In June 1962"The First Makerere African Writers Conference 1962"
Makerere University . a conference of

African literature African literature is literature from Africa, either Oral literature, oral ("orature") or written in African languages, African and Afro-Asiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic languages. Examples of Precolonialism, pre-colonial African literature can be ...

in the

English language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...

, the first African Writers Conference, was held at

Makerere University College Makerere University (; Mak) is Uganda's largest and oldest institution of higher learning, first established as a technical school in 1922, and the oldest currently active university in East Africa. It became an independent national university in ...

Kampala Kampala (, ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Uganda. The city proper has a population of 1,875,834 (2024) and is divided into the five political divisions of Kampala Central Division, Kampala, Kawempe Division, Kawempe, Makindy ...

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

. Officially called a "Conference of African Writers of English Expression", it was sponsored by the

Congress for Cultural Freedom The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist cultural organization founded on 26 June 1950 in West Berlin. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency w ...

and the

Mbari Club The Mbari Club was a centre for cultural activity by African writers, artists and musicians that was founded in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1961 by Ulli Beier, with the involvement of a group of young writers including Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe.

in association with the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of Makerere, whose director was

Gerald Moore Gerald Moore (30 July 1899 – 13 March 1987) was an English classical pianist best known for his career as a collaborative pianist for many distinguished musicians. Among those with whom he was closely associated were Dietrich Fischer-Diesk ...

. The conference was attended by many prominent African writers, including: from West Africa

Chinua Achebe Chinua Achebe (; born Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His first novel ''Things Fall Apart'' ( ...

Wole Soyinka Wole Soyinka , (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian author, best known as a playwright and poet. He has written three novels, ten collections of short stories, seven poetry collections, twenty five plays and five memoirs. He also wrote two transla ...

(later

Nobel Laureate The Nobel Prizes (, ) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in th ...

in Literature),

John Pepper Clark John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo (6 April 1935 – 13 October 2020) was a Nigerian poet and playwright. He popularly published as J. P. Clark and John Pepper Clark. Life Born in Kiagbodo, Nigeria, to an Ijaw father and Urhobo mother, Clark was a di ...

, Obi Wali,

Gabriel Okara Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (24 April 1921 – 25 March 2019) was a Nigerian poet and novelist who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The first modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental ...

Christopher Okigbo Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo (16 August 1932 – 1967) was a Nigerian poet, teacher, and librarian, who died fighting for the independence of Biafra. He is today widely acknowledged as an outstanding Postcolonialism, postcolonial English-languag ...

Bernard Fonlon Bernard Nsokika Fonlon (19 November 1924 – 27 August 1986) was a Demographics of Cameroon, Cameroonian politician and educationist who worked on the development of bilingualism in Cameroon. Early life and education Bernard Fonlon was bor ...

, Frances Ademola,

Cameron Duodu Martin Cameron Duodu (born 24 May 1937)''Africa Who's Who'', London: Africa Journal for Africa Books Ltd, 1981, pp. 349–50. is a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian novelist, journalist, editor and broadcaster. After publishing a novel, ''The Gab Boy ...

Kofi Awoonor Kofi Awoonor (born George Kofi Nyidevu Awoonor-Williams; 13 March 1935 – 21 September 2013) was a Ghanaian poet, author and diplomat. His work combined the poetic traditions of his native Ewe people with contemporary and religious symbolism ...

; from South Africa:

Ezekiel Mphahlele Es'kia Mphahlele (17 December 1919 – 27 October 2008) was a South African writer, educationist, artist and activist celebrated as the Father of African Humanism and one of the founding figures of modern African literature. He was given the ...

Bloke Modisane William Modisane (28 August 1923 – 1 March 1986), better known as Bloke Modisane, was a South African writer, actor and journalist. Biography William "Bloke" Modisane, the eldest son of Joseph and Ma-Willie Modisane,Nelly E Sonderling (e ...

Lewis Nkosi Lewis Nkosi (5 December 1936 – 5 September 2010) was a South African writer and journalist, who spent 30 years in exile as a consequence of restrictions placed on him and his writing by the Suppression of Communism Act and the Publications a ...

Dennis Brutus Dennis Vincent Brutus (28 November 1924 – 26 December 2009) was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have South Africa banned from the Olympic Games due to its racial policy of apartheid. ...

Arthur Maimane John Arthur Mogale Maimane (5 October 1932 – 28 June 2005), better known as Arthur Maimane, was a South African journalist and novelist. Biography Maimane was born in Pretoria, South Africa, growing up in the black township of Lady Selborne. ...

; from East Africa

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5January 193828May 2025) was a Kenyan author and academic, who has been described as East Africa's leading novelist and an important figure in modern African literature. Ngũgĩ wrote primarily in Eng ...

(at that time known as James Ngugi), Robert Serumaga,

Rajat Neogy Rajat Neogy (December 17, 1938 – December 3, 1995),Paul Theroux ''The Independent'', 15 January 1996, a Ugandan of Indian Bengali ancestry, was a writer, poet and publisher. In Kampala in 1961, at the age of 22, he founded '' Transition Magazine' ...

(founder of ''

Transition Magazine ''Transition Magazine'' was established in 1961 by Rajat Neogy as ''Transition Magazine: An International Review''. It was published from 1961 to 1976 in various countries on the African continent, and since 1991 in the United States. In recen ...

''),

Okot p'Bitek Okot p'Bitek (7 June 1931 – 19 July 1982) was a Ugandan poet, who achieved wide international recognition for '' Song of Lawino'', a long poem dealing with the tribulations of a rural African wife whose husband has taken up urban life and wis ...

, Pio Zirimu (credited with coining the term "

orature Oral literature, orature, or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung in contrast to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used va ...

"),

Grace Ogot Grace Emily Ogot (née Akinyi; 15 May 1930 – 18 March 2015) was a Kenyan author, nurse, journalist, politician and diplomat. Together with Charity Waciuma she was the first Anglophone female Kenyan writer to be published.Mike Kuria, ed. ''T ...

, Rebecca Njau,

David Rubadiri David Rubadiri (19 July 1930 – 15 September 2018) was a Malawian diplomat, academic and poet, playwright and novelist. Rubadiri is ranked as one of Africa's most widely anthologized and celebrated poets to emerge after independence.Jonathan Kariara; and from the African diaspora

Langston Hughes James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. An early innovator of jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harl ...

.Frederick Philander
"Namibian Literature at the Cross Roads"
''New Era'', 18 April 2008. Retrieved 14 February 2023. The conference was "not only the very first major international gathering of writers and critics of African literature on the African continent; it was also held at the very cusp of political independence for most African countries."

Conference topics

The conference dealt with the issue of how the legacy of

colonialism Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism c ...

had left the African writer with a dilemma with regard to the language choice in writing. The questions raised and debated at the conference were: *What constitutes African literature? *Is it literature written by Africans, literature that depicts the African experience? *Does African literature have to be written in African languages?

Controversy

At the conference, several

nationalist Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,Anthony D. Smith, Smith, A ...

writers refused to acknowledge any literature written in non-

African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

as being African literature. Ngũgĩ noted the irony of the conference's title, in that it excluded a great part of the population that did not write in English, while trying to define African literature but accepting that it must be in English. As he would describe it in his 1986 book '' Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature'': "The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation." In an essay entitled "The Dead End Of African Literature", published in ''Transition'' in 1963, Obiajunwa Wali stated: "Perhaps the most important achievement of the last Conference of African Writers of English Expression held in Makerere College, Kampala, in June 1962, is that African literature as now defined and understood leads nowhere. The conference itself marked the final climax on the attack on the Negritude school of

Léopold Senghor Leopold may refer to: People * Leopold (given name), including a list of people named Leopold or Léopold * Leopold (surname) Fictional characters * Leopold (''The Simpsons''), Superintendent Chalmers' assistant on ''The Simpsons'' * Leopold ...

and

Aimé Césaire Aimé Fernand David Césaire (; ; 26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was a French poet, author, and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature" and coined the word in French. He ...

