Why Rwanda wins world prizes

On September 9, the Doing Business Report of the World Bank Group ranked Rwanda as the world’s top reformer in creating a business friendly environment. The report also showed that within one year, Rwanda jumped from number 139 to number 67 out of 186 countries sampled – almost jumping 60 positions. No country in the world has ever managed such a feat. Uganda also made a jump but in reverse – from number 111 to 112.

The key areas of reform considered by the report include starting a business, employing workers, getting credit (legal rights), protecting investors, registering property, closing a business and trading across borders.

According to the report, Rwanda is the 5th highest ranking African country after Mauritius (17th), South Africa (34th), Botswana (45th) and Namibia (66th). How has this poor and obscure country beaten Africa’s giants like Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco in being open for business?

The critics of Rwanda’s current leadership must be biting their nails. On April 20, Time magazine nominated President Paul Kagame among the 100 most influential people in the world – alongside Barack Obama and Gordon Brown. Writing the commentary on the nomination was Pastor Rick Warren, the most respected evangelist in America – now an advisor to Kagame.

On July 16, the World Technology Network (WTN) had nominated Kagame as the world’s best policy leader in advancing the use of new technologies. Later, Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria told CNN in an interview that Rwanda is Africa’s most successful nation – when Barak Obama was singing Ghana. Zakaria who also hosts GPS program on CNN is among the most intellectually minded journalists in the world.

This September, I was at the University of Oxford’s Said School of Business in an Africa leadership program. The program brings together 20 Africans in their mid-30s who have made a mark in the corporate world to spend time sharing ideas on leadership on the continent. Throughout our discussions, Kagame was being cited by everyone, fellows and the visiting lecturers alike, as the exemplar of good leadership.

When I attended the Australian business leadership retreat in August 2008, Rwanda was referred to by almost every major speaker. When I went to China for the World Economic Forum meeting in September 2008, the CEO on Intel gave me a ride from my hotel to the conference hall. I told him I was from Uganda but he thought I said Rwanda.

“You have a great president in Rwanda,” he told me, “He is mentioned at every technology conference I attend. Rwanda is too poor and small a country to have such a profile especially in the area of technology. How have you done it?” For a moment, I was tempted to associate myself with success. I decided to be honest. I am from Uganda, I said, Rwanda is our neighbor to the south-west. “That country seems to be going nuts, eh” he said, “And your president doesn’t want to leave power, huh?”

So what product has Rwanda given to the world that everyone is buying into? The answer was given to me by Joe Ritchie. After making hundreds of millions of dollars as a commodities and options trader in Chicago, Ritchie has now settled in Rwanda as advisor to Kagame and CEO of Rwanda Development Board. What would make a successful multi-millionaire leave his exciting business to come live and work in this impoverished nation?

“I have a fund,” Ritchie once told me as we sat down to a cup of coffee, “It is just my own money that I invest in companies on the basis of the character of the CEO, that’s the only thing I look at. I don’t look at what sector they’re in, I don’t look at their sales projections, I don’t look at sales growth, I don’t look at anything except the character of the CEOs. I picked about 60 or 70 companies out of the hundreds and hundreds of them and I bought their stock. This fund outperforms the market regularly.”

What has this got to do with Rwanda’s growing international reputation? Ritchie met Kagame at a dinner organised through a friend. “And in five minutes, I knew there’s not another head of state on the planet like this guy, he’s just unique.” Ritchie has met many world leaders from across all the continents. “I think politicians are all crooks,” he told me, “But this man (Kagame) was clearly different. He is honest, sincere, genuine and straightforward.”

“I realized I can sell this man to the private sector,” Ritchie went on, “I can’t sell him in Washington. Washington doesn’t care if you do right or wrong. In fact they like guys that are on the take, because then they can control them with money. I mean Washington is the biggest payer of bribes on the planet. Generally, they don’t appreciate honest straightforward heads of state, because they can’t control them. But I know that in the private sector there are people that would appreciate it.

“I took a list of the companies whose CEOs care about character,” he continued, “We began introducing Kagame to CEOs on my list of companies and others we knew by reputation were very good guys. Soon we had introduced him to five people that knew President George W. Bush personally. If you know a CEO or someone that’s been very successful and he calls up the White House and says, you know what, there’s a little country called Rwanda, and a guy named Paul Kagame that runs it, and you need to focus on that guy because they are going to go somewhere, you pay attention. And if a second one calls, you say, wow. Well, by the time three or four or five call, it’s all over.”

We are told repeatedly that only one mortal human being has the competences to lead Uganda. If Kagame had remained here, he would still be one of the many people we would be told has no capacity to make a good president. The lesson is that NRM and our country are teaming with many talented people who can make good presidents. Do not stifle them.

Our Reply to Obama

On his recent visit to Ghana, U.S. President Barack Obama condemned war, corruption, tribalism, and all the other ills that have bedeviled our continent. Many Africans in Africa and the diaspora were moved by the speech, as were many Africa observers in the West. The speech captivated imaginations because it appealed to people's basic common sense.

That is where its positive contribution ends.

Rather inconveniently, all the attention Obama's speech has gotten disproves his opening remark: "We must start from the simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans." It is not the speech of an African leader on the future of the continent that is exciting debate in the media and finding space on the blogs; it is a speech by the U.S. president. This very simple contradiction reveals the world's collective tendency to seek Africa's solutions from the West.

Beyond its many good phrases and populist appeals, Obama's speech did not deviate fundamentally from the views of other Western leaders I have read throughout my lifetime -- on aid, on civil wars, on corruption, or on democracy. Obama repackaged the same old views in less diplomatic language. He had the courage to be more explicit on Africa's ills because, due to his African heritage, Obama can say as he wishes without sounding racist -- a fear that constrains other Western leaders when talking about Africa.

Even so, Obama said nothing new. He assumes that African countries have been mismanaged because leaders on the continent are bad men who make cold hearted choices. His solution is thus to extend moral pleas for them to rule better. Yet it is not the individual behavior of Africa's rulers that demands our closest attention, destructive as that behavior may be. It is the structure of incentives those leaders confront -- incentives that help determine the choices they make.

Using this logic, we can start to ask more-useful questions. If the choices made by Africa's rulers have destroyed their economies, under what conditions can they develop a vested interest in growth-promoting policies? If Africans are going to war much more often than other human beings on the planet, what causes them to do so? When is peace more attractive than military combat?

Governing is not about making simplistic choices on who is right and who is wrong. It requires making complicated trade-offs, some of which might be costly in the short term. Take negotiated conflict settlements, for example, a policy that has stabilized Liberia and Sierra Leone after the two countries' brutal civil wars. That same policy wouldn't have worked in 1994 in Rwanda, where it would have produced an unstable power-sharing arrangement between victims of genocide and their executioners. The lesson: We cannot have one blueprint for all of Africa's problems. Even "good" moral decisions, such as those so often urged upon us by the West, can be bad sometimes.

Obama assumes that the fundamental challenge facing Africa is the lack of democracy and the checks and balances that come with it. But how does he explain why authoritarian Rwanda fights corruption and delivers public services to its citizens much better than its democratic neighbor, Uganda? In fact, the Ugandan brand of democracy has spawned corruption and incompetence more than it has helped combat them. The country's ethnic politics makes patronage and corruption more electorally profitable than delivering services.

Obama's preferred models of successful development, Singapore and South Korea, were not democratic when they rose to prominence. His proposals on ending corruption -- "forensic accounting, automating services strengthening hot lines and protecting whistle-blowers" -- are technocratic in nature. But the real challenge is how to give Africa's rulers a vested interest in fighting corruption. In most of Africa today, corruption is the way the system works -- not the way it fails.

The lesson for Obama is that Africa is likely to get better with less meddling in its affairs by the West, not more -- whether that meddling is through aid, peacekeeping, or well-written speeches. Africa needs space to make mistakes and learn from them. The solutions for Africa have to be shaped and articulated by Africans, not outsiders. Obama needs to listen to Africans much more, not lecture them using the same old teleprompter.

When Uganda arrests its most prominent journalist

By Andrew Rice

Being the most prominent journalist in Uganda is a little like having the best arm in the New York Mets' bullpen--the honor is a poisoned chalice if ever there was one. But in a country where reporters are customarily bought off, threatened, or shunned by public officials, Andrew Mwenda is someone unique: a figure larger than most of the people he covers. Mornings, Mwenda's byline appears in Uganda's main independent newspaper, where he routinely exposes stories of government skullduggery and scandal. Evenings, he conducts a rollicking political talk show on a popular radio station, hosting everyone from shady generals to exiled presidents to Western visitors like foreign aid activist Jeffrey Sachs. In the hours in between, Mwenda can be seen holding court beneath a shady tree at an outdoor Indian restaurant in downtown Kampala, attired in a tailored suit, trading gossip and spouting opinions. Imagine Bob Woodward and Chris Matthews wrapped into one diminutive, thirty something, hyperactive, pipsqueak-voiced package, and you start to get the idea. When the Ugandan police came to arrest Mwenda last week, on charges of sedition, a lot of his friends wondered, "What took them so long?"

The case is a complicated one, involving a mysterious helicopter crash, a dead Sudanese vice president, rumors of sabotage, allegations of genocide-incitement, and two men with iron-plated egos: Mwenda and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. But these are the basic facts. Last Wednesday night on his radio show, Mwenda accused the president of "cowardice," "incompetence," and behaving "like a villager" in his response to the recent crash of a Ugandan military helicopter that claimed the life of its most prominent passenger, Sudanese Vice President John Garang. The next day, the government shut down the radio station, and shortly after that, Mwenda was arrested. He spent the weekend in jail before being released on bail and now faces a trial and a possible five-year prison sentence. Upon emerging from confinement, a copy of The Bookseller of Kabul under his arm, Mwenda joked that he was disappointed he wasn't instead sent to Uganda's maximum-security prison, which is situated on a bluff overlooking Lake Victoria. He said he'd been meaning to take a trip to the beach.

All in all, it was a typical performance by a man who, perhaps more than anyone else, symbolizes Uganda's brash, contentious younger generation. To most Americans, the country's name, if it summons up any associations at all, is synonymous with Idi Amin, the buffoonish and bloody dictator who, during his terrible reign in the 1970s, praised Hitler, sheltered terrorists, killed hundreds of thousands of his countrymen and, for good measure, allegedly ate a few of them. But since Museveni marched into Kampala in 1986 at the head of a rebel army, deposing a military junta and promising "a fundamental change in the politics of our country," Uganda has become a different place: thriving, bumptious and something close to free. During the '90s, the world's small and beleaguered corps of Africa-optimists hailed Uganda as a model demonstrating the regenerative possibilities of wise government. Major Western publications--such as The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine--published gushing profiles of Museveni. And President Clinton visited and declared his counterpart a leader of an "African renaissance." The fact that someone like Mwenda scoffed at such plaudits, calling Museveni an autocrat and worse, only seemed to reinforce the point. How many other African presidents tolerated such talk?

