A time of rebirth
BY DR FLORENCE BRISSET
On 14th June 2023 Father Joseph Bragotti passed away at the age of 80. A Comboni priest born in Italy during World War II and who emigrated to the US in the early 1960s, Father Bragotti was the editor of Leadership between 1978 and 1983 – a particularly dramatic period in the history of Uganda, marked by the sudden end of a brutal dictatorship and the beginning of bloody civil war. Squeezed in between
was what is commonly known as the UNLF period (Uganda National Liberation Front, from April 1979 to December 1980). This was a time of fear and hardship but also hope and the flourishing of political imagination, when Ugandans discussed the ways in which to rebuild their country.
Leadership was one of the vibrant voices in this national conversation. Operating a magazine in the late 1970s was an extremely difficult task;
journalists were under tremendous political pressure and everything was lacking: access to a printing press, ink, paper, an infrastructure
to distribute copies. However, these were years of rebirth and even growth for the magazine: in 1979, 20 000 copies were printed monthly more than now! In August 1978, Father Bragotti had been asked to take over the magazine. This was not his first time in Uganda: he had been a missionary in Acoli between 1967 and 1972 When he came back in 1978, he found Leadership in a dire state.
Bragotti imagined a new Leadership, along the lines of the fashionable US magazines of that time, with a lot of photographs, while relying on the lively Ugandan tradition of sending letters to the editor. The help of foreign and local Catholic organisations was paramount in this rebirth. Paper came from an Austrian NGO. Most of the articles were written by Priests, especially from Ggaba National Seminary, on a voluntary basis.
A lot of the people who gave time and energy to Leadership were women. The Daughters of St Paul were the backbone of the magazine: they dealt with the red tape and made sure it circulated across the territory, thanks to their bookshop and the network of parishes. Thanks
to all this, Leadership did not need to worry about advertisement, or about the number of copies, which were sold.
Father Bragotti had connections with foreign journalists and diplomats who provided support. Being a priest also helped: “We were stopped a number of times by soldiers and we always got out of it… We always wore our clericals… I speak Acoli and so I would do the talking.” After the fall of Amin, notions such as “democracy”, “citizenship”, and “liberation” were at the center of discussions in Uganda.
Leadership very much engaged in these debates: the Church saw this period as a time of opportunity.
Particularly, the magazine tried to demonstrate how freedom was actually a fundamentally Christian value. The chronological coincidence between the “temporal” liberation by the Tanzanian army and Easter helped to support this point. The Easter special issue of 1980 (n°220) featured an editorial that aimed to encourage to “live correctly this season which is offered to us so that we may prepare for the true liberation”. The magazine advocated for a deeper and more genuine liberation: a spiritual liberation, that would not only free men from political oppression but also from sin.
According to this philosophy, in order to be truly liberated, people and the Nation needed “rehabilitation”.
However, not the material, superficial “rehabilitation” promoted by the Commonwealth experts, that was focused on reconstructing the economy and the institutions… Following the initiative of the Bishops of Uganda, Leadership put forward an alternative definition of “moral rehabilitation”.
This conception of rehabilitation relied on a singular interpretation of Amin’s regime as the result of the collective responsibility of each and every Ugandan, of men’s moral corruption. “Aminism”, defined as a degraded state of mind, was here before Amin. It made Amin possible and was the real source of oppression.
Hence, the reason why each and every Ugandan should engage in a critical process of self-examination. In issue n°220, it was explained that: “Mora rehabilitation means exactly this: let us recognise what is rotten within ourselves, accept the blame for our choices, vow ever to go back to them again: No Ugandan can exempt himself from this painful task”.
Action was not limited to the magazine itself. Leadership was one of the main actors of a “moral rehabilitation campaign” that relied on the production and distribution of tens of thousands of leaflets and posters. Ugandans used this material in their own endeavours of rebuilding their community.
The leaflets tackled topics such as “freedom”, “reconciliation”, “dignity”, “responsibility”, “family life” etc. They were inserted in Leadership and distributed across the country. They included practical exercises of self-critique that were due to be undertaken individually or collectively. Schools were central in this campaign. This massive moral and spiritual drive was undertaken by both religious leaders and common citizens. They engaged in a process of self-reflection about what they had done in the past and what they ought to do in the present, to enhance their future and the future of their nation. Hopefully one can draw inspiration in that story.
energy to Leadership were women.
The Daughters of St Paul were the backbone of the magazine: they dealt with the red tape and made sure it circulated across the territory, thanks to their bookshop and the network of parishes. Thanks to all this, Leadership did not need to
worry about advertisement, or about the number of copies, which were sold.Father Bragotti had connections with foreign journalists and diplomats who provided support. Being a priest also helped: “We were stopped a number oftimes by soldiers and we always got out of
it… We always wore our clericals… I speak Acoli and so I would do the talking.” After thefall of Amin, notions such as “democracy”,
This research is part of a collaborative project between the Universities of Makerere, Gulu, Mountain of the Moon, Paris 1 and Durham. More information on: https://uganda1979.hypotheses.org Please, get in touch if you want to share about this period: Florence.Brisset-Foucault@univ-paris1.fr
Dr Florence Brisset-Foucault
IMAF, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Affiliated to the Department of History, Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Makerere University
