How I exchanged friendly fire with my ‘frenemy’ C. Wanjala

I mourn my friend Prof Chris Wanjala. A week before his death, I went to see him at his Madaraka Estate home in Nairobi. He had not informed me about his sickness, and we did not talk about it. However, I did mention to him that he had lost weight.

I had gone to see him about a public lecture I wanted to deliver at the University of Nairobi on the controversial and taboo subject of witchcraft.

Whenever Prof Wanjala was surprised, he would express his surprise by crying, “Hai!” That was what he repeatedly said as I briefed him on the subject. We had a wonderful moment in the presence of his soft-spoken wife and mother of many children.

That day, unfortunately, was my last time to see my friend Wanjala alive.

No other writer in the world had been as close to Wanjala as I had been. For decades, Wanjala and I have been like a cat and a dog sharing one cage. Literature, of course, was the cage. I have been a producer of literature and Wanjala has been the consumer and critic of the literature.

It goes without saying regarding who is greater than the other — the producer or the critic. But Wanjala never acknowledged that. That was the central stage for our fight. Over the years, I tried to force him to accept my greatness to no avail.

My fight with him reached the highest notch a few years ago when, with Saturday Nation’s Julius Sigei as the referee, in February 9, 2013, the newspaper published a two-page attack that I did on him. It was titled “The Gloves are off,” with a sub-title saying: “King of Kenyan pop literature David Maillu claims he taught Prof Chris Wanjala how to write novels, only for him to publish ‘one sad grim book — Drums of Death.”

I was responding to some unwarranted attack he had published on what he thought was my unorthodox way of getting my PhD in African Literature and Political Philosophy.

KEPT HIS DISTANCE

He rued attacking me in the article. Sigei organised successfully for a moment of a handshake apology. From that moment onwards, Prof Wanjala kept his distance.

But my fight with Wanjala had kicked off much earlier in 1975 when I published a mini-book titled NO, which Wanjala devoured and whose contents he used to trash me. He had just established himself as a literary critic long before he engaged in studying for his PhD.

The university exempted him from taking a Master’s degree by virtue of his success as a critic. In fact, a big part of his PhD thesis dwelt on my works.

When I hit back on his attack on my books, the stage was set for many other confrontations. He appeared to have taken a stand to cut me down to the size he wanted. The elephant in the room was that I was not a product of any university he knew.

At that time, he wanted literature lecturers at the University of Nairobi to gang up to discredit any outsider. However, I got support from other writers including Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okot P’Bitek and Micere Mugo, who became Wanjala’s PhD supervisor.

Prof Mugo angered Wanjala when she openly classified me as the most original author.

However, after every fight, Wanjala and I would reconcile and eat a meal together happily. Thank God neither of us took beer, which could have inflamed tempers.

One time he invited me to his country home for two nights. I have also taken him to my countryside home. All along, he remained a family friend. We shared a number of international writers’ workshops, the first one being in Lagos, Nigeria in 1977, and the farthest being in Sweden. In the 1970s, he did some part-time work for my publishing house.

I found Wanjala a most pleasant and harmless man, perhaps because I lived above his criticisms.

He became specifically naughtier when he got his PhD. I became his immediate punching bag because I did not belong to the university gang.

Wanjala was actually bitter for never having written any novel. So, being a critic, he punished those who wrote, although he kept his distance from Ngugi, p, Bitek, lo Liyong, Francis Imbuga and others. But he beat his chest for his PhD, particularly because, although those fellows were producers of literature, he had a PhD in literature when they did not. He thought his doctorate could make up for his failure in creative writing.

He expressed that point blatantly when the famous Nigerian writer, Cyprian Ekwensi visited Kenya and gave a public lecture at the University of Nairobi. Prof Wanjala confronted Ekwensi by asking him to explain why he thought his works were good enough for university consumption yet he, Ekwensi, did not have a PhD. Ekwensi fired back, saying he had read works by Ngugi and others, but he had never found Prof Wanjala anywhere in the radar of writers.