William Pike on how he worked with the NRA

NAIROBI LAW MONTHLY (KEN OPALA): Mr Pike to what extent do you think you have helped democratise Uganda, and do you consider yourself a key plank in Uganda’s move to become a democratic state?
PIKE: Let me just start by giving you some background, so you understand where I am coming from. I was born in Tanzania where my father was a colonial officer. I was born in 1952, and when my father retired, we went back to England. I went to school in England in the 1960s and 70s. After I graduated I became a journalist but then after about two or three years, I wanted to write on things that I was interested in, and I was interested in Africa, having been born and grown up here. So then I went to Tanzania and I became a freelance journalist there for about six months in 1982 writing for the British newspapers.

NLM: 1982?
PIKE: That was a low point in Tanzania, everything was very difficult. In fact I can remember sitting in a cafe reading the Daily News, and getting to page five, and at the bottom of page five in a small story, it said ‘attempted coup in Kenya’ [laughs]. It wasn’t even the lead story, it should have been the lead story. I got very depressed in Tanzania, it was so hopeless, everything was disorganised, the economy wasn’t working, there was corruption. So, I went to do a masters in African studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, part of the university of London. At SOAS, I met Ugandans and became friendly with them. We talked about politics: Is Africa hopeless? I have just been in Tanzania and everything is a mess. As it turned out, the Ugandan friend who I met doing his PhD was in fact the London representative of Museveni’s guerrillas, the National Resistance Army.

NLM: Was it Eriya Kategaya?
PIKE: No, he was called Ben Matogo and we became close friends. I was interested in the future of Africa, and underdevelopment, and all of these things, so I used to talk to him a lot about how you can fix Africa, and how can you make Africa better. But I was also a journalist and always looking for a good story. Museveni had started fighting in February 1981. He went abroad and he came back in 1982 to the bush, the Luweero Triangle, so they wanted someone to go and interview him in the bush. Because I was friends with Ben Matogo, I knew all the journalists they were inviting. I was a freelance journalist and much lower in the pecking order than BBC or Reuters, but in the end all these other journalists dropped out.

NLM: So it was a bunch of journalists who were invited?
PIKE: No, they couldn’t invite a group because it was too dangerous. Someone had to be smuggled there, and they could only do one at a time. In 1984, I started working for a magazine called South. When I joined South magazine, I said I’ll join on one condition, which is that I can leave immediately at short notice if this invitation comes through. The invitation could only be made when everything was in place. South was a progressive magazine trying to get a better economic deal for all developing countries. In June 1984, I got a phone call from Eriya Kategaya, the late minister who just died in Nairobi Hospital telling me to come to Nairobi next week. So I came to Nairobi and went to interview Museveni in the bush. The trip was very dangerous, no one had seen Museveni for two years. There were hundreds and thousands of dead bodies in the Luweero Triangle. By the time I got back a month later to England, it became a very big story on the front pages of many British and international newspapers, on lots of TV stations and radios, the BBC. It was a big shake-up for the Obote II government, and by that stage, I had become very supportive of the NRA.

NLM: Why had you become supportive?
PIKE: Because I believe they had so many good ideas, that they were principled and they were going to change Uganda and fix a lot of problems that African countries suffer from. As well as being a journalist, I became a supporter of NRA. Just because you are a supporter doesn’t mean you are a bad journalist. There are lots of journalists in Europe or America who support the Democratic or Republican party, or the Labour party or Conservative party, but they are still professional journalists.

I did a lot of kind of mobilisation work for them in London. About a month after Museveni captured power in January 26, 1986, I got a phone call from Kategaya, saying the Cabinet had just met and we are setting up a newspaper, and the newspaper was going to be called New Vision. By that stage the newspaper had already been coming out since March as a weekly newspaper. I went out for a job interview, I helped them with some issues and then went back to England. I had to give notice to South magazine, so I started work on July 1, 1986 at New Vision.

The New Vision inherited some of the facilities of the old government newspaper called Uganda Times. The name was Museveni’s ideas, the NRM thing that we want a new vision for Africa. In those days Museveni thought that the NRM revolution was going to change the whole of Africa, not just Uganda. Not many people realise it but historically the NRM revolution was unique because most guerrilla rebellions have outside support. There have only been three guerrilla rebellions that have succeeded without outside support - Uganda, Cuba and China. All other guerrilla rebellions have had outside support. It was very historic, and the NRM/NRA thought it will shake the whole of Africa if people could take up arms and put in power people’s governments.

