Culture
The Empire Strikes Back at Lawino: How Oxford Failed Okot p’Bitek
14 min read.In the first of a three-part series, A.K. Kaiza reflects on the renowned author and wonders whether Okot p’Bitek might have published other works as powerful as Song of Lawino had Oxford University treated him better.
The weight of the book in my hands registered as alarm, perhaps signalling the symbolism of its intellectual heft, a book the likes of which I had never reviewed in my quarter century in the business.
I had never reacted to a book the way I did to Lawino’s People on that day in a suburb of Kampala when it was handed to me by Kara Blackmore, one of the people at the London School of Economics who fought to ensure that Okot p’Bitek’s Ph.D dissertation, deliberately failed by Oxford university in 1970 and since then hidden from view, would be pulled out and published.
In his introduction, Tim Allen, LSE Director of the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa, puts the matter bluntly:
Okot p’Bitek’s D.Phil was actually failed by the University of Oxford in 1970. This was just three years before Talal Asad, another former student of Evans-Pritchard, published his well-known collection of articles by anthropologists, analysing and documenting ways in which anthropological thinking and practice had been affected by colonialism.
Before you have done any substantial reading, a disabling blow has already been delivered. What more can there be?
My own reaction had come before I had even read these words, and what that reaction was, perhaps holds some explanation:
I was instantly reminded of my time as a journalist at the turn of the new millennium, when I came across the most horrifying experience I remember. It was September 2004, and I had gone in a World Food Programme convoy delivering aid to Pajule camp for the internally displaced in northern Uganda. When I asked why five graves had been freshly dug side by side, I was told that no one had died yet, but that the daily death rate in that camp was roughly five.
Killing northerners had become a sort of sport. You tried to explain to all you came across that the modus operandi of the Museveni government was tribalistic, orgiastic murder and they jeered and said you northerners deserve it. You further explained that these same methods will later be turned against you and they said they were all Bantu people after all, the same people. To then watch the rising groundswell of southern activism against the regime after the end of the northern war and the disillusionment with the regime, when some of the dark methods the army learned in the north began to be applied in the south, is to feel sad at the failure to properly understand in time, who and what it was they were dealing with. It was a very dangerous time, and as a journalist, you knew that once you stuck your neck out to write about that war, it was the end of your career, and within only a year after writing the story, I learnt I would soon lose my job as journalist at the paper I worked at back then.
I had moved on from the dangerous years of the war, and now here was a book whipping my attention back directly to the war.
As for the northern war, there was always much talk about it being “a complex war”, but like all such talk, you suspected that those who made such statements really meant to say that very powerful governments, too powerful to name directly in small regional newspapers, had a hand in the conflict. Going to northern Uganda, even understanding the direct culpability of the Museveni power agenda, had felt like half-understanding the causes, with the result that a refulgent, odious, and inexplicable air of conspiracy hung over the topic.
Was this tome, weighing in at over 600 pages, going to reveal something?
All of the above may not be important, but the very existence of the book was already a statement. By publishing it, the London School of Economics academics were directly accusing Oxford University of censorship, and of deliberately destroying the academic career of one of the most pre-eminent African writers.
I understood that my reaction to the book stemmed from my own interest as a writer. But outside of that, very few people would understand why its publication mattered. Sure, the matter of two important scholar silenced by the British government, and by Oxford University, grabs attention. Otherwise, it is a matter that hacks back to a bygone era, a time when Britain mattered and which time is receding beyond living memory. So why were this group of scholars bringing back to life matters of academic pedigree that, despite the scandalous story, still belonged in the heady days of decolonisation? One big answer is that Okot is a household name. But Frank Girling? You would have had to have scholarly interest in northern Uganda, even as an academic, for the name to mean something.
Was this not breaking some sort of gentleman’s agreement by so public an execution of a fellow British university? There you have the story before you—the liberal/progressive scholars of a liberal/progressive university having a go at the mother of all conservative institutions.
The connection to our own times is perhaps the direct link in the publication of these materials to the zeitgeist, and it follows on from the Rhodes-Must-Fall campaign that has seen statues of odiously racist, right-wing heroes toppled, exposing how deeply rooted in slavery and imperialism many otherwise august western institutions are. In this connection, which is a very direct link to Oxford’s less than stellar history, this book is hence not just about colonialism and imperialism; it is about the attempt to cover up the crimes of colonialism and imperialism.
So why were this group of scholars bringing back to life matters of academic pedigree that, despite the scandalous story, still belonged in the heady days of decolonisation?
The more pedantic explanation is that the copyright to Girling’s materials, which belonged to Her Majesty’s government, had expired after 50 years, and therefore it could be reprinted.
Otherwise, there is little doubt that this affair deeply damages the standing of Oxford; it more than deserves this bloody goring from Tim et al. Oxford, the recipient of endowments from more slave ships that sailed under the Union Jack, than any other university you can think of, and one that educated nearly every colonial governor, remains so deeply invested in it’s alternative reality that it refuses to take down the statue of Rhodes from Oriel College.
Girling
He was an anthropologist. I first came across his name a long time ago whilst foraging for scholarly material on northern Uganda. Within the small, northern Uganda intellectual circles in which he is known, I have often heard it said that it was he that solidified the name “Acholi” to the group that had not commonly called itself that prior to British creation of tribes. But this claim had always rung hollow. The British delimited communities geographically and put an end to the fluidity that had previously seen clans absorbed and dispersed into different language groups. Local historians dismiss the social reality of tribes, and speak instead of language groups. They say the British froze social fluidity because constant migration was not good for cotton and coffee production and made forced taxation a headache. All these had happened long before Girling was even born.
What I was not prepared for was the extent to which the British government and the powerful universities of that country went to ensure that Girling’s career was destroyed. Given the self-declared righteousness of Britain on the international stage, so Stalinist an act, practiced with abandon but never reported by the BBC for whom tyranny only happened abroad, is still shocking.
Okot
It was not new to me that Oxford had failed Okot’s dissertation. The late Professor Akiiki Mujaju, whom I became close to at Makerere, and who was a contemporary of Okot’s, had told me about the matter. But it was unclear. It seemed that no one saw the offending dissertation. Okot himself had died tragically and young. It was speculated within academic and literary circles that what Oxford had done to him had so demoralised him that it also disorganised his literary output. Might he have published other works as powerful as Song of Lawino had the university treated him better?
