Kira Municipality Member of Parliament (MP) Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda recently went toe-to-toe with Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka. I saw the two oral pugilists going at it, as it were, on UBC TV. As is his wont, Mr Ssemujju aired the government’s dirty linen before tailing off with the words: ‘We can pretend about this, but that’s where we are.’ The Attorney General replied with what Sir Winston Churchill would have described as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. ‘The President is the one who led by example, but now you are telling him that he’s the one who broke the law. How?’ retorted Mr Kiwanuka.
It was as if the Attorney General thinks President Museveni’s position does not evolve or devolve. Instead, it ossifies around notions which do not reflect reality. I don’t know what that’s called in law. But in English, it’s pettifogging. To be fair, I have never viewed Mr Ssemujju as a debater. His analytical skills and critical thinking are rarely part of his verbal artillery when speaking truth to power. Instead, his style of argumentation betrays a bluff and blunt tendency to paint those with whom he disagrees with a broad brush. His long suit is thus uncovering truths, not interrogating them. By this, he pushes emotional buttons while omitting hot-button issues, which ponder larger, deeper questions.
This explains why so many people listen to him. You see, he is a discussant and not a debater. The latter are out of joint with the political anatomy of Uganda. That’s because we do not have a tradition of debate. In countries like America, this tradition is rich. There are awards orbiting about championships like the Great Communicator Debate Series to national and intercollegiate recognitions such as the National Debate Tournament, the Julia Burke Award for high school “policy debaters,” and the All-American Debate Squad Award from the Cross Examination Debate Association.
Thanks to oral tradition, the practice of passing down cultural actualities through spoken word instead of written records, we prefer to talk to and not talk at one another. Ugandans are generally not confrontational. Hence, debating, which calls for a battle of wits, not their synergy, does violence to the notion of communitarianism implied by said accommodation. This explains why Ugandans have often called for a national dialogue but never a national debate. A dialogue is a ‘conversation’, which is the less serious or structured version of a discussion.
Accordingly, we must appreciate that discussants like Mr Ssemujju are crucial to any democratic form. In debate, journalist Andrew Mwenda is right: Ssemujju’s ‘intellectual quality’ tends to be dimmed by the low road he takes on high-minded issues. In our context, however, his preference for exposés over expositions plays to his strengths as a journalist. Although a Muslim, he often reminds Ugandan Christians to level up by the way he brings up topics which most of us would never dare air in public.
If you recall the metaphor “salt and light” from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, you will remember that it refers to Christians’ role in the world. As salt, believers are meant to act as a preservative against corruption and decay, while as light, they are called to expose truth and illuminate the world.
Ssemujju personifies this metaphor. While some intellectuals fault him for not bending the arc of that metaphor towards wonkish debates, which place questions about fiscal policy above answers to who gets what and for how long with respect to sharing the national cake. Until we understand debate, such Ssemujjuan discussions must continue shaping our politics.