Every time I think about the nature of university that Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, Ms. Lorna Magara, Yusuf Kiranda, Bruce Kabasa, Edwin Karugire and others – as emissaries of their master – have designed at Makerere, I wonder if they realise how they have reduced a university to just lectures and coursework.
From the shiny prison-like wall around the university, to scholars clocking in like factory workers, Nawangwe and friends have killed an institution meant to produce a ‘complete graduate’ ready for the workforce – and one ready for the world – into a place filled with thieves and vultures.
I struggle to understand how much these folks understand about ‘knowledge production’ and what it means to be a scholar and professor. Dear reader, I do not carry any grudges against these people. In fact, I don’t even know most of these faces as I have never met nor seen them from afar.
But we interact with their names and policies. As members of Makerere University, one cannot miss the bitterness from both students and professors about the new ‘order of things.’ Sadly, because their policies can stand neither intellectual nor historical scrutiny; Nawangwe and co. can only enforce them with brute force.
PRIME TIME AT THE POOL
Pastor Martin Ssempa’s “Prime Time at the Pool,” which Nawangwe banned, actually completed the idea of Makerere being a university. (I know, this is a difficult proposition but should be easier to understand). It not only augmented what is taught in the seminar rooms, but also fundamentally contributed to organising life inside and outside the lecture halls.
Let me start this story from the beginning. A close friend of mine I will call Peter Okoth movingly recalls how he stopped wasting his life in alcoholism by just watching Pastor Ssempa. By simply watching this ebullient and charismatic preacher.
Okoth’s situation had really deteriorated that one time, completely intoxicated, as he staggered his way to his kafunda behind Vet Medicine in Kikumi-Kikumi, he collapsed on the veranda and snored. It had rained earlier in the day that Okoth not only slept on the floor but in the mud too.
It was a slum dog that was leaking his mouth that woke him up! Perhaps he was wondering who this terrible kisser was, only to see a hound! Hours later, he recalled he had lectures to attend. But there was no way he would be attending them.
I met him after he had quit smoking and drinking. But when narrating this story — of him on the veranda, exchanging saliva with a hound – Okoth tells me he felt so bad after that night. Nevertheless, he could not stop himself from returning to the drinking joint a couple of nights later.
By this time, this devout Catholic had diverted from the church’s teachings. He only attended Sunday mass intermittently. But because of the performative atmosphere that defined Ssempa’s Prime Time at the Pool, Okoth oftentimes found himself by the pool. What a spot for church-ain-ment!
Okoth recalls when he closely scrutinized Pastor Ssempa’s smoothness and charisma, and above all his freshness. He told me how he looked at Pastor Ssempa’s mouth – not lasciviously – and admired its brown texture and visible freshness. He concluded that this was because the man of God neither burned his lips with smoking nor soaked them in changa’a or Kill-me-Quick waragi.
Okoth recalls that that night, he vowed to quit smoking and drinking – just to try and look like Ssempa. But this was a 30-year-old mature-age entry student.
ENTERTAINMENT, PRAYER AND INSPIRATION
I have not stopped thinking about Okoth’s story ever since I learned about the banning of Pastor Martin Ssempa’s ‘Prime Time at the Pool.’ Someone needs to do a thorough ethnography of what this church meant to many young Ugandans only recently arrived from their villages – and their first time in Kampala being Makerere University.
Prime Time was their safest place for relaxation, community building and entertainment. I will ask Pastor Ssempa how this idea was born and how it all started. A former roommate of mine who was regular at Prime Time would tell me there were two slurs thrown at the attendees: “Prime Time is for broke guys who cannot find a better weekend,” or “shy guys who cannot find babes.”
He often joked at these slurs. But in truth, these slurs could only be funny because they were dangerously true. What does the ability to find a babe mean for a student? Marriage? How about a better weekend? Drugs? Drinking?
Held on Saturday evening – most lonely hour for most undergraduates from the countryside – and unlike traditional churches, Ssempa managed to combine entertainment, prayer, and motivational speaking. All these packaged in a manner wholly attractive to young adult university students who would wish to spend their weekend elsewhere.
It had to be Pastor Ssempa: a cool and dandy fella, flamboyant with a Ugandan-American accent – signalling to a man of immense world exposure and accomplishment. Just watching him was captivating enough, as Okoth noted.
Notice also that Pastor Ssempa is perhaps the only Pentecostal preacher in Kampala who could be argued to be in this game for the love of God. Other folks in this game are businessmen, and the wall-whisperers have told us enough. Thus, students would never have gotten a better selfless individual for their inspiration and guidance.
Pastor Ssempa has become many things over the years. Specifically, his anti- homosexuality stance has become more dramatic, incriminating, and sadly meshed with Museveni’s opportunism on the same matter. On the one hand, it is undeniable that his position on the LGBTQ issue is in sync with the general view of the rest of his traditionally-identifying compatriots.
On the other hand, before LGBTQ became a core talking point for our colonised lives, Ssempa had been busy with Prime Time, and his work touched many young Ugandans.
The point I am making is this: a university is not simply coursework and lectures. It is Nkoba za Mbogo. It is Makerere University Muslim Students Association (MUMSA).
It is Banyankore Kweterana. It is NRM, DP, and NUP youth wings. It is raucous and noisy guild presidential elections. It is thieves that steal side mirrors and laptops. It is Prime Time at the Pool. It is that ebullient, charismatic and oftentimes controversial pastor preparing youngsters for the world of controversies.
The author is a political theorist based at Makerere University.
Fake argument and very annoying to bring a tribal name Okoth to put a argument.
It’s not a fake argument as you presume. Spiritual education is important to a young mind for upright living. Prime time provided that at a free cost and a convenient place. Let’s be civil.
MAKUNIKA walls truly do create an atmosphere of a secondary school extension. The students now must be missing the real world mingle & society.