interacted with on the many, many occasions I wandered their corridors, deserve special praises. Among them is Geoffrey Mulinde Kiwanuka, whom I cannot thank enough for providing me with a real home in Nakulabye, for his friendship and for his unfailing support since the very, very beginning. In Nakulabye, I could always count on Mali Kirubine’s warm support over the years.
Translations into English from Luo, Lutooro, and Luganda were provided by Patrick Otim, Irene Kangume, Betty Hasacha, Michael Kisenyi, and Robinson Samuel Kisaka, whose input has been invaluable.
This book bears the mark of my years in Cambridge and the profound influence some of its astonishing scholars have had on my work. Sharath Srinivasan first opened for me the gates of Cambridge when I joined CGHR as a research associate. I will always be grateful for this opportunity and for the intense and highly enjoyable brainstorming sessions (and scary whiteboard filling!), with which Iginio Gagliardone and Alastair Fraser were also closely associated. A portion of the research for this book was carried out as part of the New Communication Technologies and Citizen-Led Governance in Africa project, developed by CGHR through the support and generosity of the Cairns Charitable Trust and the Isaac Newton Trust.
While in Cambridge, I became a junior research fellow at Trinity College and joined the Centre for African Studies (CAS). I am extremely thankful for the support both these institutions gave me. Formal and informal discussions with historians and anthropologists at CAS profoundly shaped the way I thought and studied the ebimeeza. I am particularly indebted to John Lonsdale, who, in addition to providing me with constant friendly encouragement, led me to explore how the ebimeeza were part of a deep and older conversation about what being a Muganda meant, and how the citizenship of distinction they harbored made sense within wider debates about civic virtue across the continent. I was also very lucky to engage in fascinating conversations with Harri Englund on vernacular and unorthodox uses of communication technologies in Africa. Emma Hunter’s timely and fruitful interest in the plural forms of citizenship in Africa, as well as Jonathon Earle’s captivating insights on the history of political thought in Buganda, considerably enriched my reflections.
This book is the product of the intertwining of these years in Cambridge with the French Africanist approach of political science in which I was originally trained: an approach of politics “from below,” concerned with its historicity, with people’s daily and ambivalent experience of the exercise of power and the complex sense they make of it. Richard Banégas introduced me to this approach. He was the first, when I was a student at the Sorbonne, to encourage me to explore the “imaginaires de la citoyenneté” through radio talk shows in Uganda, and this conversation still goes on. I owe him, his amazing pedagogic generosity, his brilliant suggestions, and his enthusiasm more than I can ever repay.
Over the years I have had the chance to benefit from the support, friendly advice, and acute insight of scholars such Johanna Siméant, Tilo Grätz, Dorothea Schulz, Yves Sintomer, William Tayeebwa, Andrew State, Richard Vokes, Valérie Golaz, Claire Médard, Henri Médard, Anna Baral, Pauline Bernard, Sandrine Perrot, Sabiti Makara, Julius Kiiza, and my friends and colleagues at the Groupe d’initiatives et de recherche sur l’Afrique (GIRAF). At Makerere University, the support of the Department of Political Science and the Department of Mass Communication has been invaluable. The French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA) of Nairobi provided me repeatedly with logistical and friendly support.
Another warm “thank you” goes to Béatrice Hibou and Jean-François Bayart, to whom I am greatly intellectually indebted, and whose dedication in supporting alternative ways of doing research and grooming young researchers in Africa and Europe through the Fonds d’analyse des sociétés politiques (FASOPO) I salute here.
I was incredibly lucky and honored to work with such brilliant and thorough editors as Derek Peterson, Harri Englund, and Chris Warnes, and with such an efficient team as Ohio University Press. This work considerably benefited from their insight and the anonymous reviewers’ meticulous work.
Many thanks also to New Vision Publications, MonitorPublications Ltd., and the Observer for granting permission to use some of their material. Nicholas Sowels helped with the last edits through funds provided by the Joint African Studies Programme (PUF). My thanks for these final touches.
Last but not least, I want to thank Manuel for his unfailing support over all those long years and his great talent at finding titles; as well as our boys, Pablo and Missak, for being the astonishing little persons they are.
Introduction
KAMPALA, AUGUST 2008: A CROWD WAS SQUEEZED TOGETHER under a large thatched roof. People were trying to better hear the speakers taking turns behind the microphone. The venue was Club Obbligato, one of the capital city’s most famous bars. The event was Radio One’s weekly outdoor talk show, Ekimeeza. Between 2000 and 2009, shows like this mushroomed in Uganda, especially in Kampala, where around ten might be held every weekend. All followed a similar pattern: a weekly debate organized in an open space and broadcast live on radio. Most of them were aired in vernacular languages; one of them was in English.
Approximately three hundred people were gathered at the club that day. The topic was the attempt by several opposition political parties to create a common platform to put an end to the twenty-five years of rule by President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) at the following elections. The audience was seated in circles around a large table that gave its name to the show: in Luganda, the language spoken by the Baganda, the most numerous ethnic group in Kampala, ekimeeza means “a round table” at which people sit to discuss issues.1
Seated casually at the table was the chairman, James Wasula, who moderated the discussions and called the orators to the microphone. He was surrounded by familiar faces; many were young men in their late twenties who came every week to practice the art of convincing crowds. Dr. Kayondo, however, was a middle-aged medical doctor who was part of the group who had initiated the debates back in 2000. As usual, he was leaning back by the pool table and enjoying the flow of speech. Not far from him were K.M. and H.N., often the only women in the audience.2 Seated next to the outside broadcasting van decorated with a large radio one logo, radio producer Lynn Najjemba was attentive to the reactions of the people in the audience. She was not the only one: famous or anonymous members of the Internal Security Organization (ISO), Uganda’s secret service, usually attended the show to monitor what was being said. Every weekend, political officials, and particularly members of Parliament (MPs), attended the debate. That day, John Ken Lukyamuzi, a former MP for Rubaga South, one of Kampala’s constituencies, and the president of the small opposition Conservative Party (CP), was seated at the table next to the chairman.
After an hour of debate and a long speech from an opposition supporter, the chairman called to the floor B.T., a thirty-one-year-old teacher. He was one of the most successful orators of this ekimeeza. A staunch supporter of the regime, his interventions were always funny and witty. Most members of the audience, including those who disagreed with the government, appreciated his oratory talents. That day, he set his mind on mocking the endless quarrels between opposition parties and the reluctance of some members of the opposition, especially from the Democratic Party (DP), to join the coalition project:
(Someone: shhhh) The cooperation [between parties] . . . The cooperation is very, very fine (laughs), and I want to appreciate the nature and the gut [with] which my colleague [the previous speaker] has established the moments of the [agreement] (laughs). [. . .] You are talking about bringing parties together, a cooperation. Mr. Chairman, a cooperation is very, very good. Even when a rat is fearing to cooperate with a cat (laughs), because that cooperation can lead either one to grow fat (laughs) or another one to die. . . . (laughs) In that cooperation, you can cooperate, but the people who are cooperating may not survive in that cooperation (laughs; someone: yes!). Mr. Chairman, when these people were trying to cooperate I was around Kamwokya
