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John Nagenda: Exasperating, lovable and honoured sage
Author: Muniini K Mulera. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- Even his self-flattery and name-dropping about his British connections was always delivered with a sweet language that left me hungry for more.
Dear Tingasiga:
I dreaded this moment. John Mwesigwa Robin Nagenda will be buried today, his mortal remains reunited with earth at his farm in Buloba, a few kilometres west of Kampala. A devastating loss for his wife Marion Rose Katasi Kalibbala, and their family. A great loss of a literary sage for our country. A very saddening personal loss of one with whom I enjoyed a lively and frank private correspondence that we kept out of the public forum.
Nagenda and I shared a love for our country. Our difference in views on how to achieve a just society for all was the bond that held our literary friendship together. His joyful dismissal of some of my opinions, beautifully phrased in One Man’s Week, his addictive weekly column in the Saturday Vision newspaper, unfailingly tickled me.
My written acknowledgement that he had hit a homerun in a column about a given subject was always reciprocated with a gentlemanly expression of gratitude. My private criticism of some of his writings triggered written responses that were masterfully argued and delivered. His e-mails displayed his love for the English language, complete with use of words that had me reaching for an English dictionary.
Nagenda, who was a Senior Presidential Advisor on Media and Public Relations, was one of the best-known flatterers of President Yoweri Museveni, even long after the latter had openly joined the ranks of Africa’s personality cult leaders. The praise singing occasionally became excessive, contradicting the great advice given to us by Junius, a prolific eighteenth-century writer who said: “The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.”
I am sure that I was not the only one who was exasperated by Nagenda’s flip flop on critical matters, especially President Yoweri Museveni’s refusal to hand power to others. Nagenda opposed the lifting of the presidential age limit – well, sort of. He was opposed to the idea of a referendum on the matter, because of the high cost of the exercise. Then he supported Museveni’s continued rule of Uganda after parliament was beaten into lifting said age limit. He subsequently informed us that he had become convinced that Museveni was indispensable, a fallacy that Nagenda probably chuckled at even as he wrote it. He knew that our president, like the rest of us, was a mortal being that will be outlived by his realm.
Notwithstanding his flip-flopping on the subject, Nagenda’s column in New Vision of March 3, 2018, summed up a truth that cannot be altered by all the noise and political manipulation that dominate Uganda as Museveni trots towards his 40th year on the throne. Nagenda wrote: “If the Movement is currently being wafted by some high winds, not of change but staleness, it is not to be wondered at, for four decades is a hugely long time in politics. Children at the start of it are now beginning to feel the wobble of middle-age. Those with achieved property and riches (not always without the stench of corruption!) take their most comfortable station in life without a backward glance, thus missing the glares of those who stagger in their wake.
Perhaps this is just as well. But what cannot be denied, at least by wise foxes who follow History, is that unless strong tides are channelled with wisdom, the future and past will inevitably and always collide in changes extremely difficult to control!”
Speaking truth to power is a patriotic duty of a truly loyal citizen. Nagenda’s failure to do so consistently was probably occasioned by a survival instinct of a man who was not willing to lose a life of privilege. He was not alone in this. To his credit, however, Nagenda was more willing to poke at his boss than the majority of those to whom Museveni was and remains an indispensable lifeline. We find clues of Nagenda’s stubbornness in his teen years.
In 1953, Nagenda, a junior school student at King’s College, Budo, was shipped off to Kigezi High School in very distant Kabaare. Timothy Cobb, the headmaster of Budo, exasperated by the naughty Nagenda, exiled him for a period of fine-tuning under the watchful eyes of John Wycliffe Lwamafa, the acting headmaster of Kigezi High School, and John Bikangaga, upon his returned from the United Kingdom to resume his duty as head of the great school. The Englishman reportedly hoped that the stint in Kabaare would help Nagenda “to grow up.”
One imagines Nagenda, displaying full blown signs and symptoms of what modern medicine would have addressed with behaviour-regulating drugs. Happily, the agreeable environs of the Kigyezi highlands, and the tough love approach of two of the most distinguished African teachers of the day, were all that the lad needed to rehabilitate him.
It must have been a very interesting group of kids that Nagenda joined in 1953. Other students, all known to me, who were admitted to Kigezi High School that year included Matthew N. Rukikaire, George W. Kanyeihamba, John W. Kakabaare, Adoniya Tindikahwa, John W. Rwomushana, Joram F. Katambira, Bernard Kachetero and George Mondo Kagoonyera. These are men who, in later life, demonstrated a brilliance that even Nagenda must have respected. Theirs was a milieu that was bound to sharpen a stubbornness that was probably genetic.
The exile worked. Nagenda returned to Budo in 1954, to continue his secondary school education. The rehabilitated lad became a leader, serving as captain of the Budo cricket team, under the watchful eye of Headmaster Cobb. Nagenda graduated from Budo in 1958, followed by Makerere University where he read English. By his own account, Nagenda’s post Makerere life was a “perpetual battle against the sentence.” Though he did not write as many books as his generational peers like Ngugi wa Thiongo and Godfrey Kalimugogo, his early essays in magazines were interesting. His columns in New Vision were often illuminating, and always a sweet read. I think he won more battles against the sentence than he lost. Even his self-flattery and name-dropping about his British connections was always delivered with a sweet language that left me hungry for more.
Nagenda’s pen is now stilled. We are much the poorer as his friends and fellow countrymen. The battle against the sentence is now left to those like me that, lacking his training, surrender and happily murder the English language, in the hope that the reader will forgive us and get the gist of the message. May the Lord God continue to bless and protect Marion and the rest of Nagenda’s family. Our thoughts are with them as we celebrate the life of our brother.
Muniini K. Mulera is Ugandan-Canadian social and political observer. [email protected]
