Decolonising Makerere: On Mamdani’s failed experiment
Posted on August 1, 2016 by Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire
At the “Harvard of Africa” in Uganda, power remains in imperial
structures and bodies, while excellence is still defined on Western
terms.
The Makerere University administration building. Credit: Ian Beatty.
The Makerere University administration building, Kampala, Uganda.
Credit: Ian Beatty.
In 1922, within a few decades of British colonial control of the
protectorate called Uganda, a technical school was founded. According
to folklore, the hill on which the school was built was famed for its
many noises. Kelele is the Kiswahili word for noise, the plural:
Makelele. The folk tale concludes that the hill and the technical
school took on the name, but with the ls replaced with rs. The
Makerere Technical College, as it was known at the time, taught
carpentry, building and mechanics.
In 1949, the school became affiliated to the University of London.
Alongside the likes of Ibadan, Legon and Gordon – as well as Dar es
Salaam and Nairobi later on – it became one of the so-called ‘Asquith
colleges’ offering courses with degrees awarded by its Britain-based
mother. As Carol Sicherman notes in Becoming an African University:
Makerere 1922–2000, this arrangement was “presented as a means of
guaranteeing world-class quality, [but it] ensured continued British
influence once the colonies ceased to exist as such”.
On 9 October, 1962, Uganda attained independence. Eight months later,
Makerere’s relationship with the University of London came to an end,
at least formally. Conversations about the ‘Africanisation’ (or
decolonisation, one could say) of everything in the newly-independent
countries was the order of the day. And the establishment of the
University of East Africa – comprising of Makerere, Nairobi and Dar es
Salaam as constituent colleges – marked a new chapter in the life of
each. Introducing a bill to establish this University, a politician
reasoned: “To become African in a meaningful way, a university has to
transform itself from ‘a pale reflection of alien universities’ into
‘a living concrete symbol of all that is African’.”
Uganda’s independence also had a big personal impact on many citizens,
among them a young man who had just completed his O Levels at Old
Kampala Secondary School. Born in 1946 in Mumbai and raised in
Kampala, Mahmood Mamdani was the recipient of one of 24 scholarships
the US government awarded as a gift to the newly-independent nation.
In the US, Mamdani read for a BA in Political Science at the
University of Pittsburgh and attained an MA from the Fletcher School
of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University before enrolling at Harvard
for his PhD.
Back home, the University of East Africa did not live to celebrate its
eighth birthday. It disintegrated in July 1970 as its constituent
colleges became independent universities. At this time, Makerere was
at the height of its international fame and was known as the Harvard
of Africa, though Sicherman suggests the Oxford of Africa would have
been more accurate: “aside from the students, nearly everything at
Makerere [remained] a British import – even the specimens for
dissection in Biology classes”, she writes.
Indeed, the attempts in Africanising the university were cosmetic. The
academic robes worn by Presidents Milton Obote, Kenneth Kaunda, Jomo
Kenyatta, and Julius Nyerere at the inauguration of the new Makerere
were of British styles with African motifs. The academic structures
and criteria for examination remained British. The teachers were
largely graduates of Cambridge and Oxford, and the buildings and other
structures clearly mimicked British templates.
In 1972, Mamdani returned from the US and got a job as a teaching
assistant at Makerere. But it was short-lived as Idi Amin embarked on
his economic war that saw Indians expelled. Mamdani ended up at the
University of Dar es Salaam, and in this period completed his PhD from
Harvard, which was published in 1976 as Politics and Class Formation
in Uganda.
After the Amin’s overthrow in 1979, Mamdani returned to Makerere. But
he was forced out the country again in 1984 under the second Obote
government. He had to wait until Yoweri Museveni took power in 1986 to
return, once more, to Uganda and the university.
In 1993, Mamdani departed to spend three years at the University of
Cape Town (UCT) where he was asked to design a new foundation course
on Africa that was to be taken by all students in the social sciences.
He went to work, called on a friend at the University of Western Cape,
and soon submitted a course draft entitled Problematising Africa.
According to Stacy Hardy, Mamdani wanted to transform the university
and “demanded that UCT ground its claim to excellence on being an
African, rather than ‘world class’, institution. Excellence, claimed
Mamdani, needs to be determined through an engagement with the
university itself as a historical, political and material apparatus.”
