How I started telling the story of Africa and my people

To see the sun ‘go to sleep’ over and beyond Lake Victoria is a testament to one having survived another day. To see that sun set over the years is to count the ancestors’ blessings.

Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot and his wife, Grace Ogot, make one of Kenya’s most prominent intellectual couples. They are now enjoying their retirement from active public life in their home in Yala town on the shores of Lake Victoria, a few kilometres from Kisumu city.

Bethwell and Grace have scored several firsts from the classroom to the workplace and to public and community service. Bethwell retired as the Chancellor of Moi University last year.

After politics, Grace bowed out of public life. The two spend much of their time together reading and occasionally doing a jig. But their names resound publicly in Kenya and the rest of the world.

Grace’s writing, from Land Without Thunder to The Promised Land and her autobiography Days of my Life, continue to intrigue students of literature.

Bethwell is an unmatched Kenyan historian who still reads voraciously, from as early as 6am. He is preparing to give a public lecture on Raila Odinga’s book, Flame of Freedom, at Maseno University this month.

To interview Bethwell, as I did in March, is to witness the enduring love of a couple that still shines bright 64 years after they first met at Makerere University:

Kenya is 50 years old, yet we still talk of nation-making. Why?

The first point to note is that nations are created through various vital processes and elements: culture, language, history and a sense of belonging. I edited and published a book by the late historian Atieno-Odhiambo when I was 80 years old.

The book was published in Switzerland, but he decided to launch it in Rang’ala instead of America and invited several teachers of history; not so many from the universities but just schools.

After the launch I was asked to say something about the book.

Then a Somali teacher of history asked me one reason why he should buy the book since he felt he couldn’t even recommend it to his children.

I asked him why? He claimed that the only time there is reference to the Somali community in the book is of them as Shiftas. He then asked me if that’s the image I wanted him to pass on to his children.

He claimed they aren’t part of Kenya at all and that in the books historians write, they don’t exist but are mere Shiftas or terrorists. So he said he can’t buy the book.

In the whole of Africa, the biggest problem is the issue of exclusion; those in power want to exclude others.

So this means exclusion based on tribe?

Yes. That’s basic.

If you look at the questions raised every election time for Oginga and Raila: Claims that Oginga isn’t circumcised and so a Luo can’t lead. Yet a majority of the men in the world aren’t circumcised.

I lived and taught in Uganda and know that apart from the Bagisu and a few other tribes, the rest aren’t circumcised. So it’s not an issue in Uganda.

Yet in Kenya, this is an issue and an excuse to exclude a whole group permanently from power.

I have kept reminding them that one of the oldest Independent Churches in Kenya is the Nomiya Luo Mission, founded by Owalo in Asembo, and with one of the conditions being that you must be circumcised since he was largely influenced by Muslims at the Coast. These are Luos but people don’t see that and claim Luos don’t circumcise.

As a historian, I have been reminding people that it’s the Kalenjin who introduced circumcision in Kenya. Bantus were never circumcising and it wasn’t part of their culture until recently, yet when they borrowed it from the Kalenjin, it became a big factor of exclusion.

A big part of Africa has the problem of social exclusion.

If that’s the problem now, let’s go back to the 1960s or earlier. You were young scholars, had experienced the world, and were back home. Why was it difficult to construct an egalitarian society?

My experience is that during the first two years of Kenya’s independence that was possible. I was lucky since I started teaching outside Nyanza, in Kapsabet Boys in 1953, but was moved to Nyeri during the emergency in the same year.

The likes of Dedan Kimathi would invade my house at Kagumo looking for food and I was then moved to Alliance from Kagumo; following claims I was a Mau Mau sympathiser.

My people complained that I had escaped death in Nyeri and should not move to Kiambu but Maseno. I declined and this background, not being linked so much to the Luo, helped me since I moved to Makerere University before returning to Kenya in 1964.

In the first two years of independence, political leaders, just like other young and educated Kenyans, didn’t have a problem. A majority of MPs like Martin Shikuku never went to university yet celebrated the idea of Kenya.

But then the leadership started the exclusion of the Mau Mau; alienating half of the Kikuyu population. That’s the Matigari of Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

The leadership itself wasn’t Mau Mau. Afterwards, the regime extended the exclusion to other people and created an ethno-nation, yet even within that, it was simply a small elite.

When Moi took over in 1978 he preached peace, love and unity. There was no peace either; it was the peace in prison.

Moi was following Kenyatta. He blocked channels of communication, movement, and expression, leading to the attempted coup in 1982.

Section 2A barred the likes of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and George Anyona from either joining Kanu or forming their own party.

What could they do? Even Mandela confessed that he didn’t believe in violence but formed the ANC military wing since all avenues were blocked and political violence seemed the only way. Moi blocked all avenues for these people and they said come what may, they would do it militarily.

To what extent can the intelligentsia intervene and help redirect this country right now?

I see no way out really for things to change. Since there is no guarantee that things will be better, we may go back to the Moi dictatorship. In many societies, it’s the intellectuals who direct ideology that change people.

One or two books can change a whole generation. Yet this is missing; so many of us have decided it’s safer to move on, yet we don’t know where we are moving to. We need people who will offer alternative routes to follow and the university should take a leading role.

But if you think the project of putting together a country has largely failed, is devolution the answer?

If devolution is given time, it would make a big difference. So many things previously sought from the central government are now here. Again, it shall tame the imperial presidency.

If the Constitution is fully implemented, it shall help decentralise not just services but power. The governors can be very vital if they don’t get frustrated or misbehave.

But why do you expand Parliament yet functions have been decentralised to the county assemblies; why do you vote for more money for Parliament than counties? We need a smaller Parliament to deal with national functions. People are now exerting pressure on the governors directly; they don’t go to Nairobi, and to me that’s very healthy.

How do we make these counties economically viable?

They can be viable if they are allowed to do a number of things. They should not be barred from creating their own industries. Many of these projects can generate money from local resources.

Turkana and Lamu are sitting on wealth. Nyanza is full of minerals just awaiting exploration. We’ve not even started using the lake.

North Eastern has wealth and should not bring animals to Athi River (KMC); why can’t we have abattoirs there? We aren’t exploiting our resources adequately.

Some people are complaining that these counties are too many but they simply want us to go back to more centralisation. Reducing them will bring more conflict and politics.

On education, do you think that the opening up and spreading of university education is a good thing?

It’s good in the sense that you offer opportunities for more Kenyans. At the moment, of those who qualify for university education, it’s only five per cent to six per cent who go to public universities. Yet in other parts of the world the minimum is 30 per cent.

But it must be planned; if they are public universities they must be financed. There is no sense in them being public yet they are being told to look for their own money.

The problem is planning for expansion; you should know the source of funding. It’s clear that the public universities, if encouraged, can generate a lot of money.

One particular area of concern is staff because the number of full professors in universities in Kenya is less than 300. And most of those are over 50 years old, yet it’s the younger professors who really do the work while the older professors philosophise.

When one gets a Nobel Prize, it’s not because of what they are doing but what they did 30 years back. So we need to catch the 35-50 groups; they can’t just appear from nowhere. Many old professors are leaving; who shall supervise students, who shall produce PhDs?

You collaborated with Unesco to produce the History of Africa series. Why is it we don’t even have one for Kenya at fifty or East Africa at 50 or Africa at 50?

The fault is ours. Taking the example of the History of Africa series, you realise that the initiative came originally from historians and African leaders and began with a conference in Ghana organised by Kwame Nkrumah during which he identified 12 of us and invited us to deliberate on the issue.

We agreed to write a proposal and hand it over to African heads of state who were going to meet in Addis Ababa.

We told Nkrumah to present the proposal to the leaders, for those who were already members of Unesco to raise funds for the project.

The heads passed it and it was equally passed in Paris. Then Unesco set up various conditions, nominated 35 of us, at least three quarters being African scholars.

None was to represent any particular country but we were tasked with scholarly compiling of a journal of African history. It took 20 years but it was produced in 15 languages, and is still being translated into other languages. This put African history on the world map.