.....The New Vision founding team recall the hard times

 

BY RAYMOND BAGUMA

 

Like it is said, even a journey of 1,000 miles starts with one step. It was the same story for Vision Group when it started 24 years ago. The company started operations in 1986 with the first issue of The New Vision coming out on March 19. In the 24 years a lot has been achieved. Some of the first employees and founders of the company share memories of the journey over the last 24 years.

 

James Tumusiime, founding editor
When the National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to power, I had a meeting with the minister of Information then, the late Abu Mayanja. Three of us were associated with publicity in the movement; the late Bakulu Mpagi Wamala, Arthur Kasigazi, who is a diplomat in Cairo and myself. The first cabinet had decided that a newspaper be started. The Obote government had imported a lot of equipment, very low quality stuff from Russia and they had acquired a building from an Indian on Third Street. So,the cabinet asked us to go and help set up a newspaper.

I looked around and worked with people in the ministry of information. We were able to get people who had worked with private newspapers before. Government also tried to look around for people inclined towards the media. That is how we started.

 

We had to come up with a name for the newspaper. We gave a number of names to the minister like The Patriot, The Guardian and The New Vision. The government had The Mirror previously but we did not include that one. Abu Mayanja took these names to cabinet and it approved The New Vision. I think the name was appropriate because everyone at that time wanted a new start. Our first newspaper came out on March, 19, 1986. We had spent a lot of time planning for it.

 

William Pike first editor-in-chief and managing director
Initially we started without any legal status. But in 1987, the New Vision Printing and Publishing Company was set up by a government statute. And if you read that statute, Abu Mayanja, the then information minister, had a very progressive clause on the editorial policy. It said, there is a legal obligation to voice public opinion and criticisms of a given Government policy in a fair and objective manner without becoming an institutional opponent to the Government or its interests.

Abu Mayanja drafted it at that time as a lawyer. But the clause doesn’t say you have to publish praise of government. It just said you have to publish criticism of government, so that shows the progressive atmosphere in which The New Vision was formed.
The big challenge at the beginning was the shortage of newsprint. We didn’t have any money and the government only put in $15,000. At one point we bought a pick up. We had very little money.

 

The printing equipment was inadequate. The factory was owned by departed Asians. We were battling in a very insecure environment. I remember the day Andrew Kayiira died in 1987, we didn’t have newsprint. We printed 7,000 copies and they sold out in 15 minutes. Those are the kinds of problems we had at the time. Just like you couldn’t buy bacon, sausages or beer from the shops.

David Sseppuuya former Editor-in-chief
I joined as a freelance journalist in 1987. I had wanted to be a sub-editor. But the news editor then, Perez Owori, told me I was too inexperienced to be a sub-editor. He asked me what my interest was and I told him it was sports. He introduced me to the Sports Editor then, Hillary Nsambu. I was given an assignment to cover a cricket game. That was my first published story in November 1987.

 

It was a cricket league story from Makerere University. The newsroom was always quiet in the morning. In the early afternoon and evening, typewriters would start cluttering away.

One of my most vivid memories at The New Vision was covering the Olympics in 1992 in Barcelona. Also the first time I met President Yoweri Museveni is memorable. I met him in December 1997. At that time, I was associate editor. We had a heated discussion with the President about Christianity during that informal meeting.

 

When I joined The New Vision we were very few people. We socialised a lot, both reporters and editors. A van used to drop us home, both editors and reporters. We didn’t look at the working conditions as hard. Twenty years from now, people may reflect on our current working conditions and also say they were very hard times.

Godwin Rwankwenge first production manager

Those days it took us three days to print an eight page-paper. The machines were from Russia and some of the instructions were written in the Russian language. We had to get an interpreter.

We would talk to them in English and they would respond in Russian. The machines were producing positives while the plates were negative. So we would process from positive to negative and from negative then onto the plates.

 

Maurice Ssekawungu, founding editor of Bukedde newspaper (second right),

William Pike and David Sseppuuya (left) bid farewell to George Kawule

(right), the first news editor of Bukedde newspaper

 

Sam Serwanga, The New Vision’s founding news editor
We started with a very small team of less than 10 people. Two or three were sub-editors while the rest were reporters. We had about seven people in the production department. We had a few desks and one typewriter.

 

Maurice Sekawungu, founding editor Bukedde newspaper
It was tough….very tough because initially we did not have an organic team. People were coming from different backgrounds. We had teachers and other professions.  And we had reporters who were not properly trained.  Even mechanics came asking for jobs here. My duty was to make an organic team.

 

Training them was not easy. Nobody ever believed that this project would succeed, including management. I remember some of my reporters being jeered at and ridiculed. Management thought they were just draining the company coffers because we were not making money.  

 

Robinah Basalirwa, one of the pioneer reporters
We worked under very difficult conditions. As reporters, we walked most of the time to get stories because the company had no money. We had one hired car which used to sell newspapers. The editor-in-chief used the same car, so it couldn’t be used to transport reporters. Even if you had your money, there were very few taxis then and no boda bodas.