This paper—composed to honor the journal Africa’s long commitment to publishing African-language material—asks how technological infrastructures shape the conduct of political discourse. The Ganda-language press of the 1950s and early 1960s was vitally engaged with the political affairs of the day. Newspaper editors moved in and out of the storyline, promoting their publications even as they also organized political parties, convened rallies, and composed petitions. For the government of Milton Obote—which took power in 1962—the Ganda newspaper industry was a menacing presence in public life. Populated with seditious, scurrilous, and objectionable material, the rambunctious newspaper business threatened government technocrats’ control over politics. That is why, in the later 1960s, the Obote government urgently promoted radio broadcasting. Over the course of years Uganda—a landlocked, poorly-resourced country—was at the forefront of radio broadcasting in Africa. The campaigners of the Ganda newspaper industry could find no voice on the airwaves. Radio broadcasting confined vernacular-language political discourse within a gilded holding cell: it offered space to broadcasters who spoke about morality, culture, and other safely depoliticized things.
That is how the anti-politics machine worked in post-colonial Uganda (as in other African countries). Working to deprive ethnic campaigners of their audience, technocrats lifted things to a different plane. Communicative technologies with a wide gate gave way to more authoritative, much narrower media. In turn, culture itself was redefined—not as a fulcrum for argument, but as a foundational source of order.