By Our Reporters
Teddy Seezi Cheeye was a veteran journalist of great repute. And in its hey days, his Uganda Confidential newsletter founded in 1990 was very daring and took no prisoners. Those who were adult enough recall the stampede witnessed on the streets whenever it was that day of the week for Uganda Confidential (the paper that famously split the atom) hit the newsstands. Having returned early last year from Luzira where he served his jail sentence, Cheeye opted to revive his Uganda Confidential.
In the last black & white issue of Uganda Confidential dated February 2018 (& priced at Shs5,000), Cheeye regrets his mistake of re-launching the newsletter (in April 2017) in gloss magazine format as opposed to what he terms invaluable advice scribe Charles Mwangutsya Mpagi, David Chandi Jamwa, scribe Edmund Kizito and Makerere’s Nuwa Nyanzi and Prof Kerali had given him. He says specifically Mpagi had advised him to shun the glossy magazine approach because the reputation of magazines printed in similar ways was one of being flashy but with no serious content.
Mr. Mpagi’s view was that Cheeye’s re-launched Uganda Confidential would easily be mistaken to be among the unserious publications in which case the anticipated impact wouldn’t be realized. Cheeye regrets that his earlier efforts to re-start Uganda Confidential would have paid off faster if he had taken this friends’ advice seriously. All this lamentation is contained in the February 2018 Confidential editorial titled “Re-launching Uganda Confidential.” It’s a 20 page edition totally in black & white like the original Confidential was.
In that issue, Cheeye gives his views on many things including why he thinks the “Muhoozi Project has always been a hoax.” The edition had 7 major highly opinionated articles, all of them written by Cheeye himself and they are as follows: Why Gen Saleh’s Operation Wealth Creation can’t create wealth, Why Ofwono Opondo is wrong to criticize religious leaders, Weak arguments at 2nd NTV’s Economic Forum meeting, Why President M7 should ignore Gen Saleh’s ISO report and Why poverty levels have worsened in Uganda. The other two stories reflected Cheeye’s personal reflections as to why Pearl of Africa Hotel is a smart failed investment and why Ugandans are beginning to defy FDC defiance campaign.
Cheeye, who had hired Edmund Kizito to become his editor for the revamping Uganda Confidential whose March 2018 issue he was already working on, also carried a piece reviewing Doris Kearns Goodwin’s famous book titled: “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.” It’s a 916 pages book and in that review, Cheeye attempts to draw parallels between the profiles of President YK Museveni and that of the American founding father Abraham Lincoln. He ended his narrative on page 19 with a promise to continue the series but, as we all now know, that was never to be. May his soul RIP!