You ask the question, how did you further democracy? In those days everyone was trying to fix things in Uganda and there was very little corruption. People were working for low salaries. It was a very idealistic period, and it’s sad that there are now a lot of problems with corruption. It’s sad to think that that original spirit of idealism was not preserved. So my contribution to democratization was by running New Vision. It was a government newspaper but I tried to run it like the BBC, not like Radio Moscow or the Voice of America.
The BBC is a government organ but it can also run programmes criticizing or exposing wrongdoing by whichever government is in power, whereas Radio Moscow and Voice of America were outright propaganda outfits. Of course because the government was a good government in those days, they were happy to accept criticism. It didn’t bother them because it was really a progressive government.

NLM: I was talking to somebody and they thought you got your equipment from Pravda (Soviet government newspaper)
PIKE: No, before Obote collapsed in 1985, he went to Russia and made a deal to get printing equipment. It was a commercial deal and he brought printing equipment from Russia for a printing house for the government newspaper. So there was one Russian newspaper press, but it was very small and it could fit in half of this room, and two East German printing presses. The equipment was poor quality but we just managed for about two years. By that stage, the New Vision was starting to make a bit of money and we managed to buy a Goss Community press with two units.

NLM: I didn’t get a copy of your book Dormant among Guerrillas
PIKE: That book has never been published. I had a contract with Granta publish it. I sent them the book but it was too detailed for them. They wanted a sensational ‘Among the Guerrillas’ book for a British audience. My book was written more for an African audience. I wasn’t interested in sensationalising my experience so it was really written for Ugandans. It was too detailed for the British audience who were not going to be interested in what a particular army officer did later on. It never got printed because it was neither fish nor fowl. It wasn’t an academic book, it wasn’t sensational enough for a British audience but I can give you the chapters. You can read it, you will be interested.

NLM: What will you do when you leave the Star.
PIKE: I don’t intend to leave right now but if I did leave, this book only covers my life in Uganda up to around 1991 and after that it stops. So I want to write the final chapter on the book with my final experiences at the New Vision, why I left New Vision, and a little bit about Kenya.

NLM: John Kazoora (dissident NRA officer) told me you were very close to Jim Muhwezi, head of Ugandan intelligence.
PIKE: I wasn’t so close but I went to his house and all that stuff. He wasn’t my closest friend. Anyway, coming out of the bank, there is Jim standing on the street and he says “come over here” so I go over to talk to him. He says “I got a story for you. This morning a Sudanese Antonov has just bombed refugee camps in West Nile.” So then that was the New Vision lead story the next day.
I have had contact with Ugandan intelligence, and Kenyan intelligence, but not working for them, just asking them questions. I have never ever had any contact with British intelligence.

In any case, if you speak to some of these diplomats, they are often quite badly informed. The best way to have a good story comes from listening to ordinary people. That’s the secret of good journalism. After I came back from Uganda in 1984, I knew Museveni was going to win. I knew he was going to overthrow Obote. I just knew it. So Museveni asked me to go and meet the British Foreign Office and brief them on what I had seen. So I went to meet the Foreign Office on Museveni’s instructions and I told them Museveni is going to win and I could see they were thinking this guy is an idiot, he has been bamboozled by these guerrillas. They were in touch with the highest levels of the (Obote) government but the highest levels of government were telling them crap. They were actually being misled because they didn’t listen to ordinary Africans.

So the way to get good stories is not to speak to intelligence agencies. The way to get good stories is to talk to ordinary people and just ask them what’s going on and very often ordinary people know a lot about what’s going on. That’s how we got all these stories in the New Vision which I was very proud of in the early days

NLM: I was talking to some journalists and they were saying there were only two people who were not reshuffled after 1986 for 20 years, Museveni and Pike.
PIKE: I did a very good job on the newspaper because the New Vision was the most popular newspaper in Uganda by far. Even after the Nation bought the Monitor, the New Vision still used to beat the Monitor. The government newspaper was more popular than a private newspaper. You can’t force someone to buy a newspaper, so obviously that was good for the government and they were happy with that. Having said that, there were many times where the New Vision clashed with government ministers, clashed with Museveni, just like any newspaper. You can’t run a newspaper and not have friction with government.

NLM: Now UPC (Milton Obote’s party) says that you are a gun for hire, a mercenary who helped cover up killings in northern Uganda, through your writings.
PIKE: The UPC is not a reliable source of information because it’s Obote’s party and they published a lot of false information about me, and about other people. The war in the North was very complicated. It was actually started first of all by the former Obote army called UNLA. Then their rebellion was hijacked by Alice Lakwena, and Joseph Kony is a spin off from Alice Lakwena. Now [if] you went and looked at those old copies of New Vision, I am actually very proud of those newspapers, the old New Visions, because if any academic wants to research the war in the North in future, the most detailed information is in those New Vision articles. And those New Vision articles also include details of killings by the NRA although the vast majority of killings was by the rebels. There were a few massacres by Alice Lakwena but the really bad killings started with Joseph Kony and the LRA.

