Why the politics 'Kumanyoko' are important [Editor's Opinion]

In the late 1950s, Milton Apollo Obote used ridicule to devastating effect as he took to the rostrum in the Uganda Legislative Council (LEGCO), which was a unicameral national assembly, to unleash verbal hell.

Nominated as a member of the LEGCO by the Lango District Council, Obote immediately took off the gloves and continuously called the white members of LEGCO ‘stupid’ and ‘gormless.’ The latter word being an intellectual way of saying someone is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Such abusive language electrified Ugandans seated in the Strangers' Gallery of the LEGCO. For they had never seen a black man talk to white people in this manner.

As a consequence, Obote’s put down of our colonial masters turned him into a hero, a tribune of the masses.

Enter Stella Nyanzi

She employs the same extravagant language as Obote while substituting ‘gormless’ for ‘pair of buttocks’ when describing what she perceives to be president Yoweri Museveni’s unjust reign. And the effect is no less electrifying.

In this mould, Museveni is like the colonialist of old as sure as the Nyanzi is a latter day Obote.

Moreover, the same way Stella collided with Museveni and wound up a marked person, Obote collided with the then British prime minister, Edward Heath, and wound up in exile as Idi Amin was elevated to head of state.

“I will speak to dictators in any language possible,” once said Nyanzi from the dock, it is such speech which has recreated everyday abusive language as the fine art of ridicule.

The power of ridicule

Nyanzi’s choice of invective is used as a means of crude persuasion, as well as humour.

“If I can get you to laugh with me,” said comedian John Cleese, “you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge the truth.”

Nyanzi’s ‘choice words’ convey the sort of humour that deconstructs the illogical way politics is conducted in Uganda by ridiculing the individual as a means of exposing the individuation of our politics.

Thus, she uses humour at the ruling elite’s expense to show how laughable much of our politics has become.

Again, her ridicule leverages popular emotions and simplifies seemingly high-minded notions into images accessible to all with the promethean fire of full disclosure.

This is why the ruling politicians loathe her: she democratises knowledge about their idiocies by dismantling their standpoints to a sum of their parts, thereby tearing them limb from limb.

Our political system, built around personalities instead of laws, ideas and institutions, cannot absorb ridicule because it undresses it of its fig-leaf of marginal respectability.

A history of ridicule

What Nyanzi is doing is not new, neither are the politics of Kumanyoko.

Throughout world history, literary figures used ridicule against perceived injustices.

Poet-playwright Aristophanes, for example, in 425 B.C., lampooned and directed insult at the Athenian policy of the Peloponnesian War in The Acharnians.

He filled his plays with invective and ad hominem attacks as well as sexual humour in ways that was so Nyanzi, before Nyanzi.

It worked then, fecundating at least 36 comedies, of which 11 are extant.

It works now, too. If it did not work, Stella Nyanzi would not be in exile.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Pulse as its publisher.