I first met Mwenda in 2002, shortly after I moved to Uganda. As a journalist, I was drawn to the country by all the talk of an African "success story," but my preconceptions were quickly confounded by a more complicated reality. Shortly after I arrived, police raided and closed the newspaper Mwenda worked for, The Monitor, on the grounds that it had published a story deemed compromising to national security. I tracked Mwenda down at his bare office--investigators had confiscated his computer and cell phone--and introduced myself. He jotted a "secret" phone number on the back of his business card. A few days later, we met at his favorite restaurant. Mwenda picked a table conspicuously positioned along the sidewalk, and, at high volume, set about trying to disabuse me of my favorable opinion of Museveni. He rattled off budget numbers, whispered about secret intelligence reports, dropped references to weighty books. He paraphrased a historian's assessment of Napoleon--"the man who in equal measure made and destroyed France"--and added: "That could be Museveni's epitaph." When I seemed unconvinced, Mwenda fixed an intent stare on me and said, with characteristic assurance, "This country is going to go up in flames." Then he commanded me to try his chicken korma.

After a few days, The Monitor reopened, and Uganda didn't burn. But it's not Mwenda's style to admit he's ever been wrong about anything, so, like a frustrated millenarian, he kept pushing back the date of the coming apocalypse. Over the years, we got to be friends, and I sometimes appeared on his radio show as a member of a roundtable panel of journalists. "Museveni is worse than Amin,” Mwenda would bellow, as the president's jovial press secretary, sitting across the table, cracked up laughing. For a while after Saddam Hussein's capture, Mwenda took to saying, "I predict that one day they will find our president at the bottom of a spider hole!"

Museveni, despite his reputation for tolerance, has always had a fraught relationship with the press, but for some reason Mwenda seemed never to endure the kind of routine harassment experienced by many Ugandan journalists. Museveni even deigned to appear on his radio show. Mwenda's fellow journalists used to make a parlor game of speculating about the sources of his seeming immunity: His brother was a military intelligence officer; his sister worked in Museveni's office he was buddies with the president's son. Mwenda claimed that back when Museveni was fighting for power, he had been a kadogo, or child soldier, in his rebel army. In his more sober moments, Mwenda would say the struggle had been worth it. "Press freedom in Uganda, and all forms of free expression, came to be because the government of Yoweri Museveni was civilized enough to tolerate then," he once told me. "Not because the people of Uganda wanted them."

But those are about the only kind words Mwenda has had for Museveni. What he found most infuriating about Uganda's president was what he perceived as the government's betrayals of its early promises of reform. Where Museveni had once talked of clean government, his generals were now implicated in baroque corruption scandals, such as a scheme to buy shoddy helicopters from Belarus in return for kickbacks. Where once Museveni had vowed to step aside as president after two terms in office, this year he amended the constitution to allow him to run for reelection indefinitely. Where once Museveni had promised peace throughout the land, now he was embroiled in a seemingly interminable struggle against brutal rebels in the country's north.

When earlier this month the Sudanese Vice President Garang, himself a former rebel leader, was killed in the crash of a Ugandan military helicopter that was ferrying him home to Sudan from a meeting with Museveni, Mwenda seized the big news story and galloped off on his hobbyhorses. He questioned the official explanation that the aircraft crashed in bad weather and speculated that Museveni had put Garang aboard "a junk helicopter," on a route that took him over mountainous territory occupied by Stinger missile-wielding rebels. Museveni, furious about these and other allegations--some Ugandan papers peddled rumors that the craft was hijacked, or sabotaged by a foreign power--gave an angry speech calling the press "vultures." He singled out Mwenda for particularly scathing criticism, calling him a "young boy" and saying that "he must stop." That night on his show, Mwenda shouted at a Ugandan official, "Are you aware that your government killed Garang through incompetence?" He then pledged that if Museveni shut down his newspaper, he would run for president. After that, the police showed up.

Later, Ugandan officials claimed that they arrested Mwenda protect public safety. Citing the precedent of the 1994 genocide in next-door Rwanda, when radio announcers exhorted Hutus to machete Tutsis, Ugandan Information Minister James Nsaba Buturo said Mwenda had endangered the lives of Ugandans living in Sudan. "Freedom without responsibility is dangerous to a young democracy such as ours," he told the BBC.

But it's likely there are darker motives at work. What he found most infuriating about Uganda's president was what he perceived as the government's betrayals of its early promises of reform. Where Museveni had once talked of clean government, his generals were now implicated in baroque corruption scandals, such as a scheme to buy shoddy helicopters from Belarus in return for kickbacks. Where once Museveni had vowed to step aside as president after two terms in office, this year he amended the constitution to allow him to run for reelection indefinitely. Where once Museveni had promised peace throughout the land, now he was embroiled in a seemingly interminable struggle against brutal rebels in the country's north.

When earlier this month the Sudanese Vice President Garang, himself a former rebel leader, was killed in the crash of a Ugandan military helicopter that was ferrying him home to Sudan from a meeting with Museveni, Mwenda seized the big news story and galloped off on his hobbyhorses. He questioned the official explanation that the aircraft crashed in bad weather and speculated that Museveni had put Garang aboard "a junk helicopter," on a route that took him over mountainous territory occupied by Stinger missile-wielding rebels. Museveni, furious about these and other allegations--some Ugandan papers peddled rumors that the craft was hijacked, or sabotaged by a foreign power--gave an angry speech calling the press "vultures." He singled out Mwenda for particularly scathing criticism, calling him a "young boy" and saying that "he must stop." That night on his show, Mwenda shouted at a Ugandan official, "Are you aware that your government killed Garang through incompetence?" He then pledged that if Museveni shut down his newspaper, he would run for president. After that, the police showed up.

