A CITIZENSHIP OF DISTINCTION IN THE OPEN RADIO DEBATES OF KAMPALA

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article investigates practices of speech and sociability in open radio debates in Kampala to decipher imaginaries of citizenship in contemporary Uganda. In theseebimeeza(‘round tables’ in Luganda, also called ‘people's parliaments’) orators are engaged in practices of social distinction when compared to those they call the ‘common men’. These spaces of discussion reflect the importance of education in local representations of legitimacy and morality, whether in Buganda ‘neotraditional’ mobilizations or Museveni's modernist vision of politics. Theebimeezaand the government ban imposed on them in 2009 reveal the entrenchment of the vision of a ‘bifurcated’ public sphere, the separation of a sphere of ‘development’ and a sphere of ‘politics’, the latter being only accessible to educated ‘enlightened’ individuals – despite the revolutionary discourse and the institutionalization of the Movementist ‘grassroots democracy’ model in 1986.