How distorted history raises concerns over what students learn

It’s been “back to school” preoccupation since last week, but back to school to study what?, Imbibe which values? Acquire knowledge that serve whose interest? Learn to align with which historical thread?

These Ngugi Wa Thiong’o-like questions have been crossing my mind from the time I visited the Mbale Islamic University Department of Political Science in Uganda last week.

I was seeking the assistance of the department to enable me locate where the remains of Field Marshal John Okello were buried and where his family is located.

“I have never heard of that name” a lecturer I found in the office quickly replied to my enquiries. I had to take him through the Okello story that happened in the 1960s.

“Okello was the leader of the Zanzibar revolution that overthrew the feudal government.

‘‘He was born in northern Uganda but migrated to Zanzibar and led the military operation that culminated in the liberation of Zanzibar. After taking over, he invited Abeid Karume who was exiled in mainland Tanzania to be president.

The nature of the coup that took only nine hours to effect its mission scared Presidents Karume, Julius Nyerere, Milton Obote and Jomo Kenyatta.

They declared him an unwanted man in the region.

On his way out of Tanzania, he had to pass through Kenya but Kenyatta gave him six hours to live the country. He was later arrested and jailed. After serving 18 months in Kamiti for being illegally in the country, he went back to Uganda. Upon arriving there the reigning dictator Idi Amin Dada had him killed.

The reason has been given that Okello was described by the title Field Marshall and that Amin could not stand having two Field Marshalls in “his” country.

“When I travelled to Zanzibar in the year 2000, his legacy was best captured by the response of a citizen after I asked him to direct me to any of the slums on the island. He told me that there were no slums in Zanzibar — the Okello led revolution led to allocation of five acres of land to every family.”

Even after giving him this back ground story, the Mbale Islamic University lecturer still had no idea who Okello was and so he called his colleague in the department. On speaker phone he said, “Yeah, I have heard something like that. It must have happened. “

And that was end of the story. 

These lecturers were not fools. They were experts in another type of education that was carefully designed to create ignorance about Okello’s political activities in the East Africa region, which has been based on the running philosophy of colonial education — to shape new narratives — mostly half true.

Okello’s legacy had undermined class privileges hence the rulers had to eclipse him from official history, which they did through rewriting education curriculums used in schools.

This is also what I encountered when I went back to the University of Nairobi (UoN) after the Mwai Kibaki’s government allowed me to resume studies in 2003.  

You recall that we had lost higher education following our expulsion in the mid-80s because of student activism.

During my second stint at UoN, the lecturers I encountered were mainly products of the global United States education. Every lecturer got me clashing with them. Most of them would agree with me. Especially the late University Academic Staff Union Secretary General Charles Kulinjira Namachanja.

Over time they could not give me a chance to give alternative versions of issues we would be discussing as fellow learners started talking of “Bukeism”. Disgusted, I quit college and decided to live without a degree. 

 When I was jailed in the mid 80s, my secondary school headmaster gave a long lecture on parade about how I refused to heed his advice, which during our days was punctuated by beatings.

“Check where the boy is now. Jailed for five years” he told students on a morning parade.

Today, I ask myself is this not the type of teachers teaching my daughters. They are being prepared to use us for their self-interests and fight us when we clamour for social justice, and call us stupid when we challenge the authenticity and moral grounding of colonial education.