The beginnings
Like all sagas, this one had a long and surprising, highly connected beginning. The story of Girling’s sordid treatment starts with colonial Britain moving to directly incorporate social research as a legislatively created and government-funded undertaking. Like all good sagas, there is an unpleasant ideology at play to this one; there is a cabal of dangerous men with criminal backgrounds, and to top it, an evil empire hiding dark secrets. You might almost be describing an HBO television series, rather than how such bodies as the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) came into existence.
They say the British froze social fluidity because constant migration was not good for cotton and coffee production and made forced taxation a headache.
The story begins in the late 1930s, at the very dawn of the war, and is not disconnected from it. This was a repositioning of the place of anthropology in colonial affairs. Much as the discipline has been closely associated with colonialism, it was not as central as it might seem. Within the colonial British government, anthropology had never had the prestige of say Biology, or Botany or Geology. Colonial officials in general held anthropologists at a distance, regarding them as difficult individuals with their own “personal axe to grind”, as British Secretary of State in the late 1930s, Malcolm McDonald, put it.
They had a tendency to go native.
A paradox hence; maligned by anti-colonialists, held in suspicion by colonial officials, can one say that anthropologists made colonialism worse than it already was? It would be far-fetched to assume that fascists and racists first consulted anthropology texts before making up their minds. Rather, the monies for anthropology research had come, curiously, from American philanthropists—chiefly the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Corporation. As various scholars suggest, the decision by the British colonial office to consider direct support to social science research may have been from a natural progress in colonial affairs. The empire had by the 1930s been consolidated and reached its fullest extent. Natives were now not seen as just dark-skinned hostiles, but a part of the state. The lobbying impact of the American social research council in creating the New Deal had been immense. They had had data to influence Congress. The British drive to create a welfare system lacked reliable data.
Various sources describe the fascinating meeting at which the foundations for the proposed council were discussed. For the empire, and Africa in particular, the nascent council considered Makerere and Achimota.
Who else but Lord Frederick Lugard himself to be present at the first meeting? The other imperial figure at the meeting, whose own reputation is not fondly remembered in India, was William Hailey, also Lord Hailey, Governor of Punjab in the 1920s. It was as if Darth Sidious and Darth Vader were in one room: It is 1939, and the skies are already darkened with heralds of a war that those present understood would shake their empire so there was some urgency in the agenda. If as a statement that social science was colonial conquest by other means, you could not make up such a meeting. Although it would not be until the 1960s that the council would eventually receive the government funding it demanded, its ideas were put to work straight away.
Like all good sagas, there is an unpleasant ideology at play to this one; there is a cabal of dangerous men with criminal backgrounds, and to top it, an evil empire hiding dark secrets.
The council came late to the game, for by then, anthropology had already made its fortunes. After all, by this time, Bronislow Malinowski, a leading figure in the development of Anthropology, was at the dusk of his career and would die a couple of years after this meeting.
In Uganda itself, pioneering work had already been done a generation earlier, with such works as The Baganda: An Account of their Native Customs and Beliefs (1911) by Rev. John Roscoe, and The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda (1923) by J.H. Driberg.
Coming so late in the empire’s lifespan, what would have been the purpose? Had enough not been written already? Adjusting for the fact that by 1939, no part of the empire had broken off yet, was this perhaps an attempt to respond to what were seen as the more progressive models of the USSR and the USA, which were not based on imperial colonialism but a kind of social and economic “scientificism”? A project of consolidation? Even back then, there was much talk of “development”, in the same manner that the World Bank and IMF speak of it today, a would-be positive term that in reality often means promoting land grabbing, breaking up of communities, punitive labour laws and growing inequalities in favour of settlers. The development of a colony is not good news for natives, then or now.
John Bull Sucks up to Uncle Sam
An old line trotted out to explain British attempts to clean up its colony act was the other matter of the British government’s relationship with the USA. At the advent of the Second World War, the British were skittish about getting their American cousins into the war (favourably on their side). They were not going to beat the Germans by themselves (even with the Americans in, it still remained for the Red Army to bring down the Wehrmacht), but the optics did not look good that, with an empire as vast as the British one, you could not do it yourselves. The USA had not taken the path of overseas colonialism, and opinion in Washington sneered at this European predilection for colonies. Colonialism was looking outdated, no more than a matter of beating up natives. The British were anxious to prove to the Americans that their edition of colonialism was meant for the good of the natives, but the files contained no data to create a coherent development plan. Was this turn in attitude a PR exercise in getting American help against the Nazis? At the time, it pays to remember, Soviet socialism, which was militantly anti-colonial, was visibly more progressive with its “five-year” plan models and it was Western Europe that looked antiquated.
A good man in Africa
It is how Frank Girling arrived in Gulu, as part of the army of government-funded anthropologists fanning out into the continent. At roughly the same time, Okot was getting out of Gulu, going out into the empire.
Girling got down to work with great vigour, a conscientious man out to deliver on his commission and his profession. The discipline, to the extent that anthropology could be so called, had developed a fairly structured approach and presentation. There were the requisite spatial establishing to make, of the geography, the cultural and linguistic locations. Some description of the arts, the industry, political structures, birth, youth, marriage and death rituals of the natives. Where did these natives come from, how did they describe themselves to others and who were their neighbours, what larger groupings did their culture and language belong in? Girling, like all anthropologists, had to answer these questions in his study.
He has arrived in Acholi 50 years after the start of the colonial era. He has come, as he quickly realises, not to carry out an ethnographic study, but a forensic examination. He has come to study, not the Acholi, but the impact of British colonisation of the Acholi. He realizes that he has been drafted as a co-conspirator in crime.
He is a very highly educated man. His intellectual orientation is keener than the lazy, racially self-satisfied fair of the Roscoe of half a century before him. He is a materialist whose understanding of history demands he draw his conclusions from the economic, the interactions between men, and their movement of value across class segments to make an explanation of what is happening.
If as a statement that social science was colonial conquest by other means, you could not make up such a meeting.
Girling’s conclusion is that the policies adopted since the inception of British rule in Acholi have greatly destabilised the society. He sets the beginning of this phase from the days of the first colonial administrator, John Rutherford Parkin Postlethwaite, accounts of whose actions make him a veritable Mr Kurtz, who decided to uproot a significant portion of Acholi society from their ancestral lands and resettle them in patterns deemed conducive to the production of cotton for the mills of Manchester. Girling examines how this, along with what he euphemistically calls “half-free labour”, and forced taxation, have upturned the social and political structures of the land. To boot, succession lines have been stopped and “commoners” are now in charge. The coming of the East African Railway, the industrial town of Jinja in the south, the coffee and sugar plantations of the south, the preference by the British for northerners to serve in the army, prisons and police, have torn the men away from their wives and children. The able-bodied have been taken away to work for Europeans and Asians and little left for Acholi.
This sort of treatment was very common throughout the European empires, but in the case of Uganda, Acholi seems to have been set out for unique dismemberment in ways that say, the Baganda were not. The Acholi Girling runs into question why the British destroyed their political systems but left intact those of the south. There is a racial hierarchy in operation in Acholi, as in all of the colony, with the untouchable whites, the economically favoured Asians. Black people are fair game, as one Gujarati trader openly admits; “we cheat Africans”, but goes on to say white people are not different. They have to bribe British officials from time to time.
An unflattering image of British colonialism arises. Girling has walked into a Graham Greene novel, with its tight, gossipful world of colonial masters, with their African “boys”, their mosquito boots and legal privileges. Colonial hierarchies are in full force. The rulers don’t notice black people, who throughout remain faceless.
The Empire Strikes back
The report is scandalous. If this is what the Colonial Social Science Research Council had bargained for, they had not taken seriously enough the view of the Secretary of State, Malcolm MacDonald, that some anthropologists had “a personal axe to grind”.
Girling was a Marxist theorist who did not hide his communist party membership. The report extravagantly affirms the sneering words of the Soviet Union and the USA against European colonialism.
If, as an ideological axe-grind, the prescience of Girling’s warning that British policy in Acholi would be disastrous, would need stronger imageries to counteract what was to follow a generation later, long after the British have left Uganda. We may infer, but it takes special obduracy to deny that the emergence of Joseph Kony, and the turmoil that would grip Acholi society for a generation, had its roots in the policies of Postlethwaite.
Girling has walked into a Graham Greene novel, with its tight, gossipful world of colonial masters, with their African “boys”, their mosquito boots and legal privileges.
Her Majesty’s government would have none of it. Girling was forced to cut out the damaging chapters of his conclusion. He was forced to edit his work to weed out evidence of British culpability in the destruction of Acholi social systems. What was eventually published was a greatly watered down report, putting emphasis on the ways in which “development” could be achieved.
The ensuing mistreatment of Girling, which ensured his substantial intellect would not have an impact, and his career not go far, did not change his beliefs. To the end of his life, he remained a Marxist, displaying the steadfast courage of the communists without whom the war against Nazism would not have been won. He had in his younger years, volunteered to fight against fascism in Spain after all.
A Black man in Cecil Rhodes backyard
Okot was not a Marxist. But for the system, he was something worse; he was a black man, a native. His presence and his choice to study anthropology at an advanced level were replete with contradictions. On the one hand, the foundation of the exploitative system on which Oxford drew its stipend depended upon the unpaid labour of men like himself. But Oxford was a centre of civilisation, an idea that did not theoretically gel with slavery as its endowments. If anthropology had thrived on a racist assumption about the darker races, how was a black man going to become an anthropologist? The result might have been seen from a mile away; it was a foregone conclusion that a clash was brewing. Okot’s work on the thesis was always going to be a repudiation of the very field he was studying, and so it emerges thus. He had the gall to call out the entire heritage of white scholarship on Acholi/Luo, for getting it wrong.
The work he does is staggeringly exhaustive. He is studying northern Bunyoro-Kitara. But he cannot delimit himself geographically, for he quickly discovers that the ethnic boundaries as spelt out by colonial policy don’t make sense. There is barely any such boundary between the Luo of his cohort and Bunyoro-Kitara. This becomes a source of friction between himself and his supervisors. This is where the two scholars converge. Both were supervised by the same man, Evans-Pritchard, albeit in different decades, but whose role in the ostracism of the two men would be interesting to know in detail.
Okot’s dissertation is positively dripping with disdain for all the big anthropology names that have come before him. He calls out an important source on Luo studies, Joseph Pasquale Crazzolara, for laziness. He refuses to acknowledge the preponderance of “tribe”, dismissing the idea of “Acholi”, and insisting on seeing the continuum of these concatenated societies with the same language and political ties. He is generally affirming the African version of Africa, which is a political statement in itself.
It takes special obduracy to deny that the emergence of Joseph Kony, and the turmoil that would grip Acholi society for a generation, had its roots in the policies of Postlethwaite.
For himself, the irony wreathing Okot and his Ph.D attempt brims with drama he himself might have smiled at. He already carried degrees. He had studied law at Aberystwyth University. He was a big name in world literature. He had been a footballer; now he wants to become Dr Okot. But of anthropology? For one of the lesser beings to self-gaze is comical enough in itself. As has been said of the legions of black anthropologists (an oxymoronic enough construct), Okot was studying himself, observing his own peculiarity, his own beastliness, self-othering himself, like being your own dentist, like auto-erotica or self-disembowelment.
Okot’s work vigorously repudiated the double-faced act of imperial colonialism. But he is subtle, and capable enough that he does not glorify Africanness. You cannot accuse him of something as crude as that. He places his people’s experiences in a realistic dialectic, pointing out ironies, discontinuities and historical contradictions inherent in his own people’s polity. It is a first class work of scholarliness. By and of itself, Ph.D theses have not often been so well written.
Deconstructionist
His timing was wrong. Decolonisation was in full swing. Losing an empire was humiliating enough. But the 1960s is seeing an ever-increasing number of natives acquiring doctorates, writing books and making films directly challenging centuries of the western canon. Deconstruction and structuralism are questioning the foundations of such universities as Oxford. We can only imagine how the colleges of Oxford felt besieged by the likes of Okot.
But you would have to be close enough to both Acholi and Bunyoro colonial experiences to glean something darker in both the British government and Oxford’s hands in the proscription of Okot and Girling. Okot’s study of Bunyoro-Kitara and Acholi was coming too close to a scene of crime; the British had committed a horrendous genocide in the very locale that Okot was studying and had his dissertation been approved, how long would it take before others began to ask what the British had done in Bunyoro?
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Culture
Davido’s Timeless Misses the Dial
No longer the self-proclaimed Goliath of the Afrobeats scene, Davido’s latest release reveals a waning star in a crowded firmament.
The West African Afrobeats scene is no longer the same as when Nigerian megastar Davido, popped up more than a decade ago. When he first appeared, he was on top of his game and dominated the Afrobeats scene so completely that Wizkid was the only truly competitive rival. Unlike his considerably more mellow rival, Davido bristled with unparalleled energy, intensity and ambition. Now heavily thronged with countless talented stars, rather than being defined by a pyramidal structure headed by a few notable names, the Afrobeats game is currently driven by a daunting, horizontal array of heavy-hitters. It’s much harder to make headway let alone stay in the game for any significant length of time.
Timeless, Davido’s major release since 2020’s A Better Time, features 17 tracks beginning with a mildly reflective Over Dem, a track almost futilely proclaiming his dominance over the music game with continuous allusions to the biblical David and Goliath. In short, the life and death struggles that mark the scramble for survival.
Feel is quite lacklustre and by Davido’s lofty standards, lacking in the characteristic fire. In the Garden, a love-focused number featuring Morravey, does not fare much better in terms of vocal flames or inspiration. Godfather is unmistakably a throwaway track. The lyrics are almost unbearably lame and the amapiano trimmings definitely unconvincing. In Unavailable, he hooks up with South African amapiano star Musa Keys, who does much to lift the joint out of rank mediocrity. Bop with Dexta Daps is also embarrassingly weak. Indeed, the less said the better. E pain me is about a broken heart that probably should remain broken on account of the song’s corny words, sentiments and thread-bare beats.
A Better Time is unwieldy, attempting to do much more than is necessary to prove some elusive artistic point.
Away is directed at his perceived detractors and haters and his drive to rise above the negativity coming his way. Again, there’s little to commend itself here. At first, it would seem Precision lacks originality, power and sonic appeal. However, on the chorus, Davido is amply supported by a host of stirring backing voices that give the track unexpected buoyancy.
Kante features super-talented Nigerian Afrobeats songstress, Fave, whose inclusion brings much needed fire and relief. Na Money receives help from The Cavemen—Davido’s frequent Afrobeats collaborators—and Angelique Kidjo, Benin Republic’s multiple Grammy award-winning multi-genre diva. On this calypso-inflected joint, Davido momentarily emerges from his uncharacteristic lethargy, no doubt inspired by his more adventuresome associates.
(U)juju, featuring Skepta, slumps back into the doldrums. Once again, this cut is meant for a love interest who undoubtedly would remain unconvinced by this uninspiring offering. No Competition benefits from the gifts of the incomparable Asake who literally breathes life and fire into what would have been another love-focused dud.
Picasso, which features Logos Olori, is not crafted with any ambitious artistic goals in mind apart from its understated reggae vibes. In other words, its title is simply misleading. In For the road, Davido continues his explorations of Caribbean grooves and sensibilities. Clearly, his past collaboration with Jamaican reggae/dance hall artist Popcaan is being cashed in on.
No Competition benefits from the gifts of the incomparable Asake who literally breathes life and fire into what would have been another love-focused dud.
LCNC finds Davido vainly reaching out for the distant stars that once jealously guarded him. But they don’t appear to need him anymore. What a shame. Here, he sings “Legends can never die/shooting up for the stars/dem no fit play my part.” True, but not when he seems to be deliberately trashing a painstakingly built legacy.
Champion Sound—the 17th track on this disappointing album featuring South African amapiano star Focalistic whom Davido had thrust into the international limelight—is probably the best cut. Arguably, this has even less fire than their previous collaboration on the Ke Star re-mix that had a huge continent-wide impact.
When Davido first made his appearance on the scene, he was full of beans and appeared unstoppable. He did everything and went everywhere. It seemed as if he didn’t know or understand the agonies and frustrations of creative burn-out. He was firing on all cylinders because, being the son of a billionaire, the primacy of strenuously maintaining one’s hustle is ingrained in him; failure is not the result of a tired and denuded imagination but the outcome of not trying hard enough.
Davido went on frequent headlining global tours in Africa, Europe, the United States and the Caribbean not minding the state of his voice or his nerves. He finds it difficult to stop long enough to get adequate rest as he is also the active CEO of a record label that is home to other stars such as Mayorkun, May Day, Peruzzi, Lola Rae and others. He is also constantly embroiled in hair-splitting public drama with his lover, Chioma Rowland. At some point, it all gets too much and this is evident in perhaps the worst album Davido has produced.
His previous offering, A Better Time, suggested that Davido may no longer be in full command of his creative powers. Released the same year heavy-hitters like Tiwa Savage, Wizkid, Burna Boy and Olamide offered major albums, A Better Time is unwieldy, attempting to do much more than is necessary to prove some elusive artistic point. In truth, it packs some power and also juggles some lovely ideas which are eventually lost beneath the detritus of unneeded tracks and fillers. His lack of concision sees his efforts wasted and ultimately floors him.
With seventeen mostly tired or under-done tracks, Timeless demonstrates that even the great Davido is sometimes capable of simply missing the mark. Obviously, he needs to learn how to chill, kick back, restore his voice and wait patiently for fresh ideas to visit him. In this way, he could have a much longer and also a more inspiring career. For the first time in his storied journey, it seems Davido is falling off because he still hasn’t figured out how to pace himself.
Timeless is undeniably thin, most probably because Davido is concerning himself with far too many pursuits that have nothing to do with music. His matter-of-fact approach to creativity, which initially may have propelled him to the heights of his game, has now become his nemesis.
No doubt there are a few bright spots in this largely underwhelming effort. The Dammy Twitch shot video of the viral song Unavailable explores the rich natural beauty of the South African landscape. Alongside a delectable bevy of babes bopping to the beats of Davido’s collaborator, Musa Keys, there are also the stunningly beautiful South African amapiano duo TxC and Johannesburg dancer, Uncle Vinny, dishing out head-turning moves.
Outside the recording studio, Davido has been busy with controversies around paternity issues. Women have come out claiming he is the father of their children. Kemi Olunloyo, a podcaster-turned bugbear has kept on Davido’s case, trying to reduce him into a R. Kelly kind of guy, a serial abuser of womenfolk. Rumours of drug abuse, violence and death have also beclouded his reputation. And these, rather than his bangers, have begun to gain more traction.
Sometimes, even in interviews, it is clear Davido’s hectic pace is catching up with him. He often sounds hoarse, strained, at a point of dissolution. He’s essentially a singer and not a rapper, and that being the case, the timbre of his voice as an instrument ought to be preserved at its best quality. Outwardly, it doesn’t seem as though Davido is bothered; he seems more concerned about the boisterousness of his hustle, the implacability of his grind, which might translate into great business but is not always the wisest of artistic choices. He has obviously been neglecting his primary instrument and also failing in the creative department as the world-wide bangers have slowly dwindled to a trickle.
Also, the competition within the Afrobeats scene has become infinitely more fierce, with the daily arrival of new stars—Rema, CKay, Tems, Buju, Pheelz, King Promise, Eugene Kuami, Fireboy DML, Naira Marley, Asake, Simi, Adekunle Gold, Pantoranking, Ayra Starr, and so many others. This development makes it almost impossible for an individual to exert complete dominance over a scene that is experiencing various kinds of differentiation, identities and trends. After his global success with his 2017 hit Fall, Davido is now only perhaps a fading star in a firmament filled with innumerable stars.
Musically, over the years, the frenetic pace of his life has also been captured in song and in rambunctious performances across the world. He has collaborated with an astonishing welter of artists from different parts of the globe, including US players Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown, Lil Baby, Young Thug, Keyana Taylor, Summer Walker, Casanova, Meek Mill, South African artists Mafikizolo, Sho Madjozi, Focalistic, Abidoza and Musa Keys, and UK rapper Skepta.
After his global success with his 2017 hit Fall, Davido is now only perhaps a fading star in a firmament filled with innumerable stars.
Initially, a few of these collaborations—such as those with Brown and Popcaan—seemed well-conceived. And then such efforts were rapidly reduced to clout chasing exercises. It also seems that Davido had begun to envisage a life beyond music and this is also reflected in the diminishing inspirational potency of his creative output. Of course, Davido might be the last person to realise or acknowledge this vitiation but let’s hope this gradually fading star has the grace, wisdom and courage to age with style and adequate forethought. This would go a long way to preserving his unquestionably impressive legacy.
Culture
‘Babygirling’ and the Pitfalls of the Soft Life Brigade
For black women in particular, the individual pursuit of a soft, consumption-driven life is a fragile approach to securing social justice.
The charm of the strong black woman is fizzling out as we enter the era of the soft black girl. This is a phrase used to describe a black girl or woman who intentionally pursues an easy and peaceful life. Strong black womanhood, laden with aches and responsibilities, now represents a hard life. Whereas to be a black girl imbued with softness is to view the world as a playground. It is to enjoy an existence marked by fewer burdens or none.
The term soft life first emerged among social media users in Nigeria who expressed their desire for a gentle life, unburdened by the effects of poor governance in their country. While Africans, especially Nigerians and South Africans, still actively employ the term, it is largely black women residing in the USA and UK who have co-opted both the term and its current practice.
It has become impossible to disentangle the notion of soft life from black women. Some black women claim men cannot enjoy or benefit from a soft life. This is because such a lifestyle rests fundamentally on the use of feminine energy and the repudiation of masculine energy. Such binary thinking presents soft life as a hyper feminine phenomenon. It foists it upon black women in a manner never intended by the original architects of the soft life imagination. Because of this, a growing number of black women see a soft life as a necessity and a crucial element of black feminist practice.
Many soft life enthusiasts stress the importance of softness, of practicing self-care. To justify the soft life trend, they quote Audre Lorde’s famous saying: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.” I recognize the value of encouraging black women to care for themselves and cultivate a lifestyle that enables inner peace. But I question if a soft lifestyle, in its common expression, bears the same liberatory politics as Lorde’s feminist call to nurture the self. Lorde does not remove her awareness of the need for social transformation from her promotion of self-centeredness.
The notion of self-preservation as political warfare underlines the subversive potential of self-care. It can be understood as a proactive effort against the subjugation of the self in a world that is brazenly anti-black, classist, and patriarchal. This manner of caring for the self is a form of confrontation. It is an audacious critique of oppression and exploitation as the status quo. Soft life may be a contemporary practice of self-care that enables self-preservation. But it seems devoid of political warfare, the kind that seeks to challenge exploitation. Concerned with aesthetic practices and the buying of experiences, a soft lifestyle preserves the spirit of consumerism. Soft life is a product of capitalism—that “many-headed monster” as Lorde describes.
With its mass appeal and promotion on Instagram and TikTok, soft life represents what the cultural critic Sarah Sharma calls “selfie-care.” It is a life pursued not because of its radical potential but because it can be shared online and used as a branding tool. Excessive consideration is given to consumerism as a solution to the social challenges endured by black women. In a recital titled “Soft Life Manifestations,” the spoken word artist Koromone characterizes softness as luxurious objects and experiences. This includes first class air travel, “champagne flute with strawberries,” “foreign men with an accent,” and Burberry blankets.
A soft life is one that gives off “money, green vibes.” The dangerous amalgamation of capitalism and feminism drives this phenomenon. The black women advocating for their right to softness acknowledge the need for respite in black women communities. But there is often little critique of the conditions that make it necessary for black women to prioritize rest in the first place.