His superiors though were not impressed. They asked that he revise the
course, and after some acrimonious correspondence, Mamdani was
suspended. He went on to be president of the Dakar-based Council for
the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) before finding
his way back to the US.
Mamdani gets his opportunity to reform Makerere
The next chapter of Mamdani’s engagement with Makerere effectively
recommenced in 2006 when, on 21 August, The Monitor carried a headline
reporting that the academic had declared Makerere no more. The story
was based on a paper Mamdani had presented at the university titled:
‘Liberal Reform and Higher Education: The Dilemmas of Market-Based
Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005.’
A few months later, a salary dispute led to strike action by
lecturers. Weeks later, students joined in and staged demonstrations,
demanding that the dispute be resolved so they could return to the
classrooms. But on 11 November, the university was declared closed
indefinitely. It stayed closed until 7 January, 2007.
It was during the period of closure that Mamdani’s book Scholars in
the Marketplace: The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere
University was published, detailing his critique of the university’s
privatisation. His argument was that new courses had been established
solely to attract money; unqualified staff were hired in order to cope
with the numbers; and all this led to the emergence of an informal
private university besides a formal public university.
Mamdani has said that the fate of Makerere affects him personally –
commenting that “as a product of Makerere…I should also play my part
in this reform process” – and in 2010, he got his opportunity to play
this role when was appointed director of the Makerere Institute for
Social Research (MISR).
Speaking to Pambazuka that same year, Mamdani emphasised the need not
only for an excellent Makerere, but a relevant one too.
“I cannot take the design of a Swedish architect to build a house in
Uganda. My design must reflect local conditions, use local resources
in response to local problems. Anything from the outside must be
complementary to this. That is what we call sustainable development.
Sustainable development requires research that leads to long-lasting
solutions. Research means knowing the society you live in and knowing
yourself. “
Mamdani also had strong words for the culture he found at MISR. He had
a specific vision of what academic research should be and dismissed
policy research as consultancy. In a 2011 MISR working paper, he
clarified: “A university is not a think tank. Think tanks are
policy-oriented centres, centres where the point of research is to
make recommendations”.
On 12 August, 2012, Mamdani wrote a piece for The Independent that
further expounded his plans for Makerere as he complained: “Makerere
is proud of its colonial legacy. Makerere thinks of itself as the
Harvard of Africa. If Makerere was ever the Harvard of Africa, then it
was a colonised Harvard. What is the difference between a university
that is colonised and one that is independent?” The answer, he said,
is that a university becomes independent only if it is research-based,
in combination with teaching.
MISR’s mission was therefore redefined from conducting policy research
to teaching a PhD programme, consisting of a two-year MPhil and three
years of research. The PhD fellows would also teach undergraduates,
thus reducing the workload on existing university staff. In Mamdani,
the rhetoric went, Makerere had found its saviour.
But not everyone was convinced. For instance, Moses Khisa argued that
Makerere’s problems went beyond producing its own research and were
largely a result of the Museveni regime’s desire to suppress
intellectual freedom. It serves the regime if academics are unable to
conduct independent research and critique its policies, the logic
went.
The PhD programme could also be critiqued from a decolonial
perspective. Mamdani shied away from decolonising the structure and
form of the university, and MISR’s PhD followed disciplinary modes
developed in Western universities. Generally, Makerere remains a mimic
of British and US universities aspiring towards their definition of
excellence. As Sicherman puts it, “Makerere continues to impose
criteria for promotion that were formulated in the West, even though
the circumstances of academics in Uganda are so different as to make
their relevance highly questionable.”
Meanwhile, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni argues that decolonisation cannot
happen while the European form remains intact: “We so far do not have
African universities. We have universities in Africa. They continue to
poison African minds with research methodologies and inculcate
knowledges of equilibrium. These are knowledges that do not question
methodologies as well as the present asymmetrical world order. In
decoloniality, research methods and research methodologies are never
accepted as neutral but are unmasked as technologies of subjectivation
if not surveillance tools that prevent the emergence of
another-thinking, another-logic and another-world view.”
