Memories of Makerere midwives and grand fight for piece of a don

“We Build for the Future” is Makerere’s motto. At the Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1972, we used the slogan, “We built for the future, and the future is here.”

The past, present and future were, indeed, fused there last week as the gurus of literature, language and culture assembled for the Second East African Literary and Cultural Conference, assembled for deliberations on their trade.

The Conference was steeped in history. For, as we remember, it was here, that the famous 1962 Conference on African Literature was convened, with luminaries like Chinua Achebe, David Rubadiri, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Christopher Okigbo, Obi Wali, among others, struggling to define African Literature and suggest an agenda for it.

It was here that Ngugi wa Thiong’o was compelled by the famous editor of Penpoint, Mr Jonathan Kariara, to write that story that he had promised him, and thus launched him on his writing career. It was here, too, in 1974, at the Association of Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (ACLALS) Conference, that the literati first heard of the “search for a search” in oral literature that was to eventually elicit the “oracy and orature” coinages from the mercurial Pio Zirimu and his humble student, who shall remain unnamed.

It was here that John Ruganda Araali, Peter Nazareth, Bahadur Tejani, Richard Ntiru, even Okot p’Bitek to a certain extent, and a whole host of other household names in African Literature embarked on their illustrious adventures. Tim Wangusa, too, who was launching his brand new novel, Betwixt Mountain and Wilderness at this very conference, was and is still very much part of this pantheon.

Here, too, the “midwives” of African Literature, the likes of Gerald Moore, David Cook and Ulli Beir, had done their meticulous hunt, reading, discussing, editing and promoting budding African writers, leading to the production of such offers as A Book of African Verse, Origin East Africa, Poems From East Africa and Modern Poetry From Africa.

Moore is even acknowledged by Okot p’Bitek, his colleague at the then-Makerere of Department of Extramural Studies, as a contributing influence to Song of Lawino.

Penina Mlama, the Swahili dramatist and female empowerment academic, made the most telling point about Makerere in her keynote speech. She reminded us of the question that we used to be asked in our undergraduate student days at the University College in Dar es Salaam. The wananchi would ask us if, after Dar es Salaam, we would go to Makerere. The implication was that you really had not gone to university until you went to Makerere.

Indeed, as Professor Mlama put it, Makerere was so synonymous with university education in the minds of East Africans that to them, anyone who obtained a degree had to have earned it from Makerere! Well, I did fulfil the people’s expectations. I went to Makerere after Dar es Salaam.

But then, there are so many other brilliant scholars, like Professor Mlama herself, who did not go to Makerere, and did not have to do so, in order to build their careers.

Indeed, there have been several scholars who have gone to Dar es Salaam, Nairobi and other East African Universities after Makerere.

Professor Abasi Kiyimba, the current Dean of the School of Languages and Communication, is among many other Makerereans who went to Dar es Salaam for their doctorates.

But the essence of Mlama’s observation is that, right from the beginnings of East African university education, Makerere has been at the core of it. It was the region’s member in the original “African Ivy League” schools, the others being Ibadan, Fourah Bay, Legon and Fort Hare. Even today, it would be difficult to find a university in East Africa where Makerere’s influence is not traceable.

So, as we “poured libation” (in words) at the beginning of my keynote speech, I alerted my venerable audience that the ground on which we stood was blessed, and we, too, were blessed to be standing on it. I gave them the invocation, “We are blessed indeed, indeed we are blessed.”

But then, as we invoked, I suddenly realised that, of all of us blessed ones there, I was the most blessed. I was at the core of all those strands that I was reciting about the blessings. A living blend of East African university education, I have lived, taught and studied in all our countries.

Indeed, many in that distinguished crowd had been either my colleagues, like Waveney Olembo, Kitheka wa Mberia and Tim Wangusa, or my students (and of course colleagues later), like James Adera Ogude, J.C. Odhiambo, Wegesa Busolo, and Susan Kiguli, the Makerere Literature Chair, who was our host.

Above all, I felt loved. Ernest Okello-Ogwang, the DVC Academic, my former room-mate in London’s Highgate during our SOAS sojourn, was the first to break the silence about the currents swirling around me. “I hope,” he said, “you Kenyans have not come to take away our Mwalimu.” The Kenyans, as guests, maintained a dignified silence, but I could see their body language saying, “Kwani alianza lini kuwa wenu (since when did he start being yours)?”

When Professor Mlama was asked to launch a book, Habari za Kiswahili, written by German scholars, she just said, “I cannot launch this book alone when our own Mwalimu Austin Bukenya is here.” That was a wonderful way of telling the Kenyans and the Ugandans what the Tanzanians thought of their claims!

Yet even the German crowd did not miss out on their claim to the Mwalimu. Lutti, who had led the Habari za Kiswahili authorship team, and Dr Sam Ndogo, with whom I had been at Bayreuth, just cut me off and engaged me in a real Germanic gumzo, regardless of what the others thought.

You may remember the advice I gave teachers about loving their job. Now I know that I love East Africa, I love Literature, I love teaching, I love my students, and I am loved in return.

Could I have been more blessed than that?