A Bachelor of Commerce Degree External at Makerere University takes four years but for David Musiri, it has taken a whopping eight years to accomplish.
If records on how long students take to complete a course at a university were kept, Musiri would feature very prominently. Many people who take more than the allotted time for a course usually blame their slow speed on poor academic standing or difficulty in getting tuition fees. But for Musiri, this was not the case.
In fact, during his second year at Uganda’s biggest and oldest university, he contested for the guild presidency. Although he was decisively defeated by Julius Kateregga, it demonstrated that he was on normal academic progress.
The rules bar anyone who has failed an exam – in the university language this is called a retake – from contesting for the guild presidency. Musiri was admitted at Makerere University in 2017 and he immediately got embroiled in the student politics, challenging the administration of the university every time he felt they were acting against the interests of the students.
With the ascendency to vice chancellorship by Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, any challenge of policy by either students or staff has been treated as insubordination. It is the high-handedness by Nawangwe when dealing with dissent that put Musiri at the receiving end of the new laws, hence extending his stay at the university to twice the time he should have stayed there.
Musiri was among the 13,662 students who graduated at Makerere University this month. In an interview, Musiri said he was suspended four times for leading or participating in strikes that mainly challenged the university policies.
Musiri’s first brush with demonstrations was in 2017 when, together with others, he marched to parliament to show their dissatisfaction with the efforts to amend the constitution to allow President Museveni to extend his rule beyond the 75 years of age then provided for.
For Makerere in particular, Musiri started his activism in 2017 when the then Guild president Papa Salim Were’s administration recommended fees increment after benchmarking with a number of universities in Uganda and Kenya.
This incensed the student community, who said the reports on which the recommendation had been based were doctored. Musiri and others staged a demonstration challenging the increment. In reaction, Nawangwe wrote warning letters to all those he considered to be the ringleaders of the strike.
But this did not stop Musiri from persisting in his demand for change of policy. Their strike was also inspired by the then ongoing strikes in South Africa, dubbed Fees Must Fail, that had paralysed universities in that country. Seeing that the students were not budging, Nawangwe decided to indefinitely suspend Musiri and other student leaders.
“With an indefinite suspension, you don’t know when you are going to be called back,” Musiri said.
They challenged their suspension in the High court through now Uganda Law Society President Isaac Ssemakadde. But the case collapsed as one of the students was allegedly talked out of the legal option and reinstated. The rest decided to also withdraw the case.
In response, Nawangwe demanded that they write an apology after trying them in the Disciplinary committee. When they did that, he allowed them back into the university. But the strike did not make the university reconsider its position on fees increment.
And with this, it left open the door for more demonstrations by the students. And in October 2019, Musiri was suspended for yet again leading a strike against fees. When his 89-year-old father watched the evening news and saw the brute force with which police used to arrest his son, he suffered a heart attack, which he never survived.
Musiri who had been detained at Wandegeya police station was allowed to go and bury his father the following day. However, the death of his father gave him more impetus to continue fighting for students’ rights. Two days after the burial, he was to join another strike sparked by the arrest of female students who were marching to parliament to present a petition against fees increment to the speaker.
This time, the university thought they had had enough of Musiri and decided to expel him altogether. Although the dismissal was related to the three-day strike they had staged, its immediate cause was in relation with taking hostage university officials who had met student representatives at the Main building to chart a way forward.
“We were invited for a meeting at the main building and we held them hostage. They were rescued by the police after several hours when they broke into the room. We were able to run away and the university chose to dismiss us,” Musiri said.
He was only able to return to Makerere after the intervention of Parliament. The parliamentary committee on education invited both the university leadership led by Nawangwe and the affected students for a hearing.
It is during this hearing that Nawangwe claimed that Mityana Municipality MP Francis Zaake tried to assault him. When he returned to the university, Musiri cooled down for a while, which enabled him complete his studies culminating in his graduation a few weeks ago.
WHO IS DAVID MUSIRI?
David Musiri was born on April 2, 1988 at Luwafu in Makindye division to James Bwogi Ssewanyana and Christine Bwogi. He is the last of 20 children of his mother. Yes, you read that right.
His father, however, sired more children with other mothers. Musiri went to many primary schools, but sat for his PLE at Molly and Paul primary school in Makindye.
He equally attended many secondary schools but eventually sat for his Uganda Certificate of Education at St Paul’s Lweza and S6 at Green Star SS Entebbe.
He also holds a diploma in telecommunication engineering, which he got in 2014. Because he is the last born at home, it has been him largely looking after himself because his father was retired most of the time he was in school, which is why the issue of fees increment particularly triggered him.
“I struggled with fees most of my education. So, I wouldn’t accept such fees increments [at Makerere],” Musiri says.
And if Nawangwe thought Musiri’s ‘rebel’ attitude started at Makerere, he was wrong. Musiri once ran away from home and lived on the Kampala streets for three years before he was convinced by his brother Kenneth Kalibbala to return home.
“I went back home after spending some time with an orphanage at Kigo for rehabilitation. It is this lived experience that makes me fight for the rights of the underprivileged,” Musiri says.
Musiri is the National Unity Platform political party secretary in charge of institutions. In 2021 he tried contesting for the Makindye West member of parliament position but the NUP card was given to Allan Ssewanayana.
He plans to contest for the same position in next year’s general elections. Musiri is not married but has children, with his eldest being in senior four. Two more years of striking a Makerere and Musiri’s child could have found him at the university!
Nice read
Thanks