This decolonial vision underpins the Marcus Garvey Pan Afrikan
University (MPAU) in Mbale. Started by the late Prof. Dani Nabudere,
the university bases its knowledge production on an existent
indigenous knowledge base. It has developed an epistemology named
Afrikology, which provides a framework for absorbing and disseminating
indigenous Afrikan knowledge. Veteran journalist and commentator
Charles Onyango Obbo calls MPAU the university where peasants are the
lecturers. Students are sent into communities to learn from local
people and they present their theses to these same groups, in
indigenous Afrikan languages.
Juxtaposing MPAU’s decolonial mission and MISR’s shows a myriad of
differences between what decolonisation of higher education means and
to whom.
The imperial structures that remain
Earlier this year, MISR was presented with the opportunity to address
some of these tensions. Of the research fellows appointed since
Mamdani has been director, Dr Stella Nyanzi had been the
longest-serving. But despite the PhD programme having become the
institute’s major pre-occupation, Nyanzi refused to teach it, claiming
it was not part of her job description.
This conflict with Mamdani escalated after he decided to re-allocate
office space at MISR, with the intransigent Nyanzi set to lose her
office in the process. Whatever the details of the conflict, on 18
April, Nyanzi, feeling pushed to the wall by what she called “an
oppressive tyrant”, stripped naked and shocked the university, the
country, and the intellectual community into commentary, debate and
action. Students found their voices and discussed issues central to
the decolonisation or reform of Makerere.
A few days after the incident, 40 scholars at international
universities signed a petition to the vice chancellor offering
unconditional support to their friend and colleague. In response,
dissenting Makerere students hit back at what they saw as a saviour
complex and set up their own petition, which commented:
“The international scholars’ petition sprinted past the thick line
between solidarity into interference, where they speak from a position
of privilege about lives and affairs that are geographically and
politically distant from their own. Just like tourist holidays and
training workshops are not sufficient to equip their partakers with
substantial knowledge of the problematic, the petitioners should
concede that their interests, attachments and visits do not provide
them with the necessary knowledge to speak for MISR. We, its members,
are not the de-subjectified masses of the ‘Save Darfur’ discourse. We
are not your project. We are people with lives that matter and the
complexity of our plight should not be reduced to a ‘governance issue’
as claimed by one of the petitioners.”
Indeed, decolonisation cannot be a result of “salvation” experiments.
It cannot rely on the benevolence of heroes. It is a process that must
include everyone: students, academic and non-academic staff, the
state, the civil society and other players. Decolonisation is
primarily a struggle for power, and this cannot happen if power
remains in imperial structures and bodies.
Makerere clearly needs to decolonise given the intellectual dependence
on imperial centres. But what the process should look like is a matter
for discussion. What excellence means at MISR and whether the
knowledge production process is relevant to the Ugandan context are
questions that must be asked and debated freely. Is MISR under Mamdani
seeking for Anglo-American excellence at the expense of relevance to
the Ugandan situation? Is it possible for research to be considered
excellent by Western standards and still be relevant? Is it necessary
to seek validation from Western centres of academic power? Should
Makerere instead emulate the model at the Marcus Garvey Pan African
University (MPAU)?
Considering the heavily American support for the one-man vision at
Makerere, the Mamdani experiment looks to be not only elitist but also
substantially imperial. The reliance on Western donor funding is not
an issue on its own, but when this funding is used as a tool to
control the affairs of the university, then the relationship
replicates colonialism. Among others, the international scholars’
petition was signed by some donors to MISR and played a role in the
renewal of Mamdani’s contract as director. This is a neo-colonial
relationship in which universities and donors based in West control
their outposts based in the post-colonies.
Research grants from private US donors are important, but they alone
can’t be the measure of excellence. It is awkward to judge the
relevance of research by decisions taken in Michigan and elsewhere.
Young scholars who aim at winning research grants may unwittingly end
up measuring their worth more by how US private donors define
excellence than by how relevant their research is to their contexts.
This does not look like the future the Fallist movements in South
Africa envisage. MISR is not moving the centre, and no decolonisation
is happening. Mamdani himself is quoted by Newsweek as warning,
following Nyanzi’s protest, “The best students will look for
alternative(s). Donors will look for other places to put their money”.
These are concerns that reflect neoliberal market thinking.
