The long-simmering battle of raw egos between the aging but academically illustrious Prof Mahmood Mamdani and his firebrand subordinate, Dr Stella Nyanzi, climaxed into the now infamous stripping stunt of April 18 at the famed Makerere Hill. Social pundits have been quick to apportion blame and culpability between these two protagonists for this “scandalous” development – coming as it does from highly celebrated academics! The pro-Mamdani group lauds the professor for the move he took to lock out a brazen-faced insubordinate called Dr Nyanzi from her office. Conversely, the Nyanzi enthusiasts commend her for standing up against what, in their view, is an extremely arrogant hitherto “untouchable” professor.
I choose to blame both of them but only partially. I do so because I see both Mamdani and Nyanzi as victims of a decadent education curriculum and casualties of Makerere’s bureaucratic encumbrances.
An education system that produces a well-decorated professor who cannot see the complementarities and synergies to be tapped by integrating research, consultancy work and teaching is fundamentally flawed. Why, for example, does Mamdani appear to be single-mindedly averse to the idea of Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) staff engaging in consultancy work when actually that can help to sharpen their research and teaching capacities?
In an interview with Daily Monitor on April 19, the professor explained his revulsion against consultants using a rather bizarre piece of logic. He said, while researchers are originators of ideas with demonstrable expertise, consultants are just masquerading data collectors; free-range thinkers, jacks of all trades but masters of none! I personally do not see an incompatibility between the PhD programme which he is fronting and the old consultancy promoting agenda of MISR.
Remember, consultancy work is an aspect of “service to the community”, which is widely recognised as an integral aspect of a university academic staff’s work.
In the same way, an education system that begets a Nyanzi whose idea of assertiveness and conflict resolution entails recourse to a somewhat primitive nudist show is a national embarrassment.
Her one-dimensional and inflexible interpretation of the contents of her letter of appointment and contractual relationship with the university betrays a dangerous rigidity and compartmentalised thinking, which is partially a by-product of our over-structured content-based education curriculum, outmoded pedagogy and non-criterion referenced examinations.
To Nyanzi, her appointment as a researcher in MISR is sacrosanct and, therefore, immutable even when changed circumstances may demand otherwise! If, indeed, it is true that the university council/senate (Nyanzi’s employer) sanctioned a modification in MISR’s mandate to accommodate Mamdani’s brainchild – the PhD programme (as alleged by former Makerere Vice Chancellor Prof Venansius Baryamureeba), then Dr Nyanzi ought to have gone by the requirements of the changed context. The new context now requires MISR staff to add teaching to their usual research work menu. Pure and simple!
However, for some strange reason, Dr Nyanzi seems to see an incongruity between her research mandate and the new teaching assignment she is now being asked to take on. She instead chose to flagrantly rebel against her boss and arrogated herself the role of champion of the “voiceless” basing herself on a fixated understanding of her appointment to university service. She conveniently forgets that, her letter of appointment also grants Mamdani legitimate powers to assign her any other duties as and when he may deem fit! Why can’t she simply leave MISR since teaching seems not to be her vocational calling and she tries her luck elsewhere?
But, buoyed by the cheers from a few academic charlatans and leveraged by the support she appears to enjoy from her vice chancellor (especially when the VC opted for a fire-brigade decision to open Nyanzi’s office instead of seeking to hear from the two belligerents), Nyanzi went overboard. Just like an enchanted tigress, she pranced around strutting her anatomical details for all and sundry to see in broad daylight as a gesture of defiance! Did I hear someone say knowledge is power?
I see in all these the failings of a rusty bureaucratic superstructure that Makerere has become – suffering from administrative inertia, seemingly unable to resolve its own resolvable internal contradictions and incapable of adopting proactive conflict-resolution techniques. Cry the beloved university!
Mr Okurut is a retired lecturer. okurut@yahoo.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment