Veteran Journalist Shaka Ssali. PHOTO / COURTESY
Shaka Ssali’s star nearly dimmed when he accepted to moderate Uganda’s presidential debate in February 2016. At the height of the General Elections in Uganda, where President Yoweri Museveni faced seven others, including his former close allies, Dr Kizza Besigye and Amama Mbabazi, Ssali’s critics argued he had shied he had not fired the ‘right’ questions at the veteran leader.
But it was also an opportunity for him and his fans to celebrate another feather in the hat:
“We are honored that Shaka Ssali was invited to be a moderator for Uganda’s presidential debate ahead of the country’s national elections,” Sonya Laurence Green, one of the senior editors at Voice of America, said then.
Ahead of that showdown, there had been issues before he could take up the role, for which he said hours before the debate, that he had decided to pull out.
President Museveni, who had previously described the debate as high-school talk and skipped the first round in January 2016, was convinced to attend, however. That is if Ssali was not among the moderators, and if he were to be, that he does not direct any question to the president.
The stage was then set for the much hyped debate, organised by the Elders’ Forum under the leadership of Uganda’s former principal Judge Justice James Ogoola. Ssali was not happy.
“I found myself in a box. I tried to get out, but there was not much opportunity,” he said of the debate moderated together with Mr Joel Kibazo and Dr Suzie Muwanga. “I was told the president was uncomfortable with me asking questions,” he added.
Speaking to a journalist two months after the debate, Ssali said he was convinced by Justice James Ogoola to take part, urging him to look at the bigger picture of Uganda’s growing democracy.
Acclaimed television personality Shaka Ssali died on March 27, 2025 at the age of 71.
The stakes in the debate were high, and Museveni and Besigye would be meeting in the same room, talking to the same audience, for the first time since the fallout in 1999, when Besigye penned a dossier that pointed at Museveni as drifting off track in his leadership.
Mr Ssali's crime had been hosting Dr Kizza Besigye in 2001 after he had escaped to exile, following the heated presidential election campaign in which Museveni got the toughest challenger in his former bush war comrade and personal doctor. Mr Ssali introduced Besigye’s his cause to the world, an act that could not have gone well with the Kampala establishment, even 16 years later.
He had been meant to moderate with Peter Kibazo, but Suzie Muwanga was brought in to ‘neutralise’ him during the debate.
It remains an episode that has divided Ugandans since.
Mr Shaka Ssali died on Thursday afternoon in the US, where he has been living after retiring from TV work four years ago. His family says he recently underwent surgery following months of battling an ailment.
Mwanahabari mkongwe wa Uganda, Shaka Ssali enzi za uhai wake. Picha na Mtandao
His TV career, at the Voice of America spanned two decades, although he had been a journalist longer. He was aged 71. His Straight-Talk Africa show had permanent fans, and his famous slogan of keeping Africa’s hope alive was loved too. Except when he touched Ugandan politics.
In February 2018, Mr Ssali hosted another sworn enemy of President Museveni, musician-turned politician Robert Kyagulanyi (known as Bobi Wine), who had just been elected Member of Parliament for Kyadondo East near Kampala. Three years later, he challenged Museveni in the elections and has remained a thorn in Museveni’s leadership fresh.
Shaka Ssali, real first name Mushakamba, but later shortened to Shaka, admired the legendary Zulu leader Shaka Zulu. He was born in Kabale, southwestern Uganda, about 400km from Kampala city, and went to primary school in the same village.
Learned Shaka
In Uganda, he dropped out of secondary school in the 1960s and ended up in the Uganda Army as a paratrooper, before fleeing from Uganda’s former president Idi Amin’s regime in 1976.
Later, he continued his education. He died a holder of a doctorate in cross-cultural communication from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Then man who always started his show with “I’m profoundly honoured and exceedingly humbled”, retired from the Voice of America in May 2021 after 29 years, 20 of them as the founder, host and later managing editor of the Straight Talk Africa.
Mr Ssali, had become a US citizen as well and loved calling himself the Kabale kid. He was a former Ford Foundation Fellow and a recipient of several awards, including a United Nations Peacekeeping Special Achievement Award in International Journalism and VOA’s Best Journalist Award.
Julius Mucunguzi, Uganda’s Electoral Commission spokesperson, said he was immensely inspired by Ssali. “When, one day, he came to speak to our journalism class at Makerere University in 1997 and told us to always keep hope alive, he was truly speaking from experience and we believed him when he told us his journey – a school dropout that ended up attaining a PhD and working at one of the leading global broadcasters in the world, the VOA,” Mucunguzi wrote on Friday.
“Thank you, Shaka Ssali, for inspiring many of us to always keep hope alive. You allowed me to appear on your inaugural Straight Talk Africa in August 2000, opening so many doors of opportunities that have impacted me and many others in many ways.”
In 2021, the Ugandan Diaspora community in Canada picked him as their 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, joining UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima and Kwatsi Alibaruho, the black NASA Flight director, on the list of Ugandans who are shining internationally.
Former Uganda’s Prime Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda described the passing of his childhood friend as shocking. “Shaka was a childhood friend among other youth in Kabale. As young men, we would work in the gardens, attend meetings, read newspapers, and discuss political issues,” he said.
Rooted in culture
Uganda’s deputy speaker of Parliament, Mr Thomas Tayebwa, says Mr Shaka Ssali, despite having lived in the US for many years, remained rooted in his Kigezi and African culture. “He is one of the finest human exports this country has ever had. My condolences to his family, the Banyakigezi community, the country, and Africans at large,” he said.
Mr Alan Kasujja, lead presenter at BBC News says he never got chance to meet Ssali, but he would have loved to thank him for inspiring him to look beyond his country Uganda, Africa.
Mr Ssali has been described as the man with a great inspiration to so many Africans, representing the best of Africa and becoming an African brand that was original, with no borrowed accents, always confident in his skin, and always willing to tell the African story.
Mr Ssali is survived by a son, whom he fondly called Astronaut. His extended family including sisters and other relatives live in Mwanjari, Kabale, in Uganda. Friends, relatives, neighbours, and former colleagues in Washington DC said they were arranging his final send-off.
There was no information, of where and when he will be buried.
