Oracle of Kifuuta, Katooke, Kyotera, Buddu. The one who has walked.
Listen, my children. You think independence was just dancing and new flags. No! For us, it was fire in the chest. We were not just dancing; we were reading, we were choosing which bullet to follow.
In college, we rarely got The Times. When one copy reached us, wrapped in brown paper like old bongo, smelling of dust, we fought for it. Like hungry boys fighting over the last piece of meat on a plate. We read one line and argued for one week. We took sides as if the war was in our own compound in Kifuuta.
Me, I nearly died for Angola.
I hated Savimbi of UNITA. I hated that man who burnt his own house and called it lighting. So I said, “I will go and join Dos Santos to fight him.”
I moved. Mutukula — Bukoba — Mbeya — Dodoma — Tunduma — Nakonde. I crossed into Zambia at Nakonde and travelled through Isoka and Mpika, all the way to Kapiri Mposhi X-Junction, where the road splits like the foot of a chicken. Four roads, no signpost. At Kapiri Mposhi, fear entered me. The road ahead was not a road; it was war. Guns, mines, no water. I got scared and turned back.
But the hate for Savimbi stayed in me like a nail. Years later, I had to go and see. I went to Luena, Moxico, deep in Angola, to stand on the dust where Jonas Savimbi was finally shot dead in 2002. A man who thought he would never die, lying in Moxico dust like a dead lizard. No title. No radio. Just dust.
And that is what I want to teach you: when leaders forget they are human, they end as dust in Moxico.
THE DISEASE OKUFUUKA TEMBUZI
After independence, our big men stopped being men.
Kwame Nkrumah Osagyefo — “He Who Excels Above All Others.” Above all? Above your mother? Above the old woman who cooked for you in Nkroful?
Mobutu Sese Seko — “Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga: The All-Powerful Warrior Who, Because of His Endurance and Inflexible Will to Win, Goes From Conquest to Conquest, Leaving Fire in His Wake.” You left fire, true! You left Zaire burning, and you ran away with the leopard cap!
Hastings Banda, Lion King of Malawi. A lion who ate his own cubs.
Idi Amin, Conqueror of the British Empire.
Philosophers in big books call it “arrivism”, the disease of a man who thinks, “I have arrived.” In my Buddu language, we call it Okufuuka Tembuzi. When a small man from Katooke gets a small chair in Kampala and thinks he is now Tembuzi, the god of the forest who never dies, who never goes to the toilet.
But even Tembuzi died when people stopped fearing the forest and started cutting trees.
Every man who thinks he is immortal is already preparing his hole.
LENIN — THE MAN WHO SAID “I CAN COOK”
Now let us go far, to Russia, 1917. The Bolshevik Revolution.
People told Vladimir Lenin, “You are our god now. Stay forever. Rule us till you die.”
Lenin said, “Are you mad? I am not God. I am like you. I can cook my own food. That is why I can be president. Anybody who can cook his food can be president. It does not need a superhuman.”
He told them, “The fact that I led you in bush war does not mean I am braver than you. If you remove me, you will find I am even more cowardly than another man. That other man may do better than me.”
So never worship your leader. He is a worker you gave work.
That is why the Bolsheviks, for all their mistakes, had some discipline. In our African revolutions, we forgot that. We made our leaders gods. And gods don't listen. Gods don't retire. Gods want blood.
THE OTHER ALTAR: THE ONES WHO REMAINED HUMAN
But not all got the disease. Some washed their hands and remained human.
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Tanzania.
He had all the power. Army, party, people loved him. He could have been Osagyefo of Tanzania. He refused. He said, “Call me Mwalimu, Teacher. Not Lion. Teacher.”
He tried Ujamaa; it struggled. What did he do? He did what no African big man wants to do: he resigned in 1985! He said, “My time is done; let another try.” He went back to Butiama, took a hoe, and started farming. He died in a normal hospital bed, like a human. That is why Tanzania still has peace today.
