African History at Makerere in the 1960s: A Further Perspective

Abstract

As two expatriate academics who taught at Makerere in the 1960s (RB 1960-64; MP 1964-67), we were naturally interested in the article, “Building an African Department of History at Makerere, 1950-1972” in HA 30(2003), 253-82. The story Carol Sicherman has to tell is an important one and she has produced a well-documented and forcefully delivered account. It is to be hoped that she will be able to bring out a complete history of Makerere, which is something that is badly needed. We do, however, have some reservations about the picture of the early 1960s that emerges.Our criticism of the impression given of what was happening at Makerere in the History Department in the early 1960s, before the arrival of J. B. Webster in 1968, is in two main respects. First, it may not be fair to judge everything in terms of how far an African syllabus taught by Africans had been established; the Department and the University might have had legitimate aims in addition to this. Second, even granting that moving towards an African syllabus was an aim in the 1960s—and we think it was—Sicherman tends to underestimate on the one hand the difficulties which then had to be overcome, and on the other the extent to which the aim was realized and the essential basis laid for Webster's work.

The Psychiatry of Poverty

“…37 While the curriculum was changing during the 1960s, with increased recognition of the importance of African history and literature, among other subjects, Makerere as an institution was still heavily Europeanised. 38 Much of this found expression in East African literature during the 1960s and 1970s. The journalist-protagonist of John Nagenda's 'And This, At Last', written while an undergraduate, is a product of a colonial school education and demonstrates a condescending attitude towards village life.…”