Leuven University Press

Chapter Title: Radio and Dictatorship in Idi Amin’s Uganda

Chapter Author(s): Derek R. Peterson

Book Title: Textures of Power

Book Subtitle: Central Africa in the Long Twentieth Century
Book Editor(s): Florence Bernault, Benoît Henriet, Emery Kalema
Published by: Leuven University Press. (2025)
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 CHAPTER 6.3

Radio and Dictatorship in Idi Amin’s Uganda

Derek R. Peterson

Introduction

The archives of Radio Uganda are stored in an airless room at the Uganda
Broadcasting Corporation’s headquarters in Nile Avenue in Kampala. There are
hundreds of 5-inch, 7 ½-inch and 10-inch magnetic reels, carefully placed in boxes,
labelled, and lined up by date. Many of the reels in the UBC’s archive feature the
voice of Idi Amin, President of Uganda between 1971 and 1979. Radio journalists
constantly attended President Amin, recording his public addresses with paranoid
care. On the back of one 10-inch reel – a recording of Amin’s speechat a conference
of religious leaders – there is a handwritten note penned by an anxious technician.
‘There is a slight break in recording the President’s speech,’ he nervously wrote, for

one of the adapters to hold the spool was trying to come off and the tape had to be
stopped to put the adapter back in its rightful place. Am sorry for this inevitable
technical fault and any inconvenience caused due to this is regretted.1

For radiotechnicians it was important to get every word on record.

At the time of Uganda’s independencein 1962 the new administration of Milton
Obote faced a host of media-savvy antagonists who challenged the authority of
central government. For Obote, as for his British predecessors, government-run
radio was a means of sidelining the African editors whose widely read newspapers
were setting the pace of public life (Peterson and Hunter 2016). By 1965 Ugandans
owned 112,698 shortwave radio receiving sets, distributed among a population of
about six million people.2 A survey conducted that year found that eight of every
ten Ugandans over the age of 16 years listened regularly to RadioUganda.3 In 1968
the government of President Milton Obote signed a contract with a British firm,
and construction began on four 100 kilowatt transmitting towers.4
The radioexpansion project was nearing completion when, on 25 January 1971,
General Amin overthrew Obote’s government and ushered in the Second Republic
of Uganda. The first of the powerful new transmitters began broadcasting in
November 1971, ten months after Amin came to power. Through an historical
accident Amin inherited one of the most powerful radio broadcasting services in
Africa. It allowed him to project his voice to the most remote parts of the country.
In Amin’s Uganda radio became a vehicle of public address, a loudhailer by which
officials in Kampala could impose themselves on an apparently attentive public. It

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422 derek r. peterson

made everyone – regardless of their circumstances or their location – answerable

to the president’s directives.
In two recent books the anthropologist Harri Englund has brought the social
life of radiolistening into focus, allowing us to see how creative broadcasters cul-
tivate intimacy with their audiences (Englund 2011; Englund 2018). In the popular
Chichewa program broadcast by Malawi’s public radio station as in the genial talk
shows of RadioZambia’s grandfatherly announcer, broadcasters enable expansive
and meaningful debates about public life, using a lexicon that speaks to ordinary
listeners. Other recent works of scholarship similarly treat radio as a platform
for civic engagement. The South African listeners of whom Tanja Bosch writes
are active participants in community radio (Bosch 2017). They find identity in
the programs to which they listen, calling in with their opinions and discussing
the program with friends and co-travelers. In post-apartheid South Africa radio,
argues Bosch, broadcasts democracy.
In Idi Amin’s Radio Uganda, by contrast, there was no time for discussion,
dialogue, or meaningful exchange. Radio put Idi Amin at the center of every
question. Over the radioairwaves Amin could summon constituencies that were
otherwise hard to define: the ‘women’, ‘students’ and many others. Over the radio
Amin could impose obligations on specific people and oblige them to act (Peterson
and Taylor 2013). The radio schedule structured Ugandans’ time, imposing itself
on their private lives and compelling them to listen. It consolidated the president’s
authority, sidelining bureaucrats, experts, local authorities, and other intermedi-
aries. By making government directives urgent and unanswerable, by obliging
people to respond on short notice, radio helped to make Uganda into a dictatorship
(see Moorman 2019).
In fact the reach of radio was constrained, and reception was always uncer-
tain. The authorities in Kampala saw radio as an inescapable medium, but in
Uganda – as in the Nigerian context about which anthropologist Brian Larkin
writes – the reality was ‘one of frequent breakdownand disrepair’ (Larkin 2008:
61). Broadcasting equipment was fragile, requiring constant superintendence from
over-burdened engineers. Interference from wind and weather limited Ugandans’
ability to receive the signal. People had to know how to handle the equipment in
order to make the radio work. But radio never gives evidence of the limits of its
listenership. There are no lists of individuals who do not, or cannot, receive the
radio signal. That is how broadcast media works. There is no means of determining
the limits of the audience.
In places where the signal decayed, in weather where interference made it
impossible to listen, at times when other voices or other timetables intruded,
listeners found it impossible to tune in. That is how some people fell afoul of
Amin’s edicts: by inattention, bad timing, or lack of proximity to a receiver. With
its extraordinary reach RadioUgandamade everyone biddable, but in its incom-
prehensibility radiocould also make people – all at once – into delinquents.

