The Responsible African

Extract

It is ten years since I went along to Stanford’s in St James's to buy a map which would show me where Uganda really was. This was my first move towards becoming chaplain at Makerere, then the University College of East Africa, now a constituent unit in a fully-fledged university.

While my ship turned the corner of Africa off Cape Gardafui the Kabaka was flying back to Uganda from exile to be welcomed by a Governor, the notable Sir Andrew Cohen (whose seat at Entebbe he now occupies as Sir Frederick Mutesa). The train from Nairobi was protected by armed guards against a possible Mau-Mau raid. Jomo Kenyatta was imprisoned in the far north and Sir Evelyn Baring ruled Kenya. Sir Edward Twining governed Tanganyika. Today, under Kenyatta, Obote and Nyerere, it is East Africa which is travelling into an unknown and sparsely-mapped future.

I like to recall what I said when taking over my major teaching assignment at Makerere, the first Honours Class in Political Ideas. ‘I am aware,’ I said, ‘that I am speaking to the the leaders of three future republics'. Neither the class nor I realized how quickly that future would arrive. I do not think that even Dr Jowett's pupils at Balliol reached ministerial or near-ministerial level within three years of gaining their degrees. There have been a few cases of swelled heads as a result of this swift elevation, but in general I find it heartening, on their visits to this country, to observe how these men, recently undergraduates, are conscientiously shouldering their formidable tasks.