Mazrui at 80

Prof Ali A Mazrui is one of the scholars who have made debates on Africa relevant and central to the global narrative. The scholar marked his 80th birthday two weeks ago, and 50 years of intellectual contributions.

His legendary intellectual contributions, reflected in his inexhaustible passion for the controversial, whether debating the passive-aggressiveness of Gandhi’s non-violence, the personality cult of Julius Nyerere, or the literary meaning of interracial organ transplants, offers an insightful sociology of Africa.

He is a gifted debater and orator extraordinaire, a powerful teacher; an iconoclast who has helped non-African audience to realise Africa needs to be understood and not feared.

Perhaps less well-known is Prof Mazrui’s early childhood dream to become a taxi driver. He has never learnt how to drive to this day, although his desire to be a taxi driver was due to a yearning to “travel and meet different people from different places.”

In the last half century, he has traversed the globe giving lectures and meeting iconic figures such as Nelson Mandela; controversial leaders such as Louis Farrakhan; athletic legends such as Mohammed Ali; and political activists such as Malcolm X.

For the last five years, I have documented his life across three continents—Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

Mazrui has allowed me unrestricted access to his life, inviting me to accompany him on numerous trips, which I have been recording since 2008. The objective of this project is to preserve East African memory through conversations with our thinkers.

I am involved in a similar project with the renowned novelist and cultural critic, Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

Born on February 24, 1933 in Mombasa, Prof Mazrui was raised in a family with a long history of political participation along the East African coast. His father served as Kenya’s Chief Kadhi, and wanted the young Mazrui to pursue Islamic studies at Al-Azhar University in Egypt.

“But he died when I was only 14 years old and there was no one to pursue that alternative,” says Mazrui, now referred to as ‘Mwalimu’ (teacher).

Although Mazrui always displays an infectious smile, he harbours genuine concern about the ongoing portrayal of Africa as a defective wheel that turns but does not move; the unfathomable “other” a la Jacques Lacan.

He laments how it has become acceptable not to speak rationally about Africa. Part of the reason is that knowledge about Africa is produced on the margins and in marginal institutions, denying it the influence it should have globally.

But debates on such unbalanced portrayal of Africa have not been without mitigation. Mazrui has played a “major role in shaping African scholarship in his relentless cultivation of a global view of Africa, especially when it was tempting to retreat and be inward-looking when writing about Africa,” says Prof Simon Gikandi, professor of English at Princeton University.

Mazrui considers himself a product of three civilisations: “My native tongue is Swahili, but I was educated in the West in English, and was called to prayer in Arabic.”

The convergence of these civilisations, Africanity, Islam, and the Western influence, forms the triangulated triple heritage model, which permeates throughout his works.

Although this model is controversial, today “it is evident that we can no longer ignore Islam,” Gikandi says.

One of his childhood friends, Prof Muhammad Hyder, recalls asking Mazrui what he wanted to become in life.

“He said, to my surprise: ‘I want to be a writer!’ Here was a crazy young man who wanted to be a writer when most of us wanted to become either lawyers or doctors.”

Mazrui went on to author and co-author more than 35 books, numerous book chapters, and hundreds of scholarly articles. As Gikandi says: “If the best writings about Africa are those that connect Africa to other places, Mazrui’s scholarship did so in very powerful ways.”

Mazrui considers himself “a frustrated novelist,” who has always wanted to write more creative pieces, especially a novel with a Maasai Pope as the chief protagonist. He has written only one novel, The Trial of Christopher Okigbo.

“Tell him to write that novel he has always wanted to write,” says Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o. “He is a political scientist with a literary bent and I am a literary artist with a political bent.”

Ngugi and Mazrui wanted to write the biography of Jomo Kenyatta, but were prevented from doing so because the founding father was advised against it.

Broken dream

Mazrui’s high school performance was modest, “a mere third-class grade,” which was not good enough for university admission. He saw his ambition to join Makerere University crumble before his eyes.

“I saw my former classmates making their way to Makerere, while I looked around Mombasa for a job as a clerk,” he remembers. That failure became his driving force as he searched for other routes to redeem himself.

It was after reciting a poem on the birthday of Prophet Mohammed in the presence of Sir Phillip Mitchell, the then governor of colonial Kenya, that he was, shortly thereafter, awarded a scholarship to attend university in England.

But even before he left for England, he had already started his writing career, serving as the youngest editor of the Arab Guardian, an opinion monthly publication of the Swahili community. He also served a storyteller on Sauti ya Mvita, Mombasa’s first radio station in the early 1950s.

Between 1953 and 1955, Mazrui was the sub-editor for Mombasa Times, a fortnightly page of local Arab and Swahili news. At around the same period, he started working as the boarding supervisor at the Mombasa Institute of Muslim Education (Miome), which is now one of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology’s campuses. Half a century later, he returned to JKUAT as chancellor of the university.

As he left for England, “the elders joked I should not come back with a white woman,” he recalls. Ironically, he was to meet his first wife, Molly Vickerman at Huddersfield College. He has three sons with her.

