Armed struggle: Mamdani tells politicians to learn from Luwero

By Andrew Mwenda and Mubatsi A. Habati, The Independent

Mahmood Mamdani

Leading political philosopher Mahmood Mamdani says the government’s ban on the political pressure group Activists for Change (A4C) is naïve and likely to drive opposition underground. He spoke to The Independent’s Andrew Mwenda and Mubatsi A. Habati.

Only Protected on Paper

Richard Pithouse

by Richard Pithouse, Behind the Mask

It’s now almost three months since David Kato, a former teacher and a leading Ugandan gay rights activist, was beaten to death in Mukono Town in Uganda.  Kato was living in Johannesburg in the salad days of our new democracy and, inspired by the progress made here in recognising the legal right of gay people to an equal humanity, he became a key figure in the Ugandan movement when he returned home in 1998.

Homosexuality was first criminalised in Uganda in the 19th century under the British colonial occupation. That criminalisation of a mode of expressing love and desire that is part of all human communities across space and time was sustained and updated after independence in 1962. As the new century unfolded there were active attempts, often driven by senior politicians and clerics with the support of an increasingly rabid tabloid press, to create a popular moral panic about homosexuality.  Public vilification escalated and there were threats, calls for further state repression, censorship of gay people and organisations and a further tightening of a legal regime already so repressive that it carried a sentence of life imprisonment for certain forms of gay sex.

Scholars in the Marketplace The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005

Mahmood Mamdani

Scholars in the Marketplace is a case study of market-based reforms at Uganda's Makerere University. With the World Bank heralding neoliberal reform at Makerere as the model for the transformation of higher education in Africa, it has implications for the whole continent. At the global level, the Makerere case exemplifies the fate of public universities in a market-oriented and capital friendly era. The Makerere reform began in the 1990s and was based on the premise that higher education is more of a private than a public good.

Instead of pitting the public against the private, and the state against the market, this book shifts the terms of the debate toward a third alternative than explores different relations between the two.

Commercialisation is Killing Makerere University

Mahmood Mamdani interviewed by Moses Mulondo in Pambazuka

MOSES MULONDO: Why have you chosen to return to Uganda?

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: In 2001 I had a meeting with President Yoweri Museveni. East African Affairs Minister Eriya Kategaya and the late James Wapakhabulo were also present. We were discussing regional issues, but at the end of the meeting I expressed concern about declining standards at Makerere University. I told the president how the commercialisation of the curriculum was undercutting the culture of research and how the university was being destroyed before our own eyes. In response, the president asked me if I would be willing to lead a visitation committee/commission of inquiry. I said I would be happy to do so.