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Professor with a history of provocative essays

Friday September 16 2011
maseno

Prof Ochieng was a subject of an animated online discussion for his supposed muzzling by the powers that be at Maseno University. Pictures: Jacob Owiti.

Who is William Robert Ochieng’ Opondo? That is the question that comes to the minds of Kenyan students of history whenever they come across Prof Ochieng’s thoughtful yet provocative essays in the media. Indeed, among the coterie of intellectuals in academia in Kenya, Ochieng’s name is the best known.

Early in 2010, the prolific professor of African history based at Maseno University was a subject of an animated online discussion forum of the Kenya Scholars and Studies Association not for his foray into journalism but for his supposed muzzling by the powers that be at Maseno. The contributors were agreed on one thing: It is wrong to restrict the academic freedom of any scholar regardless of his or her political disposition if Kenya is to pride itself as the bastion of open democracy in the East African region.

Prof Ochieng’ was the principal of the then Maseno University College in the 1990s when former president Daniel arap Moi appointed him his personal permanent secretary. The professor has acknowledged in The Moi Presidency in Kenya: The Politics of Transition from Authoritarianism to Democracy, 1978-2002 that he advised and even helped write some of Moi’s speeches.

Whether one agrees with Ochieng’s contribution to the Nyayo establishment or not, the good professor is entitled to his views; it is acceptable to criticise his position, not attack his person.

Okelo Nyadong’s The Don with a Pen: A Biography of William Robert Ochieng’ explores and narrates the life history of perhaps the most enigmatic historian Kenya has produced. It follows Ochieng’s experiences from childhood to the present, bringing to the fore some little-known biographical facts about the scholar. For example, the book, by examining the origins of Ochieng’s family, places it outside what would pass as traditional Nilotic/Luo lineages and linking him to Bantu lineages as well.

The book also examines the condescending perceptions that colonial schoolmasters had of African students. It traces Ochieng’s professional life over the years and portrays him not only as a hardworking scholar but one who is eager to explore sacrosanct subjects such as the lives of gay people as he did during his sabbatical in the US in the 1970s.

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While the book is a compendium of his worldview, it reads like an autobiography rather than a biography. It is captivating but lacks incisive engagement of the criticisms that have been levelled against Ochieng’ by former students and contemporaries. For example, the author does not analyse the debate that preoccupied scholars about the creation of “a relevant university in East Africa,” which pitted Ochieng’ against his contemporaries for saying unsavoury things about PhDs earned in America vis-à-vis those obtained in local universities. The debate was published in the East Africa Journal volume 8 of 1971.

Imperialist culture

Given the gadfly that is Prof Ochieng’, he may not be flattered by the author’s lack of analysis on the raging debates at the “ivory tower” such as those initiated by the so-called Kenyan Students against Imperialist Education.

The students registered displeasure about the kind of education that was being imparted to them at the university in the 1970s. Their article, published in Utafiti: The Journal of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences volume 2 No. 2 of 1977 claimed that professors William Ochieng’, the late E.S. Atieno-Odhiambo, Gideon Mutiso, and Ali Mazrui among others were responsible for the transmission of “foreign imperialist culture” in the country’s universities. However, the more unsettling criticism of Ochieng’ came in The National Interest No. 46, of 1996 in which he was accused of partisanship in his journalistic pieces.

Nevertheless, the book is a good start to asking questions about the work of intellectuals and academics in East Africa. How have scholars contributed to their disciplines and what kind of role models are they to upcoming scholars? Despite a privileged foreword and prologue by professors Bethwell Ogot and Robert M. Maxon respectfully, the book would have served the reader better had the author provided a bibliography.

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