WHEN A NEW PHONE MEANS RESETTING YOUR LIFE

So last week I got a new phone, and gave up my old trusted Samsung Note 4. Someone once said that I treat my phones like I treat my women, which is very carefully and with a lot of care (one ex claimed that I treated the phone better than her, but that was just nugu, don’t mind her). The end result is that my phones last a lot longer than many other people’s (I’m trying to remember if any phone outlasted a relationship, but none comes to mind, phew!)

Anyway, I don’t remember exactly when I got that Note 4, but I know it cost me top dollar. In any case I had it when I spent a very long month as a guest at IHK in 2016, and it was a constant companion that never failed me.

My Old Faithful, the Samsung Note 4 with the apps that rule our lives

The nurses would do their rounds and leave, the keeper would often go his mysterious ways, and visitors would say bye and leave – but my phone never went anywhere. It was my link to the outside, healthy world, and (apart from the first week) I wrote all my subsequent columns on that small keypad.

So my old trusty phone and I had come a long way together; but phone years aren’t the same as human years, and by last year it was showing signs that it had become a senior citizen. It was always telling me it was running out of space, however often I deleted images and videos that accumulated via WhatsApp.

And I could not load anymore apps, however many I deleted. Then at times it would just switch off, just like that old senior that takes a nap without notice. And the battery wouldn’t last more than about 3 hours, which meant I had to carry a power bank everywhere I went.

Thus I came to the reluctant decision that I needed a new phone; I’ve never been in an abusive relationship, but I think I got a glean of what it can be like. I knew I needed a new phone ASAP, but I hanged on to that old dang phone for as long as I could. One of the reasons was that only another top dollar phone would replace the Note 4, but I didn’t have the top dollar just as yet, blame it on covid-19 and the year 2020 that never really was.

I hanged on as long as I could, but at the end I had to let the old lady go. Since top dollar still wasn’t in sight, I got myself a ‘stop gap’ phone, one I could use maybe for some time till the top dollar showed up. Although it cost less than half of what Old Faithful did, it has more memory, almost triple the storage, and is of course a lot smarter.

Now there was the small thing about transferring data from the old phone to the new one. You know how stuff accumulates on a phone, and the longer you keep it the more you collect. I inquired from some IT friends and from Google, and decided the best way was to use Smart Switch. I downloaded it on the old phone, but I only had one SIM card, how was I to load on the new one?

That is when I learned that today’s smart phones do not need a SIM card to connect to the Internet, as long as Wi-Fi is available. End result? After a few hours all my contacts and stuff was transferred to the new phone, so I finally removed the SIM card from Old Faithful, and into the new stop-gap one.

But it was not smooth sailing after that, because it struck me just how much smart phones rule our lives. Much of our day to day life depends on apps that are loaded onto phones, without them we are really at sea. Because I had changed phones, I had to sign in again into all the apps. But there was a problem, I could not for the life of me remember how to log into the different apps.

Because smart phones save all our login details, we do not have to sign in every time we use an app, so we don’t have to remember all the details. But here I was with a new device, and I had to log on afresh. Not only could I not remember which passwords I used for the different apps, I couldn’t even remember the email address I had used to register, or the log in names.

What eventually happened felt like I was resetting my life. Some apps were easy, I just had to reset the password, and all was good. Others were more difficult, especially when it turned out I had used email addresses I had not used for a long time, and whose passwords I could not remember. Like the Yahoo! one. In the end I had to sign up again for some of the apps, which meant all the previous data was lost. An IT savvy friend suggested that I use a password manager app, then I would not need to remember any of the login details, just the one big one. So I need an app to manage all the other apps. Dang, this 21^st century!

It also turned out that the old WhatsApp data wasn’t transferred, which was almost a disaster. I don’t know about you, but I use WhatsApp as a store for information I’ll need later. It is a very effective tool for a journalist. But here I was, with all the information I had been storing for more than 5 years, all not available.

But I’m working on that, and soon I’ll have all my info available, again. My life has been reset, and I’m ready to roll.

