How the detention and trial of a Makerere academic exposes
the moral bankruptcy of Uganda’s elites
Dr. Stella Nyanzi, an academic at Makerere University, has
been jailed for using foul language to criticise President Yoweri Museveni and
his wife, Janet. It is permissible to call the president a dictator or corrupt.
I find it morally reprehensible for Nyanzi to refer to their sexual organs in a
vulgar way to express her frustration with their power though I disagree that
such language should be criminalised. Mrs Museveni responded to Nyanzi’s
insults with grace and dignity. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity for a
policy debate, Nyanzi used (and abused) it to hurl even worse sexually lurid
insults at her.
Support and condemnation of Nyanzi has followed partisan
lines. This shows a lack of basic values around which current governance and
opposition to it are organised. There is also a lack of a common agreement on
basic national goals. This indicates that we can change government not
governance. Those in power mismanaging state institutions and/or stealing
public resources and those in the opposition battling them, are fighting over
power not values.
Let us begin with Museveni and his government. Nyanzi has
been using vulgar language to criticise others. She was only jailed because she
used them against Museveni and his wife. Hence state institutions have been
employed to protect a pecuniary interest i.e. the prestige of the first family.
Her prosecution is, therefore, not a defense of our nation’s moral standards
and values. In fact, it is an abuse of power. This selective and selfish use of
state power strips such actions of legitimacy.
Museveni is now caught in a Catch 22 situation: If he keeps
Nyanzi in jail, she will become a prisoner of conscience and an international
issue. If he releases her without inflicting a high cost on her, many others
will see this as weakness and begin using worse language to criticise him and
his wife. If this is allowed to flourish, it will diminish the prestige and
aura around them that is essential for the Musevenis to hold and retain power
and command respect and obedience.
This brings me to opposition leader, Dr. Kizza Besigye and
his cohorts. He went to visit Nyanzi in jail, which is ok. But he did not
condemn her language, which implies he approves of it. Would Besigye treat it
as acceptable if someone criticised his wife in similar language? Besigye would
have shown political maturity if he said that although he shares Nyanzi’s
criticism of government, he condemns the language she used to criticise the
president and first lady of Uganda. But he lacks the courage to look beyond
petty partisanship and project a moral vision.
Besigye could retort that Museveni would not take such a
high moral stand if the insulted person were his (Besigye’s) wife. Why should
he uphold a value that Museveni would never reciprocate? Here, I follow the
standard set by the philosopher, Emmanuel Kant. According to Kant, the moral
worth of an action consists not in the consequences that flow from it, but the
intentions from which it is done. What matters is the motive i.e. doing the
right thing because it is right, not because of some ulterior motive. To Kant
therefore, we should do the morally right thing out of duty to act correctly
rather than convenience or usefulness.
(On August 10, 2005 I insulted Museveni on radio. When I
listened to the CD the next day, I wrote an apology. My mentor, Wafula Oguttu, advised
me against it saying it would be used against me in a criminal trial.
I refused saying I felt remorse that I had used vulgar
language against the president of Uganda, a person old enough to be my dad and
a father to my friend, Muhoozi Keinerugaba. My apology was published on the
front page of New Vision on August 12, 2005).
There are many opposition politicians and media
personalities appalled by Nyanzi’s language that debases public discourse and
demeans the president and first lady. But they fear to condemn her vulgarities
because they will be accused of having been “compromised by the regime” by
hordes of opposition social media activists who have formed a kind of thought
police. We must condemn vulgar language in public debate in order to protect –
not just the prestige of the president and first lady – but to promote a
culture of civic decency.
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi in his The East African column
showed moral courage when he condemned Nyanzi’s language. Timothy Kalyegira did
the same, which shows he writes what he believes rather than to endear himself
to the hordes. There are many critics who (either out of ignorance or prejudice
or factual analysis) genuinely bash real and perceived excesses of this
government. Yet many pundits take positions in order to be seen on the “right
side of the public”. I despise such opportunism.
Even if public opinion (whatever that means) sided with
Nyanzi, we should condemn her language. Indeed, I treat public opinion with
skepticism. This was implanted in me as a child reading the story of Jesus
Christ whom the Bible says was a virtuous man who had come to save our souls.
Yet at his trial the crowd was chanting: “Crucify Him Crucify Him”. At age ten,
I read about Socrates, whom Plato calls to “noblest, wisest, justest and best”
person he had ever known; he was sentenced to death by a democratic assembly.
Even as a child, these stories made me suspicious of mass hysteria.
The biggest threat to freedom of speech in Uganda today is
not the state (that is minor) but a large army of social media activists using
insults and false accusations to intimidate and blackmail those with
alternative views. This confirms John Stuart Mill’s argument in his essay “On
Liberty” which I read in secondary school and formed the core of my bachelor’s
thesis at university. Mill argued that the biggest threat to individual liberty
was not the state but majorities willing to use the weight of numbers to
suppress minorities.
But the greatest ideological influence on me happened in my
first year at university when my uncle, Prof. William Banage, advised me to
read Karl Popper. In `Conjectures and Refutations’, Popper argued that public
opinion is very powerful and that liberals ought to regard such power with some
degree of suspicion. He argued that public opinion is an irresponsible form of
power and, therefore, particularly dangerous from a liberal point of view. I
intend to discuss this subject at length in another column.
****
amwenda@independent.co.ug
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