A Stanford degree cannot cure colonial consciousness

When Robert Kirunda argued that the empowerment of women is responsible for the breakdown of marriage, the internet received it with mixed and divided reactions.

The usual supporters of “traditional family values” applauded him. Still, for others, such as myself, it was a shock such an argument came from a lecturer of law at Makerere University.

The more the video circulated, the bolder critical voices, especially feminist voices, called him out. But even then, I think both sides missed the bigger story. Robert Kirunda’s remarks are interesting; they are not particularly original, but they reveal something much deeper about how we have been taught to understand society.

They expose a crisis that goes far beyond one man’s opinion. They expose the failure of our education system to decolonise the African mind. That may sound like an abstract academic phrase, but it is actually a practical political problem.

One of the central arguments made by political philosopher Dr. Lwaza Lushaba is that colonialism did not merely occupy African land. It occupied African consciousness. And while independence removed colonial administrations, it did not necessarily dismantle the ways in which Africans had been taught to think, interpret society, and produce knowledge.

Our universities continued producing graduates, professionals, and experts, yet many remained intellectually dependent on inherited ways of explaining the world. This is not what decolonisation was supposed to be; it wasn’t supposed to be simply replacing white lecturers with black lecturers or changing the national flag.

It should have been about freeing the mind from inherited assumptions that prevent us from asking better questions. About producing citizens who explain society through inquiry, evidence, and history rather than through unquestioned authority.

Seen from this perspective, Robert Kirunda’s comments become less about gender and more about consciousness. When he claimed that women’s empowerment is destroying marriage, he presented the statement as though it required no explanation. He did not ask whether changing economic realities have transformed family life.

He did not examine how capitalism has altered work, migration, and domestic relationships. He did not ask whether many marriages historically survived because women had no realistic economic alternative.

He did not investigate how education, urbanisation, delayed marriage, changing expectations, and individual freedoms have reshaped relationships across the world. Instead, one explanation was presented as though it settled the matter. That is precisely what conscientised thinking looks like.

Conscientisation, as explained by Paulo Freire, is the ability to critically examine society instead of merely accepting inherited explanations. It asks us to question power, interrogate assumptions, and understand the historical forces shaping our lives.

It is the opposite of repeating what tradition, religion, or authority has handed down simply because those sources command respect. This is not an attack on religion. Religion answers questions of faith, morality, and spiritual purpose.

Social science answers questions about society. Confusing the two does violence to both. One cannot explain unemployment by saying demons caused it. One cannot explain inflation by appealing to divine will.

Likewise, one cannot explain the challenges affecting marriage or its changing nature by simply asserting that women’s empowerment is the problem. Society deserves better explanations.

Ironically, Kirunda’s own argument undermines the conclusion he seeks to defend. If empowering women causes marriage to collapse, it would follow that marriage was stable only because women were dependent.

In other words, stability was maintained through inequality. But why should any rational person, in this case a woman, preserve an institution that requires their own subordination to survive?

Imagine arguing that apartheid only collapsed because Black South Africans became politically empowered. That statement would be factually true in one sense. But nobody would conclude that empowerment was, therefore, the problem.

The real problem would have been the unjust system that depended upon inequality to survive. The same reasoning applies here. If marriage requires female dependence to survive, then perhaps empowerment has not broken marriage; it has exposed the weaknesses that were always there instead.

Kirunda’s argument also says something else that I doubt he intended. It strips men of agency. If a marriage cannot survive once a woman acquires education, employment, or financial independence, what exactly does that say about male leadership?

It suggests that men are incapable of sustaining healthy relationships unless women occupy a subordinate position. That is hardly a defence of masculinity. It is an admission of male fragility.

What concerns me most, however, is not Robert Kirunda himself. It is that his reasoning is entirely familiar. It is the kind of reasoning our universities increasingly produce. We have become exceptionally good at manufacturing credentials. We produce lawyers who memorise statutes but rarely question the philosophical foundations of justice.

Economists who solve equations but struggle to explain poverty in their own communities. Academics who publish journal articles but explain complex social realities using inherited theological assumptions rather than evidence.

In short, we educate people to succeed professionally without teaching them how to think critically. Is that education? I would call that certification instead. And because Kirunda also studied at Stanford, this cannot be reduced to a simple attack on Ugandan universities alone.

The problem is bigger. While a Stanford education may sharpen the intellect, it does not automatically free the mind from colonial, patriarchal, or religious assumptions. It is to say that prestige is not the same thing as liberation I am not saying decolonised education should reject Western education or Abrahamic religion.

I am saying that no body of knowledge should be accepted simply because it carries authority.

The kind that says “…I studied at Stanford Law School, the best law school in the world…. I was told by an Indian woman in a church in the west…” as to say, therefore, you should believe me.

No. Every claim must justify itself on the basis of reason, evidence, and experience. That is why Lwaza Lushaba argues that Africa’s greatest crisis is not merely economic or political. It is epistemic. It is a crisis of knowledge.

A crisis of consciousness. How do we know what we claim to know? And maybe we shouldn’t blame Robert Kirunda because he didn’t start this crisis; he merely reveals what many of his ilk are. Of course, it was shocking.

Shocking because he reminded us how easily an educated society can mistake conviction for explanation, authority for evidence, and inherited belief for knowledge, because somehow we assumed that they ought to know better.

To abandon narrow and outdated frames of reference. We shouldn’t take it lightly, though; we should be worried that thousands of educated Ugandans, judging by reactions on social media, which helps to platform, aggregate, and show reactions, heard it and considered it a sufficient explanation of one of the most profound social transformations.

We need to have real discourse in this country about why, after more than 60 years of independence, our education system still struggles to produce genuinely free minds. A public square that accepts rehashed theocratic explanations typical of the medieval great chain of being.

The writer is a researcher with Agora Center for Research

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