Strikes: The ball is in Makubuya's court

By Paul Waibale Senior School strikes are a worldwide phenomenon to which Uganda cannot be an exception. But I draw a distinction between school strikes and school riots which have escalated across the country in the course of a mere three or four months. One only needs to look at the alarming facts and figures connected with the bizarre situation to plead for intervention by the Ministry of Education to stop the dangerous trend towards absolute chaos. It is neither possible nor desirable to catalogue all the riots that have stained the image of Uganda's educational establishment within a period of less than half a year. I will, therefore, confine myself to listing a few examples as a backdrop to the proposals I will propound later. About a fortnight ago, Kabalega SSS had to be closed down and students sent home following a strike in which students were engaged in acts of hooliganism including burning down the block that housed the staff room. A week earlier the school's Senior 3 students had been sent home after they had burnt the administration block to ashes. One would have expected that it must have been something extraordinary that could have provoked students to the extent of destroying school property in such outrageous style. But it turns out that the strike (or riot, to be more precise) was protest against the school authority's practice of supplying water from the school to the nearby Masindi Hotel. Maybe the school authorities were wrong in supplying water to Masindi Hotel, but what kind of student would imagine that the best form of protest was destroying school property? What kind of student is too naive to appreciate that the resultant closure of the school would dictate financial loss to the parents and academic loss to the students? In Bushenyi SSS some ll8 students were suspended following a strike in which the deputy headmaster was injured and a lot of school property damaged. On the other hand, Gulu High School suspended 200 students who staged a strike to protest against a decision by the school administration to demote the deputy headboy. Apparently, the students were angered by the fact that they were not consulted before the demotion was effected. If the students elected the deputy headboy, as is often the case these days, the students had the right to pursue the point, but did it warrant a strike. But was the suspension of 200 students the most rational measure to take? What happened in the case of St. Catherine Girls' School has diverse dimensions. First reports indicated that 64 students were expelled from the school when they attempted to stage a strike, which was foiled by the school administration. It was not clear what the abhorted strike was about, but later reports indicated that the culprits expelled had been practising lesbianism. The school board had decided to expel them to save the school from the "satanic practice." There was also an allegation that five of the girls had contributed money to buy petrol, which would have been used to burn school buildings. Here is a tricky situation. Lesbianism is illegal in Uganda, therefore anybody who indulges in the practice is guilty of a criminal offence. Setting fire to the school buildings and any preparations made to carry out the arson envisaged were also criminal offences under Uganda law. Why were the students expelled without informing the Police? At Namilyango College, the Police had to intervene to quell a students’ strike in which school property, including computers and beddings in the dispensary were destroyed. The students also stormed the deputy headmaster's house and vandalised his car. The reason? A student who collapsed while playing table tennis was detained in the school dispensary for two hours before he was transferred to Mulago hospital, where he died the following day. Arguably, the school authorities could have acted rather passively in waiting for two hours before transferring the student who collapsed from the school dispensary to the hospital. But what does that have to do with computers in the school or bedding in the dispensary? The rate and nature of school riots unleashed within the last four months points to a mysterious situation whose tentacles need an emergency surgical operation to establish their origin. The ball is in Kiddu Makubuya's court.