By Edmond Kizito
I had been preparing, together with my team, our last efforts at putting together the inaugural edition of The East African newspaper in the November of 1994. I had been controversially named founding Uganda Bureau Chief for the regional newspaper over much more senior colleagues, much to the chagrin of many.
Yesterday, as we drove to the requiem mass of Teddy Sseezi-Cheeye, veteran publisher of the much more controversial Uganda Confidential monthly and later weekly newsletter, we pondered these events with colleagues.
Mzee Cheeye died on Thursday afternoon in a freak boda boda accident at Nakawa. He had been to see a Professor friend with a copy of the latest edition of his newly revived newsletter when death struck. His head hit the tarmac and he was to die shortly after.
Aged 60, he had served time in Luzira after he worked as Director Economic Monitoring at the Internal Security Organisation (ISO) after ending his regular publication. Returning from six years and eight months of incarceration, returning to normal life wasn’t going to be easy.
So I receive a call from him as the year ended last year.
Back to 1994, Cheeye was planning a bad article about us at The East African, we were told. Some of his contributors at the time included Norbert Mao, now President General of the Democratic Party. We also heard that the current Deputy Speaker to Parliament Jacob Oulanyah also worked for Confidential as a youth contributing from Makerere University.
Mao, an old boy from our Namilyango College days, was one of the writers. I was stunned.
The story later came out, shortly after The East African launched and Cheeye had said it had been entrusted, for the Kampala operation, to a “motley crew”.
We quickly rebuilt our confidences and the rest is history. Last year the old man calls me and says I would like you to help me get some access to some senior people here, which request I later grant.
After a series of meetings, I tell the old man: ‘Why not simply revive the old Uganda Confidential in its original format?
At inception in December 1990 – I still remember the inaugural edition, which I kept for years – it was a stunner.
As old colleague Joachim Buwembo told one of the television networks, Sseezi stretched the frontiers of journalism as we knew it then.
We were the boys at the time and we were handed a tall order. For the first time activities by the First Family were questioned, judges woke up to old tales of their own shenanigans outside of the princely robes splashed on the front-page of the then monthly.
I remember that on the day it would come out – for several years – you had to make sure you got your own copy of the Uganda Confidential before it ran out. Missing it meant you would have to do with a photocopy of the A4-size publication.
Machines would be busy for hours. Rain or sunshine, no top official would leave town before seeing the publication. If you are there, your family, career or individual esteem could be ruined.
At a dinner organized by the central bank last year, I and Cheeye were in attendance. Hon Ephraim Kamuntu, who was chief guest reminisced. He was negatively profiled by UC alongside then Uganda World Bank Country representative one Mr Choi while at an official function in Jinja.
Kamuntu was praised for his indiscretions on return to the capital, while Choi was recalled to Washington from the records of that one story.
Such was the influence of this newsletter that shook families, entities, careers and individuals with any level of influence that when a case came up that Mr Cheeye had misappropriated money while Director at ISO, there was precious little sympathy for him.
Many have said he would have walked scot-free had he not stepped on so many toes. “It was always going to be difficult for him to find any level of sympathy since he had attacked all indiscriminately,” said one senior journalist.
“He was not the biggest offender and his only sin this time was having spoken ever so candidly against so many, judges included,” he said. All Cheeye’s appeals failed.
As we drove to the vigil at his family home in Najjeera, ostensibly built to completion by his wife Annet, a senior colleague who visited him in prison recalled fond moments with the man.
“Cheeye was so special, even in prison he granted me access to his own cell, well against official rules. He had a bed and an exclusive library and proper private study,” he said.
Cheeye told me, as I helped him revive the newsletter that he had written several books that he would now like to see published one by one.
After I told him the best thing for him to do was to revive his publication, he insisted that I work with him. He would write all the articles while I helped him create some boundaries. “Do not attack anyone,” I counseled. Critique the economy and the country’s politics intelligently and you will get the readership, I insisted.
Edition One was outputted in February and a subsequent one came out for March. It is the edition he had been promoting that day when he was fatally struck down in Nakawa.
I will miss him. He sat in my house for hours as we brainstormed on his resumed work portfolio. We met in his home and he took me around his house. “Feel at home, Edmond, this is your home,” he repeatedly said as he introduced me to his entire family, the last member of which had a few days earlier only shipped out of the parents’ home.
It was an utter shock when I was told about his abrupt death, having spoken to him only earlier that morning.
“The newsletter is out and the marketing people are out there circulating it,” he told me on hone at 8:47 am, Thursday.
At the vigil the same Marketing Manager said they had been together till about 1 pm in Kamwokya and Mzee Cheeye had turned down an offer for a lift to his next destination.
“I want to go around town to see a few of my friends,” he had said.
The last one of these was apparently a university professor that he met at Nakawa.
A requiem mass has been planned for Mbuya at the Catholic Church on Saturday at 2 pm. Burial will then follow on Sunday at his country home in Luwero.
We shall all miss him dearly.
