TV presenter Mildred Tuhaise talks enduring witchcraft, intrigue at work

• Four-point summary Mildred Tuhaise says she faced sabotage and workplace intrigue during her media career. 

• She claimed some bosses questioned her pregnancies and placed her under unfair scrutiny. 

• The presenter also alleged she experienced witchcraft attacks while working in media. 

Mildred Tuhaise, one of Uganda’s regular figures on television, recently spilled her guts about the dark happenings behind the walls at some of the top media houses where she has spent nearly two decades honing her career in journalism. 

The Veteran television presenter Mildred spoke of what she described as years of workplace sabotage, malice and even alleged witchcraft during her long tenure in Uganda’s media industry.

Speaking in an interview with Diaspora Connect, the NBS Television presenter shared personal experiences from her journey, revealing that the newsroom environment for female journalists can sometimes be hostile and deeply patriarchal.

Tuhaise narrated that when she joined NBS Television, she was replacing a presenter who had gone on maternity leave and was immediately questioned about her own pregnancy plans during the interview process. 

“They asked whether I planned to get pregnant as well and I had to tell them my pregnancy plans,” she said.

During her second pregnancy, a female supervisor questioned why she had become pregnant at that particular time.

“I was flabbergasted when a female boss asked me, “What have you done? Why did you have to get pregnant at this time?”

The presenter also spoke about professional intrigues she says she encountered during her career. For years, she said she has been targeted by haters, especially those that felt threatened by her hard work

“One time a boss wrote a report and tagged every company executive, telling lies about me. They even placed me on performance improvement,” she said.

Many colleagues, she said, were shocked by the allegations made against her. She described malice as one of the biggest challenges she has faced in the media industry.

Tuhaise further made startling claims that she was targeted through witchcraft while working in the media. 

“This is the space where I first encountered witchcraft,” she said.

She narrated how one of her legs once became swollen under mysterious circumstances, leaving her with a scar. 

Around that time, she said she had overheard a colleague saying they wished she would lose her voice for good. 

She also recalled seeing in dreams, being forced to follow demonic paths at her work place.

When her leg swelling intensified, she said, she sought spiritual healing 

“My husband was the one that alerted me that it was witchcraft. I reached out to a woman in the village who was good with traditional medicine. She said there was a person at work that was doing this.”

She linked the experiences to spiritual attacks and said she mainly relied on prayer and traditional remedies to recover. 

It should be noted however, that while Ettalo is considered especially in Buganda as a form of witchcraft, medical experts advise that it is an ordinary bacterial infection that affects mostly farmers who do not properly use farming protective gear. 

Dr Mike Katongole explains that the condition: 

“Ettalo is an infection of a bacteria called Clostridium perfringens. It resides in the soils in the villages in areas below where oxygen can reach. So our farmers who farm without gumboots dig up this soil which gets on the feet that already have cuts and that is how they get infected.”

Tuhaise has spent nearly two decades in Uganda’s television industry, working with stations including WBS TV, Top TV and now NBS Television.

She started her media career in the late 2000s after being recruited from the Generation Dancers group at Christian Life Church in Bwaise. 

Outside of television, she is also involved in agriculture, particularly seedling production, a side business she continues to pursue.