SOMETHING’S ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF UGANDAN FOOTBALL

this story first run in the New Vision of Friday April 16th, 2021

Like we say in Uganda, the person that bewitched Uganda football must be smoking some really big pipes. Just when you thought the sport that used to be described as being played by ‘potato growers’ was finally attaining some respectability, someone in there goes ahead to pour chicken droppings all over it.

This time it was the erstwhile chairman of FUFA, and newly elected MP, Moses Magogo. Or maybe we really should not be surprised, who else could it be? Fresh off a suspension by FIFA for dubious financial dealings (he made a deal, otherwise he would probably be in an American prison), and just when we celebrated that Parliament had got him, and soccer could finally move ahead, he declared that no, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Moses Magogo, FUFA President and MP-elct

In a video clip that went viral and left no doubt in anyone’s mind what the 8-year head of Uganda’s football really thought of you all,  he declared that he would still stand for the FUFA Presidency.  His reason for doing so? That the national soccer team, the Cranes, had played ‘chicken droppings’ football in the just concluded CAF qualifiers. Never worry that it was on his watch that they did so.

It might not have been that clip to blame, might have been other issues were at play, but it was probably no coincidence that Uganda’s beloved and much decorated captain, Denis Onyango, resigned from the national team.

There have been many players that have shined for the national soccer team, but Onyango will stand among the best. He has diligently and most humbly served his nation, something you cannot say about the administrators of Ugandan football.

Onyango’s resignation came on the heels of another much capped player, Hassan Wasswa. Unlike Onyango, whose resignation letter was polite and humble to a fault, Wasswa put the blame squarely on Magogo and the government.

“This is our government, they have promised us many things and they lie a lot,” Wasswa was quoted as saying. “Magogo came out and told people they played s***ty football, but he is the very person who appointed the technical team that summoned the players who played s***ty football.”

Football has had a bad reputation for almost as long as anyone can remember, which is not such a long time ago, actually. But it really got bad under Sepp Blatter, who was President of FIFA from 1998 to 2015. His reign is a case study in corruption and financial mismanagement, and he should really be in prison but he got away with it, only banned from all matters football for a total of 12 years.

Blatter turned FIFA into a personal realm, and it got so influential he even threatened sovereign nations. A threat to ban a country from international soccer soon brought any attempt to fight corruption in football to a dead end. And so his cronies thrived.

All FUFA elections held in the recent past have been acrimonious, because of all the money that FIFA sends down, and looks the other way as local officials squander it. Stories are legend of FUFA receiving money from FIFA and officials withdrawing almost all of it within a few hours of it’s being wired. Nobody asked for accountability, least of Blatter, as long as said officials would kowtow to him.

Evidence adduced in court during the American trials of FIFA officials showed that at any FIFA meeting, delegates would find as much $50,000 stuffed under their pillows. This money was never accounted for by anybody in FUFA, whose officials were lucky not to be caught up in the American trials, being considered ‘small fish’.

From Semanobe to Sebana Kizito to Twaha Kakaire to Dennis Obua, Lawrence Mulindwa and now Magogo, FUFA has been just a cash cow. To make it a really fat cow, FUFA gets the lions of share of the total annual sports budget. In the year 2019/2021, FUFA got sh10bn of the sh26bn national sports budget, and NCS and the rest of the sports disciplines shared he rest. And get this, FUFA’s accounts have never been looked at by an independent auditor.

Who wouldn’t love such ‘free money’? No wonder Magogo has declared that he will stand again for the position of FUFA President, in spite of just being elected as a Member of Parliament. Ugandan MPs are the highest paid public servants in the country, so it is understandable that people are flabbergasted by Magogo’s ‘greed’, in getting all that money from Parliament, and then wanting the FUFA money, too.

For the record, soccer is nowhere near the top when it comes to listing Uganda’s most successful sports teams. The most the soccer Cranes have done is win the regional CECAFA Cup a few times, which some rate as a ‘local’ competition, nothing to write home about.

In contrast, the She Cranes (the national netball team), has been to the Netball World Cup thrice (1979, 2015, 2019), have won the Africa Netball several times, and are the highest ranked country in Africa after South Africa.

The men’s Rugby Cranes have been Africa champions, and the women’s rugby team has been to the Rugby World Cup. Ugandan athletes routinely win competitions all over the world and have set several world records.

