Thank you Mister Pike!

Oct 14, 2006

“The end of an era” is one of the more over-used phrases, many times signifying nothing; “the end of an epoch” even more bombastically so. But the news that our friend William Pike was (no matter how you dress it!) leaving The New Vision, a paper he had been the single most important individ

JOHN NAGENDA

UGANDA’S No1 COLUMNIST..INFORMED, CONTROVERSIAL AND PROVOCATIVE

“The end of an era” is one of the more over-used phrases, many times signifying nothing; “the end of an epoch” even more bombastically so. But the news that our friend William Pike was (no matter how you dress it!) leaving The New Vision, a paper he had been the single most important individual to mould, was, indeed, the end of an era.

Whether he was pushed, or did he jump. As even the competing Monitor allowed in its front page article on the bombshell, Pike had transformed the New Vision “from a typical mismanaged and loss-making government parastatal into one of the most respected and profitable companies in Uganda...”. Well put, Simon Kasyate. Me, I would go as far as to state that Vision is the best government-owned newspaper in the world, or, if that sounds too strong, that I have ever heard of!

This did not come about by accident. And, lest we forget, the enabling symbiosis has had a lot to do with the ownership of the paper itself. In other words: if the government had not decided, on balance, to enable The New Vision and all its group publications, to be strongly neutral there would not have been the slightest chance for this to happen.

In fact Government is too wide a word, for many in it have from the very beginning been extremely ambivalent, sometimes downright hostile, in giving the Vision group, and Pike as leader, so much latitude. As so often, it ultimately comes down to the President himself who has allowed this to happen. In all the shouting that will follow, which has already started, it is crucial not to forget this.

This is a good juncture at which to look at a fascinating side of Museveni, which sometimes makes him an enigma, or, as Winston Churchill said, a mystery wrapped in an enigma! He is a very strong personality, with very strong opinions and views, but ready to allow others to practise theirs, so long as they don’t rip the essential fabric as he sees it.

Your columnist is a “benefiter” (to coin a word) of this attitude. The “balancer” is that the benefiter must exercise self-discipline; must not cross that invisible red line, or not cross it too often; by commission or omission. Difficult? So is life!

Those who live in these regions, including your humble columnist, must regard this self-policing as a hazard (sometimes an exciting one) of their daily breathing. But is this so very peculiar?

Reflect on your daily existence: think of those you employ, whether at home or work, or indeed those who employ you. Or of parent and child (or child and parent!) Of partnerships, of procedure, of laws, of boundaries: these are not always laughing matters. This isn’t merely metaphysical musing, but facts by which the fabric remains intact. Where are you without the fabric?

Time to turn back to Pike. This Briton (for I don’t think he is wholly English, not that this matters!) was thrust into our midst by a series of accidents, or, if you prefer it, by divine will.

As a struggling but determined minor journalist he came to The Bush to witness and report the fighting between the then government forces and the National Resistance Army (NRA).

I remember first meeting him in the early ‘80s at the Royal Commonwealth Society in London. He was a very tall and lanky, earnest, leftish-leaning figure, who struck me as not “a man of business”. (How this latter has changed!) But more than that was his almost evangelical worship (not too strong a word) of the NRA/NRM with whom he had spent some months in The Bush in Uganda. I was a bit cynical then of the Movement, and Pike was the first “outsider” to make me wonder and draw closer. Little did I know at that first meeting that our lives were going to intermingle. For myself I have benefited. So has Uganda through the 20 years he has run its greatest newspaper. He has lost, literally, his hair in service. He has made The New Vision what it is today, as I have said above, arguably the best government-owned newspaper in the world.

Pike, the whole of Uganda knows this, from the man who by a stroke of genius or luck appointed you, President Yoweri K. Museveni, to the people who sell your papers on the street; via the intelligentsia, not only in Uganda, who argue about you ceaselessly. You are cordially hated by many whom your publications have exposed, but admired by your workers and colleagues and even competitors, and those who have regard to how papers are put together.

Interestingly enough, in spite of recent words, you are admired by Museveni the man, or you would not have lasted two years, let alone 20! You have irked, often, Museveni the President, who has to run the fabric of this nation, which you, of all people, appreciate. You, as a foreigner, were peculiarly fitted for the job you have done, not because you were above it all, but because you could take a more detached view.

The reverse is that, being an outsider of sorts, you have sometimes not kept your finger on the political pulse – necessary anyway, but especially for the supremo of the government publications.

Uganda owes you (you old dog), as you it, a debt of gratitude. Also I thank you today for using up this space away from dreary subjects like dreadful Kony and childish Red Pepper!

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