YOU PARKED MY PARACHUTE! The Story of Galogitho, Former Makerere Guild President’s Rise from Ashes

By Markson Omagor

SPECIAL REPORT

Charles Plumb was a U.S. Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent six years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal.
One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. “You were shot down!”
“How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb.
“I packed your parachute,” the man replied.
Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, “I guess it worked!”
Plumb assured him, “It sure did. If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.” ( _Kare Anderson_ )

From the fires that gutted Makerere University’s now razed down Ivory Tower in September 2020, Comrade James William Mugeni set out to find Stephen Renny Galogitho, the student Guild President whose career training in Human Medicine at the same University was shot down, so to say, on the 24th of October 1996 by the University’s Administration through Council directed by the Chancellor. Coincidentally, 24th October, 5 decades earlier in 1945 is the date of coming into effect of The United Nations (UN),  an international organization founded after the Second World War by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights

The “shoot down” followed a raft of unprecedented reforms in Education and its management by the University and Government to the discontent of the Student Body and the larger governed population as a whole. After a series of failed dialogue engagements between the parties, Students of Makerere University under Githo’s leadership elected to air out their grievances in a peaceful demonstration, a right and tool enshrined in our National Constitution. This rubbed especially the State and its then policy direction the wrong way. The student leadership was misunderstood in the line of a socialist movement aimed at promoting pro-poor interests thus standing in the path of the state’s new policy wave informed by the neo-liberal prescriptions nurtured and spearheaded by Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher that cut across the Developing World. It was such a perilous time to be a pro-poor Student Leader and Activist as Guild President Solomon Muruli of Nairobi University was murdered exactly four months after Githo’s said “shoot down” on 24th February 1997 for resisting Neoliberalism and its attendant ills in Kenya.
The rest as is remains History.

JW Mugeni’s search through a news article on social media spontaneously ignited interest in Githo’s contemporaries at University and within the then student movement leading to creation of this platform with the objective of restoring the life of a martyr of student representation and foresightedness within the larger state.
Through this platform and by aggregate efforts of all you comrades, Githo is steadily getting back on the path of dreams that were not destroyed but met obstacles.

Githo graduates today as Certified Public Manager, a program under Drake University of the State of Iowa, USA. You  parked his parachute.

In a special way, Comrade James William Mugeni’s singular efforts in identifying the study program, facilitating the commensurate enrollment and meeting the attendant fees and tuition are here recognized. Plaudits to you Comrade.

Congratulations to you Comrade Githo upon this small but indelible milestone

Comrades, lest we lower our guard, it is yet work in progress.