Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
Prof John Habwe / HANDOUT
The passing of Prof John Habwe (1962-25) is a personal loss and a collective rupture in the intellectual fabric of East Africa. His life, quiet yet profound, did not blaze in the flamboyant defiance of the early postcolonial scribes. It glowed with a steady, unyielding flame, making it the illumination of Kiswahili literature and scholarship that will not easily dim.
To write a requiem for a professor is to recognise that he embodied a vital permutation in the cultural logic of Kenyan letters, from the performative rebellion of the 1970s to a deeper, more refined struggle fought through scholarship, mentorship and the dignified mastery of language.
Habwe’s life was not about spectacle. It pursued substance more. Where the earlier generation of writers wore their resistance visibly — unkempt hair, dusty sandals, a studied slovenliness — the late author proved that the decolonial struggle could also be carried within polished shoes and crisp suits.
His rebellion was not diminished by elegance; rather, it was amplified by it. By percolating, mastering and reshaping the very institutions that once excluded African thought, he demonstrated that true intellectual freedom does not reside in aesthetic rejection but in the confident ability to claim and transform knowledge.
At the University of Nairobi, where his academic journey began as a tutorial fellow in 1989 and culminated in full professorship by 2023, Habwe built a legacy of mentorship and rigour. He supervised countless postgraduate students, leaving behind an intellectual lineage that will continue to shape Kiswahili studies long after his departure. He chaired the Department of Linguistics and Languages (2011-13) and later the Department of Kiswahili (2013-16), steering both with steady hands and a vision rooted in service.
His students, like Iribe Mwangi, the current chairperson of his department, remember him as approachable and meticulous. Many have eulogised him in the dailies as a teacher who did not impose knowledge and preferred rather to invite inquiry. In this, he was both an academic and a cultural architect, building a home for Kiswahili in the heart of Kenyan academia.
Yet to reduce Habwe to an administrator would be to miss his essence. He was above all a scribe, and his creative works are where his social vision percolates most clearly. Maisha Kitendawili (Life is a Riddle), published in 2000, is one of his most compelling narratives. In it, Habwe dissects the unpredictable, often paradoxical nature of human existence in postcolonial Kenya.
This book remains one of his finest artistic achievements in my opinion as a multilingual literary critic. It speaks about our individual struggles and the collective uncertainties of a postcolony still defining itself decades after independence without easy solutions.
A decade later, he released Pamba (Cotton), ranked by pundits as another of his significant contributions to Kiswahili literature. Its protagonist, a disillusioned intellectual, becomes a symbol of a society that has abandoned its scholars. In a country where the phrase elimu hailipi (education does not pay) has become an astringent refrain, this book is both lament and critique.
It exposes the structural failures and corruption that waste the promise of bright minds, suggesting that when education is devalued, society itself suffers decline. In this work, Habwe speaks to a broader philosophical anxiety of Kenyans: the alienation of the intellectual in a consumerist and politically unstable society.
If his fiction wrestled with the contradictions of Kenyan life, his scholarship sought to give Kiswahili the tools to speak with precision and authority. Seventeen years ago, Habwe, me and others attended the Arusha conference on the role of Kiswahili in the regional integration of East Africa. I argued for the need for an EAC-run regional radio to champion this cause. Both our presentations were published in a special issue of the Journal of Pan African Studies (JPAS) in 2009.
In his paper, Habwe argued that Kiswahili is a vital force for East African integration. He posited that the language is more than just a communication tool. It is a popular lingua franca that reflects a unique, evolving sociocultural identity shared by our diverse communities.
He acknowledged that globalisation and the spread of major world languages like English, as well as an increasing allegiance to native languages, pose significant challenges. He concluded that despite these hurdles, Kiswahili’s capacity to unify East Africa remains profoundly important.
He applied pragmatics and discourse analysis to local contexts in his works, such as Discourse Analysis of Swahili Political Speeches (1999) and Politeness Phenomena: A Case of Kiswahili Honorifics (2010). His research revealed how power, respect and authority are negotiated in everyday Kiswahili. By showing how politicians, elders and ordinary Kenyans use language to influence others, Habwe taught us that language is a stage for power.
Habwe’s commitment to Kiswahili extended far beyond the academy. He contributed to radio programmes such as Lugha Yetu and Mjadala and advocated for the establishment of a Kiswahili Council as well as the use of Kiswahili among international organisations working in Africa, some of which he worked for, such as the World Health Organisation.
What emerges from this dual life of the creative and the scholar is a portrayal of a man committed to a singular vision: that Kiswahili is not only a language of the hearth and the marketplace but also of the university, the courtroom and the global stage. He believed that the liberation of African thought required the elevation of African languages, and he devoted his life to that task.
Prof JH Habwe’s legacy is, to me, manifold. First, he leaves behind a body of creative work that probes the paradoxes of postcolonial life. Second, his scholarly contributions, particularly in pragmatics and grammar, have provided future generations with the tools to study Kiswahili with academic rigour. Third, his mentorship has ensured that his intellectual lineage will persist in dozens of students who carry his spirit into classrooms and communities across East Africa. A luta continua.
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.