MORE LIGHT ON MUGWANYA PREPARATORY SCHOOL AND A PROPOSAL

All the 6 years I spent at St. Mary’s College Kisubi I thought that the school actually belonged to the Brothers of Christian Instruction.  I was not alone.  It was just in 2005 – 2006 when I worked on the History of the school for the Centenary Magazine that I got to know that the Catholic Arch diocese of Kampala owns the school.  It so happened that after the Brothers got into the teaching as well as management of the school, they took it as theirs.   

You may not believe, but the fact is that the Monument (above) in- front of the Brothers’ Chapel at Mount St. Teresa was initially at SMACK compound.  The removal followed the development that the Brothers seemed to have taken the school as theirs.

The Mugwanya Preparatory School connection is that, the facts remain that the school was founded by the Old Boys of St. Mary’s College Kisubi, following the Sisters who were running the school giving up continued management, yet SMACK OB’s wanted a junior school where their children would be groomed and eventually join SMACK.  The Brothers must have been called in to manage the school as the Old Boys could not take on the responsibility.

How the Brothers ended up owners of the school is not clear.  Nor the way the Brothers decided to have Kabojja to a fully fledged primary school, given that children from Kabojja were supposed to join SAVIO and thereafter to St. Mary’s College Kisubi, where at least about 20 – 25 children were sure of joining S. 1 yearly.   

This matter is not simple, however, if the current management of Kabojja can re- constitute the School Board so that its Chairman is an OB of SMACK, and at least one member from the Old Boys’ Association on the school board, because much as history may have been distorted, facts are facts and these were written in Luganda.  Even the amount of grant which Buganda Government gave the Old Boys in pounds can be got from the records.  The fact that Stanislaus Mugwanya was a Catholic Chief makes him seem to have been the provider of the land, but this was surely Buganda Government to which the credit has to go.