Last Thursday (February 17), Prof Micere Githae-Mugo, emeritus professor of Syracuse University and University of Nairobi, delivered online the 2022 British Institute in East Africa annual lecture on 'Decolonising Scholarship'.
The lecture dealt with the use of indigenous African knowledge in building better societies where we care for each other. An inspiring talk, it was to my knowledge the first of its kind at the institute.
But I did not read about it anywhere in the Kenya press.
In November last year Prof Micere Githae-Mugo, the first woman university dean in the country who taught literature at the University of Nairobi between 1974 and 1983, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Royal African Society in Britain in recognition of her work in creative writing, performing arts and human rights advocacy.
I am yet to read this is in the Kenya press or see it on television.
This is deplorable. In fairness, the University of Nairobi did honour her with a honorary doctorate honoris causa in 2020, but we Kenyans are so poor at honouring the great achievers of our own that they receive accolades from outside the country before we recognise them—if we do.
In October 1980, Professor Micere gave an astounding lecture in Taifa Hall at an event memorialising 29-year old Monica Njeri, the Kenyan woman who had been cut to death with a broken beer bottle by a visiting American Navy soldier by the name of Frank Sundstrom.
To the utter shock and horror of most right-thinking Kenyans, Justice L G Harris, a British judge working for the Kenyan government, let Sundstrom off with a Sh500 fine and a promise “to be of good behaviour”!
The prosecutor, Nicholas Harwood, also British, actually seemed to be pleading Sundstrom’s case, charging him with manslaughter. In a matter of hours, Sundstrom was on a flight back to the US state of Rhode Island.
In those days, one could expect a crowd-packed turnout for a public lecture dealing with a topical and passionate issue like this. And Kenyans protested this scandalous act, from then Attorney General James Karugu to the press, students and rights groups.
Sadly, this is no longer the case today. In 2012 a British soldier on R&R in Nanyuki murdered 21-year-old Agnes Wanjiru and tossed her body in the sewer, boasting about it to his companions. Lacklustre investigation by Kenyan authorities led nowhere and the case went cold.
It bears remarking that it is Britain’s Sunday Times that broke the story in 2021. The local press picked it up. This time there were no learned public lectures and no vigorous debates to hold those concerned into account. This is the price we have paid for failure to learn from the best minds of our own.
University of Nairobi