Later, Ugandan officials claimed that they arrested Mwenda protect public safety. Citing the precedent of the 1994 genocide in next-door Rwanda, when radio announcers exhorted Hutus to machete Tutsis, Ugandan Information Minister James Nsaba Buturo said Mwenda had endangered the lives of Ugandans living in Sudan. "Freedom without responsibility is dangerous to a young democracy such as ours," he told the BBC.

But it's likely there are darker motives at work. Museveni faces a tough battle for reelection next year and many observers both in and outside Uganda have predicted a crackdown on the country's culture of freewheeling public debate. Recent opposition party rallies have been broken up with tear gas. Dissidents worry that Museveni's ruling Movement party could reprise tactics used during the 2001 elections, when it unleashed paramilitary gangs across the countryside to ensure that people voted the right way. Mwenda's arrest, then, has widely been interpreted as a possible harbinger of things to come--a none-too-subtle warning that no critic is too big for prison.

But it's possible that prison may be too small to contain the likes of Andrew Mwenda. Characteristically, he is reveling in all the attention. When I reached him by phone after his release on bail, he said he was "unshaken" and vowed to soon be back on the radio. "My head remains unbowed," he said. It's something his friends have always known:
Nothing will shut Andrew Mwenda up. And Uganda, for all its obvious problems, is a better place for it.

Andrew Rice lived in Uganda for two years.

Prison Notes - Part 1: Background to my arrest

The Chinese have a saying that a wise man looks for an opportunity in every problem while a stupid person looks for a problem in every opportunity. Thus, when Criminal Investigations Department (CID) officer, Charles Kataratambi, called me at 3.30pm on Friday August 12, 2005 to report at CID headquarters, I knew that the trouble I had been anticipating had finally come – but that also, here was an opportunity. What was this opportunity to be? I will return to this later in this series.

Two days earlier, on Wednesday August 10, BBC news anchorman, Robin Lustig and producer, David Edmonds came to my office for an interview about media freedom in Uganda. They had many questions: Is Uganda democratising? Are the media free? I told them I couldn’t give one answer since the political terrain in Uganda is a meeting ground of contradictory movements.
The media has two elements, I said: one is political, the other juridical. At the level of politics, President Yoweri Museveni personally and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) generally have demonstrated commendable respect for freedom of the press. If you listen to some political talk shows on private FM radio stations, I told Lastig and Edmonds, you would know that Uganda’s media are as free as, or even freer than, in the United States or any other democracy. People even call the president a killer, a thief and walk home sure that no one will follow them, I said.

And???? The expression on their faces was eagerly asking. I told them that at the juridical level, i.e. if you look at the statute books in Uganda, the legal regime governing the media reads like it was drawn by a committee of five eminent men – Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin and Pol Pot. Over the years the NRM has never repealed even one anti media law. On the contrary, it has reinforced them. However, I hastened to add, the government has been very restrained to use the Stalinist legal regime to clump down on the media.

Why????? Their facial expression again seemed to ask me. I told them that once in a while, the government does appeal to these laws to lock up a journalist or drag them to courts of law. The purpose, I said, is not to prosecute the case and win it, but to intimidate journalists so that we can learn to censor ourselves. The bad laws therefore hang on our heads like the sword of domiciles, I said. How about the future? They asked me. I said that President Museveni seems hell-bent on clinging to power. As some of his close colleagues are opposing him, he will increasingly act like a wounded buffalo. The future of freedom in Uganda is very bleak as an intolerant and extremist faction has taken control.

And how about yourself? Do you feel safe? You are an outspoken and critical journalist, they asked. I told them that I have spent the last seven years of my career as a journalist preparing myself for any eventuality – jail, torture, death, and the possible planting of evidence against me in order to frame me of all sorts crimes or just humiliate me. I always convince myself that Uganda is a dictatorship, I said, so that when it strikes, I am not taken by surprise. Yet, I am also part of the contradiction because many times I tend to act and behave as if Uganda is a free and democratic society. Possibly I instinctively feel so.

Later that same day, President Museveni sounded out his warning at Kololo during a funeral of those Ugandans who died with former Sudanese Vice President, Lt. Gen. John Garang. “These newspapers,” the president said while the audience cheered him in loud admiration, “I am the elected leader of Uganda, I therefore have the mandate to run their affairs (sic). I will no longer tolerate a newspaper, which is like a vulture… I will simply close it! Finish! End! Gasiya tu!” To me this sounded like former dictator Idi Amin, not Museveni.

But the president was not done: “I have been seeing this young boy, Mwenda, writing about Rwanda, writing about Sudan, writing about UPDF, he must stop. Completely!” Again, the use of the words “stop” and “completely” each as a sentence is a very common Idi Amin expression if you have listened to the former dictator. The president went on, “He is an expert on SPLA, and he knows the minutes which took place where… he must stop.”

Two things struck me from the president’s speech. He was announcing a new law arrogating himself powers to close newspapers. But Uganda has a constitution which gives law making power to only one institution – parliament. There is no law in this country that gives powers to the president to close newspapers. The last president to rule by decree in this country was Idi Amin. To his credit, Amin’s actions were at least legal since he had suspended the constitution upon taking power and declared that he would rule by decree.

