Ochieng’, the solid public intellectual who was a blessing to Kenya

By Samwel Okuro

To the global community of historians, Saturday 28 December 2013 will go down as a sad day. It was the day Professor William Robert Ochieng’ passed on quietly at Aga Khan Hospital in Kisumu. To some of us he touched directly, William, just as in death, is celebrated as a quintessential person of science, a legend and extra-ordinary mind to have emerged from the east African region.

His historical discourse transcended disciplinary boundaries underpinned by combative engagement, a resolve to establish historical truth, and a rejection of intellectual servitude of hero worship. It was this trademark that made him appear to others as uncompromising and severe to colleagues both inside and outside the academy, and particularly to those who demonstrated mediocrity in their academic and social analysis. Academics and other commentators who did not understand him easily fell into his trap. Quick examples who come to mind are professors Taban Lo Liyong and Maurice Amutabi. Indeed if  William was a live today he could have naturally and humorously reminded me not to dilute his professorship – in reference to some other academics as professors.  The limited infrastructural development in our public universities gave me a rare opportunity to share same office with Professor William Ochieng at Maseno University. In some of our office engagements he reminded me of my intellectual responsibilities but cautioned me against intellectual hero worship- the need to rigorously and aggressively establish and chart my own unique intellectual path.  One day, after reading Professor Amutabi’s rejoinder to one of his articles he asked me why East Africa has not been able to have a solid intellectuals like Michel Foucault, Amilcar Cabral, and Frantz Fanon. While my views and not meant for this article, William accused the young intellectual of being contented with what they have read –failure to intellectually engage with and critique the existing writings and instead keen at cataloguing useless list of our publications even if the publications are mere regurgitation of existing knowledge.  Those who read the most recent Professor Taban Lo Liyong and Professor Maurice Amutabi rejoinder to William will definitely confirm his fears. I also had the opportunity to remind, however, in a civilized language and connotation, the limitations on some of his writing – not that they lack historical content but that most of his writings lacked the theoretical rigour which is the hallmark on modern historical writing. However, unlike what others think of William Robert Ochieng, to me he was not organic intellectual but a solid public intellectual.  

In his pursuit for historical objectivity, Professor William Robert Ochieng refused to accept the narrow interpretation of Mau Mau as a revolutionary movement. It is the Mau Mau scholarship which made William to have fair share of critics, particularly among the historians from the Mount Kenya region. The high priest of this bandwagon is the vaguely known Professor Maina wa Kinyatti who recently referred to William as a “colonial apologist”.    As a practicing historian, let me say it today, Professor Maina wa Kinyatti and his irk have not provided any intellectually rewarding historical answer to professor Ochieng assertions about Mau Mau not being a “mere Kikuyu chauvinist affair”. In response to these William argued that in the end , uhuru was negotiated between the British and the collaborative class of Kenya’s petty bourgeois nationalists. By 1957, the Mau Mau had lost all their battles and their arguments. Kenyatta remarked, “if the reports in the newspapers that some of you are going back to the forest, making guns, taking unlawful oaths, and preparing to create civil war after independence are true, I request all Kikuyu to stop doing such things. Let us have independence in peace. We shall not allow hooligans to rule Kenya. Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated and must never be remembered again”. These are not Professor Ochieng’s words. They are Jomo Kenyatta’s.

The writer is Agrarian historian at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University