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 radio and dictatorship in idi amin’s uganda 423

The Power of Radio

The opening of Radio Uganda’s new broadcasting towers in 1971 and 1972 made
the station’s signal audible across a greatly enlarged terrain. For the station’s new
audiences, the broadcasts were a source of fascination and pleasure. In the paper
archivesof RadioUgandathere are files full of lettersfrom listeners. Writing from
southwestern Uganda, a listener named Raphael Kangye told the Chief Engineer
that – even in his remote locality – he could listen to RadioUganda and ‘enjoy your
good music.’ ‘Last Tuesday you made me very happy,’ he wrote, and ‘perhaps if you
could have been nearer to me I could get you something to drink.’5 Another listener
– a young woman named Lucy Apaco – was delighted by the music. Writing from
Gulu town, she reported that the morning hours were full of boredom, for Radio
Uganda was off the air and she was obliged to help her parents labour in the
farm fields. But ‘I do enjoy the afternoons and evenings very much,’ she reported.
‘You know, I’m fond of records, and in addition to the records you have got a nice
volume which reaches us nicely.’6
The expansion of Radio Uganda was a government initiative, driven by the
authorities’ self-interest. It was also driven by listeners’ excitement, enthusiasm,
and eager involvement in the perfection of the technology. Listeners filled the
manager’s postbox with letters reporting on the strength of the signal, on the
fluctuations in its reception, and on the content of the programs. From a small
town in Ethiopia a listener reported that he had heard RadioUganda’s broadcast
of Jim Reeves’ music, and found ‘the reception was very good and clear,’ with no
distortion of any kind.7 From western Uganda, a listener reported that the signal
could be ‘heard loud and clear’ on his Sierra three-band radio, far outstripping
the clarity of Radio Rwanda or the Voice of South Africa.8 From the north-west,
a schoolboy named James Uyana sent in a report on the variations of the Radio
Uganda signal. On 13 May the broadcast had become inaudible within minutes,
covered up by a rattling noise. On 17 May the 6:15 p.m. broadcast was unclear,
while the late-night broadcast was inaudible up to 11:40 p.m. Uyana volunteered
to send in daily reports on the reception of the radio.9 He and other listeners had
a proprietary view of RadioUganda. They saw it as a public good.
Listeners from Asia, Europe and America were likewise tracking the signal
of RadioUganda. After the erection of the new 100 kW transmitters the Ugandan
signal could be heard with clarity in far distant places. A 15-year-old German
named Roland Dilmetz decorated a letter to RadioUganda’s manager with hand-
drawn illustrations depicting a man jumping aloft in excitement, radio in hand.
He reported that the signal from Kampala could be heard in Berlin, though there
was occasional interference from Radio Yaoundé, which broadcast on a nearby
frequency.10 From Sweden a correspondent wrote to report on his reception of
RadioUganda’s broadcast. He was 47 years old, a warehouse worker, and a long-
time radio enthusiast.11 Another man wrote from Champaign, Illinois, saying that

