Two Sides of A Coin
Criticism has been offered in some forums because I have praised Miguna in the past, and now I have voiced some condemnation of him. Such criticism demonstrates very shallow thinking. Nothing is static or one-dimensional. You can admire a person for some things but still acknowledge that they have serious problems elsewhere.
Imagine a neighbour, for example, being pleased and proud to be taken on as an advisory assistant to the agricultural extension officer. For your part, you admire and praise him for his industrious work on the farm. But soon your neighbour begins to think he knows much more than anyone else when it comes to matters agricultural – including a lot more than the experienced extension officer.
Your neighbour bombards the extension officer relentlessly with his opinion, shouting it throughout the village and rudely upsetting the rest of the inhabitants – until the extension officer finds himself unable to make any progress due to this constant interference. He has had enough and he tells your neighbour to get lost. Next thing you know, your neighbour has labelled the extension officer clueless and stabbed him in the back with his jembe.
Now, while you might still admire the hoeing expertise that so impressed you in the past, you do not approve of your neighbour’s subsequent behaviour in the community, and you certainly don’t approve of his eventual violent deed. I haven’t much changed my published views on Miguna’s capabilities. But, unfortunately, some faults of Miguna’s to which I also alluded eventually grew out of all proportion, distorting and rendering irrelevant his attributes, and becoming in the end intolerable.
To exact revenge for his hurt at being told to get lost, Miguna has grossly overreacted and ended up publishing a vicious treatise generating more heat than light and containing much malignant innuendo, many falsehoods and countless inaccuracies. Sadly, at the same time, his public appearances have turned him into a buffoon. I wonder who has been hurt most by these antics. I wonder where Miguna will go from here. He has surely had his fifteen minutes of fame. Unfortunately, that fame might end up being infamy.
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