It is very easy to admire the MPAU model not only for its relevance to
the Ugandan post-colonial context but also for its emancipatory
possibilities. The MPAU model is important because it centralises
indigenous knowledge systems and modes of production and
dissemination. No one can accuse the institution of being irrelevant
to the environment in which it exists, considering that it, among
other innovations, conducts and disseminates research in indigenous
languages. It also enables us to question what excellence means in an
African context. Who determines excellence? At MPAU, to borrow Obbo’s
way of describing it, the peasants define it. But one should not
simply impose the MPAU model on Makerere, which must follow its own
path.
The Nyanzi affair this April presented Makerere with an opportunity to
interrogate what this vision of decolonisation could be. But
unfortunately, the appointments board instead chose to take a
disciplinary route by commissioning a biased commission of inquiry
into the matter which recommended disciplinary action against Nyanzi.
As such, Nyanzi is now at the Stellenbosch University, while
Makerere’s march to become an inferior replica of an Anglo-American
university in the name of “excellence” continues, led by Mamdani.
Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire is a Ugandan lawyer and writer, currently a
Fellow at the African Leadership Centre (ALC). Between 2012 and 2015,
he taught Human Rights, Jurisprudence, Labour Law and International
Criminal Justice at Makerere, Uganda Christian University and Uganda
Martyrs University respectively.
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3 thoughts on “Decolonising Makerere: On Mamdani’s failed experiment”
Balozi Morwa says:
August 1, 2016 at 3:24 pm
Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire
I am thankful to your great enlightenment about “Problem Africa”
There’s little doubt that Africa’s universities need to be locally
relevant–focusing their teaching and research on local needs.
Unavoidably, though, they’re simultaneously expected to
internationalize and participate in the heated global higher education
competition. How can the continent’s universities manage the tricky
balance between local relevance and internationalization, is an open
area for researches and model builders.
I still remember marathons of brainstorming during my postgraduate
learning at UDSM where we often ask the question as to which economic
model Africa should adopt. I personally use o answer: “the African
Model”, or more precisely, “the African Models” that define poverty as
“Not he who has little, but he who wishes more, is poor.” The
importance of such self-reliance is well-expressed by one of our
former leaders, who wisely noted “We hope for foreign aid, but cannot
be dependent on it. We depend on our own efforts, and on the creative
powers of our entire people.” Foreign infusion should just be seen as
“foreign” tools available to us to use to understand our condition
Chi-Chi says:
August 1, 2016 at 6:37 pm
It’s been a very long time since I enjoyed an article as much as
this one. Thank you for the insightful analysis.
Cornelius Mugabi says:
August 1, 2016 at 7:56 pm
Makerere and African universities are only complaining of
imperialism and neo colonialism because everything has been tried and
nothing has worked. If Uganda were a Singapore in economic terms, we
would not be talking imperialism. Africans have tried everything —
from getting independence, education, democracy, IMF policies, foreign
aid, etc hoping to see progress. None of those have worked yet other
non western countries who were colonized and were worse off have used
some of the above and gotten results. Now we’re talking about
africanising universities, education and governance. If this fails
too, what else are we going to try. Did Singapore state Singaporize
their universities, education, etc to get results ? The leader who
transformed Singapore was a product of western education and a
graduate of Oxford University, a western university. All he needed was
the will, spirit and deep love for his country — where he got his
education was secondary/negligible . Unfortunately, African leaders
don’t have these traits and it won’t matter whether we africanise our
universities and education. This is purely about economics, jobs,
employment, opportunity. Will africanising makerere miraculously come
up with efficient ways of tilling or ploughing our land to produce
enough food for Uganda and the region, provide employment to our
youths on these efficient vast ranches, farms, food processing
industries , etc All that has already been invented — nothing to
africanise. Did the Asian Tigers, Cubs reinvent anything or Tigerised
their universities inorder to see transformation? Africans and their
leaders should develop altruism within their culture which will guide
them into loving their countries. Africanising can only work in
humanities courses. The science/ engineering courses (that can
mechanize agriculture, industrialize Uganda inorder to boost
production hence improving the economy ) don’t require africanising.
Let’s first learn how to genuinely love our countries instead of
posturing with pan African rhetoric. Any education or policy from
wherever can work .
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