Mamdani free to leave - Ddumba

KAMPALA. The Makerere University Vice Chancellor, Prof Ddumba Ssentamu, yesterday hit back at the executive director of the university’s Institute of Social Research (MISR) Prof Mahmood Mamdani, saying the celebrated academic can leave.
Prof Mamdani, who is currently entangled in a wrangle with Dr Stella Nyanzi, a research fellow at MISR, has questioned the VC’s neutrality in the wrangle at the institute. Prof Mamdani, in an interview also doubted Prof Ddumba’s capacity to take Uganda’s premier university to the next level.

But Prof Ddumba last evening said MISR can always continue with or without Prof Mamdani’s leadership, despite the contribution the celebrated academic has made to the institute. “I have a good working relationship with [Prof] Mamdani and I acknowledge his contribution, but MISR did not start with Mamdani. All the people who have come have done tremendous work and left,” Prof Ddumba said in a phone interview yesterday.
The row at the institute on Tuesday took a new twist with Prof Mamdani accusing the university’s Vice Chancellor, Prof John Ddumba-Ssentamu, of being part of a larger group “running a web of intrigue” that wants to eject him from the institution using Dr Nyanzi as a stunt.

Meanwhile, Prof Dumba yesterday named an eight-man committee to probe the saga at MISR. Committee members are Prof David Justin Bakibinga (chairperson) - professor of Commercial Law in the School of Law, Prof JYT Mugisha, Professor of Biomathematics and principal of the College of Natural Sciences, Associate Prof Julius Kikooma, the Dean of the School of Psychology, Associate Prof Christopher Mbaziira, the coordinator of the Public Interest Law Clinic at the School of Law, Dr Josephine Ahikire, the Dean School of Women and Gender Studies, Ms Naome Kiconco, the legal officer in the Makerere Legal Directorate, Mr Henry Nsubuga, the manager of the Counselling and Guidance Centre, and Ms Mary K Tizikara, the director of human resources who will provide the secretariat. The Committee reports its findings tomorrow.

Excerpts of interview with prof Ddumba

Prof Mamdani accuses you of hatching a plot to dismantle the PhD programme at MISR and actually working to have him thrown out of the university so the institute is run on a consultancy and not research unit basis.

Ddumba: That is not true; I have a good working relationship with Mamdani. It is very false; I am the leader of the institution and cannot destroy it. If it (Makerere) fails under my leadership, it means that I have destroyed myself.

He says you are an impartial actor in the matter since Nyanzi is your relative and this is the reason she cannot be touched?

Ddumba: I say it again that I condemn the act of undressing by Dr Nyanzi. Mamdani should stop using that cheap popularity. That is cheap politics, I am not that cheap. Whatever is going on in MISR, he has my full support but let him stop using that cheap politics.
Is there a breakdown in conflict resolution mechanisms at the university? Did you have to wait for her to strip before forming a committee to look into the dispute?

Ddumba: I am telling the truth, it’s my first time to hear of that conflict. I only got to know about it last Friday. If I have been assisting Dr Nyanzi, how come for the last five years I have not helped her?If I am on the side of Dr Nyanzi, how come she has been complaining? Dr Nyanzi has never come complaining to me. What I want you to understand is that Dr Nyanzi was appointed in the university service in 2011 on merit when I was not yet a VC, and I became VC in 2013. So how then can he (Mamdani) say I have been helping her?
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