Boxers, cricket players, even swimmers have all performed well on the international scene, so what is it about Ugandan football? When Magogo wants to be President again, even after abusing in vulgar language the lads that give it their all, you know the stakes are very high. Like Wasswa said, there is a football mafia in control, and they don’t want to let go.

To paraphrase the great bard in his play Hamlet (Act-I, Scene-IV), ‘…there is something rotten in the state of Ugandan football’. And like in that play, hopefully it will probably all end in tragedy.

UGANDA FILM AWARDS – INSULT OR A HELPING HAND?

this article first run in the New Vision of Friday April 9th, 2021

The 2021 Uganda Film Festival Awards were held the first week of March, and winners in various categories were announced. The awards event marked the end of the annual festival, which has been held since 2014.

On the surface, and on first instance, this is a welcome thing that the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), which organises the festival, is doing. With all the controversies and recriminations that come with awards, at the end of the day they still serve a very good purpose.

Winners at the 2021 Uganda Film Festival, National Theatre

Awards, especially in the entertainment industry, encourage both quality and quantity. Recognition builds both confidence amongst the winners and nominees, and also provides for competition within the industry, which can only be a good thing. The PAM Awards, for all the controversies that came with them, were a major vehicle in the growth of the Ugandan music industry.  And so the UCC must be applauded for all the effort it has put into the Uganda Film Festival.

But as a necessity, and considering natural justice, awards should be given out by an independent body, for obvious reasons. If this is not possible, a body made up of the industry peers would be the most suitable. The Oscars are given out by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Grammys by The Recording Academy. Both of those bodies are made up of members of the respective industries, although their composition has come under scrutiny of recent.

The UCC, on the other hand, is not only not a player in the industry, it is actually its regulator. Apart from the film festival week when it aims ‘to stimulate the film industry so as to enable it achieve its full potential as a source of employment, revenue creation, and preserve culture through local content’, the UCC spends most of the year issuing all kinds of directives that serves to limit the industry’s creativity.

For example, the UCC requires that artists submit their creations for prior review before issuing a permit allowing such creations to be either exhibited or performed in public. And who determines the grounds on which the UCC shall issue a permit? The UCC, of course. Judge, jury and executioner, so off with your head.

In other words, if a musician wants to record a song, they have to submit it for review by the UCC. You want to make a film? The UCC wants to know what’s in it before you do so. You want to make a painting? Or write an article to be published, or a blog? The UCC wants to see it first, or you won’t get a permit that allows you to be an artist in this country.

Furthermore, the UCC will not allow a musician to stage a performance (or even advertise a show) unless it gives a permit for it. Which makes it very likely that if someone at UCC does not like your face, or your music, forget about performing in this country. If you are a comedian and your jokes are about the UCC and what goes on behind its stuffy doors; or how funny they get while trying to look all officious and pompous, just forget about it.

Basically what this all means is that the UCC declared that it has the power to censor anything it does not like, and stop any artist from working. Of course this is of dubious constitutionality, and hopefully it is being challenged in our courts of law.

So this begs the question, is it right for the Big Bother of the entertainment industry to be the one that determines and awards excellence? Isn’t it really an insult that the people who have the power to stop artists from working now organise an event to celebrate them? Reminded me of the films made by Nazi Germany showing Jews seemingly happy and satisfied under Nazi rule; no prizes for guessing where those Jewish actors ended up. And these film makers, how do you eat and drink with your abuser?

If there’s any hope for this country, the UCC should do the right thing and help organise an independent body to organise and give out these awards. The UCC has no business organising the Uganda Film Festival, which was after all set up as an ego trip kind of thing for the former Executive Director, who wanted to lord it over the very people he was oppressing.

The UCC was set up by politicians, and we all know the very thin skin that particular species of humans have for being criticised. So don’t hold your breath hoping they will change anytime soon.

But there is a glimmer of hope for the creative people in this country, once the new parliament is sworn in. There are quite a number of artists that have been elected, and their first order of business should be to form an entertainment caucus. After that they should try and amend that pesky UCC Act of 2013.

NOT IN BRIEF: This year’s awards were not broadcast live, but updates were available on Facebook. Reminder that Facebook is still banned in this country, as per instructions from the UCC. Go figure!