Dear Ugandans!
Bobby's analysis and conclusion as follows
" I have it on excellent authority, as Moses Nekyon suspected, that some vested interests at Makerere have been using Dr Nyanzi as a stalking horse to kick up so much dust about Dr Mamdani that it would become untenable for the University to renew his contract. She is therefore a useful idiot in the power struggles at Makerere University."
are true and well reasonned as was Prof Mamdani in his " When victims became killers" a very famous dissertation.
________________________________________
De : 'Bobby Alcantara' via Ugandans at Heart (UAH) Community <ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com>
Envoyé : mardi 26 avril 2016 16:01
À : ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com
Objet : Re: {UAH} What if Prof. Mahmood Mamdani undressed?
Simon Peter Okurut and Moses Nekyon,
I hear what you are saying. All of the points you raise are pertinent, and they all point to institutional governance as being the real problem at MISR. Consider the following:
1. The Focus of MISR changed completely in 2010, from a research institute to become a teaching institute, providing Ph.D facility for the entire Social Services Department. Dr Nyanzi seems not to be aware of this, despite being warned by her boss several times, in fact for three years.
2. The University Personnel or Human Resources department seems not to have informed pre-existing MISR staff members about the tectonic change in their department and how this would affect their job descriptions. I have looked at the Staff Employment Contract for MISR employees, and it contains a clause that allows the management to add on additional duties to the job description of an employee if it deems it is necessary. This therefore would cover the current situation, where Dr Nyanzi is arguing that, when she was appointed, MISR was a Research and not a Teaching Institute and therefore that Dr Mamdani can not demand that she should take on teaching duties. Legally, her contract allows Dr Mamdani to add on additional responsibilities on her. In an ideal world, all staff members of MISR should have been asked to sign new contracts that would specifically outline their duties as being Both RESEARCH AND TEACHING. This was not done. I work as a lawyer in the National Health Service of the UK, and we have undergone so many changes in the last 10 years. Each time a new government comes in, it changes the entire structure of the NHS, creating totally new bodies, so we members of staff have to sign new contracts every time new changes are introduced. Our jobs remain the same, although they are given new titles.
3. Dr Mamdani was interviewed for the Director Job on a BUSINESS CASE that he presented to the University Council. In it, he proposed a totally New Vision for MISR. Henceforth, it would:
a) become a teaching as well as research institute;
b) embark on a programme of training its own researchers and scholars rather than acting as a clearing house for scholarships and grants for post-graduate students to undertake further studies abroad.
c) re-focus research to issues that are local to Uganda and hopefully orient it to Uganda's development goals.
The University Council accepted Dr Mamdani's blue print, and he was appointed on the basis that MISR would become a premier research institute, sitting at the cutting edge of research and scholarship in Africa, and would attract scholars and students from the wider African continent and even beyond and not just Uganda.
It seems some pre-existing researchers at MISR did not accept this new vision that Dr Mamdani came with. Many left, but others like Dr Nyanzi stayed on, rather grudgingly I must say. Looking at the situation critically, Dr Naynzi should have fought her battles in 2010 when the University Council changed the focus of MISR.
The one bed and butter issue you have to note here is the dramatic effect of Dr Mamdani's changes on the livelihood of the staff members. With a focus on teaching, most external funding has gone to teaching rather than research, which has forced researchers to rely on paltry Makerere University salaries. They have lost allowances, travel and per diem that come with consultancies and research, and naturally are not happy about the situation.
Dr Mamdani also wants central control of all research carried out by MISR staff. But there is an entrenched culture MISR by which staff members source their own work from foreign donors and just use MISR as a Clearing House. Dr Mamdani wants to stop this, and has naturally stepped on the toes of researchers like Dr Nyanzi.
Related to the above, another impact that has been felt by Dr Mamdani's innovations is in the number of foreign scholarships offered to MISR. In the past, foreign governments, bodies and organisations offered scholarships through MISR, which would then choose the candidates to award the scholarships. I myself was a recipient of such a scholarship, awarded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth office. But because MISR is now a teaching Institute, many previous donors now prefer to give MISR cash funding to train the scholars and researchers AT HOME rather than sending them abroad to Europe or USA.
Last but not least is the point Moses Nekyon raised, which is the politics at Makerere University. Dr Mamdani has reached retirement age and many people at Makerere don't want his contract renewed. They want to inherit his $7.5 million empire even before he has died. I have it on excellent authority, as Moses Nekyon suspected, that some vested interests at Makerere have been using Dr Nyanzi as a stalking horse to kick up so much dust about Dr Mamdani that it would become untenable for the University to renew his contract. She is therefore a useful idiot in the power struggles at Makerere University.
