By Zacharia Kanyonyozi
Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Facebook
The Museveni Junta subsists on propaganda. In William Pike’s book Combatants: A memoir of the Bush War and the press in Uganda, dictator Museveni shamelessly expresses how this subsistence began.
While still a genie bottled up in the Luwero Triangle bush, dictator Museveni clearly stated that to “destroy his (Milton Obote’s) political image and disrupting his diplomacy” would win him and his genocidal bandits the war.
That is how slogans “a good Muganda is a dead Muganda” sprouted all over the place and were attributed to Obote, who was married to a Muganda and had children who were half-Baganda!
These lies are finally catching up to dictator Museveni as sure as he has a permanent bad hair day.
A couple of years ago, the former Vision Group Chief Executive Officer Robert Kabushenga (who answered to Robert Mukholi before he was appointed CEO, but had to use Kabushenga to suit Dictator Museveni’s incurable predilection for tribalism) was sacked by Papa Doc Museveni.
This sacking was set in motion after dictator Museveni summoned Vision Group management, including Editor-in-Chief Barbara Kaija, complaining about how stories depicting “the successes” of the Junta were not being properly covered in the government mouthpiece, The New Vision.
Dictator Museveni demanded a media blackout when it came to covering the opposition and a whitewash when it came to the Museveni Junta’s many crimes against humanity and sanity.
Also, dictator Museveni wanted himself to be portrayed as a god, when he is really a ‘god’ when that word is spelled backwards.
For the dogs have surely come to Uganda and are now devouring The New Vision Printing and Publishing Company Ltd as the management notifies current and prospective shareholders of an impending loss for the year 2022/2023.
The notice issued by Managing Director and Junta spin-doctor/useful idiot Don Wanyama is based on the “preliminary assessment” of the company’s performance, by the Board of Directors, which is expected to return a loss for the year ended June 30.
Propagandist Wanyama should just come clean and confess that lies do not pay the bills.
Sure, they may keep the lights on for a short while, but they tend to boomerang on the liar in the long run.
Just ask German dictator Adolf Hitler, whose book Mien Kampf Dictator Museveni consults frequently, according to State House staff.
Hitler set up the Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment to spread NAZI ideology. It controlled the media and, more aptly, theater.
For it was theatrically run by the so called poison dwarf, Joseph Goebbels.
Anyway, through its Reich Press Chamber, it did not outlaw the press. That would be too blatant.
Instead, the Nazi propaganda apparatus, like the Museveni Junta, sought to tightly control the flow and interpretation of the news and deny access to alternative sources of news.
In echo of the 1995 movie “The Usual Suspects” and the prominent French literary figure Charles Baudelaire, this would ensure that the “greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
Indeed, dictator Museveni has tried his utmost to hide his devilry.
This is why he keeps the media in Uganda on a tight leash by flooding the internet with a rash of online media houses such as Kampala Post, ChimpsReports, Independent, Nile Post, Soft Power, PML Daily among many others.
Offline, the Afrobarameter Uganda found that over 52% of Ugandans got their news from the radio every day, compared to only 15% who said they got their news from the TV every day.
Newspapers, largely thanks being Junta-compliant, are the least popular source of news in Uganda; fewer than one in 20 citizens (3%) say they read newspapers every day, and eight in 10 (81%) rarely or never read them.
There are over 309 licensed radio stations and over 60 Television stations, which the Museveni Junta censures through licensing. This is why many Ugandans go to social media for news, but Facebook is banned and Dictator Museveni introduced a 12% tax on internet data.
Allied to this, the Junta’s rubberstamp Parliament has passed a proposed new law that imposes a 5 percent tax on the income earned in the country by foreign digital companies such as Facebook (if it is ever allowed operate again) and Twitter.
As you can see, dictator Museveni is trying to muzzle free expression in Uganda, when it is critical of his blood-soaked Junta.
This why the Voice of America reported in May this year:
“The Human Rights Network for Journalists documented 94 cases of rights violations and abuses against Ugandan journalists and media practitioners in 2022. The reported cases involved assault, unlawful arrests and detention, denial of information, and sexual harassment of female journalists.”
The 2022 Press Freedom report, says the Ugandan media is dealing with “an increased deterioration of democracy and the rule of law that has made it very difficult for journalists and media practitioners to thrive.”
However, does dictator Museveni intend to crush dissent in its entirety?
I will answer that question with a question and your answer to my question will answer the question posed above.
Here’s my question: Is a frog’s ass watertight?
