Who was Prof. Mudhola?

May 29, 2009

Witnessing the current power wrangles in Busoga kingdom, Irene Mudhola wistfully remembers her late husband professor Dan Mudhola. “If he was here, I am sure those wrangles would not be happening. He would have been able to sit those people down and mak

By Lydia Namubiru

Witnessing the current power wrangles in Busoga kingdom, Irene Mudhola wistfully remembers her late husband professor Dan Mudhola. “If he was here, I am sure those wrangles would not be happening. He would have been able to sit those people down and make them see the truth,” she said.

Dan Mudhola was born to a Musoga chief, making him a Mubiito, a prince in Busoga. “He would have been eligible to become Kyabazinga himself,” his widow says, although she believes he would not have vied for the position anyway.

What he would have done, she thinks, would have been to reveal the truth to the currently feuding parties. Afterall, Mudhola had intimately researched the politics of Busoga. His PhD thesis was on chiefs and political action between 1900 -1962, with Busoga being his case study. The making of the Kyabazinga was one of the chapters in this work. “Maybe people should get it and read it now. It might help,” his widow says in reference to the Busoga wrangles.

At the time of his death, according to David Mutayisa, a relative who lived and shortly worked with him, Mudhola was researching for another book he intended to write on his royal lineage and Busoga kingdom. A book that might perhaps have answered some of the questions plaguing the kingdom currently.

Irene was near the bar on the fateful day
Unfortunately, this renowned professor of Political Science whose most famous works were on conflict resolution was killed in a brutal and unforgiving manner. A hand grenade was thrown at him in his favourite hangout in Wandegeya, a Kampala suburb. By cruel coincidence, his own wife was driving towards the scene, at just about the time of the murder. She even heard the blast. “I told the driver to go to the scene. He did not want to but I insisted because I knew that was the place my husband went to every day. I got there and reached him. He was still alive. The time they took him to theatre at 10:00 pm, he was conscious and we were talking,” she recalls. Her husband of 20 years passed away the following day at Mulago Hospital.

At his dying age of 51, Mudhola was a holder of a PhD from Makerere University (1975), a Masters Degree from Manchester University (1968) and a Bachelors of Political Science from Makerere (1964).

The old boy of Ntare School in Mbarara and Sir Samuel Baker Secondary School in Masindi had also managed to build himself an impressive career.

A distinguished tutor and researcher, he had lectured at Makerere University, the University of Dar es salaam and the University of California. He also headed the Makerere Institute of Social Research from 1983 to his dying day, ten years later. Posthumously, a book he had written, ‘Religion, Ehnicity and Politics in Uganda’ ,was published by Fountain Publishers.

His love for the youngest daughter, Gloria
He was survived by five children, three boys and two girls. His youngest daughter, Gloria Mudhola, was only five years at the time. Gloria is now doing her last undergraduate year at the university. “He loved her so much. She is named after his mother, and so he always called her ‘Mama’,” the widow recalls.

His family soldiers on albeit with wounds not fully healed. “I believe my eldest daughter has never recovered,” Mudhola’s widow said, hinting at one of those wounds.

She herself has borne a heavy cross. As a secretary (even with the State House), she almost always did not make enough money for the family. But that did not hurt as much as the realisation that somehow her own identity seems to have died with her husband. “Those days, you went to a function and people recognised you, and gave you a seat besides your husband. Today, you have to find the seat yourself. No one recognises you. It is a very bad feeling,” she says.

“Even some of the relatives who once lived with us hardly visit the family anymore. Life is definitely less than what it once was.”

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