not survive in that cooperation (laughs; someone: yes!). Mr. Chairman, when these people were trying to cooperate I was around Kamwokya [a neighborhood in Kampala] in Panafrica [a political club], and some guys from one party remained at Kamwokya eating pizza. . . . When the cooperation [meeting] ended, they said, “We didn’t know the time” . . . (laughs) [. . .] I have heard serious DP [people . . . ] saying, “No, we are not ready to be eaten.” . . . Then I said, “When shall you be eaten?” (laughs) When is the time to be eaten correctly? [ . . . ] And you see my worry, Mr. Chairman, because DP for political [reasons], DP has tentacles in the central [region] and if you want to emerge, you can’t get around DP, you have to take this into account if you want to move on. I know that my important colleague Lukyamuzi has a constituency (laughs) [This was an ironic remark as Lukyamuzi, who was part of the opposition coalition and who was present at the debate, had lost his seat in the 2006 elections], but despite that you still need DP! [. . .] You talk about being united, but you have people who run away from their parties. [. . .] What I want to say is that the cooperation is really excellent, but will these people manage to be together without fearing? I thank you.³

      A year later, in September 2009, the government banned the ebimeeza. Since then, these radio shows have not been allowed back. This book is based on the idea that the ebimeeza and their ban reveal the complex ways in which legitimate speech and political personhood are imagined in the politically restrictive context that exists in contemporary Uganda. I argue that the ban tells us more about the Ugandan political culture and about Museveni’s regime than just that it is aging and becoming less and less liberal.

      There were clear short-term political reasons for the ebimeeza—also called “People’s Parliaments”—to be prohibited. These included especially the growing tensions between the central republican state and the neo-traditional authorities of the Kingdom of Buganda: forbidding live outdoor talk shows was a way to curb radical royalist speech. However, I argue that this ban needs to be resituated within a longer time frame, as well as a wider context. To understand fully its significance, and the fact that it was approved by some of the very people who were directly affected by it (including opponents to Museveni’s growing authoritarianism), the ban needs to be resituated within the controversies the ebimeeza triggered once they first appeared in 2000, and within much older concerns about who was entitled to speak and how.

      Having access to the local arguments about the existence of the ebimeeza, about the rules they should follow, the ways they should be organized—in short, about the way people should or should not “talk about politics”—gives us a heuristic insight into profound debates on the forms and the basis of citizenship. But such knowledge also leads us to a better understanding of the concrete exercise of power and the mechanisms

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