The Ugandan Parliament has banned Daily Monitor and NTV-Uganda from covering the House, months after the State House, in March, silently banned them from key events featuring President Yoweri Museveni.
These actions are not new. In the last 15 years, there have been attempts to ban The Monitor or refuse accreditation to its journalists by Parliament at least twice: in 2015 and 2016, both targeting Daily Monitor’s Yasiin Mugerwa. However, despite many grievances against Daily Monitor and NTV-Uganda, they had never been explicitly banned from covering Museveni, if only because the President has always held out as a virtue that he is thick-skinned.
This signal of presidential fragility is, therefore, relatively new. It also suggests that the unwritten NRM-Museveni-Monitor Faustian bargain is on the verge of collapse. A Faustian bargain, as clever Ugandans know, derives from Goethe’s ‘Faust’, a 19th-century two-part tragic play by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), a German writer, poet, scientist, and statesman. It is a deal where someone tactically trades their soul (interests, integrity, or morals) for short-term power, knowledge, gain, or survival, sometimes leading to disaster. In those days, being the editorial lead at The Monitor meant developing tactics for the short-term success of the publications on the street (so you could sell copy and have a product advertisers were happy to advertise in) and ensuring that conflict with the State was at a manageable level every week.
The key strategic objective was to ensure the long-term survival of the organisation’s journalism (not business, which was the managing director’s responsibility), and to articulate the strategy for it. The unwritten Monitor Faustian bargain with the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) was how we achieved those goals, and it largely held even during the worst of times, even as we were jailed and The Monitor was shut down-it was temporary, never permanent.
The unwritten deal
And it would be quite strangely personal sometimes. For example, one time I returned to the office, and shortly after settling down, Wafula’s secretary walked in and said he wanted me to go to his office. That was unusual, because they usually just rang me on my extension. I figured something ”elephant” was afoot, so I went over quickly. There were two gentlemen in suits, and I immediately figured they were security men. I sat down, and they revealed the nature of their mission. That was a time when some Islamist extremist elements were setting off bombs around Kampala. The security men said they had received credible intelligence that the extremists planned to assassinate Wafula and me, and blame it on the government because at the time relations between the State and The Monitor were in the toilet, to put it mildly.
They had been given ”orders from above” to inform us that we would be under surveillance 24 hours a day, and that if we caught sight of them, we should not raise an alarm or show fear. In my case, they said they would even surveil the school where our children studied. The State, which was arresting and tormenting us, was at the same time extending us protection. That was only a smart part of the unwritten pact each side had made with the Devil. It was developed as a consensus during battle, and our strategy looked something like this: We would not be spared arrest or punishment (including an advertising ban that lasted five years, from 1993 to 1998), but would always be guaranteed a fair trial, and would never be tortured in some dungeon. The Monitor might be suspended or temporarily shut down, but would not be banned permanently.
The Monitor would maintain a duality, allowing voices that supported the NRM’s ”no-party”/Movement system alongside those that pushed for a multiparty system. This was probably unnecessary, as The Monitor staff were split down the middle on the issue anyway, and the organisation’s internal democracy allowed journalists on either side to air their preferences freely. The Monitor also developed a duality on the NRM’s economic liberalisation and free market policies, and a critical line that was anti-financial capital, anti-structural reform, and campaigned for a more active role of the State in the economy. We shared a common position with the government on support for East African integration and a Pan-African agenda. Unlike many critics outside the NRM at that time, we took the view-and believed-that the NRM/NRA struggle was legitimate, as was the Museveni-led government.
Additionally, we opposed any removal of the government by armed means, even if that was how NRM itself had come to power. And we deliberately chose to recognise that there were many tendencies in the NRM: radical/left, moderate, progressive, traditionalists, hardline militarists, tribalists, authoritarian one-partyists, conservatives, thieves, and honest men and women. We generally were nice and tried not to weaken the radicals/left, moderates, and progressives. The primary objective of this strategy was to ensure that there was never total unanimity against The Monitor in the government, State House, the army, or Parliament.
The two sides thus managed to maintain an open-door policy. We had a situation where we would be on trial for a story, and Museveni would denounce The Monitor at a Saturday rally somewhere. On Monday, his office would call and ask MD Oguttu to meet him at State House, and both sides would pretend everything was hunky-dory between them. And if I might be a little indiscreet, one time Museveni rang Waf (as we called him) and reprimanded him, saying The Monitor was exposing corruption, alright, but it was selective and sectarian. That it didn’t cover the corruption by politicians from the east and north, and focused mainly on that of those from the west.
Waf, who used to speak plainly to him (he knew the chief; he had been in the same study group with him in Tanzanian exile), told him that wasn’t true. Rather, it was that there were more officials and ministers from the west in key government positions, so statistically, they were more likely to be covered. He said any time The Monitor got evidence of corruption, it published without favour. It was the opening Museveni was looking for. Okay, Museveni told him, if you don’t have that evidence, let me send you something. Shortly thereafter, a juicy file was delivered to Wafula detailing corruption by a senior politician from the north.
Both Museveni and Wafula knew that the whole process was just a ritual dance. Museveni didn’t want to be seen as sending the material to The Monitor as a deliberate choice against a leader from the north in his government, because it would be perceived as tribal and undermine the ”broad-based” logic of the government of the time. He also understood that journalists are greedy for scoops, and we would lap it up, and never reveal him as the source. We went to town with the story, and milked the scoop for all it was worth.
