What is it about Uganda's cry-baby personalities?

By Kalungi Kabuye

Last week Bryan Kella McKenzie, a Ugandan TV presenter, went on to Facebook and wrote an open letter to another TV presenter, Mary Luswata.

The latter has a daily gossip show, Scoop on Scoop, and apparently she said something about McKenzie that he did not like.

I don’t know what Mary said about him because I missed that show, but was it that bad that it was going to destroy his career, as he claimed? And cause problem for his child and family? That he works hard every day and what Mary said on TV is going to stop all that? No kidding?

Ugandan public personalities (I would rather not use the word ‘celebrities’) have this thing that if anybody says something they do not like then they are trying to destroy them.

They cry out how they have come from very far, worked hard, and now because somebody said something about them, their families are in peril.

They all do it, from Bebe Cool (he is Uganda’s king of the whine), to Bobi Wine and to all those whose insecurity makes them feel that any negative thing about them in the media will be the end of them. What’s wrong with them?

David Kazoora recently complained that in writing about the problems that got him arrested in Rwanda, the media were targeting his wife and child. Maybe he should have thought of his family first before messing with those Rwandese.

It might be a cliché that ‘no publicity is bad publicity’, but it is a lesson some of our public personalities will have to learn.

Nobody owes them anything, or gives a hoot whether McKenzie came from Rutooma, Kashari “to the city to achieve my goals in life.”

The public does not really care whether Fat Boy’s disagreeing with Bebe Cool’s understanding of Ugandan music is going to make Zuena cry and their kids misbehave.

All over the world there are TV shows dedicated to trashing public personalities, and they are some of the highest rated shows ever.

TMZ, the show that showed the elevator fight between Jay Z and Beyoncé’s sister Solange, receives more than 10 million viewers a month.

All they do is concentrate on celebrities’ gossip, and nobody heard Jay Z complain that TMZ was trying to destroy his career or his family.

The Wendy Williams Show is another one, and is renowned for the fights it generates between hostess and guests. Now, wouldn’t it be interesting if McKenzie went on Mary’s show and complained face to face? Would we get a fight? Maybe somebody should arrange for that, it would break all ratings on Ugandan TV.

Or, what if the fights between the Goodlyfe Crew and their former manager Jeff Kiwanuka happened on TV? And since almost everyone these days has a smart phone, we really should be watching videos of our public personalities misbehaving, then they would not be blaming others form their misdeeds.

A friend of mine put it very succinctly; he said the problem with our public personalities is that they are still basically villagers. They do not understand or appreciate the kind of society we are living in today.

You want to be a public figure, and have worked very hard to become one? Better be ready for the attention that comes with it, and stop crying and whining that people are talking about you.

In a probably unseen result of McKenzie’s rants, Mary Luswata’s likes on her Facebook page jumped by more than 5,000.

People that had never watched her show now want to tune in; not exactly what McKenzie had in mind I’m sure.