If you live in a country governed by the rule of law rather than the rule of a man’s ego, you would sleep safely and shrug at such a statement. This was not to be. I was determined to resist this attempt to establish an Aminist regime in Uganda. I was willing to die the next day than live under such tyranny. On my show that evening, I hit back saying Museveni has no legal power to close a newspaper, and joked that if he closed Monitor, I would run for president. To prove his point, the next day government shut down KFM radio – illegally. To demonstrate his paranoia about someone even joking about seeking his job, he threw me in jail.

President Museveni had claimed in Kololo that because he was elected president, he has “the mandate to manage” affairs of newspapers. Really? He then decreed what journalists can write or not write about. Although I know President Museveni’s propensity to disregard the rule of law, I still felt that he would respect some minimum standards. I was wrong. He closed KFM and threw me in jail. Possibly he and his handlers thought this would scare me. They were dead wrong. I have always held the view that democracy is not a gift from rulers. It is a result of struggle by the ruled. Indeed, most democracy movements have been struggles, not for power, but to create a self-limiting power.

My discomfort with opposition leader, Dr. Kiiza Besigye, has been to equate his struggle for power from Museveni as a struggle for democracy in Uganda. However well intentioned he may be, the trappings and imperatives of power can corrupt Besigye too. I was therefore certain that my role as a civil society person, located in the mass media, is to stand in firm, very firm defence of my right to free expression and to liberty. Museveni and his coterie of political hangers on were not going to scare me at all – not even by closing the KFM or even Monitor.

It was clear to me that Museveni and his group underestimated the length to which I am willing to go to defend my right to be a free human being. I had once had a meeting in 2000 at Nomo Gallery with Sunday Monitor’s acting editor, Charles Odoobo Bichachi, and two UPDF generals – Elly Tumwine and David Tinyefuza. They wanted to know my source of a story I had written about what had transpired in a High Command meeting chaired by Museveni. They wanted me to reveal my sources. They cajoled, tried to convince, and finally they blew it – they tried to threaten me. “You could be arrested for this,” Tinyefuza chipped in. I told them to organize a firing squad at Constitutional Square and promised to drive myself there for it in defense of the principle of not revealing my source. Possibly they thought I was joking. I wasn’t!

Prison Notes - Part 2: Preparation for jail

My sources at state house told me that on Thursday August 11, 2005 President Yoweri Museveni’s handlers had taken him the recording of my show of the previous evening. I was told that Museveni had raged about it baying for my blood and that of Monitor Publications Limited, the publishers of Daily Monitor, Sunday Monitor and owners of KFM radio. Although a lot of what I said on radio was in jest, Museveni and handlers wanted action. They wanted me in jail. The perfect day to achieve this is Friday so that I could stay in for the weekend.

On Friday morning August 12th, I called my girl friend Fifi then in Los Angeles, California, and told her I was sure I was going to jail. I had spent the previous three years preparing her for such an eventuality. Since I have sounded the alarm many times and it has not materialised, she still held hope that it would turn out to be like “all the other times”. “Honey,” I told her, “this time it is serious.” Though she sounded worried, she still seemed unconvinced. “Be careful,” she said. Fifi is the most culturally refined and calm human being you can meet. She has largeness of mind to see the big picture, and amplitude of comprehension.

The second person I worried about is my mother. She would be devastated. I knew how much pain it would cause her. She is a supporter and admirer of Museveni. “Baitu omusaija tomuleka?” She has always warned me in Rutoro meaning “why don’t you leave the man alone?” My mother thinks Museveni is a good man who brought peace to Uganda. She has remained oblivious of the crisis in northern Uganda where Museveni’s rule has been characterised by devastation for nearly twenty years now.

It has never been my intention to seek to change her views since many in my immediate family are Museveni loyalists too. We are a very liberal family and our political differences have never been a basis of any friction among us. On the contrary, they have deeply shaped our acceptance, tolerance and love of intellectual diversity. I always tell my mother that I criticise Museveni in order to correct him because he needs others to tell him when he does something wrong. “I am therefore his strategic allay, always letting him know his mistakes where many around him are afraid to tell him,” I tell her.

That morning I dressed in my cowboy boots, a black pair of jeans without a belt and a KFM shirt. I left my wallet, credit and debit card pack, keys and all at home. I told my neighbours that I was going to jail – most likely for four months, but if things are good at the very least for a weekend. I had a German television crew to interview me that morning on the politics of Africa’s development crisis. I told them that I was going to jail later in the evening for disagreeing with the president and that if they need me later, my address would be CPS.

“You don’t look worried?” one of them asked me. “Does David Berkam look worried when he is going unto the football pitch?” I asked ironically, “Jail is the home of any journalist in a dictatorship.” We laughed it off and they wished me “good luck” and left. I had spent almost seven years of my career as a journalist preparing for jail, but the government of Museveni had restrained itself. As my friend Andrew Rice was later to write in The New Republic, a New York magazine, when the police finally called, the question was: “What took them so long?”

At exactly 3.30pm on Friday, I was in the office of our Managing Director, Conrad Nkutu discussing the closure of KFM when a call came in. “Andrew, this is Charles Kataratambi,” the voice said after I had identified myself. I burst out laughing. Kataratambi sits in the “Office of Serious Crime” at CID headquarters. For the last four years, I have been severally summoned to CID to answer questions and/or record statements regarding articles I have written in Monitor or statements I have made on radio. Each time it is to Kataratambi that I report. And each time I leave with a warning to “watch my mouth”. I never have!

