Remmy Shiundu

By Remmy ShiunduThe untimely death of Prof Christopher Lukorito Wanjala has shaken the literary world and the country as a whole. The demise came in close succession to the death of another literary giant, Prof David Rubadiri whose eulogy Chis wrote in these spaces just a few days ago. Prof Wanjala started his literary career at then University College, Nairobi in 1968.

He had seen the dichotomy between writers who seriously drew from the socio-economic reality of East Africa and those who frivolously practised art for art’s sake. He contributed to debates on literature, politics and culture in the press, journals and public lectures. He sharpened his literary horns by engaging his own lecturers among them, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Taban Lo Liyong.

The recent outburst in the print media and on social media about Kenya’s senior literary scholars, pitting them against their counterparts in the diaspora, does not augur well for the future of scholarship in this country. Harry Mulama sensationally elected to humiliate our elders and make them feel that their contribution to scholarship is either void or not wanted. The said article makes the graduates who passed through the professors’ hands feel that they sat at the feet of inferior people.