Tororo – October 7, 2022: A post by the former Guild President of Makerere University, Sarah Kagingo has made me confront the realities of today with a renewed hope.
Thank you very much my sister Sarah for representing us at the centennial celebrations of Makerere University, our alma mater. In our generation, the glowing optimism about the future and the desire to work for a better Uganda called on us to join Makerere to pursue various dreams.
For these 100 year celebrations, it looks like very few were invited, but this also exactly confirms what the Bible always says that “many are called but few are chosen….!” No hard feelings though from me.
This platform of illustrious sons and daughters of Makerere University often called to duty at various times and in different places gives me the confidence that we have put our right foot forward in the onward march towards a fairer society where there is equitable dispensation of Justice for all as we build the foundations upon which our Country will be anchored in the next 100 years and beyond.
We should not and shall not be present at the next centennial celebrations, but what we do today determines if the future will celebrate us with a sense of gratitude and deserved honor.
Sarah, I can’t thank you enough for reminding the world about my predicament and plight.
By your loving kindness you have refreshed people’s memories of the sacrifices we have had to make in our struggles to get the poor’s voices and concerns to be heard. This serves not to scare away those endowed with enough courage to stick out their necks in defense of truth, justice and equity, but encourages and strengthens the struggle for a fair and just society.
Madam President Sarah, you must be one in a million for unblinkingly looking Makerere in the eyes and imploring them to exist for what they ought to be, to build the futures of young men and women as the motto and tradition dictates instead of dismantling them which falls far short of the standards for a centre of excellence, learning and intellectualism.
The days when Makerere was nurturing intellectual giants for the African Continent and midwifing freedom for the black people was rightly referred to as the “Harvard of Africa”. It can’t be too late for it to regain this disposition at least for the sake of the coming generation.
Let the travesty of justice committed against me and by extension against my generation, serve to open our eyes and minds to be ever vigilant about these issues. As a people we should avoid or resist where need be flagrant abuse of public offices that we give to public servants.
Makerere has taught thousands and pledges to teach millions more going forward. May God grant unto them every wish of theirs except with one specific intention never to institute education apartheid which will oversee the alienation of the poor from accessing Tertiary Education. No country under the sun is better than its citizens. Uganda, therefore, cannot tolerate ignorant mass or half baked intellectuals in this fast moving world.
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God forbid, if in the next 100 years Makerere still grapples with who accesses which course arising from price discrimination without taking into account real national needs. If the trajectory goes that way, she will have dismally failed this country. Ignorance of the masses ought not to become a gold mine for education institutions.
It’s this struggle for equitable access to education for all the people of Uganda which culminated into my illegal and unconstitutional summary expulsion from the University. May you stay alive to the realities of the commercialization of Tertiary Education and the paralyzing poverty which now glaringly characterizes the countryside and beyond.
Let the next 100 years of Makerere be years of glory and fulfillment. Let these be the years of a self rejuvenation for the Harvard of Africa.
Let these be the years when this great Institution should realize the proliferation of cultivated and cultured public servants and not public tyrants spreading fear and sleeplessness among the students as they churn out disoriented people.
We hope to see or those who will persist will want to see a Makerere which generates relevant knowledge that engenders wealth for moral and physical health of the nation, and creatively solves problems in a civil manner as opposed to use of the chest to sort out intellectual conundrum as if the brain resides in the thorax.
May Makerere of the next 100 years rise and rise above mediocrity. May she rise and shine as she unlocks potentials, ignites passions and enables dreams of millions upon millions of Ugandans.
Pro Futuri Aedificamus (For the Future, we Build)
For God and my Country
Yours truly,
Stephen Renny Galogitho