Mwenda, reading too much junk does not make one intelligent

A Post Card to a Fool

Many right thinking Ugandans will agree that Andrew Mwenda’s condescending and patronising attitude towards Ugandans should end, henceforth.

Mr. Mwenda must not be left to his own vices; else his intoxicating self-deception will most likely inflict upon him an irreparable damage, and also may corrupt the minds of the gullible.  

For years, we have allowed Mwenda to lurk in his foolishness unchallenged. That free public space Mwenda enjoys, accustomed the person of Mwenda to his noises.  The Mwenda we have now is close to a fraudster or a desperado- lunatic.

Not that anyone is bothered with Mwenda's slurs and condescension towards the opposition. What is more pressing is that Mwenda needs an urgent rescuing from himself, from his delirium to re-orienting to Uganda's common man realities. We would hope that if Mwenda becomes acquainted with such common  truths, he may shut the dink up!

Interestingly, intelligent people are measured, sensitive, self-assured, toned-in, and never starved of public attention to announce themselves like Mwenda. Their deeds and dispositions speak aloud.  

Intelligentsia do not permit shouting when making a point in a civil conversation, nor do they hide in cooked-up statistics to score cheap points. Intelligent people stand out as genuinely interested in public discourses – and they appear gathered and intelligent from the onset.

In that light, Mwenda appears as an intellectual fraud, imbued simply with traits of intellectual obesity - someone over fed on a monotone of fake news, textbooks, and statehouse revisions. This "super-intelligence" posturing without common sense affirms that reading too much does not translate into intelligence.

In reality, Mr.Tamale Mirundi - his humanly limitations notwithstanding - deserves larger public space that Mwenda. Personally, I would rather suffer listening to Nadduli or Kasirye Ggwanga than tolerate Mwenda’s condescension and utter posturing that lacks depth, character, and style.

 Uganda is not short of intelligentsia, who, when given the right space and time, would expose Mwenda’s mediocrity, consigning him to the ranks of carpetbaggers or head boy of court jesters.  

Ultimately, insulting the intelligence of the entire nation is more than we should permit. People who read books written in western capitals do not give up their homegrown mannerism and wisdom. No matter how read one is, if you cannot relate that knowledge with wisdom and common sense, then you become a mere effigy - symbol of extant enlightenment, an alien obscurantist. It leaves you erudite but unrefined, aloof and foolish all the way.

When colonialists came to Africa, they rode on the backs of Christian missionaries to lay claim to vast lands of Africa; upon their capture of territories, these colonialists abused and exploited Africans in all manners possible. When Museveni came to power, he reproduced the same colonial modes of operations complete with colonial laws and a steady rise of the born-again Christian.

The sum effect of these religious organizations served to soften the cruelty of the repressive regimes.

However, the use of rogue scholars enabled stereotyping of Africans that lessened their human value as uncivilized, savages, unbaptized etc, in light of European civilization at the time. That kind of rogue intellectualism gave relevance, and justified colonial rule. In modern parlance, Mwenda is the equivalent of those rogue colonial scholars. His paid mission is to shape the structures that would regenerate relevance, and justify Museveni’s life presidency project.

However, quasi-professional obscurantist like Mwenda aggravates the dichotomy that already exists between a Uganda molded in the realms of “NRM truths” or untruths, and that organic truth, which emerges out of every day struggles of the common man.

The NRM’s duplicitous narratives of having restored peace in Uganda, championed democracy, restored economy stability leading to a middle income status; that corruption is good for the economy, and so forth, falls flat on its face when carefully scrutinized from the common man's standpoint -hogwash! The NRM’s truth exists in the shadows of every day truth of trials and tribulation of profoundly exploited, disempowered, and impoverished Ugandans.

When Mwenda tries to stupefy the nation, that a continued Museveni dictatorship is enviable and inevitable after three decades, you frown given their agenda to grab our land. Certainly, reading too much does not equate to being intelligent, does it?

 The deception that power belongs to Ugandans, and that these disempowered people can use their power as they so wish, appeals mainly to deluded minds. How would one console themselves with such nuisances, given the overly militarised, policed, and constrained socio-political spaces?

In sum, the conservatives who have ignored Mwenda, have done him a disservice. Mwenda needs constant reminding that his voice has reached a saturation point far beyond a threshold. No one takes him seriously anymore - not even himself.  Mwenda also exemplifies a fact that reading too much anecdotal materials does not make anyone intelligent. Instead, it stupefies. Mwenda is such a captive, and a man deeply ensconced in a vicious midlife crisis. Let Mwenda deal with his personal inadequacies without projecting it on others – let him suffer alone with his stupefying intellectual obesity.

The End.