Over the years, a relationship of mutual obligation has developed between the two of us. When he called so late on Friday, I knew what the game was. Go to CID, be taken to court when it is late to get bail and then be sent to Luzira for a weekend. I informed everyone at my office that I was going to spend the weekend “at the beach”. By this time I was receiving calls from my friends in all the major western embassies asking me: “what can we do for you?” “Nothing,” I would say, “I am not planning to go to exile.” African embassies never seem to care.

The journey to CID HQ
I had spent the entire morning and afternoon on my computer in my office communicating to the outside world about the closure of KFM. Over the years, I have established vital networks with media organisations, academic institutions, think tanks and government bureaucracies across Europe and North America because of my constant interaction with academics, journalists and bureaucrats, aid experts and activists from these countries.

I sent an email to all those whose addresses I could find with one subject: “A new Mugabe emerging in Africa.” I told them about the closure of KFM, but did not refer to my impending arrest.

By mid morning, I was besieged with responses – phone and email – from BBC, CNN, Channel 4 Television News, The Economist, The Guardian, SABC Africa, Washington Times, Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek, etc friends at western embassies, in academia, international organisations to protect journalists etc. I cannot recall how may interviews I gave to media organisations in Europe, North America, South Africa, the Middle East and even East Asia on that day. I learnt that the EU was meeting in Kampala to discuss the closure of KFM, the Americans and British were “concerned,” etc. But I knew that western governments have historically proved ineffectual in such situations in Africa.

The most important constituency were the people of Uganda whom I was confident were appalled by this action. They may seem quiet and even some may feign support for repression out of opportunism, but their sense of moral outrage, the desire to resist etc were all there. There is considerable demand for democratic rule in this country. What is lacking is the supply of political leadership and organisation. Individual and organisational agency is everywhere difficult to come by. Our people are not passive. Rather, they lack the supply of effective leadership and organisation to catalyse their spirit of resistance.

Thus, when Kataratambi called me to CID headquarters at 3.30pm, I had spread word on KFM closure to the international media – and world. “I will spread this to the British media,” Michela Wrong, former Financial Times Africa correspondent and author of the classic – In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, possibly the best book ever written by a western journalist on an African dictatorship wrote to me. “We do not have white farmers in Uganda to attract western attention,” I told my friends in media abroad, “But we can still do just a little.”

I drove from office to home with Simon Kasyate and a KFM car behind me. I packed my car and entered a KFM car to CID headquarters after calling my lawyer, James Nangwala, to find me there. At home, my neighbour Dina looked deeply worried and was in tears. A pretty young lady, Diana who was visiting me could not believe that I was leaving her in the house alone to go to jail. James was on the way to teach a class at Law Development Centre (LDC) but cancelled his journey there. At 4pm, I was in Kataratambi’s office. “Here I am,” I announced myself to the CID officers in Kataratambi’s office, “I am all here for you to bite, to chew, to swallow or to spit.” With that, the game began.

At CID headquarters, I was joined by our company lawyer, Ann Abeja Muhwezi, Nangwala and Kasyate. The police asked Kasyate to leave the room and join other reporters and photographers who had gathered outside to witness the event. I was taken to a nearby office where I waited for nearly two hours. At one point, our Managing Director, Conrad Nkutu came and asked to sit with me but was stopped by the police. I was becoming restless.

Prison Notes - Part 3: Playing mental games at CID headquarters

We are back in the office of Serious Crime at CID headquarters where I am awaiting whatever the state had in store for me. I was restless because the police were deliberately playing delaying tactics. I left the chair and sat on the floor to get the feel of what prison-cell life is going to be like. Kataratambi and company were shocked and asked me to sit on the chair, but I refused saying there is not going to be a chair for me in prison. Later, I lay down on the cold, dusty office floor – to taste how my night is going to be. Mental preparation is the key to success in everything we seek to do and achieve. I started anticipating the worst in jail – beatings, hunger, homosexual rape etc either at the hands of a brutal and callous dictatorship or at the hands of inmates or both.

After 6pm, the CID officers led by the Officer in Charge of Serious Crime, Senior Superintendent of Police, James Habuchiriro, began interrogating me. (Habuchiriro was later to become a friend. He was killed a few months later by an angry UPDF soldier two days after I had had a drink with him. I had learnt from him that the case of rape against Kiiza Besigye was never handled by his office. It was smuggled into court through the office that handles terrorism). He gave me a charge and caution statement. The charge was to be sedition i.e. that I had made statements, which were likely to cause public disaffection in the person of the president and the government as by law established. Then caution statement said that anything I said would be used against me in the courts of law and that I had a right to remain silent. I read both and signed on them.
The CID officers began to read me the statements I had made on radio and asked me to respond. Did you say that Museveni has totally failed to ensure security in northern Uganda? I said yes I did. For twenty years the northern region of this country has been under constant rebellion. This government, led by Mr. Museveni has failed to ensure security of person and property in that region. Did you say the president is a goon? They asked. Absolutely NO, I answered. Did you say that you Andrew Mwenda know security better than President Museveni? Yes, I said that on radio. It is my opinion that I am not just better, I am extremely better than him and I think he is a mediocre in that field.

Did you say government of Uganda killed Garang? I answered that I said that in my opinion, the government of Uganda should take political responsibility for the death of Garang because it allowed him to board a helicopter when it was already late in the evening, and was flying into bad weather, over a region that is rebel infested. That way government put Garang’s life in danger. Did you say that UPDF soldiers live like pigs? Yes I answered. I got that statement from comments made by the minister of defence Amama Mbabazi that UPDF soldiers live like pigs. It went on for one and half hours.