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424 derek r. peterson

he had received the Ugandan signal on his home-built Hallicrafters S-85 radio.12 For
listeners in Berlin and Illinois as for listeners in Gulu or Ethiopia, Radio Uganda
was a fascinating new technology. Unlike newspapers, which relied on the trans-
port infrastructureto reach readers, and unlike a letter, which took weeks to reach
its addressee through the post, the radio signal could traverse vast distances in an
instant, apparently unhindered by geography. It was a marvel.
Like many other people, Idi Aminwas fascinated by radio’s power to traverse
geography and engage listeners in distant places. Within a few months of his
coming to power Amin’s cabinet had taken the decision to establish an external
broadcasting service. In cabinet ministers’ view it was the ‘most important deci-
sion taken by the Government of the Second Republic of Uganda.’13 The Minister
of Information and Broadcasting was given a vast new mandate: it was his minis-
try’s role to ‘create a vivid, alert and outward-looking society.’14 In February 1974
government signed a contract with a Swiss firm for the construction of two 250
kW transmitters, together with an array of antennas that would direct the signal
to distant places.15 President Amin could not wait for the legal formalities. On
19 January 1974, several weeks before the contract was signed, he laid the foun-
dation stone for the building housing the powerful transmitters. There was a new
four-story office block to house 53 new members of staff; and thirteen new studios
were to be constructed for the recording of external programs.16
The external broadcasting service went on the air in 1975. In his introduction to
the printed programing guide, President Amin claimed that RadioUgandawould
‘effectively fight colonialism, neo-colonialism, capitalismand racismeven better
especially when we shall be reaching right into the enemy’s camp’ (Uganda Press
Trust n.d.). The signal was beamed toward South Africa in the late afternoon hours,
then to western Africa, and then to northern Africa. Listeners were treated to a
program featuring ‘Presidential Quotations with Musical Bridges,’ accompanied
by a series of talks on subjects such as ‘African Solidarity,’ ‘Liberation and the
Liberators,’ ‘Economic Emancipation in Africa,’ and ‘Uganda’s Economic War.’
‘Whatever we broadcast will be monitored, recorded and analyzed by foreign
countries and news agencies,’ President Amin told a crowd. ‘We shall therefore be
judged by the quality and contents of our broadcasts.’17
Radiowas meant to make Ugandaexemplary. There was no time for idiosyn-
crasy, for comedy, or for independent voices. The authorities in Kampala instructed
local government officers to channel all communications with the press through
the government’s Ministry of Information.18 Journalistsshould ‘write the gospel of
truth,’ urged a government minister in a seminar with Ugandan newspapermen.
Their role was to ‘unite Uganda as one country.’19 In Amin’s first year in power
cabinet rejected a proposal to establish privately-run radio stations in Uganda.
Everyone in the cabinet agreed that ‘the radio service was, in the present circum-
stances, the most powerful communications medium between the Government
and the public.’ If private broadcasting stations were set up, cabinet members

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 radio and dictatorship in idi amin’s uganda 425

feared that they ‘might be used by enemies of the Government to broadcast sub-
versive propaganda to the Nation.’20

Solid State Electronics?

The apparatus of official media was designed to give President Amin the final
word on public affairs. But from the start the range and audibility of Radio
Uganda’s broadcasts were constrained. The technology was fragile and always
needed repairs. Electronics in Uganda were never in a solid state. It required
human initiative – creativity, attention, energy, dedication – to keep RadioUganda
on the air (Park 2017).
In the archives of the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation there are dozens of
logbooks, bound with hard cardboard, which contain the handwritten notes of
RadioUganda’s engineers. They testify to the constant need for human interven-
tion in the operation of radioequipment. On one occasion RadioUganda was off
the air for several minutes because a technician pressed a button labeled S1A,
jamming the signal from the broadcasting studio. He was meant to have pressed
button S1.21 On another occasion the news in Karimojong was delayed for several
minutes because someone had mistakenly turned a knob that regulated the imped-
ance of the signal from the broadcast studio, making it impossible for the program
to be transmitted.22 On a third occasion the station sent engineers to a Kampala
nightclub to record a live program of dance music. The signal they transmitted to
the broadcast studio was exceedingly faint, and there was a loud hum. It took an
hour for the engineers to sort out the fault and get the dance music on the air.23
All this placed stern demands on RadioUganda’s engineers. They had to work
long hours. There was little time for human convenience. At 2:00 p.m. one after-
noon in 1971 a peckish engineer named Waliggo wrote as follows:

With the assumption that I was a human being or at least a living creature I took
permission from the [Engineer in Charge] to go to canteen and feed as it is an obli-
gation of all creatures if they are to live.24

By 2:07 he had returned to his post. ‘Back in this damn enclave,’ he wrote in the
logbook. He was on duty that day up to 5:00 p.m. He and other engineerslobbied
management for amenities that would make their work easier. ‘Important: it is
considered as a high degree of consideration to supply the [Central Control Room]
with soft comfortable chairs to make life relatively easy here, especially for the
nightshift,’ wrote an uncomfortable engineer in the logbook.25 A few weeks later
another engineer wrote to complain that the air conditioning in the studios was
not functioning. ‘I think no one is bothered about mental strain imposed on us
due to the stuffiness caused by inadequate circulation of fresh air,’ he wrote in

