Musaazi NAMITI
For many salaried workers, going without pay for even one month can create serious problems. Going without pay for two months is obviously worse. Yet that is what, according to media reports OJ-UGANDA has not been able to independently verify, BBS Terefayina staff have had to endure.
I was not surprised when I saw this news being shared on social media. In fact, it brought back memories of my struggles to get paid at two news outlets I did work for many years ago, one of which, Njuba Times, was owned by the Buganda kingdom, just like BBS Terefayina.
How it all started. Njuba Times was launched in the last quarter of 1997 under fanfare. It was a bilingual paper, published in English and Luganda. Peter Sematimba, then one of the linchpins at the Central Broadcasting Services (CBS), also called Radio Buganda, was one of the paper’s top executives. Others were Ssemakula Ndugwa, who had been a senior editor at Ngabo, a defunct Luganda daily that was published alongside the Star, also defunct. (Vision Group’s veteran journalist Hellen Mukiibi used to work for the Star.)
When Njuba Times launched, I was a young journalist. I knew a friend there who was one of the reporters, and sometimes I gave her articles to submit for me for publication.
One day the journalist friend told me one of the senior editors wanted to speak to me. “The features editor has been reading your articles and has asked me: ‘Who is Musaazi Namiti?’ He wants to talk to you.” None of my articles she submitted had been published.
I visited Njuba Times and met the senior editor, Sam Sserwanga. He was an industry veteran and had worked for Vision Group as a news editor. But when William Pike, who was the Group’s chief editor and managing director, reorganised the newsroom, preparing it for competition from Daily Monitor, which had become a daily in November 1996, he laid off Mr Sserwanga, along with other senior journalists.
Mr Sserwanga asked me to write features for Njuba Times. The very first assignment I did under his supervision was a profile about Wasswa Ziritwawula, who had served as LCIII chairman in Kampala and had sensationally resigned when the National Resistance Council (legislative assembly) extended its term in 1989.
After several months contributing articles to Njuba Times, I realised there were serious problems. The paper was supposed to piggyback on the popularity of CBS, and there were high hopes it would do well, but it did not. In fact, it collapsed.
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Journalists struggled to get paid. Njuba Times also had weak editorial administration, sometimes relying on journalists who were not on the payroll to perform duties that staff members had to do. For example, I distinctly remember Mr Sserwanga asking me one evening to write an editorial, a task normally reserved for senior journalists. It was my first time to write an editorial, or a leader, which is basically an unsigned opinion piece expressing a paper’s viewpoint on an important news item or issue.
At many well-established outlets, processing payments for contributed articles works like clockwork. At Njuba Times, I had to take matters to two top managers—Michael Kawooya Mwebe and Robert Kasozi—who had the power to decide how and when individual contractors had to be paid.
In my quest to get paid, matters got out of hand, and I threatened not to leave Mr Kawooya’s office until I got paid. What is surprising is that the paper did not even owe me millions of shillings.
Njuba Times’ failure to pay me and others was following a pattern I had witnessed, with consternation, at the defunct Daily Topic. The paper started as Weekly Topic and became a daily at the beginning of 1994 under the editorship of John Baptist Wasswa, who had been a senior reporter at Vision Group. Three senior cabinet ministers—Bidandi Ssali, Kirunda Kivejinja and Kintu Musoke—owned it.
It was unthinkable that a news outlet owned by powerful and influential politicians in the government could not pay journalists, an integral part of the fourth estate, as the media is sometimes called. I went to the International Conference Centre, as Serena was then, to speak to the Daily Topic owners about their company’s failure to pay us.
All three politicians were delegates to the Constituent Assembly, which debated the draft constitution for more than a year and held deliberations at the Conference Centre. Mr Kivejinja told me and others, who were courageous enough to speak to him, that we made a mistake by working for a company that did not have the capacity to pay its workers.
To shorten a long story, my colleagues and I were not paid. We could not take legal action against Daily Topic. We gave up. The paper folded in November 1994.
BBS Terefayina could eventually pay its workers, but when a news outlet fails to pay workers for two months, it raises questions about how effectively it is run.
READ MORE FROM MUSAAZI NAMITI
🔴 Musaazi Namiti is the Founder and Editorial Director of OJ-UGANDA. He previously led the Africa Desk at Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, worked for Globe Media Asia in Cambodia and writes a widely read column for Uganda’s Weekend Monitor. His work has been quoted by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Jeune Afrique, The Africa Report—not for playing it safe, but for saying what others will not.