His impressive academic performance in the fields of politics and philosophy earned him a fellowship, allowing him to pursue a Master’s degree at Columbia University. He later attended Oxford University for his doctoral studies, spending three years researching self-governance and nationalism in commonwealth Africa.

He made presentations at the prestigious BBC Reith Lectures in 1979, presenting them through six paradoxes, which examined “Africa’s state of health after 100 years of intense interaction with Europe” as one way of “measuring the state of the world.”

A decade on, he produced a nine-hour TV-series, The Africans: A Triple Heritage. The series, like its narrator, was provocative. In its September 1986 edition, The People Magazine described the series “as one of the most controversial series ever seen on American television.”

Writing for The New York Times (October 26, 1986), John Corry accused Mazrui of using “facts and statistics like an ideologist and not a historian,” for locating and weaving the narrative only within “moralistic and political ordinates, rather than the historical records.”

For Corry, The Africans is so clamorous “on its moral equations that we lose what may be its most serious message: Africa needs assistance; millions of lives are being lost to famine and disease.”

But that was not the purpose of the series. According to Mazrui, the series was meant to provide a human context when reading, discussing, and interpreting Africa.

“People should have a context when they hear about riots in South Africa or a military coup in Nigeria or drought in Ethiopia,” he says.

Although the National Endowment for the Humanities spent $600,000 in endowment grants on the series, the then chairperson, Lynne Cheney, dismissed The Africans as “anti-Western diatribe” that blamed “all the moral, economic and technological problems of Africa on the West.”

Cheney demanded the removal of the endowment’s name from the series’ credits.

But there are others who celebrated the series, including a mayoral recognition in Detroit and Chicago. The renowned South African writer, J.M. Coetzee, noted in 1987 how the series was destined to be the “standard audiovisual introduction to the continent in schools and colleges for years to come, or at least till the phalanx of tin-pot dictators who parade across the screen have vanished into oblivion and an update is needed.”

Were he to re-do The Africans a quarter of a century later, Mazrui would have to address numerous changes that have visited the continent since 1986.

At the age of 30, Mazrui joined Makerere University as a political science lecturer. Incredibly, in less than two years, he was promoted to full professor. “Mazrui never made it to Makerere as a student,” Hyder recalls. “But he joined that institution as one of its most powerful figures; as a teacher.”

I heard similar sentiments in Makerere last December from the retired Prime Minister of Uganda, Prof Apolo Nsibambi, a former colleague of Mazrui. When people say Makerere has declined, Nsibambi notes, it is because they are comparing the “institution’s vibrancy to the 1960s when Mazrui was around.”

At Makerere, Mazrui wrote some of his most controversial articles, the most memorable being his reference to Kwame Nkrumah as the “Leninist-Czar;” a great African but not a great Ghanaian. His article titled ‘Tanzaphilia’, describes Julius Nyerere as an original but not an independent thinker.

While Mazrui’s earlier interests were on political philosophy in Africa and the West, his range of interests has made him an intellectual maverick who deliberately resists following any particular tradition.

“If the young Mazrui was steeped in political philosophy and political sociology, Mazrui the elder is more on the sociological and cultural side,” says Prof James Mittleman. He engaged politicians in debates, and emerged as a public intellectual, shaping public policies.

After giving a talk at Makerere one day, a copy of the speech mysteriously made it back to him with remarks in the margin by President Milton Obote.

In another occasion, Obote summoned Mazrui to Parliament and admonished him as “I pensively sat in the public gallery.” From the floor of the House, Obote warned that “we don’t know if Ali Mazrui will be picked up tonight, but he should consider going to teach elsewhere.”

It was the then Chief Justice of Uganda, Sir Egbert Udo Udoma, who confided in Mazrui that Obote was under intense pressure to either imprison or expel him. “This idea of inviting you to Parliament is Obote’s substitute. He would rather shame you in public rather than physically hurt you,” Mazrui recalls his conversation with the then Chief Justice.

Profound sensitivity

Even when he was regularly harassed verbally, he remained fearless in talking truth to power; “pursuing tyrannical leaders whenever he could find them; challenging misguided policies whether they were African, European or America,” says Prof Ricardo Laremont.

But given his prominence in global circles, Gikandi feels Mazrui should have intervened more forcefully when repressive mechanisms were being deployed in Kenya from the mid-1970s.

“He should have been more equivocal in opposing what was going on but he adopted a gentleman approach; a liberal approach in a situation which was illiberal.”

Critics see him as more of an essayist than as a systematic social scientist who gathers evidence rigorously.

Other forms of criticism rest on who speaks authentically for Africa, as exhibited by Wole Soyinka’s remark on Mazrui’s TV series: “A TV series by a black African is yet to be made,” implying Mazrui is more of an Arab than a black African.

Yet, as Mittleman notes, Mazrui’s ingenuity rests in his capacity to understand cultural hybridity and interpret that cultural integration to the rest of the world.

But Mazrui’s intellectual strength, according to Laremont, lies in his capacity to listen, and from profound sensitivity and caring for the person in front of him.

