UCC’s move to limit Internet use will backfire 

What you need to know:

  • We only have to look at the different ways in which the laws of the land have been implemented to come to the conclusion that pro-regime communicators and sentiments will be least affected.

As far as ghosts of Uganda’s past go, the crafting of strategies to suppress freedoms seem to continuously rear their ugly heads every so often. This has been heightened by social media, whose growth and popularity has proven difficult to contain by the powers that be.
 
To attempt to regulate, something Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) seems to stretch to mean censoring, different laws and policies that have been put in place have failed to have the desired result.  

Some strategies have been abandoned while others reset to still limit free expression in the country. The battle has for a while been even more targeted at social media and Internet users.

A new policy directive recently issued by UCC states that all those who use social media must attain authorisation. Not to break from the usual fashion of vague, overly extended, and thus highly ineffective policies, this new directive is set to encompass everyone with access to the Internet with the purpose to share any online information. 

The questions of who determines what the public is, whose standards are used for determining misinformation, and whether UCC as a regulator has taken this gatekeeping role a little too far, have been asked, but no answer is provided.
 
To understand the systemic pattern that has been introduced as the Public Management Act, the Social Media Tax, the attempt to regulate artistes, and all the other largely flawed efforts to infringe on our ability to be seen and heard, I suggest a broader discussion around this.

Question is, whose interest does the enacting of directives such as these, serve?UCC’s track record is anything, but unbiased. It is seen as acting on behalf of the public good. Coming in the middle of scientific campaigns and elections, these new proposals seek to make it harder for people, especially those who communicate online,  to express themselves freely. There is no doubt as to who will be most affected by these recent moves and why. 

We only have to look at the different ways in which the laws of the land have been implemented to come to the conclusion that pro-regime communicators and sentiments will be least affected. The second question is, what is this expression that is evidently feared? Reader, your guess is as good as mine. 

Imagining that we are having this conversation in a society that appreciates the need for free expression, the role of the government should be to protect the rights of citizens.  This rights would, therefore, presuppose that how one exercises the them is left undefined. Yet clearly, this is far from reality. As such, restrictions to the fundamental rights and freedoms can only stand if they pass the test recognised by Article 43 of the Constitution.

This precedence as set by courts is that those who purpose to enact laws that restrict the rights and freedoms guaranteed under Chapter Four of the Constitution must prove the justification and acceptance of such a law in a free and democratic society. As UCC will once again come to learn, these directives do not pass any of these tests. 

Twasiima P. Bigirwa,
[email protected]