SILENCE OF THE INTELLECTUALS OF UGANDA: THE IMPLICATIONS.

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If you carry out a Google search on my recent writings on intellectuals, you will find that I have written three articles:

1. Does intellectual capital matter?,  which I wrote in March 2022 and was published by Watchdog Uganda.

2. Uganda: From Genocide to Ecocide to Ethnocide to Intellectual death, which I wrote in January 2025 and was published by MUWADO.

3. The Fate and Future of The Public Intellectuals: the Case of Uganda, which was published by The Buddhist Centre of Africa in July 2025.

I also wrote “The Educated Fools of Uganda in January 2024 and was published by Voice Uganda.

I wrote all these articles because I was frustrated by the declining influence of intellectuals on Uganda’s body politic and the rise of ignoramuses positing themselves as intellectuals, particularly within the status quo.

In this article, I want to focus on the deadening silence of intellectuals in Uganda and its implications.

Let me first of all make the difference between an intellectual and an academic clear. Although the North American usage of the term intellectual includes all university academics, this is misleading. Not every academic is an intellectual. What makes an intellectual different from an academic is participation in the realm of public affairs.

Academics are the bureaucrats of theory. As such, they deal in the unreal things. A true academic will not engage with public affairs. Conspiracy of silence is his or her station vis-à-vis public affairs. However, an intellectual, even if stationed in an academic world, builds up a reputation of intelligence with the general public, and uses this position to comment on any important public affairs. He or she articulates and clarifies issues for society without fear or favour. However, one may be both an academic and an intellectual. As an academic, he or she lectures and guides students, administers, researches, writes articles in refereed journals for other academics and students in his or her field of knowledge, holds seminars and attends specialized conferences, workshops and symposia, and may be engaged in academic debates, particularly in his or her area of specialization. In times of excessive repression, suppression and oppression,  academics tend to recoil to excessive academicism and scholasticism, and to completely cut themselves off from public affairs, preferring careerism.

As an intellectual, an academic writes books and articles in newspapers and on social media, focusing on a diversity of issues in politics, science, education, environment, culture, social life, government, knowledge, et cetera, many of which may be crosscutting and interlinked. Most intellectuals, however,  are located outside academia.

Sometimes an intellectual who engages with the public is called a public intellectual. In American English a public intellectual is an intellectual, often in a specific field of knowledge, who has become well-known because of his or her willingness to comment on public affairs, either in writing or speech. However, it is best to look at a public intellectual as someone who displays commitment to sharing knowledge and to advancing public intellectualism as an empowering movement to overcome unnecessary restrictions on thinking, rethinking, reasoning and providing alternative analyses to mainstream analyses concerning public affairs.

Therefore, it is the silence of the intellectual, rather than the silence of the academic, that is, or should be, of great interest, or concern, to a society or nation. Such a society or nation is said to be suffering from intellectual death. The intellectual productivity of the intellectual is virtually non-existent.

In my earlier article listed as number 2, I opined that Uganda has sunk into a state of intellectual death. I wrote that “There is intellectual death in our universities, politically and institutionally desired to ensure contradictory voices to those in power do not arise”. When intellectual death is applied to an individual, it signifies a cessation of critical thinking, resulting in mental stagnation that hinders spiritual and personal growth.

Consideration of the concept of intellectual death started with Confucius, an ancient Chinese philosopher, when he said, “Learning without thought is labour lost. Learning without thought is intellectual death” He clarified that thinking without learning will result in lack of understanding. Thinking alone without learning will result in danger, even death”.

People suffering from intellectual death are like walking corpses. They are likely to be silent in the face of daunting challenges of leadership, governance and development or underdevelopment; just as dead bodies are silent in their coffins.

It is, therefore, a serious matter when a public intellectual is forced to become silent and withdraw into human activities unrelated to his or her station as the conscience of society. It is serious when a public intellectual who could still be active producing useful ideas is selling tomatoes in a market, or driving a taxi to make ends meet, or is now in politics doing deals.

Public intellectual means an intellectual being in the public spotlight, asking questions, demanding answers from power, which may be relevant today or tomorrow, and criticising government for unfulfilled promises to the public, spotlight and drawing the attention of power and society to what needs to be done but has not been done in the public interest.

Thus, power and society should be happy when public intellectuals are busy questioning, analysing, clarifying, articulating and illuminating, at no cost to the nation. The public intellectuals sacrifice their time and energy doing this at the expense of accumulating money to make their lives or those of their family members livable. They do not care if they are labelled financially poor when they know they are intellectually rich, producing new ideas where there were none, putting sense where there is nonsense, and helping their nation (s) to develop and be transformed to higher levels of change, in new directions.

In nations such as Uganda, where the rulers are gratified when public intellectuals are silent, nincompoops take over the role of public intellectuals. Their ideas become the overriding intellectual products, not to change in new, more useful ways, but to ensure that the rulers retain power as long as they want, and get everyone, educated or non-educated, to toe the line of thinking and reasoning of the ruler. If the public intellectuals resist toeing the line, they are dismissed as anti-government, anti-patriotic and saboteurs of the economy

Many once useful public intellectuals and academics have fallen prey to the men and women of power and are now victims of intellectual death. They have been convinced that what matters is not intellectual production, but owning property and sacks of money. When a nation reaches this stage, it is not only suffering from the intellectual death of its intellectuals, but it is actually dead! It is a myth to suggest that development, transformation and progress will occur when the public intellectuals are confined in coffins of eternal intellectual death and silence, and of no use to the nation anymore, yesterday and today than tomorrow!

For God and My Country.

Written by

Oweyegha Afunaduula

I am a retired lecturer of zoological and environmental sciences at Makerere University. I love writing and sharing information.

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