Prof Mahmood Mamdani, the director of Makerere Institute of Social Research (Misr), recently terminated the contract of research fellow, Dr JAMES OCITA.
The development followed The Observer story about a memo Ocita wrote criticising the way Mamdani runs the institute. In an interview with Baker Batte Lule, Ocita explained his falling out with Mamdani and what he calls the mismanagement of Misr.
Besides the missive lambasting Prof Mamdani and his management style, elaborate more on the problems at Misr…
There are quite a number of problems, some of which I talked about in my memo. The problems facing Misr are two-pronged. There are those related to institutional structure and bureaucracy, which, among others, account for the poor oversight regarding how the unit functions. The problems in Misr have festered because the relevant offices and organs of the university are reluctant to call the unit to order.
The problems in this category were exhaustively addressed in the Hajati Sharifah Buzeki committee, which made several recommendations, most of which are yet to be effected. The second set of problems involves those that I belaboured in my Memo. These have to do with the capricious manner in which Prof Mamdani runs Misr in total disregard of established institutional procedures, regulations and structures.
With regard to the 2017 cohort of doctoral students, Misr disregarded Makerere’s policy on the demographic compositions of the admitted students, which is two non-Ugandan to eight Ugandan students, when it admitted only three Ugandans and four non-Ugandan students.
The other problem pertains to supervision of students. Misr has failed to heed the call to have its supervisors appointed by the Directorate of Research and Graduate Training as required by policy.
Instead, the unit is the ultimate authority that decides students’ supervision. The problem with this arrangement is that Prof Mamdani, using Misr’s Academic Board, which simply rubberstamps whatever the executive director wants, can then insensitively change a student’s supervisor at any moment.
I don’t raise concerns about the composition of Ugandan-to-non-Ugandan students on parochial grounds but, rather, to challenge ingrained prejudices where weaknesses and strengths are ethicized and one section of the unit’s population are baselessly viewed as weak. I also want to add that the reason for admitting less numbers was the delay in the renewal of Mamdani’s contract; so, a number of grants have not been renewed because a number of them had also expired.
Do you mean to say that grants to Misr are tied to Mamdani being its director?
Normally, funders want to deal with somebody who is credible. Mamdani has got the name. Of course, he also gets the grants on behalf of Makerere. This has made Mamdani to have too much power and everybody is afraid of him.
Some people say you helped him have those powers. They argue that when Dr Stella Nyanzi raised some of those issues, you vehemently defended him.
I wouldn’t say I’m raising the same issues like Dr Nyanzi. I wouldn’t like to go back to Nyanzi’s issue but at that time I had reasons to disagree with her position.
At what point did you realize the injustices and Mamdani’s mismanagement of Misr?
I was aware of the challenges of Misr for all the time I was there but the issue is magnitude. I bought Mamdani’s explanation that Misr is a work in progress.
We had Misr before but it was mainly turned into consultancy; so, the current setup of Misr as an academic unit is a new thing and Mamdani kept on telling us that we have to understand the new unit.
As work in progress, mistakes were bound to be made in the running of the unit. So, the kind of challenges that I knew were those that I thought could be rectified but what I came to realize was that we were not learning from our mistakes.
You say Mamdani had convinced you that Misr was a work in progress. It’s just eight months down the road, you no longer believe that?
The work in progress started in 2012 when Misr got its first PhD students. I joined the unit in 2015 and I have been part of the administration since then. Contrary to the perception that I have been in defence of Mamdani, I have been challenging him from inside.
I made a decision to resign last year. I notified Mamdani, quietly telling him I didn’t want my resignation to be disruptive. The reason I resigned was because I no longer wanted to be part of the irregularities.
In your memo you complain about the withdrawal of some of your responsibilities like supervising students. Would one be right to say you are now sour graping?
Most of the decisions in Misr are supposed to be taken by the academic board but it is hardly independent. It only toes the line Mamdani wants. Nobody wants to confront Mamdani. It was only in the last academic board meeting that I confronted him.
You have seen what has since happened. I have since been bundled out of the unit formally. You may not be aware of that but Mamdani has since issued me a letter saying my contract with Misr ended in December.
So, you are no longer a research fellow at Misr?
Yes and that was a decision that was made on Wednesday or Thursday of last week.
Does it have anything to do with the memo you wrote?
Of course it must have a connection because earlier in the month we had an exchange where Mamdani was telling me about teaching next semester and I was pointing out that that was irregular because he should have crosschecked with me and not wait until I have written to him to find out what was happening. So, it was surprising to get a letter that my contract ended in December.
There is the argument that you are fighting because Misr pays relatively better compared to the rest of Makerere.
I’m one person who has shown least interest in money. By the way I didn’t get any money in 2015 although that was the time I served Misr most diligently. The unit owes me over $12,000 which I didn’t claim because my being at Misr was not financially driven.
Earlier, you talked about withdrawal of scholarships from students. They say one of those students is your wife Judith Ekiring.
My wife submitted her proposal and she is yet to get feedback. She has not lost her scholarship and if anybody from Misr tells you she lost it, let them give her that letter, then we can respond to it. My wife is currently in the fourth year and she is supposed to be in the field. Nobody in fourth year has yet lost a scholarship.
You were part of Misr administration when your wife got a scholarship there. Would anyone be wrong if he accused you of influence-peddling?
I married my wife only last year. By the time I joined Misr in 2015, she was already there. Actually my brother was also there and he has just defended his doctoral dissertation. So, influence-peddling doesn’t arise.
In the past, you have accused Prof Ddumba-Ssentamu of mismanaging Makerere, Dr Muhammad Kiggundu and his executive of short-changing Muasa and now Prof Mamdani of mismanaging Misr. How come you are the only one seeing these things?
Firstly, I did not query the conduct of Prof Ddumba-Ssentamu as a person. Rather, I’ve raised issues about top management of the university generally, of which Ddumba is only a part.
Secondly, the Makerere webmail and the Muasa general assemblies, the platforms on which I have raised these concerns, have many other vocal and critical members. Having made those two clarifications, there is, of course, nothing wrong with holding leaders to account and demanding a higher standard of transparency and accountability.
Some people say Misr is not sustainable without Prof Mamdani…
A Misr that is not sustainable without Mamdani is not worth having. Mamdani has everything it takes to build Misr that is sustainable without him. There are other units that run on grants like Misr.
He should give Misr time to build a unit. He is not building but, rather, destroying it and that is what we have been pointing out. Mamdani is bent on building a personal cult and this is dangerous for the unit.
bakerbatte@observer.ug