By Eriah Lule
Muhereza means “servant leader” in various parts of Uganda. According to Forebears, the world’s largest database of name meanings and distributions, more than 14,000 Ugandans are called Muhereza. One alumnus of Uganda Christian University (UCU) is among them, and appropriately so as he serves as a social justice leader for communities.
The civil rights activism of the Rev. Liberty Muhereza led him to write a training module focused on civil rights ideals to be imparted into society. When he shared his curriculum with leadership of the Uganda Police Force, they did not hesitate to take it up. Today, the module that Muhereza developed is part of the curriculum that is taught to trainees in police academies in Uganda.
“Since childhood, I have always dreamt of a world where there is equity and social justice,” Muhereza says.
It is this dream that even after completing his law degree course, the 38-year-old opted to work with civil society organisations, where he thought he would make more impact than setting up a law firm. He studied a Bachelor of Laws course at UCU, after which he pursued a Diploma in Legal Practice at Uganda’s Law Development Centre.
Muhereza is the Country Director of the African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM), a not-for-profit organisation that deals with conflict resolution, servant leadership development, social justice and reconciliation, as well as community transformation. ALARM, a Christian organization that was birthed in 1996, is based in Ntinda, a suburb of Kampala.
The organization operates in six countries in the Great Lakes region: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan and Uganda, where it started in 2002.
Muhereza, a father of two, started working with ALARM when he completed his Diploma in Legal Practice course. He joined the organisation as its head of the peace and justice department. It is while heading the peace department that Muhereza developed a module on social justice that was eventually integrated into the curriculum of the Uganda Police Force.
Police officers being one of the major enforcers of social justice, Muhereza explains, ALARM found it necessary to train them in servant leadership development, peace, justice and reconciliation. He said they also mentor a section of lawyers under the Uganda Christian Lawyers Fraternity.
As a Country Director, he has created partnerships with Civil Society Organizations, Government agencies and many churches in Uganda to train pastors or church leaders. Muhereza says they have held sessions with leaders in the Church of Uganda, the Roman Catholic Church and the Pentecostal churches.
To champion their goal of fostering peace and reconciliation, the organisation set up a vocational school, the ALARM Technical Institute in Pader district, in northern Uganda, to equip former child soldiers, wives of soldiers and illiterate teenagers with self-sustenance skills. Northern Uganda was a hotspot of a two-decade civil war, from 1986, with the atrocities of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels forcing communities into internally displaced people’s camps.
At the technical institute, Muhereza says: “The youth are empowered with skills like carpentry, computer literacy, building and concrete practice, electrical installation and many more, in order to establish a job-creating generation rather than a job-seeking one.” He is the institute’s board chairperson.
Muhereza resigned from his job as the head of the Peace and Justice Department at ALARM in 2015 to pursue the Master of Divinity course at UCU. Upon completion, he joined All Saints Cathedral Nakasero, as part of its clergy. However, due to his exceptional service at ALARM, it did not take long for the organisation to call him back, this time as its Country Director, a position he holds to date.
“Attending UCU ignited my Christian values and leadership skills,” says Muhereza, who was a fellowship leader, choir master and was also involved in various ministries as a student at UCU.
Currently, Muhereza is a board member of Hope Children’s home, a not-for-profit that looks after underprivileged children. He also is the general secretary of the Uganda Christian Lawyers Fraternity, and the board chairperson of Fashion and Compassion, an organization that empowers women with skills for economic development.
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