There is also little regard for complexities in identity and social circumstance. The overwhelming focus on softness as hyper femininity and luxury consumption presents the soft life as accessible only to financially privileged black women, and boxes women into a consumerist identity. What seems to be overlooked in popular discourse about soft life is that the version of soft life so heavily marketed and championed online requires a significant amount of work to initiate and sustain. According to media representations of it, a soft life is fundamentally a costly life, it requires deep pockets and undue labor.
The complexities and contradictions embedded in the soft lifestyle are reflected in its extension of hustle culture, which is popularly understood as working long hours or striving for multiple income streams. There are soft life enthusiasts who acknowledge that, given the highly consumerist nature of a soft life, it can be difficult to bring such a lifestyle into fruition. Their solution to this problem, however, isn’t to completely discard aspirations for a soft life but build wealth and work multiple jobs if necessary. Accordingly, living a soft life represents rather paradoxically a hustle against hustle culture.
Soft life enthusiasts and practitioners who advocate working hard(er) to fund a life of superficial softness are ultimately proponents of neoliberal feminism or what bell hooks called “faux feminism.” The feminist scholar Angela McRobbie describes neoliberal feminism as an “unapologetically middle-class feminism, shorn of all obligations to less privileged women or to those who are not ‘strivers’.’’
Striving for softness seems to be the new feminist directive. While it is not the same as striving to break through the glass ceiling, it still greases the wheels of capitalism. It makes it possible for industries and corporations to exploit an emerging group of lifestyle conscious consumers. Catherine Rottenberg, another critic of neoliberal feminism, notes that in the imagination of neoliberal feminists, “the notion of pursuing happiness is identified with an economic model of sorts in which each woman is asked to calculate the right balance between work and family.”
In the case of the soft life, it constructs the pursuit of happiness in relation to economic capacity. But the desired balance is not necessarily between work and family since caring for family is increasingly viewed as laborious. Instead, soft life as a neoliberal feminist desire entails creating a balance between work and self-indulgence. The irony, however, is that mainstream expressions of self-care are founded upon relentless exertion. In a widely watched YouTube video on tips for living a soft life, the content creator claimed, “soft life requires planning and preparation.”
Towards the end of the nine minute video, the following warning is rendered in relation to the tips offered: “Just because I’m saying you don’t need to do everything doesn’t mean I’m saying never do anything.” Such a claim appears to be delivered with benevolence. It gives the impression that the insistence on doing at least one soft life activity reflects a genuine concern for viewers’ well-being.
However, presenting a series of luxurious, yet physically demanding and relatively expensive, activities as necessary for respite simply justifies continuous labor under capitalism. It does little to improve well-being. Popular depictions of the soft life reveal how capitalist structures work to extend the logics of labor to private and personal realms of being. Rest is no longer a simple phenomenon characterized by inaction or stillness; it has become a tedious performance.
The idea of a soft life is not one I am entirely opposed to, but I frown upon its consumerist manifestations. One should not have to buy a life of ease and nor should it be Instagram worthy. It shouldn’t be limited to indulging oneself but encompass what Lynx Sainte-Marie calls a “community care practice and politic.” It should ensure that others too can experience comfort and peace in their lives which enables a continuous sharing of softness.
Dominant representations of the soft lifestyle impede our collective survival of the harshness of capitalism. For black women in particular, the individual pursuit of a soft, consumption-driven life is a fragile approach to securing social justice. Real softness may find us through a radical reimagination of care. We may encounter it through a stronger awareness of the fact that the route to a life of ubiquitous tenderness is more easily and safely traveled through a collective stride.
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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.
Culture
Who Was Fred Kago?
Exploring the legacy of writer Fred K. Kago, his Wĩrute Gũthoma books and the teaching of African languages in the school curriculum.
Tawa wa Kahara
Cege Rehe itete
Hihi ini nĩ rĩhĩu
Moko ma komo
To some Kenyans, the above verse is pure gibberish. However, to others, myself included, the first line alone is enough for lips to remember the words as the mind embarks on a journey into the past, back to childhood, unearthing vivid memories of where they were, when and how they learnt to sing them. So much so that eyes begin to water.
Seventy-one years after it was first published, that verse now encapsulates a place, a year and a time in Kenya’s history. It has also become a badge of honour for many seeking to reclaim their pride in their culture, identity and language.
It is a verse in a Gĩkũyũ alphabet rhyme that appears on page 11 of the now famous book, Wĩrute Gũthoma – Ibuku Rĩa Mbere (Learn to Read – Book 1) by Fred K. Kago. Published in May 1952 by the now defunct Nelson‘s Kikuyu Readers, it was one in a series of three books that became the first ever of their kind to be written entirely by an African teacher for the learning and teaching of an indigenous African language in the school curriculum.
For years now, Kago has continued to both confound and arouse a great curiosity in many Kenyans. A dearth of his beloved series, which went out of print a decade ago, has left many searching online. There are inquiries on social media platforms about where one might procure copies, even as others post content from the books to either reminisce or demonstrate a sense of pride in having learnt their mother tongue in school.
Yet a search online will turn up his work but nothing about who he was, what he looked like, where he grew up, where he was educated, what kind of person he was, what drove him to write textbooks for teaching indigenous African languages in the late 40s. More importantly, there is little to tell the story of his profound impact, which went well beyond the teaching and learning of African languages in schools.
Kago’s Wĩrute Gũthoma series has had a profound effect on my life, not just as a native of the culture but also, and more significantly, on my work as a Gĩkũyũ digital language advocate and a poet who writes and performs in her mother tongue.
The complex history of indigenous languages in Kenya’s education system
The role of the mother tongue, Kiswahili and English in the domain of education in Kenya was first discussed during the United Missionary Conference in Kenya in 1909. The conference then adopted the use of the mother tongue in the first three classes in primary school, Kiswahili in two of the middle classes, while English was to be used in the rest of the classes up to university.
Since then, during and after the colonial period, some key commissions were set up to review education, including the Phelps-Stokes Commission of 1924. Some of these endeavours had a bearing on language policy. In his paper Language Policy in Kenya: Negotiation with Hegemony published in The Journal of Pan African Studies, 2009, W. Nabea writes:
The colonial language policy was always inchoate and vacillating such that there were occasions that measures were put in place to promote or deter its learning. However, such denial inadvertently provided a stimulus for Kenyans to learn English considering that they had already taken cognizant of the fact that it was the launching pad for white collar jobs.
