Prof Bethwell Allan Ogot speaks to the Nation at his home in Gem, Siaya County on December 24, 2024.
There are African historians, and then there is Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot—a towering figure in the discipline, whose intellectual presence loomed as solid and enduring as granite. Prof Ogot’s work was not merely an academic pursuit, but a profound engagement with the politics of knowledge. At times, and many times, he got entangled in the web of ethnic and national discourses that have always shaped post-colonial African nations.
By the time of his passing this week, the esteemed scholar had etched his name indelibly into the annals of African historiography. At the beginning, he sought to study African history. Now, history students, globally, study Ogot —the man, the mind, and the profound contours of his thought. Few scholars ascend to such towering heights.
As an intellectual force, Prof Ogot fiercely advocated for the decolonisation of African history, urging its liberation from the shackles of Eurocentrism. Year after year, and with unwavering conviction, he sought to dismantle what he termed "the self-satisfied superiority by which the West lays claim to a monopoly on the very notions of progress and development." In essence, Prof Ogot sought to restore to Africa the agency and grandeur long obscured by colonial narratives.
Born on August 3, 1929, into the first generation of Christian converts in Gem, his father, Paulo Opiche, was a colonial chief whose family played a crucial role in the spread of Christianity and literacy in the region. As a young man, fascinated by the past, Ogot's intellectual journey took him to Maseno School and then to Makerere University where he graduated with top honours. After teaching briefly at Kagumo School and then Alliance High School—where he taught in 1954— Prof Ogot flew to Britain for higher education. Among his students at Alliance were future luminaries such as Kenneth Matiba, Bethuel Kiplagat and Bernard Hinga.
Suspicious colonialists
There is a story he always told, and which found space in his autobiography, My Footprints on the Sands of Time, that with his teaching salary, he purchased a new Ford, an act that aroused the suspicion of colonial authorities. "Suspicious colonialists thought I had stolen it," he wrote in his autobiography. He realised, this early, that some symbols of modernity were, in the colonial imagination, the preserve of the Europeans and Asians and that African economic mobility was restricted.
At the University of London, Ogot earned his PhD in history, where he grappled with foundational questions about African historical consciousness. Most importantly was the way he placed oral history at the centre of the study of African history – retrieving it from the dustbins of anthropology where it had been confined. His last book, History as Destiny and History as Knowledge, and his autobiography reflects these enduring inquiries into the origins and trajectories of African historical narratives.
Independence gave African historians a chance to challenge Eurocentric ideas and saw the rise of an army of Afrocentric scholars. As new nations were born, Prof Ogot, in 1964, moved to the University College of Nairobi, following a broader push to "Africanise" higher education. At Makerere University, where he had previously taught, African scholars had waged a spirited campaign to wrest leadership from colonial administrators, aligning with the nationalist fervor sweeping across the continent.
Prof Ogot saw universities, not as degree churning factories, but as avenues for the creation of new knowledge. In his search for this knowledge, Prof Ogot stepped on many toes, was at one time ostracised, and had even thought of going into exile like other scholars. He opted to fight from within. His academic views are cited globally in the study of African history.
Perhaps the most important contribution to his students was championing that the most senior scholars at the university teach first year courses – so as to lay a foundation for their students. It worked in all the institutions that he taught: The University of Nairobi, Kenyatta University, Moi University and Maseno University.
A pioneering advocate for oral history, Prof Ogot sought to bridge the "historical gap" between the Stone Age and the present, recognising that African history could not be fully comprehended without integrating multiple strands of knowledge.
African historiography
Prof Ogot was not merely an academic; he was a historian who dared to challenge conventions, a scholar whose intellectual breadth reshaped the contours of African historiography. His legacy endures, a testament to the power of rigorous scholarship in the service of truth and historical justice.
Reading through his works, it was Prof Ogot’s argument that a historian's toolkit must extend beyond the written word, incorporating insights from archaeology, linguistics, paleontology, and anthropology to construct a more holistic narrative of Africa's past. Inspired by scholars such as Jan Vansina, he championed new methodologies for studying preliterate societies. Yet, where Vansina dismissed the works of community historians, claiming they lacked scholarly legitimacy because they were produced outside the academic guild, Prof Ogot took a radically different stance. He insisted that history should not remain the preserve of the academy alone; rather, the voices of ordinary Africans must be recognised as active agents in the production of history. And that was a major contribution to history.
