Students around the world this year have shown us how fed up they were with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, from Berkley to Columbia in the US, to Manchester in the UK, they called for a ceasefire and for their universities and governments to divest from the state of Israel. The anger spread to the African continent too, from Egypt to South Africa as students faced harsh crackdowns from the police and state.
Yet, all the while, our students at Makerere University in Uganda have failed to speak out for the Palestinian people.
Makerere, the oldest university in East Africa was once a well-known hub for intellectual discourse on the continent. It was here that ideologies such as Pan-Africanism found a breeding ground. Students were politically conscious. In the 1960s, they protested against Ian Smith’s government in Rhodesia for the murder of three African nationalists. In 1970, a group of students planned a protest in which they intended to parade in front of the British High Commission in protest of arms sales to South Africa. The army stopped the march before it left campus using tear gas to control them.
