EULOGY: Tamale Mirundi was a patriot

COMMENT | URN | The country is reeling with the death of renowned media practitioner and former presidential press secretary, Joseph Tamale Mirundi who passed on yesterday (August 14) at Kisubi Hospital.

Mirundi, aged 60 , has currently been holding the portfolio of Senior Presidential Advisor on Media and pubic relations.  Son to Molly Namatovu and Yowana Mirundi of Matale Kalagala, Rakai District, Mirundi leaves a mixed legacy with some thinking he was a reckless and fearless commentator while others see a thoughtful and independent commentator.

He has been renowned for his no-holds-barred attack on excesses in government despite being part of the establishment.

The journalist who reportedly made his way from a humble beginning as a school drop-out was reportedly brought to Kampala by a brother – Ssali who was working with the then Munno Publications in the early 1980s.

Mirundi, according to accounts took on newspaper vending, a fit playing assist to his brother Ssali’s role but took keen interest in writing especially letters to the editor.

Later he took on reporting about events and proved a worthwhile journalist. He was never to look back as the paper sponsored him for short term trainings to horn his skill.

Soon he became a colossus at reporting, rising to chief reporter at the paper.  He was later to become the paper’s editor, but broke ranks with his employers in the early 1990s as some board members tried to force him to publish what he was opposed to on ethical grounds.

Mirundi in the mid-1990s started his own company, Lipoota Publication that published Lippota in Luganda and The Report in English.  The later was more short lived than Lipoota though both publications did not much flourish owing to the economic terrain faced by the media them.  The situation could possibly have forced him to compromise here and there for the enterprise to survive.

Later he founded The Voice, which former minister Sam Kuteesa heavily funded for political capital but that also did not live long and collapsed.

He is also remembered for his struggles to maintain a free media as government moved to regulate the industry by bringing the Press and Media Statute that required journalists to have a minimum of a diploma for reporters and a degree for editors.

In the panic that engulfed media practitioners, journalists moved to claim self-regulation, which failed.  Those struggles saw the media practitioners divided between the elite (as Makerere University opened to study of Mass Communication and Journalism).

The “Abataasoma (uneducated)” who were dominant by numbers belonged to the Uganda Journalists Association (UJA) as the elite had something like Uganda News Paper Editors and Proprietors Association (UNEPA).

To the latter group belonged the top honchos of the then nascent Monitor Publications.

Mirundi belonged to the former of which he was President at one time.

Mirundi was to later (2003) go back to school scooping a degree from Makerere University before becoming press secretary to president Yoweri Museveni who is said have bankrolled his university studies.

A close relationship had developed through the numerous presidential press conferences that Mirundi attended.

At one of those press conferences, MIrundi was to beat the President at a bet by the latter that the incessant Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander Joseph Kony and his belligerents who were fighting government in northern Uganda would soon be history. The deceased won his million and went away smiling.

In 2015 he relieved of his PPS duties in what he describes as an intrigue filled process that bordered on blackmail, ethnic sectarianism and out right abuse from some presidential office colleagues. None-the-less he remained a self-proclaimed admirer of Museveni, baffling many as he claimed loath for the system the President headed.

Even then, remained vocal in his social media and print publications against excesses of power in Uganda, always doing it in a dramatic, comical and sometimes abusive style.

Like him or hate him, Mirundi had a hero and patriot in him.  Rest in peace Mirundi.