{UAH} Has UBC lost Muteesa’s voice? what kind of leaders were these? kawenkene was kawenkene!!
|
11:28 AM |
No comments |
Former boss Aggrey Awori spills beans
It has been claimed that Uganda Broadcasting Corporation lost recordings of the late Buganda king and Uganda's first president Edward Muteesa II. Buganda historians and officials have told us that there is little in the archives about Muteesa because his voice was deliberately wiped out by the Milton Obote government.
Some claim Muteesa's speeches and pictures were erased by former UPC stalwart and Samia Bugwe North MP, Aggrey Awori, who was head of the public broadcaster at the time. But the former legislator, who crossed from UPC to NRM in 2007, has roundly denied that claim.
He instead, accused Obote's "other people."
Awori told The Observer last Thursday that these "people" also badly wanted to delete former DP president Benedicto Kiwanuka's speeches but failed. This week, outspoken historian Mukulu Kisolo told The Observer that Awori clinically expunged Muteesa's speeches at the height of the 1966 crisis, during his tenure as director of Uganda Television, now Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC).
Kisolo said at the time Awori was in charge of the then UTV while Appolo Lawok was the boss of Radio Uganda. Lawok is in the UK. Speaking to The Observer, Dan Walusimbi, the Buganda Information minister said that Kisolo's assertion held some water because "what Obote did was to distort history" when he came to power.
"What I know is that after the 1966 crisis, a lot of history of Buganda was destroyed. I cannot say that UBC doesn't have the speeches at all, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are not there," he said.
Kisolo argues that what remains of Muteesa's short presidential tenure are pictures and, maybe, recordings by Europeans plus his hard hitting book, "Desecration of My Kingdom," where he poignantly describes the May 24, 1966 attack on his palace and how he escaped Obote's onslaught led by Idi Amin Dada, who later became president of Uganda.
However, Jane Kasumba, the UBC corporate affairs director, told The Observer that Muteesa's speeches were intact.
"To the best of my knowledge, our archives are intact. We try very hard to be as meticulous as possible," she said.
Kisolo told The Observer that by deleting Muteesa's speeches, Awori's intention was to win favour from Obote. Asked to explain how the speeches disappeared without his knowledge as a supervisor and boss of the station, Awori said there was a historical seed planted in the country at the time, that whoever got to power erased the speeches of his or her predecessor.
In political science, they call such habits—officiating history, where a regime thinks history starts with its coming to power.
"But what I know is that whenever there was regime change, some people would erase the record of those who have been in power," Awori said.
Awori added that since Muteesa was perceived as an enemy then, his records could have been expunged immediately after the 1966 crisis before he took over the leadership of Radio Uganda in 1967.
Kiwanuka, NRM
Awori argues that during the Obote I regime, it was not Muteesa alone who was targeted.
"There were certain people I won't name who tried to erase (Benedicto) Kiwanuka's voice but I stopped them because it's such a stupid thing to do," he said.
He said Obote's people wanted to expunge Kiwanuka's record around the time of Pope Pius IV's visit to Uganda in 1969.
Awori argues that because Obote had sowed this bad seed, when the NRM government took power in 1986, it also attempted to delete the speeches of former presidents—Amin and Obote. Awori said that didn't happen because reason prevailed.
UBC to blame
Awori partly blamed UBC for the loss of archives saying that some of those in management steal the archives whenever there is change in leadership.
"Those guys (UBC) also loot the archives whenever there's confusion. So they are part of the problem," he said.
Kasumba distanced UBC from these claims.
"You cannot erase history even if you hate someone. It is stupidity of the highest order to erase someone's voice just because you have taken over power," he said.
dtlumu@observer.ug
dkiyonga@gmail.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment