by ISAAC OTIDI AMUKE
Christopher Owiro aka Karl Marx in conversation with students at the University of Nairobi, circa 1996
Student movements in many African countries have historically confronted contradictions of colonial and post-colonial rule. In Kenya, these movements sent generations of young people into the streets, underground, into exile or death. Isaac Otidi Amuke retraces heady years of involvement in student politics, and the rise and fall of arguably the most renowned activist at the University of Nairobi.
“Do not take part in student politics.” This was a piece of advice given to every Kenyan freshman by family members before reporting to university. If, like most of us, you came from a not so well-to-do economic background, you were reminded that, should one be kicked out for engaging in activism, only the children of the rich had alternatives, like being shipped overseas to complete their studies. Under no circumstances were we, the sons and daughters of peasants, to partake in troublemaking. We were to remember where we came from, the suffering we had left behind. We were not at the university for our own sakes but for the sakes of many others. This narrative was well perfected, and was repeated over and over.
In my case, I had once tried engaging my father in conversation about Tito Adungosi, a former president of the Students Organisation of Nairobi University (SONU), who had been jailed after the 1982 attempted coup d’etat by a section of disgruntled Kenya Air Force privates. He had died in 1988, a few days before his rumoured release date. Adungosi, an Iteso like me from a little-known corner of Kenya, was the closest I got to visualising University of Nairobi radicals at whose feet I worshipped since I was a kid. My father told me Tito had been trouble, a lot of trouble. But he didn’t know why I was asking. A few years later, my brother’s boss, an engineer, who had been at the university with Adungosi, warned me against doing student politics, telling me that Adungosi was a fine orator, but would have done better to liberate his mother’s homestead from grass thatched houses before he opened his mouth to speak. Children of the poor need not speak truth to power. Adungosi died in prison. His mother couldn’t transport his body to his village in Teso because of the stigma surrounding his death, and the fear of repercussions from a paranoid state. Adungosi’s case remained the perfect cautionary tale for freshmen: stay out of student politics or you’ll simply cause your mother untold pain and suffering.
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