Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of UNAIDS and companion to veteran politician Col. Kizza Besigye has opened up on why she quit Makerere University.
Byanyima who joined Makerere University in 1977 to pursue a degree in engineering revealed during BBC’s Desert Island Discs Programme that she wasn’t able to fulfill her dream having been sexually assaulted by a lecturer.
“What happened is a story that I have never told but it was really defining for me. A junior lecturer walked into my room one evening and made a preposition to me that I should be his girlfriend and that I will be sure to pass my exams. I told him I don’t need any ones help to pass my exams and I asked him to leave,” Byanyima said.
Besides, Byanyima said that the lecturer in context threatened and assured her that she was bound to regret, a situation that forced young Byanyima to quit Makerere University.
Having quit Makerere, Byanyima found her way into University of Manchester with the aid of a family friend.
The ‘sex for marks’ vice, regarded to as Sexually Transmitted Degrees (STDs) by some, is one vice that is yet to be completely wiped of most higher learning institutions.
In 2018, Makerere University fired an assistant academic registrar Edward Kisuze for sexual assault. In the proceeding year, the institution fired three lecturers over the same vice with the latest being a one Professor Christopher Bakuneta who was facing charges of sexual assault in January 2021.
Despite the previous attempts to end the vice, it seems to have come to stay; and these (known cases) are only a drop out of the ocean.