The freedom struggle after the Second World War, however, prompted a paradigm shift in the colonial language policy that hurt local languages. This shift began as the British colonialists started a campaign to create a Westernized, educated elite in Kenya as self-rule became imminent. Thus, English was reintroduced in lower primary and taught alongside the mother tongue. Kiswahili started being eliminated from the school curriculum.
Kago wrote the manuscript of what became the Wĩrute Gũthoma series in the late ‘40s while Kenya was still a British colony and more than a decade away from gaining its independence. At the time, command of the English language was considered the badge of the educated and civilized native and African indigenous languages were fast being shunned in schools as many began seeking education. They were regarded as second-class languages and the hallmark of how primitive people spoke. Kago was clearly swimming against some heavy currents.
The freedom struggle after the Second World War, however, prompted a paradigm shift in the colonial language policy that hurt local languages.
However, for children who grew up in rural Kenya in the 60s, 70s and 80s, learning indigenous African languages in the early years of primary education (from nursery until grade 3) was mandatory. For them, Kago became synonymous with that experience. However, the use of indigenous African languages in the early years of primary education has had a complex history.
Since the United Missionary Conference in Kenya of 1909, the decision to include or remove the teaching of Indigenous African language in the language policy was either at the whim of the political climate at the time or based on the interests of the missionaries.
Kago joined government service in 1931 as the Phelps Stoke Commission of 1924, which advocated for both quantitative and qualitative improvement of African education, was well into its implementation. According to the academic paper titled The Treatment of Indigenous Languages in Kenya’s Pre- and Post-independent Education Commissions and in the Constitution of 2010, the commission recommended that,
The languages of instruction should be the native language in early primary classes, while English was to be taught from upper primary up to the university. Schools were urged to make all possible provisions for instruction in the native language. However, the Commission recommended that Kiswahili be dropped in the education curriculum, except in areas where it was the first language. Kiswahili’s elimination from the curriculum was partly aimed at forestalling its growth and spread, on which Kenyans freedom struggle was coalescing.
Throughout Jomo Kenyatta’s reign and well beyond Daniel Arap Moi’s presidency, the post-colonial commissions such as Gachathi (1976), Koech (1999) and Odhiambo (2012) all recommended that a child should be taught using the pre-dominant language in the school catchment area and Kiswahili should be used only in schools with a heterogeneous school population. The supremacy of English in the Kenyan educational system entrenched by the Gachathi Commission of 1976 continued even as Kiswahili and indigenous languages received inferior status in the school curriculum.
The Wĩrute Gũthoma series was translated widely and used by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development in teaching other African languages. He had a virtual monopoly on the market in the colonial and immediate post-colonial periods.
Who was Fred K. Kago?
For a man whose books have nurtured more than four generations of learners, and one who has made immense contributions to the development of the post-independence school curriculum—including the setting up of numerous training colleges and developing their teaching materials— very little is known of Kago.
Until his demise in July 2005 at the age of 92, Kago was both a polymath and an outlier. He was a footballer, a bugle player (horn played during boy scout troop meetings), an organist, a piano player, a writer, a hospital administrator, a talented teacher and a scholar. Fondly known to his friends and relatives simply as F.K., the late Fred Karanja Kago was born in Thogoto village, Kikuyu Division, Kiambu District in 1913. He was the first-born child of Kago wa Gathatu and Eva Murugi.
He had a virtual monopoly on the market in the colonial and immediate post-colonial periods.
Kago grew up in a typical Kikuyu traditional homestead at a time when education was not really a priority for many families. It was by pure luck that he started attending school in 1920 as his parents viewed education as a disruption to the roles traditionally assigned to young boys—primarily grazing their father’s sheep and goats. Kago only became enrolled after his half-sister Wambui died following the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic (Kĩmiiri). Back then, the missionaries required that each homestead send one child to school. Kago became her replacement because he was quite small for his age compared to his younger brothers who were much bigger and much stronger workers on the family land.
Described as a reluctant schoolboy in the November 1986 edition of The Weekly Review Magazine, it is Kago’s who took him to the mission school every day. As a child, Kago was innately bright and had a curious mind, excelling in anything he took an interest in. As soon as he settled down to school life, Kago was excelling in football, and in the boy scout brigade where he became the designated bugle player to mark key moments during troop meetings.
In March 1926, Kago was admitted to the newly established Alliance High School. As reported in his eulogy, Kago’s only other classmate was the late James Mbotela (father to Leonard Mambo Mbotela). While at Alliance, Kago joined the newly formed first African Boy Scouts troop where he soon became the Senior Troop Leader. He also learned how to play the organ.
At the end of 1931, having passed the final government school examination, and with no money to send him abroad for further education, Kago taught briefly at Alliance and then joined government service.
He was posted to the Veterinary Training Centre at Ngong where he taught for thirteen and a half years before joining Waithaka Junior Secondary (later renamed Dagoretti High School) in 1944 as principal for the next three years.
It was, however, three government scholarships and the ensuing promotions that were to mark a turning point in Kago’s life from a teacher and trainer to a prolific writer.
Kago the pioneering author in indigenous African languages
Kago pioneered the writing and publishing of books in indigenous African languages. He authored numerous books—over 30 titles—that were published not just in his native language but also in English, Kiswahili, Dholuo and Kikamba. Besides the Wĩrute Gũthoma series and its respective teachers’ guides (translated into Kiswahili, Kikamba and Dholuo), Kago also wrote The Teaching of indigenous African languages – A Handbook for Kikuyu Teachers; Ciumbe cia Ngai (God’s creation); Hadithi za Konga Books 1,2 and 3; Mango’s Grass House; Lucky Mtende; and The King’s Daughter. Kago also adapted and had the Longman’s (now Longhorn) Shona Readers Books 1 and 2 translated into Kikamba, Kikuyu, Dholuo and Kiswahili and the Highway Arithmetic textbook and The Three Giants storybook into Kikuyu.
