By Mulengera Reporters
During the Tuesday edition of Focus on Africa news program, Ugandan award-winning journalist Solomon Sserwanja told hundreds of millions of BBC listeners that the situation was so bad for those practicing the journalism trade in Uganda to the extent that his wife Vivian Nakalika keeps begging him to stop it or else he invites risk to himself.
That Nakalika has several times reflected him on the growing dangers of being a journalist in Uganda while imploring him to avoid stuff that could cause her to become widowed, and their children orphaned, at such a young age.
Sserwanja was part of the panel of three eminent journalists from three countries which the BBC characterized as some of the worst places on earth to be journalist in. One such country was Sserwanja’s Uganda and Cuba which was represented by another journalist on the panel.
BBC invited them to reflect on and discuss ways in which they thought the Donald Trump’s Administration decision to defund the US’s own Voice of America would impact media freedom, practice and funding in badly-ruled countries like Uganda and Cuba with poorest rankings when it comes to media freedoms and safety.
Sserwanja said that in Uganda’s case, VoA’s Trump-induced problems would have far reaching impact and would without a doubt constrain ordinary Ugandans’ ability to access quality and independent news reporting. He enumerated the ways in which VoA cash grants have been enabling the growth and professionalization of the Ugandan media outlook. He also spoke of fellow journalists in Kampala who for decades have relied on VoA for direct and indirect employment.
Without even being prompted, Sserwanja then plunged into discussing MK who he introduced to BBC listeners as one of the biggest threats currently facing the Ugandan media. He explains that the man derives enormous power from being the President’s son and also the Chief of Defense Forces, which effectively makes him the apex authority of the Ugandan military.
Sserwanja narrated how the President’s son had come up with controversial tweets sarcastically praising the military personnel who leveraged the just-ended Kawempe by-election campaigns to clobber and torture innocent Ugandans including journalists. Sserwanja said that some of Gen MK’s tweets created an impression that clearly the human rights situation in Uganda, and moreso that which is journalists’ protection-related, will get first worse before it gets better.
He predicted that Gen MK’s JATT men will predictably be out to persecute journalists even more as the country counts down to the 2026 general elections.
Perhaps having realized he had unnecessarily been too hard on Gen MK, Sserwanja (as the BBC program progressed) reorganized his thoughts and told the World Service listeners to spend more time reflecting on real threats to the media practice like the implosion of social media, declining advertising revenues, general funding problems and fake news which he submitted were universal problems for the media, not only in developing countries like Uganda but globally. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
