An African literary guru Chakava has rested ... go well, namesake!

No news is good news, they say. And so it was with profound sadness that I received multiple WhatsApp messages Friday morning bearing the same news: that publisher and literary icon, Dr Henry Chakava, was no more.

The message hit home coldly, as all devastating news does, not least because he was my first employer. He introduced me and a good number of others to the world of business in the literary sphere.

I recall that late afternoon in 2006 when I was ushered into Dr Chakava's office. For nearly a year, I had been an intern - mainly doing proofreading work - at East African Educational Publishers Ltd and had been recommended for absorption as an editorial assistant.

So, at the tail-end of the recruitment process, I had to meet Dr Chakava, who was then managing director, and who asked me why I thought I should be given a job in the publishing department. I stammered forth, dropping things like the need to learn and gain experience, and so on.

His arms folded across his chest, Dr Chakava looked this way and that, then into the distance. He seemed. The glower on his face left no doubt that I had flunked the interview. Two days later, however, I got my appointment letter. That was vintage Dr Chakava; hard to figure out but ever objective and resolute.

For orientation, he insisted that you had to visit the printers, schools, bookshops, the warehouse and every department of the business and understand what went on there, before sitting in the office to produce books.

He would subsequently meet us for weekly sessions where he taught us everything about publishing; which he said was quite different from any other business. He popularised the industry dictum that publishing as a trade lies somewhere between the Cathedral and the stock exchange. He meant that, while, like all other businesses publishers had to file returns on shareholders' capital, the industry had a near-sacred duty to promote the cultural development of the societies in which they operated.

And promote the cultural development of Kenya and Africa he did. For, it is hardly by coincidence that the best writers to have come out of Africa passed through his immensely gifted editorial hands - Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Elechi Amadi, Kekelwa Nyaywa, Okot p'Bitek, Marjorie Oludhe McGoye, Katama Mkangi, Micere Mugo, Grace Ogot, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Jomo Kenyatta, Yusuf K. Dawood, Peter Abrahams, and many others.

In an industry that, shortly after Kenya's independence, was dominated by foreign publishers, Dr Chakava took over Heinemann East Africa and converted it into a force for the advancement of African cultural heritage, in a historical context where most publishers did not produce Afro-centric works of literary art.

As a business manager, Chakava's world was flat. Unlike most publishing firms where publishing editors filed weekly reports to their managers, who then called a meeting to discuss progress before forwarding an integrated report to the managing director and so on, his style was radically different. Every last Thursday of the month, he would summon the executive members of the board and senior management to listen to each publishing editor unreel what they were doing at their desks.

I feared these editorial and production board meetings so much that whenever a project was behind schedule, you could hear my breathing from three rooms away from the charged boardroom. The editors would field questions from marketing, finance and other departments so that by the time you went to press, you were sure that you were not only doing the right thing, but you had everyone on board. Things sometimes got quite heated in these meetings, but Dr Chakava always defended us from the largely hard-driving management team.

These dreaded conferences, in hindsight, were just the baptism by fire that we needed to understand the trade, thanks to a man who was so fearless in his publishing endeavours that he lost his finger during the heady days of repression when state agents came around looking for a man called Matigari, who happened to be a mere character in a book by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Matigari ma Njiruungi.

But perhaps it is humility and genuine care about people's welfare that disarmed me the most. When he later handed over the CEO's position and remained simply as 'Chairman', he one day came looking for me. I and everyone else thought I was in trouble. It, however, turned out that he wanted us to go for lunch, so I could tell him how I was settling in as he shared some of his first experiences when he was a literary editor, about three departmental generations before. From that day, to him I have always been 'namesake'.

This down-to-earth approach cemented the company into a close-knit family where everyone truly cared for everyone else. The fact that Dr Chakava's list of authors reads like the who is who in the literary world is a lasting testimony that his legacy is unshakeable. Go well, namesake.

The writer, a former literary editor at East African Educational Publishers, is an editorial and publishing consultant