Dear Mr. Kabushenga

I hear that you are thinking about working for the Buganda government. I have a few ideas to put across in this regard.

I have written what in my view are some comments regarding the work that the New Vision has done to date most of which
has been done under your watch.

The media group which you lead, has made a lot of progress and has contributed a lot in the development of the country.
As you consider this move, you need to ask yourself a few questions. Firstly, is a move to Kingdom business a strategic move into a bigger space or is it a deliberate move into a smaller more intimate position where improvements will be easier to see and quantify?
In other words, is Uganda still subsumed by Buganda.

The structure of your dailies reveals that your paper even if it has global reach is designed to cater for Ugandans. There are sections that are designed to handle regional challenges (largely ethnic) and religious ones (with coverage of most of the major religions). In short the structure of your paper allows you to serve the greater purpose of Uganda.
if however your view is that not much has changed since the sixties and possibly the earlier protectorate years, maybe your argument makes sense. Maybe Buganda is still at the heart of Uganda and service to Buganda translates to service for Uganda.

The second question has to do with the challenge of ethnicity and the view that scripture often places in 'favor' of foreign prophets.(John 4:44 "...A prophet is hath no honor in his own country"). It is the idea that i have often wrestled with regarding the effectiveness of local leaders in their own domains. My suggestion is that cultural leaders take deliberate steps to import 'foreign' talent to run internal affairs. An intellectual exchange of sorts where Buganda Kingdom sends some of its best minds to run the affairs of Busoga Kingdom and so on. Maybe this would make sense in your case.

There was once a missionary who was sent into a tribe of warring communities to take on the role of mediator. To help appease the tribes he explained the story of the bible and described the Christ as Heaven's peace offering to men. He later made the suggestion that each of the tribes needed to have a Peace Child from each community to be exchanged as a symbol for peace from each of the groups.

The second question therefore represents this suggestion. A deliberate release of top Kingdom minds and officials to serve in other cultural landscapes as ambassadors and possibly peace offerings.

Thirdly, i would like us to think twice about the message we are sending when on one hand we speak against the west and decry the effects of imperialism while on another we ship our princes and Kings to the bastions of western education (the Omugabe of Ankole and the King of Toro as a case in point) at the expense of our own institutions. Naturally the same can be said of our health related structures.


I hope this makes sense and helps fill in some of the gaps you may have you think about the transition.