Kenneth Kaunda, KK Zambia.
Twenty-seven years as president. He cried in public! He played guitar! Which of our Lion Kings cries? When his son Masuzyo died of AIDS, KK wept on radio and told Zambia, “AIDS is not witchcraft; fight it.” When Zambians said, “KK, time up,” he left State House with his white handkerchief, no bullet, no burning. He became ordinary. Human.
Samora Machel, Samito Mozambique.
FRELIMO commander. He wore boots, but he said, “The chief and the professor must sit on the same mat.” He said, “We must kill tribalism before tribalism kills us.” He did not build a palace of gold. He died in 1986 in a plane crash at Mbuzini, on his way from Zambia, like a soldier, not a god.
Nelson Mandela, Madiba.
Twenty-seven years in prison. When he came out, the world said, “Be our god; rule forever.” He said, “I am not a saint; I am a sinner who keeps trying.” He ruled for five years only! ONE term! He invited his jailer to sit in front at his inauguration. He wore the jersey of the Springboks — the team of the white people who jailed him — to unite the country. Only a human can forgive like that. Gods revenge. Humans forgive.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the Bearded Ones of Cuba.
Fidel had power for 50 years but slept in army uniform and argued with farmers about sugarcane yield. Che, a doctor from Argentina, could have been a minister in Havana with a big car. He said no. He left to fight in Congo, then Bolivia, because revolution is not a chair; it is walking. He died in La Higuera, Bolivia, with only asthma tablets in his pocket. No bank account. No mansion in Miami. He refused to become Tembuzi.
These men understood what our professor of Soil Mechanics taught us.
One day, he entered class, put down his notes, and said, “Today I will not teach bearing capacity. I will teach you what happens after you get your papers.”
He said, “Some of you will get BSc, MSc, PhD and go mad. The paper will enter your head like jiggers. You will no longer greet your mother. You will not sit on a mat in Katooke and eat katogo. You will run to Kafuluma shrine and call yourself Oracle because you have a paper.”
He said, “No matter how high you go, soil still needs water. And man still needs humility.”
THE END OF GODS: SIRTE, TIKRIT, RABAT
Now see how gods end.
Muammar Gaddafi, Libya. Forty-two years. Gold tent. Female bodyguards. Green Book. When power left, where did we find him? In a drainage culvert in Sirte. No tent. No guard. Like a 16-year-old old lion by the roadside, alone, cooking his own food, with dust on his head. No one to protect him because he trusted no one.
Saddam Hussein, Iraq. Called himself the new Nebuchadnezzar. At the end, he was found in a hole near Tikrit, beard long, like a hyena without teeth, hiding in a hole like a rat.
Mobutu Sese Seko. The warrior who leaves fire in his wake. He died in Rabat, Morocco, buried standing, they say. Even in death, he could not lie down like a human. Up to now, he is standing in Morocco, not in Zaire, which he claimed to own.
You sit in that chair for a time. Then the chair sits on you. You can leave office so powerless, worse than a beggar on Katonga Bridge.
FINAL DRUM FROM KIFUUTA
When Africa got independence, many leaders had never dreamt they would sit where they sat. Power came too fast, like strong tonto on an empty stomach. It entered the head.
They damaged the very countries they were trusted to lead.
So I, Oracle of Kifuuta, Katooke, Kyotera, Buddu, tell you: whether you become an MP, LC1 chairman, headmaster, doctor, engineer, pastor, or manager of a hardware shop in Lukaya or Kyanamukaka, remember you are human.
You still need to cook your own food.
You still need to say, “I was wrong.”
You still need to be told, “You are lying.”
You still need to sleep and wake up with back pain.
The day you start thinking you are Osagyefo, Sese Seko, Lion King, Tembuzi, you have already started digging your culvert in Sirte, your hole in Tikrit, your standing grave in Morocco.
Stay human. That is the only title that never expires. That is the only title God Himself will respect.
Welcome to Kitelede, Kifuuta, Kyotera, Buddu.
