It's becoming impossible to market Uganda
By Wairagala Wakabi The East African
The people marketing Uganda to the international community must be very depressed.
Just when it appeared that they were convincing the world that Uganda was a democratic and stable country, the tables were brutally turned on them.
Barely a month ago, the country dished out some $1.4 million on a campaign spot on CNN to neaten up Uganda's grungy image in the outside world. But last week, CNN was significantly one of the channels that ran stories detailing the destructive riots in Uganda, the harassment of Kizza Besigye – President Museveni's former aide, who now wants to take his job – and questioning Museveni's democratic credentials.
Many other regional and global media channels extensively covered Kampala's political and security troubles, a all calculated to water down whatever gains the CNN campaign had achieved.
The timing could not have been worse. In London, a Ugandan delegation was spending some $54,644 on a stall at the World Travel Market exhibition to showcase Uganda as an attractive tourism and investment destination. The exhibition hosts about 4,000 exhibitors from 180 countries. Before the Ugandans departed for the UK, they said they expected their stall to be visited by 6,000 people, all eager to hear why Uganda is the country to visit.
SOME OBSERVERS said the Ugandan exhibitors may have received even more than 6,000 visitors, but most were asking about the degeneration in the political and security situation in the country. And few are expected to be calling at Entebbe Airport any time soon.
The arrest and arraignment of Dr Besigye, the vicious riots in Kampala, the police and army's iron-fisted clampdown on the demonstrators, were all captured on camera and relayed to the world. The Internet is awash with stories of how President Museveni, once respected as a visionary statesman, has manipulated a constitutional amendment to allow him to remain president till he dies; and how he is so passionate about realising this ambition that his government has thrown all decency to the winds.
Arrests of political opponents and ruthless responses to demonstrators have occurred in many other places where men and political parties have dominated and misused power.
But the scenes outside the High Court in Kampala, where armed men in black T-shirts besieged judges, Besigye supporters and supporters who had been granted bail, seemed a first even in Africa's sorry record.
The men, who were identified as members of a newly-created Black Mambas Urban Hit Squad, were at the court to re-arrest the suspects whom a judge had granted bail. Some of these suspects, among them Besigye's brother, have been in remand for more than two years. As the siege continued, the Chief Justice and Principal Judge had to be sneaked out of the premises through a backdoor.
The so-called Black Mambas, some of whom appeared like they were auditioning for the cast of a Ninja or Rambo movie, were understood to be under the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, a body that has often been accused of torturing suspects.
"BRAND UGANDA," the campaign on CNN, touts Uganda as gifted by nature. It seeks to depict Uganda as a country with a myriad natural attractions – wildlife, rivers, mountains; and as a stable country with decent people. Last week's events punctured what illusion the world may have conceived about Uganda's suitability as a tourist destination.
But even before that, the murder on November 8 of Briton Steve Willis in Murchison Falls National Park by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerillas had done immense damage to the country's publicity campaign. Willis was the industrious proprietor of a range of tourist facilities in Uganda, including in Murchison Falls. He was killed while assisting a team of tourists that had rafted the Nile from Egypt through Sudan to northern Uganda.
His killing came on the heels of a spate of fatal LRA attacks on foreigners and international non-governmental organisations. So, is Uganda stable? While President Museveni and his publicists say it is, much of the world thinks not.
Just last month, many humanitarian agencies, some under the United Nations, either suspended activities in northern Uganda or scaled them back over the increasing rebel attacks.
The LRA, a rebel group which President Museveni has claimed to have defeated several times, continues to wreack havoc in the region, 18 years after it took on his well-trained and superbly funded army. The consequences: 1.6 million people live in squalid war camps where 1,000 die each month; HIV/Aids prevalence figures are 14 percent in many camps compared with the national average of six per cent; the region's children hardly-afford school and a large chunk of the Acholi people remain effectively disenfranchised and alienated.
And so, both the British and American governments have just advised their citizens against travelling to northern Uganda. The US Department of State said in its advisory that LRA attacks targeting foreigners have in recent weeks resulted in at least six deaths. "Most of these attacks occurred during daylight hours, and some occurred in areas that were previously believed to be secure," it said.
Uganda's desperate bid to look good in the eyes the international community earlier this year saw the engagement of an international public relations firm for a $600,000 fee.
This followed a spate of critical press in influential world media as Museveni was engineering the deletion of presidential term limits from the constitution.