.... Another significant event in the Conference, is the tacit omission of

Amos Tutuola Amos Tutuola (; 20 June 1920 – 8 June 1997) was a Nigerian writer who wrote books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales. Early history Amos Olatubosun Tutuola Odegbami was born on 20 June 1920, in Wasinmi, a village just a few miles outsid ...

Effect and legacy

Writing of the conference 50 years later,

James Currey James Currey is an academic publisher specialising in African Studies that since 2008 has been an imprint of Boydell & Brewer. It is named after its founder, who established the company in 1984. It publishes on a full spectrum of topics—incl ...

in ''Leeds African Studies Bulletin'' quoted Chinua Achebe as saying in 1989: "In 1962 we saw the gathering together of a remarkable generation of young African men and women who were to create within the next decade a corpus of writing which is today seriously read and critically valued in many parts of the world. It was an enormously important moment, and year, in the history of modern African literature."James Currey
"Ngũgĩ, Leeds and the Establishment of African Literature"
''Leeds African Studies Bulletin'' 74 (December 2012), pp. 48–62; quoting Achebe from a lecture given at the

University of Guelph The University of Guelph (abbreviated U of G) is a comprehensive Public university, public research university in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1964 after the amalgamation of Ontario Agricultural College (1874), the MacDonald I ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

, in 1989. The conference is regarded as a major milestone in African literature, and is thought to have defined many African authors' style of writing. For example, Currey notes that

as a young student ventured to ask Chinua Achebe at the conference to read the manuscripts of his novels ''

The River Between ''The River Between'' is a 1965 novel by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o that was published as part of the influential Heinemann African Writers Series. It tells the story of the separation of two neighbouring villages of Kenya caused by differ ...

'' and ''

Weep Not, Child ''Weep Not, Child'' is a 1964 novel by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. It was his first novel, published in 1964 under the name James Ngugi. It was in the African Writers Series of the Heinemann publishing company. ''Weep Not, Child'' was th ...

'', which would subsequently be published in Heinemann's

African Writers Series The African Writers Series (AWS) is a collection of books written by African novelists, poets and politicians. Published by Heinemann (publisher), Heinemann, 359 books appeared in the series between 1962 and 2003. The series has provided an int ...

, launched in London that year, with Achebe as its first advisory editor. Ngũgĩ subsequently rejected

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...

in 1976, and changed his original name from James Ngugi, which he saw as a sign of colonialism. He also resorted to writing in the

Gikuyu language Kikuyu or Gikuyu ( ) (also known as Gĩgĩkũyũ) is a Bantu language spoken by the Gĩkũyũ (''Agĩkũyũ'') of Kenya. Kikuyu is mainly spoken in the area between Nyeri, Kiambu, Nairobi and Nakuru. The Kikuyu people usually identify th ...

instead of English.

Memorial conference

"SOAS African Literatures Conference – 55 years after the first Makerere African Writers Conference" was organised as a memorial event taking place on 28 October 2017, hosted by the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

School of Oriental and African Studies The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...

(SOAS), with a keynote speech by Wole Soyinka.

Otosirieze Obi-Young Otosirieze Obi-Young (born 1994) is a Nigerian writer, editor, culture journalist and curator. He is editor of '' Open Country Mag''. He was editor of ''Folio Nigeria'', a then CNN affiliate, and former deputy editor of '' Brittle Paper''. In ...

"55 Years After Makerere Conference, University of London’s SOAS to Host Memorial Gathering"
''

Brittle Paper ''Brittle Paper'' is an online literary magazine styled as an "African literary blog" published weekly in the English language. Its focus is on "build(ing) a vibrant African literary scene." It was founded by Ainehi Edoro (at the time a doctora ...

'', 27 October 2017.

References

{{Scholia, event

Conference topics

Controversy

Effect and legacy

Memorial conference

References

Further reading