My attention is drawn to a third document in a row from Makerere University Academic staff Association (MUASA) calling for industrial action. This document was served yesterday 4th/04/2020, a day before the begining of physical lectures for the newly oriented year one students Academic year 2020/21 of Makerere University.
This document is Clearly stating that there shall be no business to do with academics unless plights of the academic staff are enriched. A similar document was issued before the Vice Chancellor’s office okayed online lectures for continuing students. Surely there has been no lectures till now. The vice Chancellor while addressing a congregation at St Francis Chapel Makerere and the media (NBS TV) denied the talks of a strike by Academic staff.
Last week, Graduation dates for final year students were postponed because striking lectures were not present to avail their marks in order to clear for graduation. It’s my humble appeal to call upon all students of Makerere University to interest themselves in this matter because there is no assurance that the plights of these striking lecturers shall be enriched so soon.
The absence of an inspirational Students’s leadership is yet the biggest suffocation to the voices of students. The speaker of the 85th Government Mr Ezra Byakutangaza who doubles as the interim guild president and a member of council (Students’s representative) was thrown out of council because his tenure as a student expired since he is to be a graduand soon.
Incumbent on this, we are therefore asking the administration to clearly issue a go ahead to students electoral politics by issuing a Roadmap as soon as possible.
The administration is imposing Electronic voting(E-Votes) on the students. This is being viewed as a means to influence the election out come by the University.
We are aware that some University departments most especially finance have access to all students university portals without necessarily knowing their passwords. We therefore, quest the university to disabuse themselves of the proposal to implement the E-Vote with immediate effect.
Aaron Oguttu a student of Bachelor of Arts with Education has petitioned the vice Chancellor to come up with a clear Statement on the fate of Students politics which were halted last year by a presidential directive to close all universities inorder to contain the Covid19 pandemic.
Aaron Oguttu was one of the top contenders in the guild race that was cut short. Apparently he returns with umbrella symbol of National Unity Platform competing with NRM’s Macxzon Muhwezi, Tumusime Joseph, Nalukwago Judith and FDC’s Obedgiu Kwokuboth.
However, the process of verification and validation of candidates according to the electoral reforms of 2020 was not yet completed by the time the president decided to close all institutions Owing to regulate the spread of Covid19 in Uganda.
When we interrogated various students about the online elections m, we noticed that out of the one hundred students we interviewed, 95% did not have trust in the online voting system christened E-Votes.
One of the students told us that the administration of the university has access to the student portals and can access them without passwords, meaning that they could vote on their behalf and manipulate the results in favour of leaders that will pass unfriendly policies.
Picture: My grand mother Aliya Aate (RIP), the mother of His Excellency President Idi Amin Dada, barely a couple of years before she passed away. Here she was carrying her grandchildren (my elder brother Ali and my elder sister Maryam). While my grandfather was tall and slender, my father probably got the heavyweight build from my grandmother.
Truth is she past away the year I was born so I have only heard great stories about her from my father and his elder brother Ramathan Amin (RIP). The two were her only children, though they had an elder sister who passed away very young. My grandmother had alot of knowledge about herbal medicine at a time when western medicine was not available in Africa as it is today. Living in the British colonial barracks with my grandfather who served in the Uganda police, she helped treat alot of the officers and neighbours for all types of ailments. Africans those days went for herbal treatment just as we go to the dispensary, pharmacy or clinic today. It was the normal treatment that everyone was turned to when sick…until western medicine progressively spread across Africa. Soon word reached the Buganda royal family about her skills and knowledge in herbal medicine, and she started treating members of the royal family and their entourage. In those days it was reportedly just word of mouth that went around if a particular herbalist’s medicine had successfully treated a patient, and more people would just start trickling in for help with their different ailments.
She was so good at her herbal medicinal skills and probably saved a few royal lives because the Buganda King donated to her a huge plot of land. I suspect they also wanted her to grow all the plants that she needed on that expanse so that she could have all that she needed for their ailments nearby. The problem with politics is that my father was hated so much that they started insulting, abusing and slandering my innocent grandmother as well for no reason whatsoever. This was so painful especially that she not only passed away before my father ever became president, she had also actually devoted her life to helping Ugandans in the only simple way she knew best, and that is with her herbal medecine knowledge. One of my biggest regrets is that I was not around to write down all that knowledge. Who knows if she could have known the best herbs that treat covid-19 symptoms or HIV/AIDS for example. But without anything in writing to pass on, there is generally no way today to even conduct scientific research and clinical trials of invaluable African herbal medecine knowledge and related treatments plus it’s effectiveness. It is indeed unfortunate that slander is the price she has also paid, even in death, in the hatred-filled arena of Uganda’s politics, combined with the unchecked rage of disgruntled former colonial masters whose political and economic control over Uganda had been deeply and abruptly severed when she was not even around anymore. It is only my grandfather who lived to see his son become President of Uganda before he passed away peacefully five years later in 1976. But angry people overseas wrote about my grandmother as if they ever knew who she was, or had ever sat down with her to talk about her life-saving work, or what she stood for in her community. I remember when I was at my fathers bedside at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital of the Saudi Ministry of Defense in 2003, the last person my father talked about fondly before he passed away was my grandmother.
Meanwhile, at a time when owning a car and taking a photo were both a very big deal for the average African (compared to today where everyone, even those in African villages, have a camera on every cellphone), this picture was taken at my grandmothers home on the land in Bugerere gifted to her by the Buganda Royals. And the brand new vehicle in the background (I believe it is a British-made Anglia, very popular in those Ugandan independence years) is President Idi Amin’s first ever privately-owned vehicle ever. He loved my grandmother so much that as a young man in the military he drove his brand new car all the way to her house to show it to her, and took this souvenir picture that turned out to be the only one ever taken of my grandmother.
