Prof Nawangwe must set MUK free

On September 10, another bunch of letters warning and suspending students at Makerere University made rounds on social media. This time around, Ms Jackline Tumusiime, and Daisy Andiru were on the receiving end of the warning letters. Mr Martin Oteba wasn't as "lucky”; the College of Computing and Information Sciences student received something more dreadful: A suspension letter. 

The three letters, like tens of others before them, were all signed by none other than the university vice chancellor, Prof Barnabas Nawangwe. Despite his busy schedule as the man running one of Africa’s topmost universities, Prof Nawangwe always signs these letters personally, which goes to show how much importance he attaches to them.

According to Prof Nawangwe, the two female students were warned and Mr Oteba was suspended for what he described as "participating in and mobilising fellow students to participate in acts that are disruptive in nature”. By these many words, the vice chancellor was simply saying he deemed it fit to warn and suspend the students – all of whom happen to be student leaders – for interesting other students in proposed increment in tuition and rallying their electorate to oppose such a move. Like several times in its post-independence history, Uganda is facing another lull moment for civil rights. 

As in the past, the Ugandan State today freely arrests and jails political opponents, tries them in the General Court Martial, and the most powerful of its officials and their families live – even without saying it – a life above the law. Again, as it happened in the past, the Judiciary has reduced itself to an enabler of these injustices, and the country has been turned into a nation of 45 million potential victims of abuses without guarantee of redress. None of this is uncharted territory for our gallant nation or her people. We have been here before. 

Hopefully, we will not be here again, but few will be surprised if we do. One thing has always been curtained though; each time the country found itself beleaguered in the past; Makerere University played the role of a lighthouse. The university management, academic staff, and students have always stood up against all forms of oppression and injustice in Uganda. 

This quest to stand up and be counted for standing with Ugandans in their hour of need saw a former occupant of Mr Nawangwe's seat, Frank Kalimuzo pay the ultimate price in 1972 just as Idi Amin’s dictatorship was beginning to run amok. Other gallant Makerereans such as Prof Ali Mazrui fled to exit while students like Prof Nawangwe fled the country and were forced to continue their education elsewhere. 

It is scandalous, therefore, that today, at a time the country is looking to Makerere once again to be the lighthouse it is so capable and experienced at being, none other than the vice chancellor won’t let the student leadership do as little as convene a discussion on their own tuition policy. The freedom to protest – like most freedoms – can be a messy business. 

Yet, on a cost-benefit analysis scale, the framers of the 1995 Constitution deemed this freedom worthy of constitutional recognition and protection. As one of the rights under Chapter Four, only in the rarest of rare circumstances, where there is a real danger of serious problems resulting from the exercise – in essence the violation of other people's rights – should thoughts of restricting this freedom be harboured. 

As such, Prof Nawangwe must do the right thing and release Makerere from the tight grip of chokehold his knee has put the university in. 

The writer is a lawyer with a keen interest in politics, human rights, and governance.
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