Once again, Daily Monitor is in trouble, this time over a story in the Sunday paper about alleged recruitment of soldiers into the police force. Maybe it was a welcome bother, for the last six months, Daily Monitor has been in the news mostly with stories alleging that the paper has given up its fight for democracy, and that the shareholders in a fit of commercialism had jumped in bed with the Kampala government. One outcome of this has been allegations of attempt to quash some critical columns and, more famously, the controversial departure of Andrew Mwenda. That was particularly difficult for some of us to take.
So here is Monitor today, once a fearless crusader against corruption and the excesses of the State, being accused of cowardice, and held in contempt by the purists. Interesting. I have always been intrigued by people, and God knows they are in their hundreds, who send emails to editors and journalists, urging them to take on the government, abusing them for letting down the cause by not tackling the Museveni regime hard enough. They will list all the terrible things people in government, and the relatives of the President have done, and then plead with you to ‘please, please, don’t reveal my name, you know these fellows are dangerous, they could kill me or harm my family.’
I always wondered whether those of us being urged to put our necks on the line were immune to death or didn’t have families that could be harmed. But you can never really tell that, because you freely chose to be a journalist and assume the risk that comes with it so they have good reason to expect that you will see your commitment through. They, on the other hand, didn’t. I am a veteran of the battles, and I have very many scars to show for it. But the choices that an independent newspaper like Daily Monitor has to make in the imperfect political situation in Uganda are more complex than most imagine. There is a memorable scene in the 1982 Oscar-winning film Gandhi in which the Mahatma Gandhi character says: ‘There are causes that I will die for, but there is no cause for which I will kill’ (or words to that effect).
Over the nearly 10 years I was The Monitor’s editor, and almost every other day after since I left that job at the end of 2002, I keep asking myself whether it is possible, or even desirable, for it to have Gandhi’s moral certitude. I am no longer sure that there’s a cause for which Daily Monitor should ‘kill’ for, in this case ‘killing’ would mean there’s something out there that is so terrible, the paper should risk its existence to destroy it. Sometimes we journalists assume a certain arrogance about our ability to change the world or end evil. We end up living in a delusional world, where what we do is nothing more than urinating in the face of a hurricane, yet we congratulate ourselves, claiming victories which are only partially ours.
There are many stories that Red Pepper or New Vison will publish, and the powers that be will not even sneer. But if Monitor touched the same stories, hell would break loose. That discrimination used to gall me to near death, but then I would cheer up because such attention suggested that Monitor had something special that the rest didn’t have. However, I also felt-and today more keenly than in the past- that the Monitor fell into a trap. By accepting these exceptional responsivities, it contributed to disempowering Ugandans. Because it was willing to fight so many of their battles, it supplanted the people. It denied them an opportunity to claim a triumph they could call their own.
Monitor fights on
In the end, many people sat back, content to let Monitor fight on, cheering from the sidelines, expressing sympathy and solidarity-and nothing more. Not even buying the paper! The last 15 years have taught me that whatever brave words people will throw up, no daily newspaper has done what the Monitor did. And I don’t expect that that will change any day soon. If that’s the case, what should the Monitor do then? Should it continue the battle of yester-years, or preserve itself to fight future wars?
Today, the paper might be a tad feeble, exhausted by years of lonely combat, but I believe that a Monitor that says only 10 percent of what it used to, is still better than one which says nothing. After the knocks and hits it has taken, and the betrayals, I think the present generation of editors has a job that is very different than ours was. It might be simple, it might be more treacherous. Theirs is just to outlast Museveni and Musevenism. Like the anthill in Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah, their lot is to tell the story of the fire that will burn over the Movement and Museveni bush. For ultimately, only the Monitor can do that.