04/09/2025
Title: “The Haunting of Intelligence: Balunywa, Kadaga, and the Busoga Paradox”
By Baker Muzige.
In the unfolding drama of our nation’s politics, one troubling motif recurs: the haunting of Busoga’s brightest minds. It is a paradox of history that societies often fear their most enlightened sons and daughters, and instead of honoring their contributions, they seek to diminish them. Today, in the case of Professor Waswa Balunywa, this paradox resurfaces with alarming clarity.
I. The Specter of Fear and the Fate of the Enlightened
Philosophy teaches us that power fears knowledge. Plato’s allegory of the cave reminds us that those who see beyond shadows are often resisted by those comfortable in ignorance. In Uganda’s political theatre, Busoga has produced intellectuals of national and international renown, figures like Prof. Waswa Balunywa, a reformer in education, and Rt. Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, a trailblazer in governance. Yet both, rather than being universally celebrated, have endured systematic marginalization and political suspicion.
Prof. Balunywa, founder and longtime Principal of MUBS, transformed a fledgling business school into Uganda’s premier institution of higher learning. His record of service, leadership, and philanthropy is unquestionable. Yet today, he is remanded on allegations over three staff recruitments, a charge disproportionately small compared to his decades of national service. None of those recruited were his kinsmen, friends, or tribesmen. Still, he is portrayed as if his entire legacy were a fraud.
Rt. Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, once the Speaker of Parliament and one of Busoga’s most powerful daughters, was unseated in a manner that bore the markings of a political purge rather than democratic choice. Even after her exit, the shadow of persecution still trails her, as though her very intellect and independence were intolerable to the structures of power.
Thus emerges a pattern: to haunt Busoga’s intelligent leaders is to attempt to dim a re