As Uganda’s former presidential candidate moved to petition the UNHRC on the gross violation of human rights in Uganda, Robert Kyagulanyi moved along with various media houses heading to the regional office of the United Nations Human rights Commission in Kampala.
Drawing close to the officess the former met with the miliaty and police that clobbered all Journalists and injuring so many of them.
The former later submitted his petition to the UNHRC.
Jah Ras Tafari is the original name of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Sselasie 1. Haile Sselasie’s rise to power in the 1930’s was as a result of a prophesy made by a Jamaican politician Marcus Garvey. Garvey foresaw that there shall arise an African King that will rise to rescue their race from colonialism and it’s related evils.
Colonialism saw the deposition of Selasie by Mussolini in a bid to overrun Ethiopia. Jah Ras Tafari fled to the West Indies and later to Jamaica where he was worshiped as the Messiah talked about by the prophet Marcus Garvey.
He founded the Rastafarian Movement that was christened from his name Ras Tafari. A religion that was popularised by the then Bob Marley and other Raggae Maestros across the globe.
Jah Ras MacKinnon Tafari was murdered by the power and blood thirsty Haile Mariam Mengistu who was also deposed by Melez Zenawi. The Mengistu is currently living in Harare Zimbabwe where he should be fetched and dumped in prison.
Taking a critical look at the various guild constitutions of Universities across Uganda, political parties do not feature any where. However, there is a manner in which student politicians associate themselves with political parties like the FDC, DP/UYD, NRM and now the NUP etc.
It’s a culture that Students organise protest in solidarity with the broader society with the most recent being the “Tojikwatako” protest in Kampala against the Amendement of Article 102, b of the presidential election Act of the 1995 constitution of Uganda and the anti social media tax protests.
On the 14th January 2021, Ugandans went to the polls and extended Yoweri Museveni’s term of office to over forty years. An election that local and international observers doubted it’s aunthenticity. Basis of this, it’s suspected that the dissatisfied group will protest the election out comes. One may think that the student’s community being a stronger spot of the opposition may be nabbed in these protests. That’s in case they occur and perhaps justify their continued closure.
However, the reason given by various blogs may not be ignored because the Covid-19 is real. Though many critics of the regime may not buy this school of thought.
For over 10months, Ugandan Universities have been under key and lock for fear of the Civid-19 pandemic. It was expected that the universities would open this January to enable schools catch up with the normal calendar. The National Council for Higher Education (NHCE) in a statement requested Universities to continue with the ODel for fear that the pandemic would arise from the blue.
The national Council stipulated three months for the universities to open citing that the situation would have normalise then.
However, critics have related this decision to be a political move motivated by fear of the growing activism in higher institutions of learning most especially Makerere and Kyambogo Universities.
We spoke to some people who preferred to remain anonymous and they shared their views. They had this to say.
Personally I still doubt whether that directive was issued by the president of Uganda. If he did so, his advisors then told him so. Let’s first look at how the information moved 1.National Council wrote a letter , which wasn’t stamped. Later, media houses ( Nbs and Vision group ) . These channels we have been suspecting to be engineered by mafias initially.
Nbs and New Vision made publications before any media house . Actually it was 30 minutes after National council wrote the letter . Daily Monitor gave a different story . The story which we all knew that the minister of Education was supposed to address the nation on the 28th January 2021 but she didn’t. However, NCHE only addressed universities but the media houses included all schools, raising alot of questions .
So let’s compile 1.National Council releases a letter 2.Nbs and Vision group publish the story , where did the president speak from , from his bed , because on all occasions , Museveni has been addressing issues concerning Corona on TVs 🤷🏿♂️ 3.JC muyingo says that meetings are still on going to decide a day , that but the end of this week they will have gotten a story , yet the president had already decided 3 months🤷🏿♂️🤷🏿♂️🤷🏿♂️🤷🏿♂️. Meetings are on going yet the president had extended . Then what are they meeting for ???
Daily monitor publishes something contrary . So am seeing conflicting forces within the administrators . If we stay home Am expecting a deal , like President we need 15 billion for inspecting schools ,to see whether they are competent to follow SOPs before they start operating .
At first I thought it was a fear the university students might revolt , but what the primary kids ???????
[1/29, 9:00 PM] Smocker: There is a manner in which Universities act as an extensional academy of political parties most especially in the opposition. If you critically look at the NUP, it’s strength was to some extent gauged on the recently concluded guild elections. Even most of the country wide polling agents were recruited from Universities. I see a great fear that the opposition could recruit these energetic young men who are dissatisfied with the manner in which the Government has managed their affairs like the tuition hikes, removal of feeding allowances and hall allowances etc. This could tantamount to untold unrests for the state.
I spoke to one of my comrades from the the medical school of Makerere whose identity I prefer to keep anonymous. And he has this to say.
The truth is that I think at this political instability, Universities may be the start of a revolution that may see him out. That’s my thinking. Once Universities open, internal challenges like feeding, tuition blah blah can elicit demonstrations in universities mostly Makerere that can start from there, also history has it that most of the violence in Uganda doesn’t spare Makerere University.
It’s only Universities, Makerere in particular that can withstand a weekly strike amidst intimidation and 2019 strike that lasted for two weeks brought a lot of international focus and tension. I even heard it from the vice Chancellor’s office that some politicians wanted to utilize that chance to make the strike move to kisekka market and beyond.
With all the challenges in Uganda currently, University students are the least you can rely on to maintain peace and patience and they’re always united.
Something small internally can become something big.
Again Makerere had made it a consistency to strike always at the begining or middle or end of the semester and right now, something small may spread.
Wounded Activist 