women interviewed who attended regularly were generally highly educated and actively engaged in a political party. Very often they were also part of the leadership of the show (see chapter 7).
Given the fact that the NRM has usually been praised for its achievements in integrating women into politics,68 it is worth questioning more precisely the relative absence of women. This phenomenon illustrated further the disconnection between the ebimeeza and the Local Councils, which guaranteed a place for women to engage in politics and be elected, and thus be granted access to a specific form of citizenship largely focused on the management of local issues. According to Aili Tripp, in the 1990s, women attended the lowest levels of Local Councils but were more rare in the higher ones, and women who did attend LC meetings tended to remain silent.69 They also tended to prefer women’s rather than mixed groups.70 According to Sylvia Tamale, there was generally a feeling of hostility toward women engaged in “high politics” at the end of the 1990s.71 The women speakers interviewed did indeed stress the difficulties they had in taking the floor at the ebimeeza. When they did, they were exposed to nasty remarks from the audience.72 They were very vigilant on what they wore, being careful not to show their waist or legs.73
As mentioned earlier, ethnic characteristics varied from one show to the next.74 The table below gathers ethnic group representations (as listed in the 1995 constitution) according to the regional categories usually used by Ugandans on a day-to-day basis.75
TABLE 1.3. Ethnic and regional origins of audience members at three ebimeeza
The contrast between the Ekimeeza of Radio One and the others is obvious. In the ekimeeza in English, ethnic origins were very varied. People who defined themselves as Baganda in the questionnaire were a small minority. The majority of the informants presented themselves as Northerners or Easterners, reflecting a certain distortion compared to the proportions in the Central Region and Uganda in general.76
For Club Obbligato, these results illustrate an important shift in the ethnic composition of the audience. This shift can be attributed to the fact that all the other shows were in the Luganda language and that there were no shows in a Northern or Eastern language in Kampala. Most of the Northern or Eastern members interviewed said they had not mastered Luganda enough to engage in a Luganda debate, and the Radio One Ekimeeza was the only one where they could take the floor. As such, the show became a meeting place for some Northerners and Easterners in Kampala, including politicians from Northern constituencies (see chapter 5).
The audiences were also characterized by a high level of education:
TABLE 1.4. Completion of primary school by audience members at three ebimeeza
In the three shows covered by the survey, more than half of the informants said they had completed at least primary school. The proportion was higher in Club Obbligato. I mentioned earlier that the questionnaire introduced distortions: there is a strong possibility that actually, the proportion of people who accessed formal education and completed at least primary school was in fact smaller. When more precise answers were taken into account, the proportions in the audiences were as follows:
TABLE 1.5. Diplomas held by audience members at three ebimeeza
According to UNESCO, in 2008 in Uganda, 21.65 percent of the age category concerned benefited from secondary education,77 and 3.77 percent of the age category concerned had access to university.78 Keeping in mind the distortions already mentioned, it seems safe, however, to say there is still an important gap between the ebimeeza audiences and the general population in terms of access to higher education. More than half of the informants in the English-speaking Ekimeeza had gone to university. There were approximately half that many in the shows in Luganda, however, whereas the local discourse made the ebimeeza in Luganda places where “school dropouts” could take the floor, there was a nonnegligible number of audience members who had at least finished primary school and had been to university.
Despite these high levels of education, a difference between the composition of the original group and the audience of 2008 was not deniable: in the show in English, 13.4 percent of the informants said they didn’t have a diploma, whereas the historicals were all graduates from university, successful businessmen, lawyers, and doctors. The latest statistics on the use of different languages in Uganda are very dated (1970).79 Yet what can be safely said is that speaking English remains linked with the possibility of attending school at a relatively high level. Thus, most informants who attended the debates at Club Obbligato were relatively well educated (most had been to secondary school). Nevertheless, some nuances must be taken into account, especially differences between spectators and orators: these will be investigated closely in chapter 9. Some members at Club Obbligato understood English but did not feel fluent enough to take the floor. In the ebimeeza in Luganda, it was possible that people who took the floor were very educated, even if generally the people who attended were less educated. The bottom line was that one could find members of the English-speaking Ekimeeza who had only some very basic education, whereas other participants in Luganda-language shows could be graduates from university.
The questionnaires showed that there was a certain variety in terms of professions and important changes compared to the profile of the historicals in that regard. The original nucleus of wealthy businessmen was open to a more varied population of students and teachers, but also employees, security personnel, social workers, and so forth. It is also worth mentioning that the number of members whose parents both were farmers was very high in the case of the English-speaking Ekimeeza compared to the others (54.4 percent versus 33.6 percent for Mambo Bado on CBS and 19 percent for Simba): again, this goes against the widespread idea that the show in English was more “urban” than the ones in Luganda, or that “rural folks” preferred to frequent the shows in Luganda.
The enlargement of the population and the relative disconnection of the ebimeeza from the original sociability practices that led to their emergence was illustrated by the fact that some members interviewed stated that they would not have frequented Club Obbligato if it had not been for the show, because of the price of the drinks, the presence of alcohol, or because they did not feel it was their place to be. These specific members, who came from more modest backgrounds, had different sociability practices and political heritages. The mere contrast between the locations where the interviews with different members of the ebimeeza took place was per se amazing and illustrated this social diversity. In the same day, interview locations ranged from the huge and luxurious offices of a business lawyer to an insalubrious small cabin in the slums of Naguru or Nakulabye.
Despite the fact that they were presented as “People’s Parliaments,” the ebimeeza were not the reflection of the integration and diffusion of ideals of radical democracy. They were the offspring of practices of sociability and the representations of legitimate political action that were typical of the educated wealthy male circles of Kampala. After the discussions started being broadcast, the composition of the audience was enlarged: new generations of speakers appeared, especially students, party mobilizers, and Northerners, in the case of Club Obbligato. Although the Ekimeeza was still dominated by educated members of the Ugandan population, it did accommodate a wider spectrum of social and economic statuses. By reconstituting the early history of these discussions, however, we can get a better view of the ways in which the Ganda business class and the intellectual guerrillas of the West of Uganda became mutually interconnected after
