A few weeks ago on the BBS Talk Show Amaaso Ku Ggwanga, panelists Charles Rwomushana and Nakaseke MP Paul Lutamaguzi ended the show in a bitter exchange, during which Lutamaguzi charged Rwomushana with that rather dubious crime of thinking himself smarter than the rest. The reader is invited to listen to the exchange below.
The genesis of the quarrel between the two panelists was a discussion on the torture of the writer Kakwenza Rukirabashaija. The main thrust of Rwomushana’s argument was that while we are asking those with “hard power” (guns, instruments of torture, etc.) to act with restraint, we should also remember to restrain those who deploy “soft power” against them. He gave the example of Lutamaguzi who earlier appeared to celebrate, on air, the shooting to death of General Katumba’s daughter. This he said was a form of soft power. And that for Lutamaguzi to deploy such power without restraint and yet demand that Katumba, who has hard power at his disposal, be restrained is wrong. Rwomushana’s larger point was that society has lost its way, that we have all lost our sense of propriety. And that that is dangerous.
Lutamaguzi’s response was to accuse Rwomushana of being a shill for the government. The follow on and more interesting charge was that of “oloowoza otegeera nyo!” (“you think you are very smart”). While it is clear watching the exchange that Lutamaguzi was more keen on shutting down his fellow panelist than facing the core of his argument, it is worth thinking a little bit more about the epithet he used, its sadly common use in our society, and what implications that has for us as a people.
The essence of “oloowoza otegera nyo” is “you think you are cleverer/more informed/wiser than the rest of us!” It is often used as a form of insult. An epithet. Something to cause the other person to pause long enough and consider their display of ‘bad form’! Yet if we think about that ‘insult’ for more than a second, it is obvious that it is as vacuous as it is wordy! For starters, it should only be a crime to think of oneself more highly than one is! Should, say, a brain surgeon not think more highly of their domain knowledge than that of the patient who has come to consult them? More specifically, what if it is the case that Rwomushana’s capacity for incisive social and analysis exceeds that of Lutamaguzi? Should Rwomushana apologise for the bad manners of putting that on display?
How We Got here
I have some ideas as to the origins of this peculiar artifact of our society. That we are so easily put out of joint by displays of subject mastery. First I believe that those who have had at least one eye opened (by exposure, education, etc.) have had a long history of pointlessly showing off and denigrating the blind. Which leaves the latter with unkind feelings about them. During my time at a top secondary school, I recall a chairman of the school board who would from time to time come and address us. He often brought along some object that he said his son had made at his presumably better school. A clock one day, perhaps a stool the next. I suppose his point was that our school should be doing more to provide an all-round education. Just as his son’s school was doing. But surely it was his job to make that happen. And he never did. Instead he kept bragging to us about his son’s wonderful school. Which was truly tedious and irritating even for the young me. To this day I am instinctively turned off by his kind. The kind that hoards their privilege. It takes some effort to suppress my prejudices and actually listen to them. So I can understand why many of us hate our betters.
On the flipside, we have a class of leaders that seem totally stuck in what you might call “polemics mode”. Few leaders are as emblematic of that disease as Lutamaguzi. I don’t doubt that he has an honest heart, but he seems perennially unable to move past wailing and decrying the ills of the current government. I recall well the inscription on the grave of Karl Marx: “The philosophers have interpreted the world. The point however is to change it.”
a better path
Polemicists often misinterpret solutioner-seekers and those who implicitly try to move past the diagnosis as being insensitive or outrightly in cahoots with the devil.
I am sympathetic to Lutamaguzi, but I also feel that taken in totality rather than in bits, the charge against Rwomushana was fundamentally of no value. Rwomushana, like all decent intelligence officers, is not easy to appreciate if you like your interlocutors one dimensional. Decent intelligence types are rarely speak in simplified terms. They gather far too much information, so that where we mere mortals see one or two sides of an argument, they see ten or twenty. Where we see one agenda they see five. They are typically more aware of the complexity of society’s ills than the rest of us. What matters then in listening to them is to try and figure out whether the person is honest or not. And from listening to Rwomushana over the years, I get the sense that he is fundamentally honest. Unlike most of our public voices he never hides his humble origins. He never fails to point out the wrong that any side does. He may not trade as much in polemics as some would like, but that’s mostly because he seems to prefer expending his words on pressing for solutions, even as we may find them hard to accept. Witness his insistence that our biggest problem is spiritual. That we are a society steeped in sorcery. That we have sold our souls to the devil. And are then perplexed when we see so much murder, theft and destruction around us. Yet what is needed, in his view, is repentance. Okwenenya in Luganda. I paraphrase of course but that is the gist of his long-form argument.
Society is destroyed when we actively suppress the talents of our best and brightest because of the sins of our parents. We should not get angry at intellectualism because of the failings of past intellectuals. That is, “lugezigezi” (the shorter form of the “you think you are so smart” insult) should be ‘decriminalised’. It seems to me we have extinguished a whole of bright lights because they’ve feared to be dubbed “alowooza ategeera nyo”. A society which puts out all its brighter lights soons find itself in total darkness! So we must stop, shield our eyes a little maybe, but let the brighter lights burn.
On the flip side, those who burn bright must also install dimmer switches. To make it easier for the rest of us to take the glare. That is — stepping away from the metaphors — it is not enough to be the best analyst or engineer or doctor. To be exceptional and useful to society requires that one continually learns to connect with the society. This often requires learning patience: Not everyone is as smart as you are, so you must try (and try again) to get through to them, even as that may require lowering yourself to their level. Because we all exist and live in the same society, we have a better society if all its members are fully utilised and integrated in it.
Muhavura 