Prof Ogot was deeply invested in reinterpreting Kenya’s anti-colonial struggle. He viewed Mau Mau as a process of constructing ethnicity and tradition, rather than merely a nationalist rebellion. He argued that Jomo Kenyatta deliberately distanced himself from Mau Mau, refusing to link it to the imagined Kikuyu community or to the broader spectrum of Kenya’s ethnic groups within an independent nation-state. Ogot was critical of the tendency to exclude non-combatants from the anti-colonial narrative, contending that resistance took many forms; "fighting with the pen, or with the brain, or by generating a powerful spiritual force." In this, he was in the group of scholars such as E.S. Atieno Odhiambo and William Ochieng who were at loggerheads with the likes of Mukaru Ng’ang’a and Prof Maina wa Kenyatta over Mau Mau. The term "fight," Prof Ogot lamented, had been too narrowly confined to physical combat. It was a paradox since his cousin, Argwings-Kodhek, served as a Mau Mau lawyer and later met an untimely death under circumstances that the family never fully accepted as accidental.
At the University of Nairobi, Prof Ogot emerged as one of the founding figures of the Department of History. He encountered a young department, still dominated by proponents of the "Dark Africa" school—scholars who sought to justify colonialism and imperialism. Ogot’s intellectual battles were not confined to the academy; he was watched through the political lenses of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s Kenya People’s Union (KPU), making his position precarious.
At the continental stage, Prof Ogot played a key role in redefining African historiography on the global stage. As a distinguished member of the Unesco team responsible for drafting A General History of Africa from 1971, he contributed to a groundbreaking intellectual project that sought to reclaim Africa’s past from the distortions of Eurocentrism. This seminal collection, spanning multiple volumes, presented Africa’s intricate and dynamic history through the lens of African scholars themselves.
Intellectual labour
Reflecting on the project’s mission, Prof Ogot wrote: "The volumes seek to illuminate the true history of Africa, long shrouded by Eurocentric preconceptions, methodologies, and reference points. Africa is treated as a singular historical entity, rejecting artificial divisions imposed by geography, race, colour, and religion. The ultimate aim is to unveil the deep historical interconnections among the continent’s diverse regions and to affirm Africa’s indelible contributions to the broader narrative of human civilisation."
This volume sparked controversy among many Western Africanists as it challenged the established international division of intellectual labour. It led to the Western loss of intellectual authority over African history. Historically, African historians were often confined to writing about local histories—ethnic groups, clans, or national histories—while broader continental syntheses were left to Western scholars.
As he battled Eurocentric views on African history and decolonisation of the same, Prof Ogot met a hindrance in the name of Charles Njonjo – the Attorney General whose mannerisms were of a colonial spanner boy. When he was appointed the pioneer director of the pan-African The International Louis Leakey Memorial Institute for African Prehistory (TILLMIAP), housed at the National Museums of Kenya, Prof Ogot was quickly at loggerheads with paleontologist Richard Leakey – and this defined another chapter of his career. Leakey, and with Njonio’s support, wielded considerable influence in the study of Kenya’s prehistory – which he treated as a family enterprise.
Twice, Prof Ogot was forced to step down from museum leadership positions to accommodate Leakey’s ambitions. First, he was ousted as the director of the institute, and later, he was removed as chairman of the Museum Board of Trustees after Leakey, backed by international media, lobbied vigorously for his reinstatement to a position he had resigned. "The BBC, the Voice of America, and other media groups campaigned vigorously in support of Leakey’s restoration to his job, as if he had been sacked," Prof Ogot observed in his memoir. In a dramatic turn, the Office of the Vice President, then occupied by Prof Ogot’s former classmate, Dr Josphat Karanja, nullified the new museums board headed by Prof Ogot, reinstating the previous board indefinitely. Moi’s State House had a hand in this.
Political enforcer
Between 1978 and 1983, during Njonjo’s tenure as Kenya’s political enforcer, Prof Ogot found himself virtually a persona non grata in his own country. The political persecution he endured was compounded by the broader marginalisation of Luo intellectuals, which had started in mid 1960s following the establishment of Oginga Odinga’s Kenya People’s Union. During the construction of the Ramogi Institute, Ogot was caught in political crossfire, navigating his role as a member of the East African Legislative Assembly amid suspicions of subversion.
In his seminal work, History as Destiny and History as Knowledge published in 2005, Prof Ogot called for a radical rethinking of Nyanza politics, urging scholars to move beyond "the simplistic approach which looks at everything in Nyanza through the Odinga spectacles." His insistence on multi-vocality in historical narratives remains a clarion call for contemporary historians.
Beyond his academic and political engagements, Prof Ogot’s personal life was intertwined with another formidable intellectual force; his wife, Grace Ogot (née Grace Akinyi Joseph), a pioneering writer and politician, and the daughter of a distinguished evangelist and educator. His wife would also become a towering figure in her own right. She wrote the widely read novel, The Promised Land, which explores concept of the ideal African wife.
In the academia, Prof Ogot rose. When Mwai Kibaki ascended to the presidency, he appointed him as Chancellor of Moi University, a befitting recognition for a scholar who had served as a long-standing member of the institution’s Senate.
With his death, Prof Ogot has left a body of works that will keep historians busy for decades to come. For, there are African historians, and then there is Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot.
[email protected] @johnkamau1