I hope I have been as open and honest as possible. Please ask Dr Owor Kipenji not to comment- each time I give a reasoned and constructive discourse, he jumps off his arse to claim I am bragging, claiming to be clever etc. I am tired of the idiot as he does not add any value to what is a critical debate..
Bobby
--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 4/26/16, 'Simon Okurut' via Ugandans at Heart (UAH) Community <ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Subject: Re: {UAH} What if Prof. Mahmood Mamdani undressed?
To: "ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com" <ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 1:31 PM
Bobby
Alcantara,
We
should not rush into sweeping conclusions and engaging in
hypothetical thinking is not sexy! How you support the such
imaginations as brought by Mukholi in this thread i.e.
"suppose Mamdani had undressed," surely Bobby, I
know you are capable of not engaging at such imaginative
stuff. Rather, I expect us to examine what has actually
happened for instance:
1.
Professor Mamdani states that teaching was part of the
contractual terms in Dr. Nyanzi's
appointment;
so we should ask for the copies of the contract and check
if such clause exists, in that way we can see
who
has breached the contract.2. We
next consider the penalties for breaching the contract; do
they include physically barring one
that breached it?3. We
should examine how the hiring process at MISR is done, are
positions advertised with clearly spent job descriptions,
did everyone including Prof. Mamdani and Dr. Nyanzi apply,
did each of them attend interviews and did they sign their
contracts?
In my
opinion such examination and many more stuff can help us
find out more about MISR not imaging what would have
happened if Prof. Mamdani had been the one that had
undressed. I confess I am not an expert at foretelling as
this seems to be involving seen what has not been shown [My
grandfather would have helped in this kind of discovery - he
was a native doctor (witchdoctor)]. By the meaning of the
word "undress" the certain thing that would have
happened would be that Mamdani would have been naked; would
that annoy people? I don't know; would they laugh, I
don't know? Would he have expressed his frustration? I
don't know.
You
can say we don't understand and that only Moses Ocen has
got what you have been struggling to say and since it is not
a contest of ideas, that is okay; it was not supposed to get
100% consensus or unanimous decision on who is right or
not.
Peter
Simon
From: 'Bobby
Alcantara' via Ugandans at Heart (UAH) Community
<ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com>
To:
ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday,
April 26, 2016 7:22 AM
Subject: Re: {UAH} What
if Prof. Mahmood Mamdani undressed?
Afuwaa Kasule,
I hope people like Frank Mujabi, WBK, Dr Owor
Kipenji, Abbey Semuwamba, Ikanos and others read this piece.
For the past two or three days, this is what I have been
trying to explain to anybody who wants to listen but for my
troubles Dr Kipenji Owor claims I am engaging in
"voodoo intellectualism" and pretending to be the
"cleverest man on the planet". It is only Moses
Nekyon who has got the grip on what is happenning at
Makerere University. All these other commentators failed and
still fail to grasp the tectonic shift that occurred at MISR
in 2010, when Dr Mamdani was appointed Director.The
University Council changed MISR's focus and made it a
teaching Institute. Dr Naynzi does not want to teach, and
information I have gathered now indicates she is not capable
of teaching at a Ph.D level. Her expertise is very limited
to Sexuality and Human Rights within the Anthopology domain,
but most people doing Human Rights research would rather do
it in the Law or Politics domain, rather than
anthropology.
Bobby.
--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 4/26/16, 'Afuwa Kasule' via
Ugandans at Heart (UAH) Community <ugandans-at-heart@googlegroups.com>
wrote:
Subject: {UAH} What
if Prof. Mahmood Mamdani undressed?
To:
"Ugandans-at-Heart@googlegroups.com"
<Ugandans-at-Heart@googlegroups.com>
Cc: "Mahmood Mamdani" <mm1124@columbia.edu>
Date: Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 12:01 PM
The conflict at MISR can be best
understood and
appreciated by switching the
roles of the protagonists.
David Mukholi
When Dr. Stella Nyanzi undressed
protesting being
evicted from an office at
Makerere Institute of Social
Research
(MISR) many on social media supported her.
Not bothering to get to the bottom of the
matter, to them
she was resisting a boss so
she was right. This shows that
many of her
supporters are not bosses wherever they work and
would easily do the same thing if faced with
similar
challenges at their work place.
