The Constitutional Court in Uganda has dismissed an appeal filed by three Seventh-day Adventist students at Makerere University's law school who claimed the institution infringed on their religious rights by making them take exams and attend lectures on t
The Constitutional Court in Uganda has dismissed an appeal filed by three Seventh-day Adventist students at Makerere University’s law school who claimed the institution infringed on their religious rights by making them take exams and attend lectures on the Sabbath, or Saturday.
“The Makerere University policy complained of by the Seventh-day Adventist students was fair and its students, including the petitioners, voluntarily joined the university,” the court ruled in late September. The court agreed with assertions that the students could attend other institutions, including Bugema Adventist University.
At the same time, two Adventist students at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania have been suspended over abbath issues, church officials report.
Dr. Mutuku J. Mutinga, public affairs and religious liberty director for the Adventist Church in the east-central Africa region, says that the Makerere decision will be appealed and the church will support the students.
“We have a large population of Adventist students in Makerere University,” Mutinga, most recently the president of the University of East Africa—Baraton, told ANN in a telephone interview. Noting that the students asking for relief were in the law school, he said that other Makerere students “have been able to, through struggles, find solutions to observe [the] Sabbath.”
He stressed that since Makerere is a public university, its facilities and schools should be open to all eligible students since their families provide taxes to support the institution. While Adventist colleges and universities exist in East Africa, they do not yet have schools of law, medicine or veterinary medicine, and Adventists who wish to enter these professions must attend other universities.
“Makerere is our university, it’s a public university, so no one has a right to say, ‘Hey, you don’t belong here,’” Mutinga said. “A lot lies at stake. If they lose, then a lot of our students will find themselves in a very difficult situation; they will say ‘go to Bugema, go to Baraton, go to whatever.’ We don’t want that kind of situation.”
The Adventist official said that in his earlier academic career similar situations arose at a public university, but a solution was found.
“The University of Nairobi, with a total of 30,000 students, has more than 3,000 Adventist students,” he explained. “This is the case with other public universities—there are many Adventist students. They are given consideration. When I was teaching at the University of Nairobi, I had the faculty Senate rule that they should not teach on Sabbath, and there would be no exams.”
Mutinga is more hopeful about the situation in Tanzania, where he hopes to meet with the vice chancellor of the University of Dar es Salaam soon.
