Do not mix politics and academics

Jul 19, 2007

PROFESSOR Ssemakula Kiwanuka’s article titled, “Active politicians should not be university chancellors” <i>The New Vision</i> of June 29 opens a debate in the relevancy of today’s academic sector to Uganda.

By Michael Kaluya

PROFESSOR Ssemakula Kiwanuka’s article titled, “Active politicians should not be university chancellors” The New Vision of June 29 opens a debate in the relevancy of today’s academic sector to Uganda.

Many would agree that Makerere University has completely changed the role of academics in the country because of political infiltrations at almost all levels of the university. The future of Makerere is threatened to whimper if “politics” is not separated from academics.

Political attachment stems from battles between the opposition and the ruling government to claim the campus as a separate constituency to support their causes.
In doing so, the politicians have influenced faculty, administrators, support staff and the campus clients to support their political ideals.

Secondly, the management of commercial education by knowledge providers has put students to demand this knowledge inelastically. This greatly explains the changed picture of the once glorious university in Africa.

Unsurprisingly, doing so as explained above has not only changed the way the university is run, but also affected the best ingredient any university can contribute to its nation — the supply of knowledge through research based teaching.

Therefore, two things need to be addressed at Makerere University to promote quality education and put professors back to teaching, research and publication.

There is need to de-link the university from the political class within the Government and the opposition politicians.

Institutional managers need to claim the management of the university’s affairs and separate professors from research and money. Although money is very crucial in conducting quality research, the professors do not need to manage the coffers.

Additionally, the professors must be at the forefront to absorb the increasing volume of information currently penetrating the country through qualitative and quantitative analysis. They also need to understand that our information today, no matter how vast, has a fundamental problem of being disorganised and seemingly chaotic. In the end is a country of abstract knowledge. that will keep us from connecting at a deeper level and finding fundamental meaning.

Meaning and understanding is what the country needs most so as to gain value through knowledge based systems.
My visit to Uganda recently gave me two lessons — a country at the brink of development in almost all sectors through both organised and disorganised ways and secondly, the country is faced with a great number of idle people just spectating on what is going on without making any efforts to fit in at some point.

This kind of population has two sub groups — the pessimistic, negative, jealous, unappreciative and that one which wants to participate, but lack the means in terms of information, resources and political patronage.

This group b is very optimistic and will appreciate any processed and well presented information necessary for its advancement.

In the long-run, it (this population) will find a place if what is needed is finally received. The only problem is that this group is mainly suffering from the effects of post-colonialism. It is used to handouts whose absence is a fundamental error to its survival. This is something the Government has to fight and change the mindset of such groups or else all efforts are rendered useless.

Thanks to professor Ssemakula for opening up this debate of politics and academic advancement in Uganda as two separate entities whose separation benefits the country at the lowest cost possible.

For God and My Country

The writer is a PhD student of Public Policy and Political Economy at the University of Texas at Dallas, TX, USA

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