By Morris Wambua

I have come to believe that the African intellectual dies not once, but twice. The first death is a slow suffocation. It is the deactivation of intellectualism. The burial of thought occurs not in the classroom, nor the street, but in the corridors of power, where critical minds are seduced into silence.

The second death is physical, and far less tragic than the first. This intellectual demise, this mental crucifixion, is neither poetic nor metaphorical. It is as real as the budgets never read, the manifestos never lived, and the dreams that flicker and die in the concrete cages of our post-colonial governments.

I have watched it happen too many times.

A brilliant scholar, sharp, lucid, almost luminous with conviction, is appointed to a cabinet position. A minister of education here, a special advisor on policy there. For a moment, you believe that something might finally shift.

Perhaps this time, thought will sit at the table where decisions are made. But then, the descent begins.

The speeches become sterile.

The body language changes.

The fire dims. And within months, the former critic, the once-defiant voice of reason,
now speaks in platitudes, empty, rehearsed, and cowardly. He becomes what the psalmist described so aptly: a man walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Not fearing evil, but slowly becoming it.

This editorial is a eulogy for those minds. But it is also an indictment.

I speak here not just as an observer but as a member of a generation that was taught to believe in the power of the mind. We were raised on Achebe and Ngũgĩ, on the promises of independence and the thunder of decolonial thought.

We believed that education was emancipation. That to think clearly was to act justly. We believed that ideas mattered. And then we watched as governments, our governments, treated thought as a threat and inquiry as insubordination.

In post-colonial Africa, intellectualism is not merely sidelined.

It is extinguished.

Our governments are not just hostile to intellect; they are its graveyards.

The Cabinet as a Mausoleum

Let us speak plainly. In many African countries, the cabinet is not a council of merit but a theater of loyalty. Ministers are selected not for what they know, but for whom they serve. And thus the most intelligent among us, if they wish to serve, must perform stupidity.

They must downplay their expertise, dilute their truth, and speak not as they believe but as they are instructed. This is not merely disappointing. It is systemically destructive.

A government without intellectuals is a government doomed to repeat its mistakes. But a government that recruits intellectuals only to neutralize them is far more dangerous. It is a government that fears knowledge more than it fears poverty, corruption, or tyranny.

In such a system, truth becomes a liability. To know too much is to risk being labeled arrogant. To question policy is to invite suspicion. To cite data, theory, or history is to be accused of “overthinking” or being “Westernized.”

This anti-intellectualism wears many masks like populist authenticity, cultural pride, pragmatic realism, but at its core, it is nothing but fear: the fear of being held accountable by minds that will not kneel.

Colonialism’s Lingering Chains

The irony is brutal. The same colonial governments that derided African thought now have successors who do the same in African tongues. Where colonizers once silenced us with foreign laws, our own leaders now silence us with patronage and bureaucracy. The master’s tools, it turns out, have been handed down, repainted, and sharpened.

The education systems we inherited from colonialism trained us to manage, not to question. Universities were designed to produce administrators, not revolutionaries. And so, even our brightest minds often emerge fluent in compliance but illiterate in resistance.

It is no surprise, then, that when they enter government, they adapt not by transforming the system but by being consumed by it.

This is not to say that the African intellectual is weak. Quite the opposite. The ability to survive in these systems without completely surrendering one’s mind requires almost superhuman resilience. But the system is designed to make that resilience futile. The mechanisms are subtle but effective: long meetings that achieve nothing; committees that smother bold ideas in procedural fog; threats of dismissal disguised as performance reviews; praise offered in exchange for silence. The result is a slow, grinding erosion of courage.

What is mental death?

It is when you stop asking questions.

When you stop reading critically.

When you no longer feel disturbed by contradiction, injustice, or hypocrisy.

When you say “yes, sir,” not because you agree, but because disagreement has become too expensive. It is when you wake up one day and realize that you have not thought a new thought in
years. That you have become useful but unoriginal.

Powerful but irrelevant.

Alive but intellectually dead.

I have seen too many peers, mentors, and friends die this way.

Intellectualism as Resistance

I still believe that thought can prevail. Not in the halls of government, perhaps, but outside them. In the streets, in classrooms, in independent media, in literature, in art, in community movements. These are the new parliaments of the African mind.

We must reimagine what it means to be an intellectual in Africa today. It is not about titles or tenures. It is about refusal. The refusal to accept lazy thinking. The refusal to normalize
mediocrity. The refusal to separate thought from action. It is about reclaiming the intellectual not as an ornament of state power but as its necessary opponent.

And we must be honest with ourselves: many intellectuals are complicit in their own demise. Some pursue government positions not to serve, but to escape obscurity.

Some accept silence in exchange for contracts, visibility, or diplomatic postings. We cannot lament the death of thought while enabling the very systems that strangle it.

Being an African intellectual today is inconvenient. It is to speak when silence would be safer. It is to critique those you admire. It is to be willing to burn bridges that lead to comfortable irrelevance.

The PathForward

There are three imperatives, I believe, for salvaging intellectual life in post-colonial African governance:

1. De-institutionalize thought.
The university is not the only sanctuary of truth. We must support thinkers who
operate outside traditional structures: journalists, artists, bloggers, and independent scholars. Let us fund them. Let us protect them. Let us stop measuring intellect by access to power.

2. Revalorize dissent.
A healthy government should not just tolerate intellectual critique. It should
invite it. We need to rebuild a political culture in which disagreement is not betrayal, and complexity is not weakness.

3. Reclaim education as transformation.
Information systems must train minds to challenge, not just conform. We need curricula that center African epistemologies, that teach not just content but criticality. A degree should be a license to question, not a passport to submission.

A Call from the Valley

I write this not as a lament, but as a warning and a call. The valley of the shadow of mental death is widening. It has become the main thoroughfare to power. But we do not have to walk through it blindly. We can choose another path.

We must.

Let us not mourn the intellectual. Let us resurrect them.

Let us remember: a mind that refuses to die is more powerful than any ministry, any budget, any regime. It is the seed of every revolution, the architect of every future. Governments may silence voices. They may marginalize thinkers. But they cannot kill thought. Unless we let them.

Say No to Ujinga!