“When you couple that with his great gift of writing; that is what creates the formidable intellectual he is.”

Despite Mazrui’s prolific contributions, there is more he can do to guide, especially the future generations “by revisiting his work and tell us what he should have done differently,” says Mittleman.

As he continues to write and teach, “greater clarity in separating the Zionist project and the Jewish project is required in order to bring greater nobility to his work, which is already noble,” says Laremont.

Other critics argue Mazrui has often failed to account for his intellectual positions and choices.

According to his nephew, Prof Alamin Mazrui, when Mazrui prevails as a man of ideas, the scientist in him is devoid of meticulousness. “But it is his originality of many ideas that has made his reputation internationally.”

Alamin and Chief Justice Dr Willy Mutunga co-edited three volumes on Mazrui’s exchanges with his critics.

When Idi Amin came to power, there were mysterious disappearances and several university professors were killed. Mazrui was told to “shut-up” to avoid endangering his colleagues’ safety. Rather than shut up, he applied for a position at the University of Nairobi, but was not welcomed by Dr Josephat Karanja, the then Vice Chancellor. After a brief appointment as a Fellow at Stanford University, Mazrui joined the University of Michigan in 1974.

He founded the Institute of Global Cultural Studies (IGCS) at the State University of New York- Binghamton in 1989.

He resides in Binghamton, New York, with his wife Pauline. They have two sons.

While Mazrui considers Kibaki’s legacy to be an ongoing project, at least for now, he is grateful to Kibaki for “restoring me to legitimacy” by appointing him Chancellor of JKUAT.

Kibaki, he says, will be remembered for opening up previously muted discursive spaces by the former political regimes.

Although he is now permanently on a wheelchair and must be accompanied by a health escort on all his trips, Mazrui has continued to give lectures across the globe. His voice is less resonant. The delivery of his speeches is slower but poetic.

He now sports a beard, acquiring a contemplative look of a philosopher. He always carries a small bag containing new publications. And there is a small radio that he never leaves behind.

“I had received a radio as a birthday gift on February 24, 1966. As I listened to it, I heard Kwame Nkrumah had been overthrown. He was toppled on my birthday. It was real bad news,” he remembers.

Mazrui still commands attention and his arguments pulsate with unbridled creativity, but he is less combative. “Age makes us mellow,” he said to me over lunch in Philadelphia last December during the annual African Studies Association conference.

At the conference, the International Institute of Islamic Thought organised a special luncheon in honour of Mazrui’s contributions to African and Islamic studies.

A formidable catalyst

In attendance were key African scholars including the renowned historian, Prof Toyin Falola. My mini-documentary, which revolves around Mazrui’s views on Kenya’s oil discovery, the role of ICC in Kenyan and African politics, the impact of Kenya’s war against Al Shabaab, as well as Kibaki’s legacy, was screened.

At 80, Mazrui continues to give lectures across the globe, serving as a formidable catalyst that inexhaustibly opens up debates about Africa to other influences.

To celebrate his 80th birthday, IGCS will host this year’s New York African Studies Association (Nyasa) 38th annual conference in the first week of April.

Those invited include Mutunga and government leaders from Nigeria. A former head of state and Princess Elizabeth of Toro are among the guests.

Distinguished writers, including Ngugi wa Thiong’o, have confirmed attendance. Makerere University will send a delegation of a dozen people, and Nyasa will institute an annual Ali A Mazrui Book Prize.

Mazrui’s intellectual biography continues to challenge his readers to look at Africa in the world, and the world in Africa. The sheer quantity of his work, its wide range and diversity of ideas, significantly explains why he has attracted keen admirers and harsh critics.

“There are many people who do not agree with me,” he says. “My life is one long debate.”

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Mazrui is not the intellectual people think he is

“Mazrui asked the question: “Who killed intellectualism in East Africa?” If one did not know Prof Mazrui’s sense of intellectualism, one would think it was such a big thing whose death should be mourned.

But Prof Mazrui wrote very little against the misdeeds of his native Kenya. Perhaps there were no fascinating ideas emanating therefrom? If intellectualism is mere “fascination with ideas” and it is dead, then perhaps one should celebrate the death of such a luxury.

And welcome the sprouting of the intellectualism of involvement in social transformations of one’s country whilst living in the country and if suffering for one’s ideals come to one, then so be it. Let the intellectualism of Ali Mazrui die.”

— Prof Taban lo Liyong

“Mazrui is a towering intellectual in terms of his internationalism and his academic writing. He also went beyond his field in political science. He is an independent scholar, never a leftist.

In the early days I used to criticise him a lot, that even though he is a very good English user, perhaps better than any white man I have read, at the end of the day there wasn’t anything much that he wrote that lasts.”

— Prof William Ochieng’

“Just what is happening to Ali Mazrui, and how much longer are we to be afflicted by this ingenious smokescreen that has induced so much phlegm, distorted so much vision, generated so much heat but has offered scant illumination?”

— Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka