*12.12.1942 - †30.06.2023

Tribute to Prof. Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo

It is with great sadness that the Gender and Diversity Office of the Africa Multiple Cluster announces the passing of Prof. Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo on the evening of Friday 30 June 2023 in Syracuse, New York after a long illness. Prof. Mũgo - Mwalimu Mĩcere, as she was known to many - transitioned at the end of a full life at the age of 80.

A poet, playwright, author, social justice campaigner, Africanist and literary critic, Prof. Mĩcere Mũgo was appointed Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University, New York State in 1993 and retired in 2015. Prof. Mũgo was a pioneer in many things: being the first student in segregated colonial Kenya to be admitted into an all-white school, Limuru Girls’ High (in 1960); the first person (man or woman) in East Africa to receive a doctorate in Literature (in 1973) and the first woman to be elected Dean of Arts (comprising of the arts, humanities and social sciences) at the University of Nairobi (in 1978).

She was the recipient of numerous honours, among them:

• the Lifetime Achievement Award in African Literature by Africa Writers, Royal African Society, London (2021);
• Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Nairobi (2020);
• the Flora Nwapa Award for excellence in writing;
• Distinguished Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Award from the University of Dar es Salaam;
• the Nelson Mandela Leadership Award;

Among the 200 publications as book chapters, articles and interviews in Prof. Mũgo’s oeuvre, the most notable are

• The Imperative of UTU/UBUNTU in Africana Scholarship (monograph)
•  Writing and Speaking from the Heart of my Mind (selected essays and speeches);
• My Mother’s Poem and Other Songs (poetry);
• Daughter of My People, Sing! (poetry);
• Visions of Africa (literary criticism);
• African Orature and Human Rights (monograph);
• Mũthoni wa Kĩrĩma--Mau Mau Woman Field Marshal: Interrogating Silencing, Erasure and Manipulation of Female Combatants’ Texts (monograph)
• The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (play, co-authored with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o).

We were fortunate to have had Prof. Mũgo visit the Cluster at the University of Bayreuth to give a lecture in the GDO’s ICDL Lecture Series on 9th June 2022, entitled In Celebration of Utu /Ubuntu-inspired leadership: Profiles of two Kenyan Women Freedom Fighters. A companion event was facilitated in the Cluster’s Knowledge Lab this past 11th May 2023: a screening of the documentary film Making Life Sing in Pursuit of Utu: The Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo Story, with a subsequent Round Table with the filmmaker and invited Kenyan feminist scholars and activists, which Prof. Mũgo attended via ZOOM.

Many of us present at the June 2022 lecture, remember Prof. Mũgo as a gracious figure of intellectual erudition and curiosity. Her philosophical approach towards the African relational principle of Utu / Ubuntu (the Kiswahili term for the “essence of being human and demonstrating communal solidarity” or the “philosophy of I am because you are and since we are, therefore I am”) is invaluable in imagining decolonial community building in higher education spaces. Prof. Mũgo practiced the actual ethic contained in this principle in her dealings and relations with everyone she met, whether in teaching, in research or in creative, literary and political endeavours – indeed the lady was a powerhouse. As a scholar and critic with specific decolonial visions, Prof. Mũgo never shied away from addressing the pressing intersectional complexities of systemic injustices of racism, sexism and classism in higher education spaces, as well as greater political arenas: “The need for protest, dialogue and legislation to break the silence around women’s existence is more urgent than ever now” (Mũgo, Writing and Speaking from the Heart of My Mind, 2012: 155). She knew the struggles and costs of exile and unbelonging even in her own home of Kenya, while speaking her truth to colonial and heteropatriarchal power.

Prof. Mũgo will be remembered for her generosity for coming to Bayreuth to share her teachings with us, despite her busy schedule and the challenges of her long illness. Our research community is honoured that she took the time and the effort to be here with us in person to engage with and contribute to the Cluster’s own mission and vision of reconfiguring African Studies. I am personally grateful to Mwalimu Mĩcere for sharing her unique insights during our time together, and for recognizing my work to advance intersectional and critical diversity research perspectives in the Africa Multiple Cluster. Both her lecture in June 2022 and the film screening event in May 2023 were moments where this African woman’s scholarship was clearly inserted into history – the macrocosmic Kenyan historical narrative and the microcosmic Cluster Reconfiguring African Studies narrative.

We, the scholars whose paths were made possible because of the groundwork laid down by African women scholars like Mwalimu Mĩcere, remember this intellectual foremother of Utu / Ubuntu scholarship, we celebrate this epistemic giant and her work, we mourn the passing of this great soul, generous in her grace, we rejoice she is free from pain, reunited with beloved ancestors and other loved ones.

May she rest in power and peace.

We extend our heartfelt condolences to Mwalimu Mĩcere’s daughter Dr. Mumbi Mũgo and all other family members during this time of bereavement. They are in our prayers and thoughts.

Asante sana, Mwalimu Mĩcere.
We are because you are. 

[By Dr. Christine Vogt-William, Director GDO,
Africa Multiple Cluster,
University of Bayreuth, Germany]