Ali Mazrui is proof that few heroes are respected in life

On Thursday, August 13, Prof Ali A. Mazrui voluntarily gave up his prestigious job as chancellor of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. He had held this responsibility for five years, his first major job offer in Kenya.

Before President Kibaki posted him to the Juja-based university, Mazrui had whined, complained and wailed many, many times about his exclusion. “I never had a chance to serve as an employee of the government until President Kibaki gave me a chance,” he would later say.

For several years, when he was at the top of his professional excellence, I played the role of his devil’s advocate. I wrote pithy and jeering articles that pricked his ego.

While miffed at the beginning, eventually he realised that I was simply a goader. For truly Mazrui is one of the greatest thinkers of our time. He probably speaks and writes in English better than any Englishman alive.

The apogee of his scholarship was spent at Makerere University, where he taught political science. But now and again, he travelled to Nairobi, or to Mombasa, to deliver his eloquent and exquisite speeches. On those occasions the lecture halls would be full to capacity.

The Kenyan establishment was never at ease with him, and literally kept him at a distance, but in Uganda, he was patronised by President Milton Apollo Obote, who was himself an intellectual, and who attended most of Mazrui’s public lectures.

After Obote was overthrown by Uganda’s soldiers in 1971, Mazrui attempted to get close to Idi Amin, a fellow Muslim, but realising that he was playing around with a wildebeest, he fled for exile to the United States.

On many occasions, Mazrui travelled home for holidays, and while here, he would make anti-establishment statements, particularly with regard to human rights, that annoyed the Kenyan leadership.

One day, over a luncheon at State House, I made a remark on Mazrui which drew the attention of retired president Daniel arap Moi. He looked at me and asked: “So you also admire that strange man?”

Ali Mazrui attempted greatly to be accepted and appreciated by fellow Kenyans. He made a big fuss when the Voice of Kenya refused to air his television series, The Africans: A Triple Heritage.

But while he was widely known and respected in intellectual circles, very few ordinary Kenyans knew him personally. Is it any wonder that when JKUAT threw a farewell party for him, very few of the invited guests, including the minister for Education and fellow university chancellors failed to show up?

To them, Mazrui is like a fairly tale — a story told about magicians and goblins. Such people you only meet in novels, and not in person.

Embarrassed by the absence from the party of his intellectual colleagues and top ministry officials, Mazrui commented: “Africans do not say goodbye even to those we bury.”

Of his chancellorial colleagues only Prof Florida Karani, the chancellor of Maseno University, attended. When later I asked Prof B.A. Ogot why he had not attended the party organised for his colleague, he claimed that he was not aware that Mazrui was leaving for good.

As William Shakespeare once told us: “Time and tide wait for no man.” Today the professor looks exhausted, frail and aged; but he still retains his bold and critical character.