They want to shut you up, but don’t let them succeed

Banning uncomfortable issues from being discussed by citizens will not bury those issues. If the people won’t talk about theft of taxpayer and donor money through drama in the National Theatre, they will simply continue talking in – it is akin to the classic case of hiding one’s head in the sand – bars, taxis, churches, homes, and on social media

The Media Council is finally doing something. And it is the wrong thing. Instead of facilitating free expression, it is actively stifling it. That is a dumb thing to do even if dumb things go on in official Uganda all the time.

This past week the sensible people at the Media Council – part of whose mandate is unambiguously to “censor films, videotapes, plays and other related apparatuses” –stopped a play that was already showing at the National Theatre. The State of the Nation KkuGirikiti takes no prisoners in its treatment of our sorry politics and government. I have not watched the play yet, but those who have, plus news reports, say it attacks official theft of public money and property, cronyism, hypocrisy, and pretentions to dynastic political succession.

You would wonder why a play that spreads wide open these obvious issues is so toxic as to be banned. One clear conclusion comes to mind: the play is telling it as it is – the truth. As we have heard all our lives, the truth can be uncomfortable sometimes. It hurts. In this case it hurts the prospects of those in power who seek to continue holding on to it in unaccountable ways.

Banning uncomfortable issues from being discussed by citizens will not bury those issues. If the people won’t talk about theft of taxpayer and donor money through drama in the National Theatre, they will simply continue talking in – it is akin to the classic case of hiding one’s head in the sand – bars, taxis, churches, homes, and on social media. The Media Council is therefore engaged in an exercise in futility.

Ironically, this is the same play the Council had granted permission to be staged in public in the first place, say the producers. If the producers are speaking the truth, it must then be that the Council members saw nothing wrong with the play but changed their minds because someone from high up (always someone from high up) complained. This shows the Council, a body that also regulates the print media, is a spineless entity that is incapable of doing a professional job.

Intolerance is one of the things The State of the Nation KkuGirikiti rails against. The Council was at the centre of the action recently when the police locked up Mr David Cecil, a UK citizen, for staging The River and the Mountain, “a comedy drama about a gay businessman killed by his employees”. He is out on bail. His crime? Staging the play without the permission of the Media Council. So the Council does not want you to talk about serious political issues, but neither does it want you to talk about serious “social” issues such as homosexuality as well.

For writing a book titled 50 Years of Turmoil, a 23-year-old student has been arraigned in court. In the book, the young man says some uncharitable things about President Museveni. Since when did criticising one’s own country on its golden jubilee and calling the sitting President names amount to an offence? Part of the job of President of the Republic, fountain of honour or not, is to take unstinting criticism. To be derided comes with the territory. Else one goes home to herd cattle.

These three back-to-back cases point to a resurgence in the government’s desire to control what Ugandans can and cannot say, or even think for that matter. Our autocratic government seems to be slowly morphing into authoritarianism.

There is mindlessness to this stuff too. This government has ignored the creative industry. All those visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, comedians, and of course, dramatists, have to struggle mightily in dingy workspaces, often on less-than-full stomachs. Yet the only time they encounter their government is when that government is stopping them from sharing with fellow citizens the works they have created under those very rough circumstances.

If the government feels it must get involved with Ugandans’ creative business, it cannot do so arbitrarily. Let it start, for crying out loud, by fixing the torn, and therefore dangerous, floorboard of the National Theatre – yes the same floorboard that forms part of the stage on which the banned play was being staged.

Mr Tabaire is a media consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence. bentab@hotmail.com