Struggle for the soul of Makerere

Last Friday, Prof Mahmood Mamdani wrote an article in the Daily Monitor with an alarmist if decidedly misleading title: ‘Have regime change intellectuals captured Makerere?’

There was quite a bit of needless and circuitous narration, but the real target was John Barya, Prof of Law. Interestingly, Mamdani didn’t have the courage to state that it was Barya he was referring to!

Full disclosure: Barya is my colleague with whom I have worked for many years. With other colleagues, we co-founded a think-tank, Society for Justice and National Unity. Barya is interim chair and I am interim secretary. The core objective is to mobilise and bring scholarly input into critical national debate, to play our roles as citizens and contribute to the struggle for a better Uganda.

Neither Barya nor any other colleague in the think-tank is a politician. But we are not apolitical nor are we disinterested academics who are indifferent to the problems of the country. We are united by our deep feeling of being duty-bound to play a role in shaping the Uganda we wish to have.

We do not believe that scholars should remain walled-off in the Ivory Tower and totally removed from society in the name of pursuing the life of the mind, away from the rough and tumble of the social and political world.

Barya, Fred Jjuuko (now retired from Makerere) and Joe Oloka have consistently stepped forward to speak truth to power and to lend their intellectual resources to the cause of progressive politics in Uganda.

None of them would have any qualms or apologies for making a case for regime change in Uganda, and arguing that Ugandans desire an end to the corrupt NRM rule. This is where Mamdani seems to have a problem because he thinks otherwise.

The idea that to speak to the politics of the day and stand for the cause of social justice turns a scholar into a politician, who is not interested in critical scholarship, as Mamdani seems to suggest, is at best misleading and at worst disingenuous.

At a general level, the struggles at Makerere are struggles for the soul of our premier university, caught in the throes of autocracy and maladministration for which Mamdani is very much a current active player.

It is the same struggle for national liberation from the misrule of Mr Museveni, to put an end to abuse of power and to place the common good above the narrow interests of the few powerful.

It stretches the imagination to claim that Makerere is under capture by those opposed to the status quo. Rather, it has long been the case that the regime through its apparatchiks continues to fight to fully capture Makerere and strip it of its independence and close out the space for critical engagement with public issues.

Contrary to the sensationalist suggestion of regime change intellectuals, the academic staff association has successively been led by individuals known to support the NRM regime. What is more, from the chancellor to the University Council, Appointments Board and Convocation, the individuals in those positions are NRM supporters if not cadres altogether. Over the years, the missing link was finding a fully pliant vice-chancellor.

So where are those regime change intellectuals who have captured Makerere? Well, it comes down to the fact that Barya, who specialises in labour law, has been advising the leadership of the academic staff association on legal matters.

For Mamdani, with Barya providing legal counsel when he is openly opposed to the Museveni regime, never mind that the people he has advised are NRM supporters, is enough to conclude that regime change intellectuals have captured Makerere!

What is at stake in the stand-off with the vice-chancellor is resistance against abuse of power and an assault on the cardinal principle of academic freedom that any university worth its salt must preserve. It is to oppose running a university like a kindergarten the same way Museveni looks at Uganda as his private estate and sees Ugandans as his children.

Unsurprisingly, Mamdani sees no problem with the actions of the vice-chancellor because at the unit he heads, he has summarily dismissed students critical of his autocratic modus operandi and manipulated rules whenever he wants to get his way.

More importantly though, evoking regime change is meant to appeal to the rulers that their agents at Makerere are under threat. Again, it is of little surprise that the alarm had to be sounded by Mamdani whose current appointment at Makerere is illegal and only possible because of intervention from the holders of state power.