SABIITI MUWANGA was recently reelected as the Uganda Sports Press Association (Uspa) president for the next two years. He told Elly Kyeyune how he plans to bring the journalists’ body back to order after a turbulent campaign that exposed deep cracks in the association.

What is your resolution for the next two years in office?

I want to make Uspa a fully-fledged national association or complete that process because I had already begun that by expanding the association beyond Kampala and its suburbs.  So, by the end of two years, Uspa should have tentacles nationwide. I started with Bunyoro and the Eastern part.

What are the biggest challenges you want to overcome in the next two years?

Uspa badly needs a stable website. The website can raise money for the association as our sponsors will be the first advertisers. It had started but it was frustrated somehow.

I am also looking at a united Uspa. I think we can do better than tear ourselves apart. We need also to go back to professionalism. I believe we are short of professionalism; maybe  it’s lack of formal journalism training. I also intend to attract as many sports journalists as I can because the association can only survive with a strong membership and institutions.

Sabitti Muwanga

But Uspa office at Namboole is like a paper tiger…

It is actually functioning though not fully-operational. Uspa leadership is voluntary and to have it operational on a day-to-day basis, it would need someone to be there fulltime. Those are costs which we don’t have now.

The buildup to the November 26 Uspa elections was uncharacteristically-divisive. Have you tried to reach out to disgruntled members?

I and my new team are looking into how to approach the discontented and address their issues.  Most of the things they raised are constitutional and none was administrative or performance-based.

For instance, they questioned why we failed to hold the polls in October. So, my [would-be] opponent [Leon] Ssenyange did very bad to withdraw at the last minute because the move put Uspa into disrepute because it is the only credible journalists’ association. Trivial issues should not put Uspa in bad light.

I once invited Ssenyange to be the vice president but he turned down the offer. I am sorry to say, but I really don’t know what his motives are. Uspa is a family but I don’t know why he thinks he can do it alone. But any way, Uspa has many issues to deal with other than that.

Some members are calling for a probe committee to address some issues regarding the running of Uspa and financial operations, would you welcome it?

When you call for a probe committee, it means there is something that hasn’t been going on well. So, what has not been going on well?  The problem is, some people do want to think that Uspa is in state of hopelessness. 

I would welcome the probe if there was a clear case of financial management, failure to fulfill pledges or even missing out on some programs. Instead, we are expanding the association and widening the scope of its visibility.

Some of your critics say you sold out to Fufa…

You see, many people joined Uspa to watch football matches, especially international games. Right now, there are many media houses and every member would wish to watch those games. Now, Fufa called me to a roundtable to discuss those issues and we agreed on the process of accessing international games. However, the Uspa card remains functional but some people do misinterpret information.

There is also the issue of amending the constitution, what is your take?

The executive realized the need for changes in January this year. So, we constituted a committee to amend the constitution. Actually, every Uspa member was given a soft copy of the constitution and we wanted them to see where there is a need for amendments.

But the biggest problem with our members, they are journalists but they don’t want to read. Unfortunately, we got like three people responding and due to that poor feedback, the process aborted. But anyway, those are the issues I want to tackle.

Ssenyange’s splinter group recently held awards to recognize outstanding sports scribes yet Uspa has failed to hold their journalist awards. Isn’t this a huge challenge?

First of all, I have no problem with their awards if they were done in good faith to appreciate outstanding work. When I came into office, reviving the awards was one of the top targets. But, we can only do so depending on sponsors because annual membership subscription of Shs 35,000 is not enough to do that function.

But we already put that on tables of potential sponsors and are only waiting for their response. By the way, awards are okay but training our members is a bigger priority and it is something I’m really proud of because not every Uspa member went through journalism training.