Our belovedUganda has had plenty of play in international media in recent weeks. First, President Museveni was in London for the Somalia Conference and gave what sources who attended say was his shortest-ever speech, less than 10 minutes, but mostly on point.
Somalia is one of the areas that Museveni deserves credit for putting troops on the ground when more powerful states had failed or were dithering, and helping bring some stability to that country. Yet his appearance on the BBC’s Hard Talk programme elicited no questions on how to ensure Somalia does not slip back, but plenty on the anti-gay Bill.
Then there was that report in the UK’s Daily Mail, which alleged that a local gang had poisoned two foreign tourists after failing to rob them, leading to the death of one. In fact, the unfortunate pair had overdosed on cocaine, which they had wilfully (and illegally) procured.
The first case can be put down to playing to the gallery while the second can be explained away as an unfortunate case of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.
It is the third – the Kony2012 YouTube video – that has drawn more controversy over its inaccuracies and over-simplifications. Your columnist agrees with many of the criticisms of the video – and there are many – but is not surprised by them.
International media has long perfected the reductive art of trying to explain a complex, foreign story to an uninterested domestic audience in the traditional 90 seconds or three minutes of a television news clip.
They often adopt the Hollywood model, adopting a good guy and a bad guy narrative, throwing in some exotic props (dreadlocked, mystical rebels with a penchant for abducting children suit the bill) and tie in something closer to the audience (the US army is helping save the world so keep our boys in prayer or call the number on your screen to donate right now).
The video by Invisible Children had it all. A few Ugandans have tried to repair the damage on social media, pointing out inaccuracies in the video et cetera but a lot of that is reactive and finds that many have already moved on to the next viral video.
The biggest concern shouldn’t be the inaccuracies or the lack of context in the video – that is to be expected – but that there are few, if any, alternative realities to correct them. We are simply not telling enough of our own stories.
Mzungus have written most of the books I have read on the LRA war. Italian researchers have done a lot of the research on the Rwenzori Mountains, including its disappearing glaciers. Two Mzungus own the most notable guide to the local tourism industry (on top of owning many of the resorts).
Fifty years after independence, one can count less than that number of good, insightful books written by Ugandans telling the story of our nation and the men (and women) who built it.
This is not to say that we are indifferent to good stories or incapable of telling them. Far from it. Instead we are addicted to Mexican soap operas and slapstick comedy that passes for news bulletins, bootleg Hollywood movies that cost a dime a dozen and voyeuristic navel-gazing gossip.
Log onto YouTube and you will see thousands of fancy (albeit faux) music videos and comedy skits shot and uploaded by our young, creative people. It is not that we can’t create; an entire generation of young Ugandans have been cuddled into an unthinking, ask-no-questions life of merrymaking.
It is a generation that knows Kanye West but not George Kanyeihamba; Ben 10 but not Ben Kiwanuka; Lady Gaga but not Princess Bagaya. We are not just talking about invisible children but an invisible generation.
The older generation is not any better, I’m afraid. A few years ago newspapers reported that government had postponed the northern Uganda post-conflict recovery programme because it couldn’t find its portion of the money to supplement what donors had put in. Where was the outrage?
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