Underlining the melodrama at
Makerere University is a
conflict between
new and old ideas. There was a time when
the MISR was a consultancy outfit. Today it is not and
that
is why research fellows have to
combine research and
teaching.
For refusing to teach,
Nyanzi, a research fellow was asked
to
vacate an office and she chose to strip. In response
Makerere University administration allowed her
to briefly
reoccupy the office and
announced a committee would be set
up to
investigate management wrangles at MISR. But later
realized stern action was needed. She was
suspended and a
probe team was immediately
named.
Nyanzi, according
to Prof. Mahmood Mamdani, the MISR
executive director, was hired as a research fellow on
condition that she teaches on the PhD
programme run by the
institute. But she
later refused.
The
stripping act eclipsed the real issue and raises a
number of questions.
Should Nyanzi have continued to occupy office
without
teaching? Is it right for her to
pledge to teach and
backtrack? Was Nyanzi
doing private research using MISR's
name
and resources? If yes, was it right for her to do so,
even when it was for her to earn a living and
look after her
family?
The conflict at MISR can be best understood
and appreciated
by switching the roles of
the protagonists.
Supposing Mamdani was the research fellow at MISR under
the
headship of Nyanzi. He disregards
teaching as required,
conducts private
research and is evicted from office. Would
the decision to ask him to use the library and give the
office to a fellow who is ready to teach be
justified? Would
it be right if he chose an
unorthodox method like undressing
in
protest? And what would be the reaction of the academics,
students and general public if the
vice-chancellor decided
to reopen the
office and allow him back?
Fortunately, Mamdani is the director of MISR.
Even if he
were in Nyanzi's shoes he
would not strip. With all the
experience
and profile built in the academic world,
undressing would bring to naught his reputation something
he
wouldn't risk. His most likely course
of action would have
been to study the
conflict and publish a paper like
academics
do.
For Nyanzi it does
not matter. She could have figured out
that
her profile in the academic world matters less. So she
could undress consequently intimidate
authorities in keeping
her and thus she
staying in her job to earn a salary, which
to her is the ultimate goals, but not contributing to the
generation of knowledge through research and
teaching.
Nyanzi might
have reacted on a spur of a moment, but it is
important to ask why she chose undressing
rather than any
other action. It can be
argued that striping showed the
enormity of
the maltreatment that had denuded her
self-esteem. It is also possible that by undressing she
was
in effect disrobing Mamdani as a boss
who allegedly drives
subordinates to the
extreme.
Before it
embarked on the descent into drabness Makerere
University was known as the Harvard of Africa
for its
teaching, research and graduates.
It was respected. But
political turmoil and
misrule in the 1970s affected it and
Makerere embarked on a saddening descent. Its reputation
was
damaged, respect lost and so did the
admiration for the
staff and graduates. The
rot continued unabated in the 1980s
aggravated by political conflicts in the country.
In its most difficult days
some lecturers and students
became victims
of politically motivated murders. Also the
economic breakdown of the country took toll on Makerere.
But
amidst the gloom no staff and no
student striped in protest.
Not even the
killings at campus or outside would provoke
such action. But this week the university woke up to a
drama
of a stripping research fellow. Not
only did she undress in
protest but also
took to social media posting her nude self
and soon had a big following.
Caught off guard Mamdani has failed to match
her on social
media and resorted to the
mainstream media. He has been to
all the
big media houses to put his case, but the social
media bashing goes on. In the mix of
Nyanzi's followers on
social media are
varied views. Some are looking at Nyanzi as
a female elite being mistreated by a male boss.
Others think she has the
potential of replacing Mamdani and
in
response he is frustrating her. And there are those who
are of the view that she is being mistreated
because she
allied with the opposition, in
effect branding Mamdani's
decisions to
evict her from office as politically
motivated.
Mamdani's
long explanation in the mainstream media is out
matched by Nyanzi's and her supporters'
short messages
and video clips shared on
social media. Increasingly social
media is
gaining currency in shaping opinions and casting
doubt on the truth. Every post that circulates
projects
Nyanzi as a victim and earns her
sympathy. But if the
committee finally does
its work it will discover the source
of
conflict as changing MISR from consultancy to a research
–based institute. And also Mamdani's
insistence on
quality work and results,
which always is always resisted by
supervisors anywhere in Uganda.
Twitter: @dmukholi1.
--
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