Bare Knuckles: Finally Monitor doesn’t have to die or kill for anything anymore

Back in the day – more precisely in 1992 - when the founders of the Monitor Publications Ltd sketched the blueprint of what they wanted to create they were driven by the passion to deliver the ‘most’ objective and balanced news based on their professional desire to offer Ugandans an alternative platform where the path to democracy and all its underlings would come alive.

It was for the same desire that they found themselves hounded out of the Weekly Topic and over the years, in the pursuit of these ideals the Monitor has received overwhelming admiration and hate almost in equal measure.

Battling State excesses
Those who have admired our work have spoken of our courage to ‘arm-twist’ the State to account to Ugandans, observe best governance practice, and avoid human rights abuses.

In its battles against State excesses, the Monitor has sometimes staked its own existence which is why most of its ardent admirers feel if the newspaper were to die now, a piece of themselves would go with it.

But there are those who would exchange the Monitor for three silver pieces having grown tired of its prodding style. Most of these are those who have benefited from the State’s benevolent dictatorship and endemic corruption.

It brings me to one of Charles Onyango Obbo’s classic Ear-to-The-Ground pieces; “What should Monitor die or kill for? Here it is” written five years ago. Although the headline suggests a solution, Obbo, deliberately or otherwise does not exactly put his finger on what it is that the Monitor should die or kill for but in the last paragraph of that article he refers to Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah.


In giving comfort to the current crop of editors at the Monitor, he says; “their lot is to tell the story of the fire that will burn over the Movement and Museveni bush…” To tell that story the editors and the newspaper must preserve and outlast their subject but that is easier said than done because of the treacherous nature of the political landscape hinged on rampant patronage and institutionalised corruption where official terminology for the rot is ‘facilitation’.

Both the editors and the newspaper are not immune to the infection of ‘facilitation’ which comes in many forms including shareholder complacency to big business.

But again, taking a back seat amidst all the forces trying to extinguish the newspaper for self-preservation is a dangerous preposition and a quicker way to death.

These forces have over the years evolved in scale, numeracy and enormity akin to what Prof. Gilbert Bukenya once described as the mafia. They have political clout, they carry hard cash to buy off weak souls and command backyard armed gangs to kill those they can’t buy.

Moral certitude
So, how does the Monitor ride the hurricane? It is both a moral and professional question. Does it dance to the political clout, accept the cash or take a bullet?

The question of “moral certitude” that Obbo raises is one that should concern all independent media in Uganda where they are faced with the choice of how to contribute to socio-political and economic transformation without being run over by the powers that may not necessarily have the moral authority but have the most political power, the most cash and the most tools of violence.

The Monitor is partly a victim of its own success in standing out against State extravagances which has made the latter more abrasive in dealing with the Monitor through, among others, a set of tailored legislation and threatening potential advertisers to throttle the newspaper’s ability to realise a healthy bottom-line.

That success has been chiselled from a steadfastness of absolute independence and critical content.

It would be suicidal for the newspaper to be swayed by State or commercial opinion over its editorial direction. Its editors have one of the hardest jobs in this country handed over to them by what Obbo recognises as a “trap” the newspaper fell into when it accepted to take over the overwhelming responsibility of “willing to fight so many battles” on behalf of lazy, unpatriotic and ungrateful Ugandans.