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 ("orature") or written in African and Afro-Asiatic languages. Examples of pre-colonial African literature can be traced back to at least the fourth century AD. The best-known is the ''Keb ...

in the English language, the first African Writers Conference, was held at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda. 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 advocacy group founded in 1950. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the ...

and the Mbari Club in association with the Department of Extra-Mural Studies of Makerere, whose director was Gerald Moore. The conference was attended by many prominent African writers, including: from West Africa Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka (later

Nobel Laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) 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 out ...

in Literature),

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

Obi Wali Obi Wali (27 February 1932 – 26 April 1993) was a minority rights activist, politician, distinguished senator, literary scholar, and an orator from Nigeria. Among his achievements, he fought for the cause of the Ikwerre ethnic minorities and ...

, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, Bernard Fonlon, 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 Boys ...

, Kofi Awoonor; 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, Lewis Nkosi,

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; from East Africa

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938) is a Literature of Kenya, Kenyan author and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu language, Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English language, English. He has been described as having bee ...

(then known as James Ngugi),

Robert Serumaga Robert Bellarmino Serumaga (1939 – September 1980) was a Ugandan playwright. He was also an important political figure in Uganda during the late 1970s, being the leader and co-founder of the Uganda Nationalist Organization militant group and M ...

, Rajat Neogy (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 recent y ...

''),

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 as opposed to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used var ...

"), Grace Ogot,

Rebecca Njau Rebeka Njau (née Nyanjega; born 15 December 1932) was Kenya's first female playwright and a pioneer in the representation of African women in literature. Her writing has addressed topics such as female genital mutilation and homosexuality. Her f ...

David Rubadiri James David Rubadiri lukin Hendricks (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 ind ...

Jonathan Kariara Jonathan Kariara (1935–1993) was a Kenyan poet who wrote works including "A Leopard Lives in a Muu Tree". He was born in 1935 at the Church of Scotland Mission, Tumutumu, in Nyeri County, Kenya, in 1935. In the 1950s, he attended Makerere Unive ...

; 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. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hug ...

.Frederick Philander
"Namibian Literature at the Cross Roads"
''New Era'', 18 April 2008. 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 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 writers refused to acknowledge any literature written in non- African languages 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 and Aimé Césaire.... 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 outside o ...

Effect and legacy

Writing of the conference 50 years later, James Currey 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, Canada, 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 prolific Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o that was published as part of the influential African Writers Series. It tells the story of the separation of two neighbouring villages of Kenya caused by differen ...

'' 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 among the African Writers Series. It was the first English language, English novel to be publis ...

'', 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 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 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, with a keynote speech by Wole Soyinka.Otosirieze Obi-Young
"55 Years After Makerere Conference, University of London’s SOAS to Host Memorial Gathering"
''Brittle Paper'', 27 October 2017.

References

{{Reflist, 30em Languages of Africa African literature 1962 conferences 1962 in Uganda