[allAfrica.com] [allAfrica.com_Business_Page] Comrades, Burials: Why I'll Dig Up P'bitek The Monitor (Kampala) OPINION July 4, 2004 Posted to the web August 4, 2004 By Willy Mutunga Kampala On June 25, I visited Gulu to see for myself the so-called "protected villages" where the Acholi have been put in village camps by the government of President Museveni. The Acholi are refugees in their own country. As the insurgency persists, they do not get adequate protection from the government, and none at all from the rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army who have been waging war for more than 10 years now. Yet both sides claim to be protecting and fighting for them! I also wanted to see the phenomenon called the "night commuters", the exodus of children from the camps between 6.30 p.m. and 10 p.m. for fear of abduction by the rebels. At the crack of dawn these children trek back to the camps and their schools. While in Gulu I visited the cemetery of St. Philips Cathedral. It is in this cemetery that the great poet and cultural revolutionary, Okot p'Bitek is buried. As a young lecturer at the University of Nairobi p'Bitek was my mentor. To get Okot's attention I went to the university bookshop and bought all his books. I then requested him to autograph them for me. In the process he got interested in what I did. Thereafter, I saw Okot almost every morning at the Senior Common Room. I took coffee. Okot drank his coffee laced with two tots of Johnny Walker whisky. Musa Mushanga would almost all the time join the group. Okot, like Prof. Ali Mazrui and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, always told you something out of the ordinary to think about and never forgot. One evening during one of the Senior Common Room chats, Professor Vincent Simiyu, who still teaches history at the University of Nairobi, joined us. I do not remember what he told Okot, maybe something about Sorbonne, the famous French university, where Simiyu studied. Okot did not like it. So he looked at Simiyu who was then balding and told him, "You, you, you headless." Since that day Simiyu has been fondly known to his colleagues as "Headless". Okot was actually slighted in his profession at the University of Nairobi. So was Ngugi wa Thiong'o for a long time. Okot told us of his interview (for the position of senior lecturer) when some professor asked him which his field of study was, was it Literature, Sociology or law? The insult intended was that Okot was a jack of all trades and master of none. Okot did not take this kindly and he asked the professor whether he had been to any school. He was not promoted, and as far as I know he was still a lecturer when he left for Uganda to take up a professorship at Makerere University. Ngugi only managed to be an associate professor after many battles with the administration and his academic colleagues who did not like his ideological and political positions. Another professor who was slighted was Taji Mohiddin. Though a professor at Makerere University where he had to leave hurriedly to save his life during dictator Idi Amin's days, University of Nairobi asked him to take or leave a position as lecturer. The University of Nairobi since the 1970s has humiliated scholars who were world famous. Ask (now Planning and Economic Development minister) Prof. Anyang Nyong'o when you have a minute with him. Okot died on July 20, 1982, so last month was the 22nd anniversary of this tragic event, and that is why we must remember him. The day he died I was in Industrial Remand Prison awaiting my trial for possession of a seditious document, entitled, "JM Solidarity. Don't be Fooled. Reject these Nyayos." It is only after my release from detention that I was told that Okot had died and that they buried him in a church cemetery. I could not help but wonder how the church had managed to "steal" Okot's body, and how my mentor would be constantly turning in his grave over this gross injustice. Okot and I discussed religion a lot. Like many human rights activists who believe that mainstream religious denominations violate the rights of traditional religions, Okot had no kind words for religious leaders and their mainstream religions. He kept on asking me whether I had seen a thin religious leader. If by chance I said I had seen some, he would then follow up this answer with a comment, "But of course even the thin ones you have seen have a skin as soft as a baby's bottom!" As a lawyer himself, he taught me how to be a cultural lawyer, how to be a people's lawyer. When I started giving legal aid to slum dwellers, he was very pleased. The greatest honour I could do to my mentor while at Gulu was to visit his grave. I was accompanied by human rights activists and religious leaders to St. Philip's Church. We viewed the grave, said our individual prayers and paid our respects. In my silent prayer I told Okot I regretted the situation he was in and vowed to dig him up when the situation was opportune. I also lamented the security situation in Gulu and told him that his brothers and sisters were in camps, albeit of a different type from his own. I told him I would write an article to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of his death and give my reflections on the burials of comrades. I have not been able to trace Carol, Okot's widow, to know why she agreed to have Okot buried in a church compound. That burial was a subversion of Okot's core being, what he believed in and what he taught and preached. It was an affront on all Okot's mentees. What has happened to Okot is a lesson to all comrades. Political friendship is bigger than social friendship. Political friendships challenge familial ties. Our family members need not believe in our ideology and politics. We have heard of fathers who disown their sons or daughters who are activists, so that they can save their businesses from the powers that be. Ideology and politics are important to political activists and our family members have no right to marginalise our political friendships. I take this point seriously because I have written a will in which I have asked the Release Political Prisoners Pressure Group, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the 4Cs and the NCEC to sing the famous reform song, Mambo Ni Yale Yale, Mambo ya Ukoloni at my funeral. Now I have to change this will and say who should not speak at my funeral. Political activists should not be buried by systems they died fighting, family members who opposed their vision and subverted it and religious leaders who know what the political activists thought of their mission on earth. For those activists who do not practice any religious faith they run the risk of some family member saying they converted to some religious faith on their death bed and some religious leaders confirming that lie. The time has come for comrades and political activists to struggle against the dictatorship of the family, clans, systems, ruling groups and their fellow travelers when it comes to their burial.   =============================================================================   Copyright © 2004 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). =============================================================================