Once upon a time, when you did not like what was happening around you, the options to express your anger were limited. You would either go to a bar, drink and start making noise on the way home--kuteera omurengye--as they would say in Rukiga language in South western Uganda, or you would try to stage a demo and be arrested. If you were lucky, you would write a letter to the editor in one of the newspapers and subject yourself to the mercy of the editors, hoping that they would publish it. You would wait and wait, and when it came out, it would be edited, often diminishing intensity of your meaning. I experienced such frustration many times, including on one occasion when I bought a carton of milk and found all of the sachets rotten, and had no where to complain from, since the receipt they gave me had bold words stating that: GOODS ONCE SOLD ARE NOT REFUNDABLE AND CANNOT BE RETURNED. I then wrote a letter to the editor in The Monitor, but it took two weeks to be published. Or when I authored a story about remarks by a cabinet minister about a sensitive matter, and he came out to promptly deny them through a letter to the editor, even when I had his voice recording. My rebuttal only came out weeks late. Then GOD heard our prayers and created the internet, facebook, twitter, whatsapp, the mobile phone and all the other social media tools! And Lo and Behold! Ordinary people, just like ministers, big men and women got empowered to raise alarms when things went wrong, without going through editors as gate keepers to their thoughts and opinions--and instantly at that. And with the mobile phone, they started calling into FM radio studios to challenge lies by those in power during like talkshows--and everything changed forever..
Posted on: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 10:09:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015