The start of Kago’s journey into writing was purely experimental. It was while attending the University of London’s institute of education in 1947 to study for a teaching diploma on a government scholarship that Kago decided to try his hand at writing textbooks for primary schools.
Growing up, Kago had learnt traditional Kikuyu stories, riddles and songs at his father’s feet, learning the richness of his language through the expression of idioms, proverbs, riddles and phrases. As an educator, he had witnessed first-hand the dearth of textbooks in African indigenous languages.
Kago pioneered the writing and publishing of books in indigenous African languages.
Armed with his first draft manuscripts of what would become the Wĩrute Gũthoma series, Kago approached Thomas Nelson and Sons publishers (now Thomas Nelson) in London who agreed to publish his books. During the holidays, he would find time to put together his manuscript for the three-book series and also write the teachers’ guides.
When he returned to Kenya, Kago was promoted to the position of African Inspector of Schools. This position gave him great influence as Kago had always been an advocate for the use of the mother tongue not just in schools but also at home during a child’s formative years. As he quickly rose through the ranks to join the Ministry of Education in charge of the teaching of indigenous African languages, Kiswahili, and religious education, Kago now had the power to not only directly influence how these subjects were taught, but also what learning materials the learners and teachers used.
It was while he was at the helm that the Kenya Institute of Education produced the TKK (Tujifunze Kusoma Kikwetu) series in various indigenous Kenyan languages including Dholuo, Ekegusii, Kikamba, Kalenjin, Kiswahili, Ateso, Luhya, Kigiriama and Kimeru.
Kago the man behind teacher training colleges
Kago was innately multitalented, versatile and an over-achiever whose hands left an indelible mark on whatever they touched, not just as a writer but also as a scholar, an education policy maker, and a teacher trainer.
Kago had begun his teaching career at his high school alma mater. In 1950, shortly after his return from England, he was posted to the teacher training college at Kangaru, in Embu, as the assistant area commissioner. What followed were a series of scholarships and subsequent promotions. A second scholarship to Santa Barbara in the US for a year in 1959 was followed by an appointment as Education Officer in charge of Kirinyaga District, and another scholarship to Australia for a course for school inspectors from developing countries in 1966 led to his appointment as the first African principal of Thogoto Teachers Training College a year later. He had served in an acting capacity at the same position in 1962.
As an educator, he had witnessed first-hand the dearth of textbooks in African indigenous languages.
Little is known of the close relationship between Kago and Kenya’s second president Daniel Arap Moi, and how a directive issued by Kago in 1949 while he was at the helm as an African Inspector of Schools would alter the course of Moi’s life. Moi was so indebted to Kago that in 1986 he directed that indigenous African languages be used in the early years of primary education.
Upon retiring from Thogoto Teachers Training College, Kago joined PCEA Hospital Kikuyu as a hospital administrator where he remained until 1976.
The controversial Beecher Report of 1949
Kago’s life was hardly linear or bereft of controversy. Like many Africans who received higher education during the colonial era, despite his belief in the use and teaching of the mother tongue in schools, Kago was a member of the Westernized African elite whose position and influence as an agent of the government was used to propagate the interests of the establishment as it weaponized education to serve the colonial agenda.
Following the paradigm shift in the colonial language policy after the Second World War, a committee headed by Leonard J. Beecher, a missionary, was set up. Much like the report of the Phelps-Stokes Commission and the Ten-Year Developmental Plan before it, the Beecher report of 1949 reinforced the argument for the provision of practical education for Africans, with an emphasis on vocational or moral training.
Moi was so indebted to Kago that in 1986 he directed that indigenous African languages be used in the early years of primary education.
At the time the Beecher report was being discussed for adoption and implementation, Kago had just been appointed as an African Inspector of Schools and he became one of its most vocal proponents.
In his PhD dissertation titled “Old Wine” and “New Wineskins”: (De)Colonizing Literacy in Kenya’s Higher Education published in August 2006, Dr Mwangi Chege, then a student of the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University, noted how, in a speech, Kago attacked Africans who viewed the “Beecher Report” as failing to address the literacy needs of Africans. Chege quotes Kago as having stated, in defence of the colonial government:
“You should realise the fact that all that Government wants to do is for our benefit and for the benefit of our children and we should unite together to build up a very good foundation right from the beginning and I am sure Government is ready to give us all the assistance we require.”
Chege’s critique of Kago was scathing:
“Thus, it is safe to conclude that Kago and his colleagues hailed the “Beecher Report” not because it was actually beneficial to their fellow Africans but because they were agents of the colonial system.”
In his book, A History of Education in Kenya, 1895-1991. S.N. Bogonko writes,
“The African view of the report was that it was to lead to Europeanization rather than Africanization of education and it sought to maintain the status quo of keeping Africans in low-wage positions. In addition, the report recommended that Kiswahili be the language of instruction and literature in primary schools in towns. However, provision was to be made for textbooks in indigenous African languages in rural areas and indigenous African languages were to be the medium for oral instruction in rural areas.”
The Beecher Report’s recommendations formed the foundation of the government’s policy on African education until the last year of colonial rule.
A hall with no hall of fame
Apart from the hall at the Thogoto Teachers Training College where there is a plaque with some letters missing, there is no hall of fame for Kago. Few in his hometown remember him or his contributions to his community, culture and the teaching fraternity.
The Beecher Report’s recommendations formed the foundation of the government’s policy on African education until the last year of colonial rule.
Most of Kago’s books have become so rare that they are now collectors’ items. Nelson East African Publishers (a subsidiary of Thomas Nelson & Sons UK) was acquired by Evans Brothers who later wound up their African operations in 2012. As Evans Brothers did not have any local shareholding, their entire catalogue went out of print, with the rights reverting back to the authors.
Little is left of the legacy of a man who always believed in the use of the mother tongue in schools and one who watched with dismay as English and Kiswahili took over as the languages of instruction in schools. Yet, Kago did prove that it is possible for our education system to implement the learning of African languages in schools; he created the blueprint for introducing indigenous languages as an area of learning in schools. If Kenya’s Ministry of Education is serious about actualising the National Language Policy within the competency-based curriculum (CBC), then they need not look too far.
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