Dr. Kihura Nkuba
DR. Kihura Nkuba is a lecturer in classical African history, a writer and broadcaster. He believes Blacks are the mothers and fathers of the world as we know it today, and does not believe, therefore, that Africa is underdeveloped or that Africans are lazy.
But it is well known that Africans are lazy…
You get me from my bed at the age of two and take me to sit in class, away from activity and development and you want me to suddenly wake up and become vibrant? NO. All I did was sit!
But you were learning useful things to help you get a good job…
Do you know what I studied in school? John Speke. I studied that John Speke met Kabaka Muteesa in 1872. And that’s the only thing I know about Kabaka Muteesa. He didn’t have a coronation, he didn’t marry, he didn’t celebrate a battle, he didn’t commission a big lake... the only thing we know is that he met this lonely lost dumb white man named John Speke. Isn’t that sad? And they put his picture in Kasubi Tombs?I am sad Kasubi tombs caught fire, because they were was the pyramids of Uganda. But that picture of John Speke and Sir Samuel Baker... I am glad they caught fire. I haven’t found out if they really burnt them but I hope they did and their ashes can’t be reconstructed. What was they looking for to come and colonise us? To come and they own us? I don’t even know Kabaka Muteesa’s mother. I don’t even know who his chief commander was or the meteorologist who told him about the right season to plant.
All I learnt in school was John Speke. You know, if the legal system was good in Uganda I would have sued the entire education system. What makes the African unable is that he has no confidence. And he has no confidence because of the education system. It’s our education system that teaches people that the degree of knowledge is enough to make you developed yet there are 306 degrees.
So you think Africa will develop if Africans get very many degrees?
No. Education has to add to existent knowledge instead of just opening someone’s books. I want people to get an education that involves practical application. I want someone to be given a task — say an acre of land that produces 250 bags of maize today and is told to make it produce 500 bags of maize. If you succeed, then you qualify to be called an agriculturalist.
The world has moved on and this is the computer age but they are still studying the St. Lawrence Seaway, problems of New York as if I am going to be the mayor of New York. What do I have to do with New York? They don’t even want me there. Isn’t that madness? I wish I could go and remove the St. Lawrence Seaway so they don’t study it anymore. We need to study things that concern us, not the problems of New York but the problems of Rakai. It’s madness that we have the same education system we had years ago. We are doing exactly the same thing in the same way in the same environment yet we expect different results. That’s madness.
Do you want Africa can go back to the pre-colonial times?
I don’t want it to go back to precolonial times because it had already fallen from glory at about 662. I want it to go back to that time when we had built pyramids though now we can build a bus that doesn’t need fuel; or we can find a way of making a man walk on water. I want our food to be restored, not African people eating rice from Vietnam.
I want African people to call themselves African names not James and Barbara because a name identifies you with your language and culture. I want African people to project their Africanness and culture and to use culture to sustain themselves and develop tools and instruments that will take them forward. I want Africa to redesign and control its destiny. I want Africa to be free, and by that I mean the absence of coercion where leaders can choose their directors and ministers.
I want our judges to stop taking trips to America — for what? How many American judges have you seen invited to visit Uganda? I want our people to stop thinking that if I go and study in Europe I will be better educated that the person who studied in Kiswera Primary School because it’s the same education system. I want them to wear our African clothes not clothes from Germany or hold bags by Gucci. I want them to dream freedom. I want people to believe in a black God because the first people He created were blacks.
You have such grand plans for Africa! Why don’t you join politics and use it to as a forum to change Africa?
Do you know that the President asked me to be a minister and I refused? I told him that if you want me to be a minister let us all (ministers) work for no pay so you can know who is really patriotic. But I remember the President arguing that if you take me from Rwakitura and bring me to Kampala you need to give me a house... but I told him that all those people already have houses. They don’t live in foxholes.
That’s why Thomas Sankara became an icon. He gave all his ministers old volkswagens because they were lucky to get a job. But the people also have a problem. How do I come and put up a 14-storeyed building and you all keep quiet? You come and ask me where I got the money from. And that CHOGM thing made me angry, but Temangalo made me angrier.
In your opinion, what is wrong with our country and leaders?
Two things are making Uganda fail: the leadership is a leadership of plunderism. They are thieves. They are not nationalists. They are plunderers. But I believe that the President doesn’t steal because he has his cows. But he’s the only person I can say that for. His problem is that he shelters those who steal. I believe that he’s a genuine Pan Africanist but Europe pulling him. And I am not grateful that he closes his eyes at people plundering the country.
The second problem is that they trust white people more than they trust their own people. I met the President in July and I told him that if he died now he would have died as the president of Asians and Europeans. He promised me that they will start giving contracts to the black people in this country. They have failed to build an independent nation, not an imitator nation.
How can Africa get back her lost glory?
We have to re-orient ourselves. We have to re-learn. We have to get an ideology that suits us, first of all by defining ourselves as to who we are, where we come from.
If you are a black person, you need to know nobody else wants you in the world. Nobody wants black people, so it is ridiculous that we black people don’t want ourselves. They don’t want you in India. They don’t want you in China, Russia, Europe and America. So, the best thing you can do is like yourself as a black person, know where you have come from. Know your history. Know your culture. It’s revolutionary.
I think that the first step forward is the first step backward. For African people to say ‘let us discover ourselves.’ Let us first know how unique we are, what distinguishes us from everybody. We have to use an ideology that uses our culture for technological advancement. And I think we can make it, but we have to make it on our own terms to create something in our own image. We can do it, but first we have to love ourselves.
Published November 20 2010
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