Outgoing Editor, Jean Marie Nsambu

THREE years ago when I came to the Leadership Magazine as editor, who also served as vice director, I may not necessarily have placed importance to the ‘employee tenure’ at the helm of this oldest media house in Uganda. What occupied my mind the most was how I, the first layman and second African in that position, was to fit the shoes of the preceding editors.

One month into settling in, and everything was left to me to steer on singly, the more than 50-year-old publication. This was when then Comboni missionary Carlos Rodriguez returned to his home country Spain.

Nothing would have prepared me for the task. Not the little experience I had helping out one of my writing mentors and former Leadership editor (late) Fr. Jack Raffaele Dellagiacoma, mccj; nor the journalism foundation my father, Hillary Nsambu had helped ground in me, as I began my writing experience with the New Vision government newspaper, back in the late 1980s.

Incoming Editor, Sr. Mary Lilly Driciru, MSMMC

Somehow I managed, however. Not with the encouragement and support of the Combonis themselves, particularly the Uganda provincial superiors and Leadership board chairmen in succession, Bishop Giuseppe Filippi and (currently), Fr. Sylvester Hategek’Imana! The management committee initially led by Frs. Ruffino Ezama, mccj, and later John Peter Alenyo, mccj, also supported me invaluably.

But now the time has come for me to move on to another calling. Yet the impressions I take with me of the magazine, remain enormous; not to mention, nostalgic and emotional.

I first knew of the magazine while in nursery, at the Mbuya Kindergarten [then run by the Comboni Sisters in my home parish], when its editors would commission taking of our photos, some of which would be published in Leadership, or its then colour posters inserted in the magazine. Later in my senior four vacation, i would get the opportunity to do some work of packaging of the magazines, for distribution and sale, at the time Fr. John Troy was editor.

In the years that followed, particularly after Fr. Dellagiacoma took over, I would contribute articles, with particular and exceptional guidance of this English-trained editor. And a year or two to his 70th birthday, when Dellagiacoma would repeatedly feel unsually exhausted and under a lot of pressure to beat deadlines for production, he invited me – an outsider – to work with the editorial team during the monthly editing moments, to get the magazine out promptly, without loading him too much.

Juggling pastoral work, overseeing the administration and production of the magazine must have weighed heavily on the Italian editor, who incidentally had been diagnosed with cancer. After taking a year or so away from Leadership [for other assignments in northern Uganda (1999)], during which time, a Ugandan Comboni, Deogratias Tulinnye served as editor, Dellagiacoma would bounce back at Leadership in 2001, only to be taken ill in 2006 and flown home to Italy, where he passed away in June 2007.

At the time, Spanish Rodriguez, whose transition from heading the magazine, at the end of 2007 saw me come in, had taken over from Raffaele, as editor. I consented to the arduous trust placed in me by the missionaries and the Church in general, with simply submitting my abilities to counsel and prayer.

In the pursuance of the sustenance of that trust, I encountered several challenges and may, myself, have been a challenge to my colleagues. Everything that I may have made to seem a challenge, however, was for the good intentions of the Leadership Magazine. In no way were any of my mistakes – as may be perceived by anyone – in utter pursuance of personal aggrandizement.

It was just because, to strive for less, for the magazine, would have been unworthy of the trust vested in me. I had a duty to dispense and did all in my humble means and wit, to see to its close-to-perfect execution. Thanks to you all that have appreciated the work and openly came out to tell me, or just made a helpful critique of my service. I will forever treasure your immense contribution to my successes in that position.

So, as I handle this, my last issue of the Leadership Magazine, I wish to invite continued support for the publication and in a special way, my successors – a Comboni priest expected soon in the country and Sr. Mary Lilly Driciru, a member of the Missionaries of Mary Mother of the Church. While the priest Fr. Sebhatleab Ayele Tesemma shall be managing director of the magazine. Sr. Driciru will handle particularly, the editorial tasks.

Leadership Magazine, for all I can state, remains the top Catholic publication in Uganda, circulating all over the country and in a number of other countries around the world. I proudly continue to associate myself with it, and indeed, look forward to continuing to contribute articles or otherwise, in support of its continuance, but only insofar as the new management may wish.