Shortage of gossip as authorities shut down social media, money transfer in Uganda again

By Annet Kasiima | 7yrs ago | 3 min read

We have this monster called UCC in Kampala. I think it means Uganda Communication Curtailer, but they claim it means Uganda Communication Commission. It is manned by a bunch of heartless Engineers who seem to derive enormous pleasure in switching off people’s communications abruptly.

Most recently, we received text messages on our phones from the service providers stating thus: Dear customer, following a directive from UCC, all social media have been blocked.

Well, we could only get the message by telephone sms because the social media which most people are on had been blocked, simple. And the message came when the blockage had outlived its purpose – keeping social media users in blackout until the presidential swearing in had been completed.

Then several hours later, another message came saying: Dear customer, all social media have now been restored. The blockage had lasted about five days, from the 10th of May to the 14th. You have no idea how the blockage affected flow of gossip around here. An earlier blockage had taken place mid February to enable the general elections take place in blockage.

It is a tradition that Ugandans have to get used to whenever general elections are held. In earlier years, the UCC would block internet services from organisations that were trying to tally elections results. This year the tradition internet services were not such a target because a stern warning had been issued by the government spokesman to any foreign organisations that such tally centres do not enjoy diplomatic immunity, therefore they can be stormed by police anytime.

However, the most drastic blockage the communication curtailers did during this year’s election was curtailing mobile money services. Rumours had it that the blockage was done because UCC had to stop opposition candidates from sending allowances to their polling agents.

oppressive regimes

The official reason for the blockage was given as “security reasons”. Presumably UCC feared that some terrorists were going to send money to their suicide bombers to disrupt the polling. So thanks to UCC, we had no terrorists blowing themselves up at village polling stations.

Thank God Uganda is not a litigious society. Had it been in Kenya, I don’t know how many legal suits would be chocking the courts from people saying that their patient whom they had wanted to send money for treatment had died. Others would say the treatment had delayed and thus become more expensive. The phone companies would have just closed down. Now the service providers have to use traditional sms to reach all customers, which is okay and logical as the official contractual channel between them and their customers. But what will happen when UCC decides to cut off the sms services? Oh, there are the voice services.

They will send voice messages to all customer so that your phone rings and when you pick it, a sexy voice, or for better effect a commanding militaristic voice tells you that social media has been blocked. But what if the opposition candidates, sorry the terrorists start sending voice messages? I guess the UCC will just suspend all telephone services for the required number of days. Which is not a bad thing. Imagine a lovely, peaceful week without phones calls, especially from your creditors!

Meanwhile, Kenyans should not laugh and pity Ugandans that much. I say this because a little bird has whispered to me that the Kenyan authorities are planning to create an Internet gateway by mid next year — similar to what oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia, China and others operate— where Internet traffic across the country will have a single choke point that will make it possible to turn off internet services across the country at the flick of a switch.