In journalism it is taught that news is when man bites dog. But when dog bites man, there’s no news. On July 28 The New Vision, Uganda’s government newspaper, reported that Ugandan men were paying for Rwandan women in a story they titled "Wives for Sale.” But a small blog, Nile Post, beat them to the real story, "How woman was recruiting, training, Kampala teen girls to sleep with dogs.” It is surprising that The New Vision would miss a story about dogs and Ugandan adolescents being trained to become objects of bestial sex. That’s because the newspaper itself has gone to the dogs.
When the New Vision was headed by William Pike, the British Journalist, it was still a government propaganda publisher; however, Pike could push back against his boss and retain a semblance of journalistic professionalism at the newspaper.
In 2006 Pike was fired precisely for this reason, pushing back against editorial decisions and interference from his boss. Pike had wanted to do "professional” propaganda while his boss wanted crude praise-singers. He was replaced by Robert Kabushenga, then still a young and impressionable NRM cadre. For much of his tenure as head of the New Vision, Kabushenga tried to fulfill his boss’ propaganda demands without sending the newspaper completely to the dogs; to retain just enough credibility to remain afloat. The Uganda-Rwanda crisis was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Sources inside the New Vision say although Kabushenga was prepared to push anti-Rwanda propaganda, there were lines he wasn’t ready to cross – the overtly crude stuff. In his assessment, some of the content his boss and the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) were pushing was not only counterproductive because it wouldn’t help sway the audience of the New Vision about who was to blame for the crisis but his own credibility would be damaged, especially when it came to derogatory content that even the dirtiest tabloids would never touch. But this is what his boss wanted, so Kabushenga’s days at the helm of the New Vision were numbered.
Kabushenga was fired in January this year. Don Wanyama, not one to let small things like self-respect get in the way of the job, was appointed as his replacement. Wanyama immediately began signaling to his boss that in him he had made the right choice. Wanyama has turned the New Vision into a paper for hurling insults against Rwanda, publishing things that would never pass the editorial standards of the Red Paper at its most tabloid.
Wanyama isn’t even inserting minimum common sense in his stories. In the story about Rwandan girls, his "investigative" reporter has this to say, "My mission was to convince the pastor to admit me in his church as a girl looking for a husband so that I can explore if there were any human rights violations and criminal activities. Recently, there have been rising cases of trafficking of women in the country. The girls are picked from Uganda on promises of high-paying jobs and taken to Arab countries, where they are sold in open markets as maids and prostitutes. I embarked on my journey to Maanyi…in Mityana.”
This is Wanyama stuff. The girls are taken to Arab countries but guess where Wanyama’s investigators went for a scoop? If you guessed to an Arab country you are wrong. They went to Mityana, a district just outside Kampala.
But the meatman, "nyama” as he is fondly known, isn’t very smart. The human trafficking business that sends young girls to Arab countries is run by his boss’ family, his pastor daughter Patience and her husband Odrek Rwabwogo - now his father-in-law's senior adviser for special duties - to be specific.
In other words, Wanyama's story "to explore if there were any human rights violations and criminal activities” invites unnecessary attention to the human rights abuses involved in the flesh-trade of his boss’ own family. As far back as October 2016, Daily Monitor wrote a story titled, "Museveni's daughter, in-law, among owners of firms exporting labour to Middle East.” The "brokers” Wanyama is looking for are in State House at the right hand of the father!
Wanyama’s predecessor was smart enough to avoid stories that will invite negative attention to the first family. Wanyama is out for raw meat. But he didn’t have to go outside Kampala. The blockbuster was right there under his nose: The same people who are selling Ugandan teenage girls to Arab countries have expanded that business and are now training them in Kampala, this time to export them to Europe for the sexual 'pleasure' of Europeans' dogs.
William Pike must be pulling his hair!