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426 derek r. peterson

the logbook.26 These and other complaints reflect the claustrophobic pressure that
those who worked in the service of technology must have felt.
The shortages and upsets of Idi Amin’s Uganda made it evermore difficult
for engineers to manage the pressures that technology imposed on them. Living
in dangerous and insecure times, many staff members found it impossible to
do their jobs. On evening in May 1971 thieves broke into the house of a Radio
Ugandaengineer. The engineer awoke and pursued the burglars, and in the fracas
that ensued he cut his foot badly. He was unable to work for several days.27 For
some time in 1975 the Arabic news program could not be broadcast because the
newsreader was in prison.28 In 1978 the Director of Broadcasting prepared a doc-
ument entitled ‘Some of the Failures in Transmission Emanating from Unreliable
Transport at UBC.’29 The vehicle tasked to deliver staff members from their homes
to Broadcasting House had a puncture, and for several days the staff was obliged
to walk to the studio. The Director of Broadcasting called this and other difficulties
‘demoralizing’.
Like the engineers, the journalists who created reports for Radio Uganda’s
programs had to contend with shortfalls in equipment and material. Shortly after
Idi Amin came to power the government posted ‘information officers’ to each
of Uganda’s districts.30 Their task was to compose news reports on local affairs,
which they relayed to Broadcasting House in Kampala over telephone or telex
machines. The information officer in Jinja, the capital of eastern Uganda, had no
office furniture, and there was no moneyeven to pay for the cutting of grass. ‘We
cannot overemphasize the perponderous role being played by the Mass Media in
the development of a nation,’ wrote one officer,

without being flung by emotion to wonder over the ordeal of an Information Officer
without transport, whose usefulness is thought of only when his pen and paper are
required. Their condition of service leaves a lot to be desired.31

Information officers in the provinces had to struggle to ensure that news from
their districts got on the air. The information officer in Lira district, in Uganda’s
north, was a man named Obwona. Upon his appointment he had no office, and
neither did he have a telephoneline.32 When he had a story to file, he had to walk
into town and use the Post Office call box. The telephone line from Lira to Kampala
was full of static, especially during daylight hours. Mr. Obwona was obliged to
spend a great many evenings at the Post Office, filing reports with the newsroom
in Kampala.33 Even when the line was operational, the newsmen in Kampala were
often rude. As Mr. Obwona reported:

Some of the headquarters staff treat we up country officers as their house boys who
they can afford to do anything to. Sometimes when we get through to Kampala it
is ridiculous that it should take a person receiving the story five to ten minutes to

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 radio and dictatorship in idi amin’s uganda 427

get a pen and some papers. Some of them direct us to ring later and just bang the
receiver down.34

There were language problems, too. Mr. Obwona reported that headquarters staff
had ‘fallen into the habit of showing off that they know every English word in the
whole vocabulary.’ When an upcountry information officer used an unfamiliar
term, the man in Kampala would unctuously correct him, saying that ‘such and
such a word does not exist when in fact it is him who doesn’t know the meaning.’35
It was a struggle to keep Radio Uganda on the air. Listeners likewise had to
struggle to make RadioUgandawork. For many Ugandans the signal was irregular
and hard to pick up. In the early 1970s – when the powerful new transmitters
were installed – engineers shifted the station’s signal from the short wave to the
medium wave frequencies. The medium wave transmissions could travel over
a vast terrain, but rainy weather or cloud cover could interrupt transmission.
Throughout the 1970s RadioUganda’s morning broadcasts were inaudible to many
Ugandans, for medium wave signals are constrained by sunlight. One listener – a
student in northern Uganda – spent several days tuning his radioto RadioUganda’s
frequencies. It was only during the evening hours, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., that he
could hear clearly.36 Another listener, writing from West Nile, reported that he had
to take great care about the position of his radio receiver: if it faced northwards or
southwards the signal dissipated.37 In 1974 the Ministry of Information sent three
senior bureaucrats on a tour to assess the reception of radio and televisionbroad-
casting in the provinces. Everywhere the men from Kampala were confronted by
frustrated listeners. In Busoga, in Uganda’s east, a district councilor complained
that ‘for two years his radio has not been serving him properly: at times the radio
generates awkward noises which makes it difficult to receive radio programmes
properly.’38 Why, wondered another councilor, could he receive the Voice of Kenya
or RadioRwandamore clearly than RadioUganda? In reply, the Kampala officials
explained that the soil in Busogawas unsuitable for medium-wave broadcasting,
making it hard for the signal to propagate. Moreover, local people’s shortwave
radios were unsuitable for the new, medium wave broadcasts.
The shift to medium-wave broadcasting created new inequalitiesrs of access.
Owners of shortwave radio sets – which were smaller and cheaper than medi-
um-wave receivers – found themselves shut out of the airwaves. Writing from
Lango District, a student named William Ocen noted that the new signal was ‘very
good and clear and loud and we all like it very much indeed,’ but he and other
students who owned shortwave radio receivers found it impossible to tune in.39
He asked for a return to shortwave broadcasting, so that ‘we poor people owning
small radios with one band should enjoy the new transmission together with the
people who are better off.’ Povertylikewise made it difficult for people to purchase
the dry cell batteries that powered radio receivers. In the latter months of 1972
dry cell batteries were in short supply in Uganda’s provincial towns.40 By 1975

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428 derek r. peterson

the price of batteries had increased dramatically. It enraged many people. In a

letter to President Amin a critic complained that ‘We buy one torch dry cell at
Shgs 7 each and you tell the world that we are very well off in Uganda. Maybe
you are very happy because you have many cars.’41 By the later 1970s dry cell
batteries were unavailable for purchase in Uganda’s leading eastern town, and
local officials lamented that ‘the public are unable to listen to government policies
on their radios.’42 They had to commandeer cartons of batteries for distribution to
anxious citizens.
The trade language of the media businessmakes it seem as though the creators
of radio programs always have the initiative. Radio stations ‘broadcast,’ as if the
program were effortlessly sent out into the wind. Listening is always a passive act,
as if it took no work at all. The quality of the signal is called ‘reception.’ Listeners
are called an ‘audience,’ as if the ear was all that was needed to receive a radio
signal. In Idi Amin’s Uganda, though, receiving official media was an active under-
taking. The channels of distribution were never clear of interference. The path
of the radio signal from transmitter to receiver was impeded by the weather, by
landscape, by soil types, by the financial wherewithal of the listener, and by the
listener’s access to the technology of reception. There was a constant need to adjust
the tuning and search for the signal. Listeners had to be aware of the changing
patterns of wind and weather. They had to anticipate the advancing hours of
darkness. They had to have batteries and medium-band receivers, at a time when
such equipment was expensive and hard to find. Receiving the broadcast required
creativity, connections, and constant attention.

Government by Radio Announcement

The men who governed Idi Amin’s Ugandacould not acknowledge any of the work
that was required to broadcast or receive the signal. Standing at the edge of a
new era in the history of communication, officials in Kampala acted as though
the distribution of radiobroadcasts was undifferentiated and universal. At a 1973
seminar a longtime Ugandan journalist heralded the ‘transistor revolution.’ The
‘mass media,’ he said, ‘can reach enormous audiences. The radio does it regardless
of climatic hazards, regardless of inappropriate communications through jungles,
swamps or even storms at sea.’43 At the same seminar another speaker proclaimed
radio to be a means of ‘reaching, simultaneously, millions of people of all classes
in a matter of moments.’44
Amin and his men presumed that listeners were available, attentive, hanging
on every word. There was a dramatic shortening of the time between decree and
implementation. At a briefing in Kampala one morning in 1973, President Amin
directed two studentsfrom each of Uganda’s universities and colleges to meet him
at State House at 8:30 pm the following day to discuss the prospect of a national

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 radio and dictatorship in idi amin’s uganda 429

language for Uganda.45 There were no students physically present when Amin
issued his directive. Neither was there a procedure by which students could select
their representatives. But Amin was confident that, through the broadcast media,
a specific constituency – the ‘students’ – could be summoned. At a time when paper
was in short supply, when the postal system was increasingly inoperative and
petroleum was prohibitively expensive, radio was the means by which govern-
ment authorities in Kampala communicated with people in the provinces. Amin’s
speeches were full of directions for specific groups and constituencies. During
the same broadcast during which he instructed students to attend an evening
meeting regarding the choice of a national language, Amin also told government
authorities to install a water supply in Arua; instructed the Minister of Commerce
and Industry to build a cement factory on the road from Moyo to Arua; directed the
Yugoslav contractors building the Arua airport terminal to transfer their attention
to the building of a hotel; directed the Minister of Works and Housing to repair the
bridge over the Wangi River; condemned waiters for demanding tips from their
customers; and suggested that people living in overpopulated areas of southern
Uganda should move to fertile unpopulated areas in the north.
Diplomats called it ‘government by radio announcement’ (Gwyn 1971, 71).
Local authorities had to budget their time to be present when broadcasts were
on the air. Listeners in northern Uganda had to stay up late, past 11:00 p.m., to
hear the local news, which was broadcast after President Amin’s long and winding
speeches had ended. It was difficult to find time for sleep.46 Local government
authorities – and a great many private citizens – took notes and learned about new
policies, rules, and directives from RadioUganda’s broadcasts. On 29 August 1972,
for instance, President Amin made an address at the International Conference
Centre in Kampala that was broadcast on the radio. Amin announced the creation
of nine new provinces in Uganda and banned teenagers’ dances, reasoning that
they have ‘sapped the energy of our young people and … encouraged drunkenness,
laziness, disobedience to parents and other vices.’ He also announced new open-
ing hours for bars and nightclubs.47 Away in the provinces, the administrator in
Kigezi District was listening carefully. The next day he typed up a summary of the
speechfor district officials.48 He highlighted the presidential directive to ‘speed up
services’ and mentioned the new opening hours for bars. His transcription of the
key points furnished local authorities with the guidelines they needed to get in line
with the president’s speech.
Radiowas the medium of record in Idi Amin’s Uganda. People listened to it rig-
orously and attentively, expecting to find their obligations laid out on the airwaves.
Their reputations, and their future, depended on the care with which they sifted
through the broadcast. In June 1971, a few months after the coup that brought
President Amin to power, broadcasters on Radio Uganda read out an announce-
ment saying that a schoolteacher in southern Uganda named David Kabunga
had been employed by Obote’s maligned General Service Unitto spy on Idi Amin.

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430 derek r. peterson

Kabunga, alarmed about his safety, made haste to write to the information officer
in Kabale, his hometown. He asked that a correction be broadcast immediately
since, he maintained, ‘I have never worked for the GSU.’49 Kabunga’s nervousness
reflects the urgency of his situation. Radiocould not be ignored.
Inattentive people could – quite suddenly – find new obligations thrust upon
them. In a radio address on 4 February 1974, for example, Amin’s government
announced a summary ban on the wearing of wigs.50 They made ‘our womenlook
unAfrican and artificial,’ the president said. Besides, the wigswere fabricated by
‘the callous imperialists from human hair mainly collected from the unfortunate
victims of the miserable Vietnam war.’ Amin’s decree came as a surprise. A woman
named C. Kakembo listened to the news broadcast on RadioUgandaat 8 p.m. that
night. No mention was made of the directive, and she blithely went out for an
evening drink. It was only during the 10 p.m. broadcast that the directive was
announced. Ms. Kakembo reported that ‘those who heard the announcement and
happened to be in public places had to pull off the wigs immediately to avoid
being bullied, touched and embarrassed.’51 The announcement demanded the
rapid revision women’s attire. Ms. Kakembo and many other women were obliged
to find ribbons and cloths to tie over their heads to ‘look respectable enough in
public’ (Kembabazi 2020, Decker 2014: Ch. 3).
The inconvenience and irritation that Ms. Kakembo felt must have been shared
by many Ugandans, who found themselves – unexpectedly – compelled to conform
to government decrees. There was no time for discussion or deliberation. On
14 May 1973 President Amin announced on radiothat Ugandans should hold coun-
try-wide meetings about the design of the national flag. Shortly thereafter a county
chiefin eastern Ugandareceived a telephonecall telling him to summon taxpayers
to discuss the issue that very day.52 The chief hurriedly typed out a missive to his
subordinates, instructing them to bring representatives to his headquarters within
the hour. The notices were delivered by messengers, and many of them did not
reach their destinations until the early afternoon. The discussion had to happen
in very great haste. That evening the county chief – who was probably exhausted
at all of the activity – typed up a report. His people preferred that the red color
be replaced with green in the flag, he wrote, since red ‘shows us that Uganda will
remain in blood shed’ and therefore damaged the country’s reputation abroad.53
All of this tells a familiar tale about the capriciousness of life under a dictatorial
government. The point here is that arbitrariness has an infrastructure. It was pos-
sible for government officers to issue rapid-fire directives because they acted as
though that whole Ugandan public could be addressed through official media. With
the Ugandan public was apparently gathered before them, officials could compress
the timescale on which government worked and make everyone act. That is why
Ms. Kakembo found herself – unwittingly – exposed to the attention to censorious
men and women, who insisted that she would immediately conform to Idi Amin’s
edict banning wigs. That is why the hapless chiefhad to hastily organize a meeting

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 radio and dictatorship in idi amin’s uganda 431

to discuss the national flag’s design. That is how many Ugandans unknowingly and
unexpectedly came to be named as enemies of state, as whole categories of people
were summoned, directed, and made subject to Amin’s radio-born directives.

Conclusion

In February 1979 RadioUganda’s employees planned a celebration marking the 25th

anniversary of the station.54 At the center of the festivities was a ‘program produc-
tion competition,’ in which teams of announcers were to broadcast, in 15-minute
intervals, from the top of Broadcasting House in Kampala. The challenge was to
ensure that equipment, microphones, and personnel were all in place and that the
broadcast went off smoothly. The engineering staff had a separate competition:
they were to design and build a recorder using spare equipment in RadioUganda’s
engineering shop. The winner of each of these games was to be awarded 50,000
shillings. The organizing committee developed an extensive guest list.55 Former
ministers of information were to be invited. So were retired staff members, includ-
ing the British engineerswho had founded RadioUganda in 1954. All of President
Amin’s ministers and permanent secretaries were to be invited.
The members of the committee never celebrated RadioUganda’s 25th anniver-
sary, for even as they worked out their plans, an invading army from Tanzaniawas
marching north, driving Amin’s men before them. The Amin regime was ousted in
April 1979, before the festivities could take place. But the earnestness with which
Radio Uganda’s employees laid in plans to celebrate the jubilee reflected their
investment in the technical work of radio. During the most tumultuous months of
Uganda’s history, they looked for ways to honour their vocation. The technology
oriented their loyalties and clarified their duties.
Ugandan listeners likewise found themselves bound up in the timetable of
radio broadcasting. Coming to power at the outset of a new era in the history
of technology, Idi Amin found in radio a vehicle by which to address the whole
of Uganda’s disparate people, all at once. Radio furnished the Amin government
with a prosthetic infrastructure for government communication. It transformed
the relationship between rulers and ruled, sidelining local authorities and mak-
ing everyone act in accordance with the president’s directives. It pre-empted
Ugandans’ disparate timetables, obliging everyone to act on short notice. There
was no time for representation, for deliberative democracy. Neither was there a
means to hold authorities in Kampala accountable. The texture of power could be
heard in the president’s unanswerable voice.

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432 derek r. peterson

Notes

1 Uganda Broadcasting Corporation archive (hereafter UBC) tape 71/021: ‘President’s Closing Speech at
Religious Conference at Conference Hall,’ 6 June 1971.
2 UBC ‘Old Files, 1950 to 65’ box, file 23: Humphreys, Sound Broadcasting Development Scheme, 7 April 1965.
3 ‘Improve our Radio,’ Uganda Argus 5229 (18 October 1971).
4 UBC ‘Old Files, 1966-1970’ box, unnumbered file: Humphreys, ‘Project no. 13-15-03: Links to Medium Wave
Transmitters,’ n.d. (but 1969).
5 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 10: Raphael Kangye to Chief Engineer, 19 April 1972.
6 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 10: Lucy Apaco to Chief Engineer, n.d. (but April 1972).
7 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 10: Abraham Michael to Chief Engineer, 7 April 1972.
8 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 10: Cyril Ondebo to Chief Engineer, 30 May 1972.
9 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 10: James Uyana, St. Edward’s Bukooli, to Chief Engineer, 18 May 1972.
10 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 10: Roland Dilmetz to Chief Engineer, 21 June 1972.
11 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 10: G. Johansen to Chief Engineer, 2 July 1972.
12 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 17: Ralph Perry to Radio Uganda, 11 December 1971.
13 Cabinet paper on ‘Radio Uganda,’ enclosed in British National Archives (hereafter BNA) FCO 31/1062: High
Commission to East Africa Department, 28 Sept. 1971.
14 Uganda National Archives (hereafter UNA) MBL 15/2: ‘Contribution of the Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting,’ 5 November 1973.
15 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 5: Agreement between Brown Boveri and Co. and the Government of Uganda,
15 Feb. 1974.
16 UBC ‘1972-1973’ box, file 5: Katende to Director of Engineering, 9 Jan. 1974.
17 ‘Swahili and French for Closer Ties with our Brothers,’ Uganda Argus 5255 (21 Nov. 1971).
18 Kabale District Archives NW/CM 11, ‘Newspaper and Press Relations’ file: Henry Kyemba to all District
Commissioners, 24 May 1971.
19 ‘Press freedom is not a license to mislead,’ Uganda Argus 5249 (15 Nov. 1971).
20 UNA OP 9/1: Minutes of the 37th meeting of the Cabinet, 9 November 1971.
21 UBC Central Control Room logbook, 12 Jan. to 26 Feb. 1966, entry for 14 Feb. 1966.
22 UBC Daily log book, Central Control Room, 29 Jan. to 1 April 1967, entry for 8 Feb. 1967.
23 UBC Central Control Room logbook, 13 April 1971-, entry for 12 June 1971.
24 UBC Logbook, 13 April 1971-, entry for 9 June 1971.
25 UBC Logbook, 13 April 1971-, entry for 19 April 1971.
26 UBC Logbook, 13 April 1971-, entry for 18 May 1971.
27 UBC Logbook, 13 April 1971-, entry for 10 May 1971.
28 UBC ‘1974-1989’ box, file 9: Assistant Controller of Programmes to Controller of Programmes, 8 August 1975.
29 UBC ‘1974-1989’ box, file 39: Cosmas Warugaba, ‘Some of the Failures in Transmission Emanating from
Unreliable Transport at U.B.C.,’ 21 May 1978.
30 Jinja District Archives (hereafter JDA) Info. 1/20: Secretary for Administration to all District Commissioners,
19 March 1971.
31 Kabarole District Archives box 59, ‘Information services, broadcasting and publications and newspapers,
1974’ file: Provincial Information Officer, Western, to P.S. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting,
12 March 1975.
32 Lira District Archives (hereafter LDA) box 517, file with no cover: G. Obwona, report for April 1971,
5 May 1971.
33 LDA box 517, file with no cover: G. Obwona, report for December 1971, 10 Jan. 1972.
34 LDA box 517, file with no cover: G. Obwona, report for March 1973, 6 April 1973.
35 LDA box 517, file with no cover: G. Obwona, report for April 1973, 7 May 1973.
36 UBC ‘1972-73’ box, file 10: E. Ssemambo to Chief Engineer, 7 April 1872.

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 radio and dictatorship in idi amin’s uganda 433

37 UBC ‘1972-73’ box, file 10: Lawrence Obonyo-Pata to Chief Engineer, 18 April 1972.
38 Kabarole District Archives 271/1: Address of the Three Directors to Members of the District Team and
Planning Committee, North Busoga, 6 June 1974.
39 UBC ‘1972-73’ box, file 10: William Ocen to Chief Engineer, n.d. (but 1972).
40 UNA Moroto District Archives 14/S/INT 8: Security committee meeting, 18 Sept. 1972.
41 BNA FCO 31/1950: Mulengera Lubwana to Idi Amin, 30 October 1975.
42 JDA 117/TRD 1: Trade Development Officer, Jinja District to all government agents, 3 April 1978.
43 UBC ‘Old files, 1966-1970’ box, file 22: Charles Mpanga, untitled seminar paper, 9 April 1973.
44 UBC ‘Old files, 1966-1970’ box, file 22: Cosmas Warugaba, ‘The Transcription Service as a Foreign Service,’
1973.
45 ‘National Language, New Flag being Considered,’ Voice of Uganda 1 (139), 15 May 1973.
46 LDA box 517, file with no cover: G. Obwona to P.S., Ministry of Information, 2 Sept. 1972.
47 BNA FCO 31/1234: Kampala home service, 29 August 1972.
48 Kabale District Archives ADM 50, ‘Circulars–Secretary General’s Office’ file: Kigezi District Administrator
to all county chiefs, 30 August 1972.
49 Kabale District Archives ADM 1, ‘Kigezi: General Complaints’ file: David Kabunga to Information Officer,
Kabale, 14 June 1971.
50 ‘Decree Bans Women’s Wigs and Trousers,’ Voice of Uganda 1 (365), 5 Feb. 1974.
51 Editorial letter, C. Kakembo, Voice of Uganda 1 (384), 27 Feb. 1974.
52 JDA ADM ALG 1/12: County chief Butembe to all gombolola chiefs, 17 May 1973.
53 JDA ADM ALG 1/12: County chief Butembe to D.C. Busoga, 17 May 1973.
54 UBC ‘1974-1989’ box, file 22: Minutes of a meeting for the Radio Uganda jubilee, 9 Feb. 1979.
55 UBC ‘1974-1989’ box, file 22: Proposed List of People to be Invited for the U.B.C. Silver Jubilee Celebrations,
n.d.

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