Who is the better thinker of them both? It is such a difficult question since it seeks a comment about the commenters. You would appreciate my predicament as a lesser commenter being cornered to comment about higher commenters. When Daily Monitor recently published a story about a man making a career off Tamale Mirundi’s brand (‘Dr T. Amale: The man who mimics Tamale Mirundi, 31 August 2016), the question came up again.
Let me start by noting that this is not a gossipy question say where simple minds would be accused of discussing people and not topical issues. It is very legitimate in the sense that at some point in their lives, by a stroke of their genius (military accomplishment, eloquence, art, leadership, education, sometimes, birth) ordinary people become public characters.
Their persona—silent or speaking—represents constituencies turning them into subject for heated public discussion and scrutiny. These persons are then plunged into a futile struggle protecting their hitherto private lives from public scrutiny. They never win. Ironically, the scrutinizers are often people of lesser talents.
It is by this detour that I accepted the challenge: Between Mwenda and Mirundi. Firstly, it is dumbfounding how much these two men share in common. Both have associations with government or at least the President—as advisors, with Mwenda doing so in a private capacity (and he often writes about it in his column), and Mirundi publicly boasting of being the “President Museveni’s barking dog.”
Both men have public stage names, one going as ‘The Old Man of the Clan’ and the other as the ‘Intellectual.’ Both monikers are claims to authority of knowledge and insight. With different levels of sophistication, both are boisterous not only proud of their accomplishments (material and intellectual), but also never miss an opportunity to ridicule others of possessing dismal talents.
I need to add that both are eloquent conversationists; their speech is fast, and their wit is sharp. Indeed, their commentaries often come across with a sumptuous doze of entertainment. Both men are good readers and writers, one a celebrated columnist, and the other a prolific political pamphleteer.
In their different media lives, they have attracted a great deal of controversy, threatened Museveni’s presidency, and as at present, both had remarkable turnarounds and are the most eloquent poets of the same man.
The genius of their poetry for the regime is in their ability to simultaneously praise and critique their object attracting an illusory sense of balance and objectivity. Indeed, not surprisingly, you will hear these men referenced in ordinary conversations by both pro and anti-regime advocates.
Despite the above similarities our public intellectuals have some real differences. Although Mirundi’s English is grammatically straight, he is blunt to debate in the English language. On the other hand, it is rare for Mwenda to debate in Luganda.
These being the major languages in Kampala where our two elite commenters are pitted against each, one is right to argue that they appeal to different audiences.
This is quite true to the point that these men actually access different spaces and package their rhetoric differently. However, there’s a problem with identifying where one audience ends, and the other starts—some of us have often switched sides, or listened to both with equal loyalty.
Let’s return to our thorny question: Who is the better of them all? Again, this question would be stale if these two men did not pit themselves against each sometime early this year.
In that media-consuming saga, Mwenda went on social media and announced that Mirundi was ‘mad,’ and Mirundi called his nemesis a ‘mercenary.’ It was a challenging moment for us who listen to them both—and perhaps admire both. Indeed, this explains the permanence of this question.
Certainly no one has an answer, except if we phrased the question differently beginning by seeking to unpack the subject of their conflicting crafts: President Museveni, the absolute symbolism for Money, Power and Frame. Yes. Shakespeare was right As You Like It, paraphrased in an American humour: All the world’s a bar/ And all the men and women merely drinkers…with their different staggerings and exits!
The author is a PhD fellow at Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR)
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