Students strike because they are surbodinated

SCHOOL STRIKES

A spectre looms above our heads in regards to equity in social discourse. It is important to understanding that in the new millennia, students are not subordinates, but key stakeholders in the education system. The persistent condescending attitude towards students in Ugandan is very problematic. In fact, it is thwarting growth, retarding our civilization, and to a greater extent, lowering the quality of our education.

School strikes, demonstrations, and all forms of civil resistance in our schools confirm that the education system itself is repressive. Strikes and demonstrations are merely a response to this objectionable colonial domination that typifies life in our public institutions.

The RedPepper Tabloid, on its April 1^st, 2015 edition reported that Prof. Mondo Kagonyera, the Chancellor of Makerere University advised employers not to hire students who participate in strikes because such students are undisciplined. This speech was delivered at the 12^th graduation ceremony of Makerere Business Institute (MBI) at Kikoni, in Kampala.

We all agree with Prof Kagonyera that strikes may lead to destruction of resources, bringing huge setback to private and public investments. However, the good Professor needs to be reminded that strikes are never intended course of action for students to resolve grievances. Students, like all other citizens, have found themselves facing difficult times, bad governance, repressive university policies, and alienation, such that strikes or demonstrations have become a broader social movement for mobilizing efforts at confronting these oppressive and repressive policies, and degrading human conditions.

 It is not that I support or promote the culture of strikes. Already, strikes in Uganda have found a life of their own among the disgruntled. More-so, it is ingrained in the perceptions of the managers of our affairs who refuses to recognize that those they manage are developmental partners, not subordinates.

Students are stakeholders in school administration and day-to-day management of schools. In most cases, they are treated as recipients of education services and denied decision making. When you investigate the reasons for most strikes in Ugandan schools, you will find some disturbing trends of radical exclusionism.

For example in October of 2014, pupils from Ngora School for the Blind went on strike in protest of their unfortunate living conditions and horrible foods. An elaborate article by Ivan Okuda ran in the Daily Monitor of July 2013, titled: What is fueling school strikes in Uganda. It provides insight into various school strikes, such as those at Ntare School, Mbarara High School, Kitagata SS and others. Prof Kagonyera should familiar himself with this article to gain insight as to why students go on strike.

The bottom-line is that our education institutions are the foundation of the culture of oppression, repression and impunity. The school system has failed to treat students as stakeholders, contrary to the recommendation in 1992 White Paper on Education, which recommended that students be given equal space and place at all levels of decision making.

To this date, strikes have become the corpus of public response to bad governance due to lack of accessible alternative medium of mediation to students. Every day I read the Ugandan media, reports of people demonstrating; youths running street battles with the Police, and Opposition figures being whipped to pulp by the police are commonplace. These running battles in the street reveal the high intolerance to divergence and yet we are ironically incapable of convergence on any matter.

The school system is still transmitting totalitarianism where it tries as much to galvanize and control all aspects of the students' public and private lives.  We forget that such systems were successful when access to information was a privilege for a few educated people. Public administration was then defined by control over information, something which is impossible with the advent of globalization, internet and social media!

Time is showing that the preserve of absolute control conflicts, naturally, with the values of the millennium youths who are more privy to instantaneity. They are bold and confident in their resolve to seek instant solution, were any delay is considered a strife.

Rampant strikes are a malfunction of the education system as a whole. Unless student are treated as equal stakeholders in the system, they will continue to feel alienated by the system. Their roles in school strikes should never determine their prospects in an empowering employment environment which promotes innovation, partnerships and transcendence.

 END.

Uganda is ready for a new dispensation.

A NEW DISPENSATION

Nigeria has completed its multiparty elections where an incumbent gracefully conceded defeat in an election. It is unprecedented “first” of its kind in that Nation. In Uganda, such a dream is far-fetched.

The road to 2016 is shaping up with its characteristic uncertainties of inflation, insecurity, hostility, and intolerance. The back-to-back assassinations of prominent figures taking place in Uganda projects a gloomy future pre and post elections.

That aside, there is a crisis of confidence in Uganda’s politics. For Ugandans to recover from the apathy towards their politics, some hangers-on must be exposed and eliminated.  These people aim to galvanize social and political spaces from replenishment of ideas.

There are cynics in this country who have amassed enormous amounts of wealth and will die protecting it. Many are now hanging on to this regime for selfish reasons to protect and secure their loot. However, we must assure them all that a change of regime does not translate into a change in their fortune, especially for those who have rightfully accumulated wealth.

Uganda is rife for a new dawn of politics; the politics of unity within our diversity.

The old Parties and current antics no longer have the capacity to propel us to a conjoined future. In fact, they are holding us hostage and continue to drag this nation downwards and backwards.

FDC President, Gen. Mugisha Muntu recently stated that the status quo measures progress from where we are coming from, not where we are going, or where we should have been.  This statement needs amplifying because Uganda is in the NRM bus that has no headlights. It is only those behind the driving wheel who are able to see their future, and the near future as such. In that bus, the common future for all Ugandans is obscured, bleak!

However, what options do we have with precariats?

The Ugandan opposition groups, without Dr Col Besigye, are like disciplined pupils in a classroom. They are constrained such that they have to obey draconian oppressive rules. In this regard, you know a serious Opposition figure by the frequency of charges against him/her tat are in court.

It is comprehensible that going back and forth in court and jail are frustrating; affording a lawyer is no ordinary feat for many; and feeding a family is hard task if the family’s breadwinner is in and out of jail. Living in the Opposition is precarious, making them “Precariats”, as coined by the American Linguist, Noam Chomski.

It is simply impossible to dislodge President Museveni if you are the type of urban elite who wants a luxurious life. Mr. Museveni has taken full control of the economy and the resources of this country as his own.  His costly investment in public administration enables him to secure control over Ugandans and their resources.

It implies that Mr. Museveni has the power to dispense wealth, comfort, vanity, dignity, and a peaceful existence to his unquestioning loyalists. The Uganda under President Museveni is a theatre of revolutionists of different shades. There are those who have and must protect what they have; and those who have nothing, but they must protect those who have, to exist.

Depravity explains the treachery, suspicion, distrust, and infighting within the Opposition ranks. It is very simple analogy – when you administer depravity, it sets ground for infighting due to scarcity of privileges and resources.

Such a pitiful existence is despised by a society that valorizes corruption and insanity. For public visibility, most opposition members have to appear on the fence. It is revealing of lack of organizing ideology, and thus, a need for new dispensations.

By far, Dr. Besigye deserves very positive appraisal for his courageous efforts at unsettling the status quo. Reform Agenda forced Museveni to return Northern Uganda on national agenda. Left to the vagaries of the status quo, that place could have been obsolete by now.

Without a strong non-opportunistic coalition of patriots, Mueveni will treat 2016 general election as a mere rite of passage.  At this rate, only Museveni can defeat Museveni. Period!

END