I write from Makerere University about Ngugi wa Thiong’o, whose attachment to Makerere as his alma mater was no secret. To understand Ngugi’s strong attachment to Makerere University, one has to understand his life-long politics. Ngugi’s politics were anchored in his roots and in perceiving the interconnections between one’s past, present, and future. He was a strong advocate of knowing one’s roots, heritage, and values in order to direct the future. Therefore, throughout his long and exceptional career, Ngugi recognized his formative and foundational years in shaping him into a writer and public intellectual whose struggle with the forces of marginalization of his people was literally his life.

I have had the great opportunity to read reports on Ngugi that were written about him during his undergraduate years at what was then Makerere University College of East Africa, where he studied from 1959 to 1964. The reports consistently show his interest in literature, especially that which spoke to his own experience, his unassuming deep character, and the great regard in which his tutors held him. I would like to substantiate my observation by quoting at length from one of the reports by Professor Geoffrey Walton, the then Dean of Faculty of Arts, dated November 13, 1963:

This report already points to Ngugi’s fine sensibility in engaging with the literary field and his budding vocation as a writer. Another of the reports by his Warden in Northcote Hall, H.P. Dinwiddy, dated August 11, 1963 recounts the diverse range of activities and interests Ngugi was involved in as a student and ends pointedly with the statement: “After all this it seems hardly necessary to say that he is an outstanding student” (Dinwiddy Reference Dinwiddy1963). Yet another report dated September 3, 1963, simply marked as coming from the English Department, ends with the strong prediction: “Even if he does not achieve quite the result one hoped for, he will certainly do the College honour in the future” (Ngugi Reference Ngugi1963).

Ngugi lived up to his tutors’ expectations and even surpassed them. He did not just make Makerere proud but the whole of the African continent and beyond.

It was at Makerere that he participated in the monumental conference of African Writers of English Expression in 1962, which sparked off landmark debates including the seminal language question in African literature. The beginnings of Ngugi’s consistent debates on the significance of African languages, defining the notion of African literature, his concern with questions of identity as well as the impact of colonialism on Africa, have their roots in his time at Makerere where his intellectual work began to bloom and his creative writing interests were concretized and greatly encouraged. Additionally, a number of Ngugi’s reports at Makerere emphasize that his enunciation of English was not good and that he did not seem motivated to work at refining his English speech, which could already point to his resistance of the imposition of the dominance of another language at the expense of his own. Whereas many scholars of Ngugi have argued for his radicalization and development of a socialist vision while at the University of Leeds, Ngugi in his memoir Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer’s Awakening and at various fora has pointed at the grounding he had at Makerere in sharpening his thinking about creative writing and intellectual debate despite his acknowledgement that the institution was steeped in a colonially oriented curriculum. In his memoir talking of the Makerere of the 1950s and 1960s, he said it

Ngugi was a writer and intellectual who was determined to survive and make meaning in the space he found himself and he was also a very generous human being who spoke truth to power and was brutally honest in the fight against injustice. He never ever faltered in his vision to be a voice for the voiceless in any way he could and as other tributes will and have demonstrated, he devoted his life to this mission to the very end.

I met Ngugi in person a number of times and was deeply struck by his desire to keep his beloved Makerere connections alive as well as his encouragement to younger colleagues to grow in their careers and to think carefully about issues of identity and marginalization. Up to now I wonder how he managed to keep in touch with so many of us. Almost all my colleagues in the Department of Literature at Makerere have received an email from him. Personally I communicated with him via email quite frequently, sometimes just to check on him, and he never ever failed to reply to a message and to also always ask how my writing in Luganda was progressing. He always insisted that Makerere made him, in that typically gracious manner so characteristic of the man. I tend to think both Makerere and Ngugi boosted each other over the years. I distinctly remember a time when he remarked that in keeping in touch with colleagues at Makerere, he kept in touch with part of his soul.

I have always repeated the story of how in 2013, when he came to Makerere as the keynote speaker at the occasion of the 50th anniversary celebration of the University of East Africa, he recognized me. We had met ten years previously when he visited his other alma mater, the University of Leeds, when they awarded him an honorary doctorate. When I expressed surprise at his remembrance of me, he chuckled and remarked that he could not have forgotten me since we had been the only two Makerereans in the room at Leeds. I also distinctly remember that after the formal discussion at the Leeds University Centre for African Studies (LUCAS), he preferred to spend a little more time chatting with us students, even when there was a formal lunch with staff that had been organized for him. I will always carry those memories with pride because in my view, apart from his exceptional memory, his recognition of me and also his desire to hear in an informal setting what the African students had to say, fitted in with his views on solidarity with his own people and his own roots. Many people have observed that Ngugi was a generous soul and that was demonstrated in so many ways—for example, during the 2013 visit to Makerere, he insisted on visiting the Department of Literature and retracing his steps in the corridors of the department. He was so pleased when the meeting was hosted in one of the lecture rooms where he had frequently sat as a student. Ngugi believed that history was important and it determined so much of our lives, and I saw at this meeting that his beliefs were a proactive part of his life; or as his personal tutor B.S. Hoyle stated in a report dated October 13, 1961: “Mr. Ngugi impresses me as being a very good student, who to a large extent ‘lives’ his subject” (Hoyle and Ngugi Reference Hoyle and Ngugi1961). Ngugi from early on, as this tribute shows, was a man with a mission and all around him noticed how involved he was in his chosen calling to connect with and fight for the dignity of his communities.

Altering the space he lived in was a constant in Ngugi’s life; for example, his name is part and parcel of the legendary abolition of the English Departments in East African universities that led to the birth of the Departments of Literature at Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Makerere. The move was in tandem with Ngugi’s belief that Africans should be at the center of determining Africa’s destiny and inevitably African intellectuals and academics should set the agenda by approaching debates from an African orientation.

I feel infinitely privileged to pay tribute to this son of Makerere. He was a phenomenon and rare gem whom we at Makerere will continue to celebrate. Public intellectuals and creative writers of Ngugi’s calibre do not come in hordes and so we will miss his physical presence, but I am reassured that Ngugi is an inspiration to African letters and his legacy will live on as long as Africa as a continent continues to survive.