Nebanda: A PR failure of Olympian proportions

That case of using media for propaganda and misinformation was in February 1977, and the incident was the death of Archbishop Janaani Luwum and ministers Charles Oboth Ofumbi and Erinayo Oryema.

Credibility! If there is anything that PR people know is an absolute necessity in their trade, it is credibility. Anything short of the credible in public relations is a waste of time, a pissing in the wind, so to speak.

For older folks, the memories are still fresh, of a photo of that Range Rover vehicle, with mudguard crashed in, published on the front page of the then government-run newspaper, the ‘Voice of Uganda’, with accompanying story that the archbishop and two ministers had died in a road accident.

That case of using media for propaganda and misinformation was in February 1977, and the incident was the death of Archbishop Janaani Luwum and ministers Charles Oboth Ofumbi and Erinayo Oryema.

The published story was that the three men, under arrest, were being driven in the Range Rover and had fought the driver, a Sergeant Musa, if the memory still serves right, overpowered him, and caused the car to crash (not on a highway but along the road running outside today’s Sheraton Hotel!). Now the three men died, but Sergeant Musa was shown with bandaged leg in a hospital bed in Mulago. No one was fooled.

The government was complicit in those men’s deaths – they were apparently shot dead, and the families given sealed coffins to bury under the noses of army rifles. It probably is the worst PR case by a Ugandan government.
The Nebanda death saga is nowhere near as extreme (and this government has made it clear that they did not kill the MP, and they must be given the benefit of the doubt, even as a lot has been said by all-comers in the heat and the emotion of the moment), but the public relations has also been clumsy, failing on just about all principles of PR, and making the government look guilty by ineptitude.

Take credibility. The people managing the information have done everything possible to remove credibility from the equation.

The arrest of a doctor who was formally commissioned by Parliament and his travel to South Africa approved by Police, Parliament, Mulago Hospital and the Director General of Health Services inevitably raised suspicion.

Doctors are universally the most respected professionals, and you would have to be a Dr Mengele to be so disgraced (Mengele being the Nazi doctor who performed horrific genetic experiments on prisoners in German death camps) to be otherwise.
The second principle is that ‘your word is everything’.

On TV last week, we were treated to the bizarre spectacle of a police chief, in justifying the deployment of dozens of police, insisting that the late MP’s family needed protection, juxtaposed against the mother who was saying they did not need it and that their home was open to all mourners.

Now, if ever there is any grief at bereavement, the pain would probably most be borne by a mother, she who carried the baby in pregnancy and cared for the child. A mother’s grief can hardly be superseded, so the police officer was a case of crying louder than the bereaved. Poor policeman!
The third PR principle is ‘choose persuasion over manipulation’. The less said of this, the better.

The fourth principle is ‘PR is a marathon, not a sprint’. Rushing to publish cause of death, within hours, then the results of the toxicology tests (of the other, government-sanctioned analysis), when arrests of suspects, let alone the building of a case scenario, were not yet done, simply raised suspicion further.

The fifth principle is ‘strive to treat everyone with dignity’. Nebanda’s family, already grieving, have come in for some fairly shoddy treatment, as have MPs who have lost a colleague. Because every human being loses/will lose loved ones, it is even more imperative to treat the bereaved with that little extra dignity. Ugandans know this, which is why their sympathies are largely with the family, and not with a bungling government/police. It is called empathy.

The sixth principle is ‘manage for tomorrow’. Handling public information should be for more than just the moment. It will matter how future issues will be perceived and, given that Uganda is not short of them these days, it seems just a matter of time before another scandal of public proportions draws in the government, the police, and specific individuals.

Who manages government PR? Is it the Information Minister? The Media Centre? Presidential advisers? Whoever it is, their work is obviously cut out for them.

In the Year of Kiprotich, this PR debacle only rivals the Olympic triumph in the unlikelihood of pulling it off. It is an Olympian feat.
dsseppuuya@yahoo.com