Museveni even denounced The Monitor over the stories, saying it was, as usual, undermining the NRM-even though he dismissed the politician shortly thereafter, later justifying the move by citing our stories of his corruption. Then, one time, Gen Salim Saleh called Wafula to his House to blast him about The Monitor’s reporting. Wafula arrived there to find that Saleh was having a small drink party with friends. As Wafula ate Saleh’s food and drank his juice, the general scolded him. In the end, Saleh good-naturedly escorted him to his car, as if no strong words had been exchanged.
Faustian bargain’s end
Now there has been a significant change, and my reading is that the bargain is on its last legs, a casualty of both an evolution in The Monitor and the transformation of the NRM and Museveni’s presidency. For one, The Monitor leadership is young, no older than Museveni’s offspring, so he likely sees them as impertinent children, not as peers, which is how he might have seen Waf. Secondly, Daily Monitor and its sister radio and TV station are now professional classic news platforms. The Monitor is no longer a cause paper crusading for specific policy and political outcomes. The cause crusader period of The Monitor probably ended in 2005 when multipartyism, which it had championed (sometimes as a lone voice), was restored.
This is a necessary change, as the now-Nation Media Group-owned outlets have adapted to address 21st-century challenges and outgrown the vision of their founders. This process began in 2000 when NMG acquired a majority stake in Monitor Publications Limited. That, though, is likely boring. The more interesting thing is what happened to the Uganda Parliament, the NRM, and President Museveni. Let us begin with the two most bipartisan laws passed in the Uganda Parliament in recent years, where the opposition was as eager in their support as the NRM side. On December 18, 2013, Parliament passed the Anti-Pornography Act, and Museveni assented to it on February 6, 2014.
Then, more famously, in March 2023, it passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act. The earlier NRM had a philosophical aversion to legislating morality. It held the view that sexuality was an issue of personal choice, which should be free from State coercion if it didn’t harm others. Additionally, that moral laws tended to justify discrimination, bred hypocrisy, and drove behaviour underground. Coming off what was touted as the world’s first major success against HIV/Aids through a robust policy of openness, the NRM had naturally become averse to driving sexual behaviour underground. A conservative drift There were, however, significant changes in the NRM, and broad drifts in the country, and a re-orientation among the political actors.
One of those shifts was apparent in Parliament itself. James Wapakhabulo, a close confidant of Museveni and a member of the NRM, had served as Chairman of the Constituent Assembly from 1994 to 1995. Then he became the first Speaker of the new Parliament from 1996 to 1998, when he was appointed as the NRM’s National Political Commissar. Wapa, as he was popularly known, was the last Speaker who was an NRM historical and had been close to Museveni in the days of the struggle. Edward Ssekandi, who succeeded him, was an outsider, and Rebecca Kadaga, who came after Ssekandi, though she is a dyed-in-the-wool Movement woman, wasn’t a historical figure either.
More significantly, Wapa was one of the leading NRM moderates. He represented Mbale Municipality, and a wider tradition of politicians (and military officers) from eastern Uganda populating the moderate wings of Uganda’s ruling parties. During Milton Obote’s first Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) rule, in the 1960s, its moderates were politicians like James Ochola from Tororo, Shaban Nkutu from Busoga, and so on, and it had many radical young people in its youth wing. During Obote’s second term, notable figures included David Anyoti (Teso), Osindek Wangor (Tororo), and UNLA senior officer Kagata Namiti. When Museveni came in, the tendency held, with Michael Werikhe, Basoga Nsadhu, David Migereko, Omwony Ojwok, and also some of its strident leftists, like Chango Machyo.
This is not to say that there were no moderates from other regions; there were (Eriya Kategaya, Bidandi Ssali, Kintu Musoke, Amanya Mushega, and more), but they were quite concentrated in the east, as a percentage of the relatively small populations in the region. However, by 1998, the mobile phone had been around in Uganda for nearly three years, and the country entered the 2000s with the slow expansion of the internet. Ugandan society, already internationalised by HIV/Aids, became much more open. There were strip tease bars (ekimansulo) all over, and the late Mary Karooro would rail against them in her weekly Monitor column. A society that had become relatively liberal about sex became even more sexually permissive.
The social and sexual revolution started to provoke a conservative backlash, and progressives in Uganda missed this dramatic change until it was too late. Without making this a commentary on Anita Annet Among, this conservative backlash propelled her to the Speakership of Parliament, and the politicians from the east were no longer moderates, but hardliners and socially very conservative. Perhaps no politician in Parliament is more focused and consistent on moral purity than Sarah Achieng Opendi, the Tororo District Woman Representative. As a result, there is now a right-wing drift across the country (among older folks), with one of its pillars being sanctimonious evangelicalism.
There are still, of course, socially moderate MPs from the region like Fox Odoi, a former senior legal counsel to President Museveni, who brought a Bill to abolish the death penalty, and was one of the petitioners in court against the Anti-Homosexuality Act, but they are not in ascendance. In this rightward political drift, the NRM-Monitor Faustian bargain appears to be dying, in part because it lacks political partners. After all, the NRM centre has dwindled as virtually all those who helped prop it up have exited, been sidelined, died, or have no “old comrades” in The Monitor. It is also exciting that the young ones now get to build a structure of their own.