By this time, it was dark and past 7.30 pm. I played the game to the script, well knowing all the delay was meant to leave no time for me to go home. My destination was either CPS cells or Luzira. At 7.30 PM I was put in a saloon car where I sat in the rear seats with two CID officers – one in front, one behind with me to CPS. Throughout all this exercise, I did not want any favours from the state or anyone. If I am to be a free man, and Uganda a free country, then me, and many others must be willing to sacrifice our lives and our social and material comfort.

Inspiration

I knew that jail is a miserable and sad place to be – even for an hour. Yet because I know it to be part of the menu of being a journalist in Africa, I have spent seven years preparing my mind for it. I suppressed every feeling of resignation and appealed to my sense of purpose and mission, knowing that the cause for which I would be going to jail – freedom and liberty – is worth the sacrifice. Friends warned me about the cold prison floor, about the bad food, about possible beating, torture and homosexual rape – if not at the hands of the state, at least at the hands of inmates.

“African governments can be extremely brutal and inhuman,” many of my friends have warned me over the years whenever they asked me to tone down my language. I would tell them if African governments were not that brutal and inhuman, my freedom would not be under threat. To be free, I must be willing to sacrifice. “But the prison floor is very cold, and the food is very bad,” they would tell me. I am not seeking Sheraton Hotel standards in prison, I would answer otherwise it would not be prison. Then the threat: “they will sodomise you.” Well if that is the price to pay for freedom, truly it is a cheap price.

Prison breaks people’s hearts, cripples their morale and causes despair. To cope with these challenges, most prisoners tend to convert to religion, believe in the higher being called God in order to keep body and soul together. Unfortunately, I do not believe in God and have failed to have faith in the omnipotent. Pretentious Christians denounce me, but I remind them that Jesus Christ, whom they claim to follow, would embrace me. Jesus said he did not come for the righteous but the sinners; he sent his disciples to spread the gospel to non-believers like me, not to preach to the converted. But while I lack faith in God, I have it in human freedom and liberty. While Christians rely on the scriptures for inspiration, I rely on books of/on liberation.

As we drove to CPS, the words of Kwame Nkrumah in his book Africa Must Unite kept ringing in my head: “Freedom is not a commodity that is given to the enslaved upon demand. It is the precious reward, the shining trophy of struggle and sacrifice.” As a child, I had read about Mahtma Ghandhi, Martin Luther King Jn., Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Ahmed Ben Bella, Patrice Lumumba, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Amilcar Cabral, and other leaders of African liberation movements.

I had read Lumumba’s letter to his wife just before his death, and could recite it word for word when I was still in primary school. “Neither brutality nor cruelty nor torture will bring me to ask for mercy, for I prefer to die with my head unbowed and my faith unshakeable and with the profound trust in the destiny of my country, rather than live under subjection and disregard for sacred principles,” he had written. As a child, I used to recite these words to my self and even cry in admiration. “They have corrupted some of our compatriots and bribed others,” Lumumba had gone on in a defiant tone, “Dead or alive, free or in prison by order of imperialists, it is not myself who counts.”

I had also read with admiration Mandela’s concluding remarks during the Rivonia Trial. “Throughout my lifetime… I have cherished the ideal of a free and democratic South Africa in which all people live in harmony. It is the ideal for which I am prepared to live, fight for and achieve, and if need be, it is the ideal for which I am prepared to die.” I had met Mandela in 1990 when he was visiting here in Kampala and recited for him his speech, and he had hugged me and kissed me on the forehead. At 10 years I would recite it to friends in primary school, as I did to the speech by Nasser to the UN General Assembly after the assassination of Lumumba, and the speech by Col. Ojwuku when he was declaring the independence of Biafra from Nigeria, and his prayer.

“And if we must die,” Ojwuku’s prayer read, “let us die in the fatal effort of preserving our identity from absorption. Let our children eat garri and die of kwashakol. Let us be pressed to the wall and topple into the grave. We are better dead than living without a shadow.” I also remembered Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire, when still a revolutionary in 1985 telling us that he would rather die on his feet than live on his knees. These words energised me as I removed my boots and prepared to go into the underground prison. At that point, there was nothing the state could do to me that would shake my faith in freedom and liberty. Neither jail, nor torture, not even murder would have changed my determination.

Prison Notes - Part 4: Entering the cell

The thick metallic cell door slammed behind me. I had the juggle of the keys and the snap of a locking padlock as the police officer that had taken me to the underground cell at CPS locked it behind me. For a moment, my mind went to the first sentence of Arthur Koestler’s classic novel, Darkness at Noon. It is written in bold letters thus: “THE CELL DOOR SLAMMED BEHIND RUBASHOV.” The second sentence says, “He remained leaning against the door for a few seconds and lit a cigarette.” I do not smoke, I was not alone.

We are back to that fateful evening of Friday August 12, 2005 when the government of President Yoweri Museveni threw me in jail accusing me of daring exercise my right to liberty and free speech. Apparently, as we arrived at CPS, we found electricity had gone off. The police officers driving me in the car cursed the evening. “Do they load shade you regularly,” I asked. “No,” was the immediate answer, “This is the first time electricity is off in a long time.”

