Next week on June 30, two USA-based organisations, Project Syndicate (www.projectsyndicate.org) which prides itself as ‘The World’s Opinion Page’, and the Meliore Foundation, will host conversation on the topic: ‘Can democracy survive without independent journalism?’ The conversation will cover three areas, namely:
Without Fear or Favour – protecting journalists from legal and political intimidation.
The Accountability Business – finding a new model to sustain serious journalism that holds power to account.
Unflooding the Zone – safeguarding the shared factual basis on which democracy depends. Had this meeting been organised by Africans here in Africa, perhaps the question would have been framed the other way round: ‘Can independent journalism survive without democracy?’
From our side of the universe, the former feeds off the latter. In Africa, it is democracy that protects independent journalism. Without democracy, independent journalism has always been bludgeoned, leaving a trail of blood and tears. Whichever way, both are in many ways akin to the proverbial chicken and egg question. What came first? The chicken or the egg? Independent journalism supports the healthy functioning of democracy while a vibrant democracy guarantees independent journalism. Uganda has over the years witnessed spurts of both. One of the lowest moments of the independent journalism was in January 1973 when Fr Clement Kiggundu, then editor of Munno newspaper was abducted by military men and killed in cold blood. His body was found two days after his disappearance, dumped in Namanve forest near Kampala.
This was just in the nascent stages of Idi Amin’s military dictatorship – two years after he had grabbed power in a putsch.
His ‘crime?’ According to the article, ‘African Witnesses: Fr Kiggundi, In Defence of the Truth’ (www.comboni.org), ‘When then President Idi Amin decided to expel all the Indians from the country, Fr Kiggundu had the courage to write in the newspaper that it was an unjust decision. In defence of the expelled Asians, Fr Kiggundu insisted that all those expelled were not only businessmen, but they included women, children and the elderly.’
Another of his ‘crimes’?
‘It was also believed that besides criticism of the expulsion of Asians, Amin was annoyed with the newspaper’s publication of a litany of complaints by women whose husbands had disappeared without trace. The women organised a meeting in Kampala in November 1972. During the meeting, they accused the government of kidnapping their husbands and taking them to unknown places. Others were discovered dead while those whose freedom was bought were found tortured.’
‘During that meeting, the women appealed to government to stop arresting and torturing innocent civilians. They also asked the authorities to release those in captivity. Government media outlets such as Radio Uganda and the Uganda Argus newspaper shunned the meeting and never gave it publicity. Munno stepped in and gave the women’s concerns prominence.’
Yet another ‘crime’?
‘Fr Kiggundu was covering the killing of Kiwanuka, and Amin was afraid that he might discover too many things.’ One of former Prime Minister Benedicto Kiwanuka’s sons recalls his father talking about a conversation he had with Fr Kiggundu during a lunch, shortly before both were abducted and killed by armed men linked to the State. Kiwanuka reportedly said: ‘We cannot abandon our country because we are menaced. If we have to die, better to die as martyrs.’
Fifty three years on today, Uganda’s independent journalists are back to covering the same stories of abductions of citizens. Of mothers and wives wailing about their missing sons and husbands. Some of the abducted citizens are missing after five or so years on (presumably dead), others are languishing in prisons in stalled trials, and others are seen (or out) with stories of torture.
Are we learning the same lessons?
Clearly, our journalism – and our democracy (or whatever we want to call it) – may not be where it was in 1973 – at least not yet. But the parallels in the stories are not lost. If journalists are writing the same stories of abductions, torture, disappearances, mothers and wives wailing, etc and facing (or not facing) the same risks, is this what is sometimes described as a time warp? Whatever the case, journalism and democracy live in a symbiotic relationship which makes the question of whether one can survive without the other neither here nor there.