Banange! Why Ugandans have more PhDs than anyone else in Africa

Sorry if you thought ‘PhD’ in this context has anything to do with a doctorate degree awarded at the university. In Uganda, ‘PhD’ has everything to do with a strange ‘Pull him or her Down’ syndrome that psychologists claim most Ugandans suffer from. They say it’s an itchy instinctive urge by locals to maintain our collective miserable status quo.

Honestly, we Ugandans have a weird sense of nationalism. For most of the week just ended, quite a number of people in Kampala have been celebrating the African Union Summit that took place in Kigali, Rwanda. They don’t remember most of what took place there, especially to do with Sudan. No, they are excited by the failure of their candidate to clinch the coveted AU Commission chair job.

The Ugandan candidate was the country’s former Vice president Dr Specioza Wandira Kazibwe, who besides being a medical doctor, also enjoys the locally revered title of Nalongo – mother of twins. But it seems your average Kampalan’s admiration for Her Excellency doesn’t go much beyond her capacity to deliver twins. When she ‘landed’ in Kigali, coming number three out of the three candidates, some people in Kampala – I won’t say ‘many people’ for ‘legal’ reasons – were ecstatic. They were happy that a Ugandan had lost the shot at the high profile job.

Animal’s right to enjoy sex

In the end, nobody got the job because none of the three candidates garnered the two thirds required. The West Africans under ECOWAS abstained and the vote will be held again after six months. Ugandan officials say that Her Excellency can stand again. However, chances are that a better prepared candidate will emerge from one of the over fifty countries, now that everybody has been alerted to the vacancy. The outgoing chairperson from South Africa might also be tempted to seek to retain her job. We shall know in the next six months.

I do not claim to know why some people are happy that Dr Spe, as she was popularly known in Kampala’s night spots, failed in her bid for the continental job. For all I remember, she was quite a popular character in the country. As the first woman to hold such a high office in Africa, she was indeed a novelty.

As a member of parliament, she took no prisoners and used to call a spade a spade, just like a typical scientist in the medical profession. That endeared her to the population and the media. She one time advocated for mass training of all Ugandan women in taekwondo martial arts so they can hit back and immobilise wife beaters.

As VP and agriculture minister, she advocated for abolition of artificial insemination because, in her words, “it denies animals their right to enjoy sex”! In parliament, she complained of smelly socks of male MPs that were suffocating the August chamber in the afternoons.

When committees went to look for valley dams on which billions of shillings had been spent by her ministry and failed to find them, she said it was easy for a lay person to stand on a valley dam during the dry season and fail to see it unless an engineer showed them. Well, the lay persons thought a valley dam should be more visible in the dry season because it would be an isolated collection of water.

Spe said so many other things that sold newspapers like hot cakes. But the continent has been denied the chance of hearing from her from Addis. Poor Ugandans! Banange, why do we hate seeing one of our own progress? Anyway, let me not whine too much. May be it’s not just a Ugandan thing, Kenyans, too, could be suffering from the syndrome.