NLM: They say you went to Uganda because you were close to Lynda Chalker (former British government minister).
PIKE: These are all UPC rumours, that is why I started by telling you how I went to Uganda. I met met Lynda Chalker when she came to Uganda in1996. I did not meet Linda Chalker in 1986 when Museveni captured power. Lynda Chalker was smart and recognised that Museveni was here to stay. The British were very frightened of Museveni, because they thought he was an extreme Marxist but Linda Chalker quickly recognised that he was a person she could do business with. Lynda Chalker met Museveni at that stage, but I actually didn’t. I met her when we started Capital Radio in Uganda in 1994, and I interviewed her for a show on Capital Radio in those days. That was the first time I met her properly during that radio show.

NLM: Do you think time is ripe for New Vision to be privatised?
PIKE: So while I was at New Vision, I thought it should be privatised because there is nothing wrong with a newspaper supporting the NRM just like the Guardian supports the Labour party in England, the New York Times supports the Democratic Party but they are completely private. So why can’t the New Vision be private and support NRA? So, 40 percent was privatised in around 2005. It was sold on the stock market and a few years ago another 20 percent was sold so it’s now 60 percent private and 40 percent government, which I think is probably a good balance.

NLM: Item 7 (question about New Vision and Tiny Rowland).
PIKE: Tony Rowland never had anything to do with New Vision. I never ever met Tony Rowland. I have read about him and actually I would like to have met him because he was a historic figure from the 60s and 70s in Africa. I was telling you Museveni never had any external support in the bush wars until after Obote was overthrown in a coup in July 85 by Tito Okello and Bazilio Okello. Obote went to Zambia and then they started peace negotiations in Nairobi with NRA which went on for six months but then in the end Museveni just took control of the government.

In that period it became obvious to people that Museveni was going to take power so these vultures like Tony Rowland immediately started offering assistance and money. Tony Rowland lent his private jet to Museveni to move around to get some support. So Tony Rowland arrived at that stage and gave some limited support to Museveni and NRA. Before that the only external support was in 1982 when Col Gaddafi gave a little bit of external training in Libya to about a hundred soldiers. Then just before the coup in 1985, he did an air drop of some arms.

Then after the coup Mozambique and Tanzania sent rifles to Museveni but their external support only came when it was obvious that the Obote regime was collapsing or had collapsed. So Tiny Rowland never contributed anything to the New Vision directly or indirectly. I never met him. I never met any representative of Lonrho so we didn’t have anything to do with them. The people who actually bankrolled the New Vision were the Russians because the Russians actually contributed something like a million dollar loan when they sent the original printing equipment which was enough to get started. They never got paid because the government said it couldn’t afford to pay and in about 1990 Uganda, with the World Bank loan, they paid eight cents on the dollar to the Russians.

So the Russians lost out badly and they contributed. The New Vision lost 25,000 dollars in its first year which the government gave. After that it only survived on its own resources. The New Vision now is probably worth 30 or 30 million dollars. All the government contributed at the beginning was $25,000 and a pick-up.

NLM: They say that you must have hidden some information about the death of Fred Rwigyema (first leader of the RPF who died in 1990 at the start of inthe invasion of Rwanda).
PIKE: There was a lot of false information and it’s very difficult to know how Rwigyema died. The story is in my book and you can read it. Probably he was shot at the border because Museveni had called them and asked them to come back and stop the invasion. Then some renegade RPF officers just shot him. A month later Kagame came back from Fort Leavenworth. He was in America and shot the renegade officers because Rwigyema was one of his friends and took control. It’s not clear exactly but some of those stories were covered in detail in the New Vision.

NLM: I was in Uganda and they were saying that you want to launch a newspaper.
PIKE: There are so many rumours but I am not planning to start a newspaper in Uganda because first of all, the Star is too much work. It’s so time consuming. By the time I left I only had to work about four or five hours per day at New Vision because it was running very smoothly. It’s such hard work of starting a newspaper, and even now five years later it is still a lot of work. So firstly I don’t have the time, secondly we don’t have enough money to do it, because Star is only just breaking even, but thirdly, I think it’s not such a good idea because we have Capital Radio in Uganda, and Beat FM.

NLM: If you go to the Internet, you are considered among the wealthiest Ugandans.
PIKE: That is also so much bull****. Obviously I am not one of the poorest people in Uganda. What I would say is obviously I am more comfortably off than many Africans, but I wouldn’t say I am one of the 100 wealthiest people. And by the way in Uganda, there was a leadership code, you had to declare your assets every year, and all my assets were always declared, and nothing was hidden, I am happy to tell you.

Adopted with some editing from http://www.the-star.co.ke
The full interview was originally published in the Nairobi Law Monthly