For a moment, I suspected foul play but I was keen not to let the police officers know my anxiety. Why the darkness? On the day I come to jail? Again, I appealed to my sense of purpose and mission and braced for the worst. As the thick metallic door to the underground cell at CPS was locked behind me, I met two young men. I could not even recognise their faces. It was dark outside; that should give you an idea of how dark it was in an underground cell. They asked me for money, and I told them I had none. “Let us check his pockets,” one said and I told them to take anything they found.

Meantime, my mind was telling me this is only the introduction. For all I could suspect, these could be thugs hired by the state to give me “hell” in jail. One young man asked his colleague: “take him to my place; I will deal with him later.” I walked down the dark staircase. My head was throbbing. I had spent the previous night speaking to international media organisations about the closure of KFM, had gone to office without breakfast, did not eat lunch, had not taken dinner and had not rested for nearly 28 hours. Fatigue was now begging to take its toll.

Along the staircase, I stopped and told my young escort to sit with me. “I have a bad headache,” I said, “I need to sit down and relax. After sitting for a while, the young man insisted that I go to where his “boss” asked me to be taken. I obliged. We reached the end of the staircase and I landed on a place with a mat, a pillow and blanket. “Mnh!!!???” my mind said, “Am I being prepared for sodomy?” What did “boss” mean that he would deal with me later? I was too tired to even think of a response to any provocation they meted out.

I had been on that comfortable place for a few minutes when another guy came and asked who I was. As my “escort” tried to explain, he just waved him to silence and asked me to follow him. By this time my headache was running out of control. I desperately needed to sleep. I followed the guy into a large hallway and there I could see dim images of groups of prisoners sitting talking to each other, courtesy of a fire in the cell. I walked to the first group, bent and greeted them and asked if I could join them. They welcomed me with open arms.

Joining inmates

I was later to learn that because I came amidst darkness, prisoners did not recognise my arrival to raise a hue and cry. A gentleman in his mid 40s asked me to introduce myself. “My name is Andrew Mwenda,” I said. “Andrew Mwenda Live!” Many prisoners roared back in chorus, and then there was silence suggesting disbelief. Then a guy who had come in only the previous day, unfortunately I forgot his name, told them that he had heard KFM had been closed because of what I had said. The situation changed dramatically.

In ten minutes, word spread through the cells that I was among them. The vast majority of the prisoners knew about me. The others who did not were told that I am a journalist. Intense competition ensued whereby every prisoner with a problem now wanted me to interview him, to tell me his story so that I can tell it on KFM. “He also writes for Monitor,” another prisoner said; then all the others wanted me to write about their plight. Then something struck me: many prisoners, some of them do not speak English at all would tell others that “Ono omusajja alwanira obuyinza (this man fights for freedom).”

My headache just disappeared, as did the fatigue. For the next one hour, I was locked in intense discussions. Prisoners wanted to know why I had been arrested. I told them I had disagreed with the president. Many were happy that they could be in the same jail as someone whose crime is to disagree with the president. “Eh, pulezident namuvuma ku ralle,” they would say, “kati nono Mwenda navuma pulezident ku KFM radio. Nze mbimanyi, kyo kyebamukwatira.” Meaning: “the president insulted this guy at a rally and this guy insulted him back on radio. That is why he has been arrested.” It was interesting how prisoners understood the issues.

I told the prisoners it would be better if they told me their problems rather than me telling them mine. I want to hear your stories so that I can write about them. A new comradeship had been born. In a few minutes, prisoners had brought a pen, others pieces of paper, and I began recording their names. Many told me they had been dumped into the underground cell at CPS by an organisation called Violent Crime Crack Unit (VCCU) or the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI). Some had been in detention without appearing in court to be charged for over five months, others had never even written a statement. Several prisoners had been tortured by VCCU before being dumped at CPS where the police did not have power to release them or take them to court.

“This is a goldmine,” the journalist in me said. And that is when I was called upstairs. “Andrew Mwenda,” someone called out, “you are needed upstairs.” Jesus Christ, I said to myself, who is interrupting this sumptuous dinner of prison tales? I wondered. I went up only to find our Managing Director, Conrad Nkutu, had brought me food, juice, a blanket and pillow, a T-shirt to change into, toothbrush, toothpaste, a deodorant, towel etc. I almost collapsed of laughter. “Listen,” I told Conrad, “I am in jail and please let me be in jail. I do not want Sheraton Hotel standard meals and beddings here. I want live the true experience of an African jail.”

After exchanging a few pleasantries (Conrad looked really worried about me), I realised it was impolite to reject the things he had brought as that would tantamount to disregarding his care. I took the things and asked to be allowed to re-join my fellow inmates quickly. The conversations in the go-down were animating. Somehow, I had fallen in love with the cell. I ran back down, dumped the things given to me in a corner and told prisoners that I was going to sleep and eat “like” them and “with” them. I had not settled to listening to all the prison talk when I was called again, this time it was Salaam Musumba. She told me Maj. Gen. Mugisha Muntu, David Pulkol, James Musinguzi, Jack Sabiti had all come to see me, and were supporting my cause.

We exchanged a few words. I cannot even remember what Salaam brought me. I now told the police that I was very busy and did not want more visitors. “Busy doing what?” the police officer asked me and I answered, “This cell is a journalist’s goldmine,” and the police officer locked the door, smiling reassuringly. The Uganda Police force is a pro democracy institution and the police officers at CPS treated me with great respect. Many told me they shared my views and looked to me with admiration. Did anyone else come to see me that night? I would not even remember. I called a few prisoners who had become close to me and gave them the food and juice brought to me.