Chakava’s legacy: A timely and sober look at our publishing family

Feel, think, then write. This is one of my pieces of advice to my students of creative and critical writing. I suggest that effective writing consists in the three-link chain of deeply-felt and internalised experience, skilful and analytical reflection and clear and articulate expression.

I had to go back to these basic tips in the face of this week’s breath-taking developments in the literary and general book world.

Still struggling to internalise the events, I have decided not to dwell on personalities, not even on my friend, Henry Chakava, whose departure has shaken our writing, publishing and reading family to its foundations.

After all, what could I meaningfully add to the unanimous avalanche of tributes, eulogies, encomia and threnodies accompanying this giant of African publishing to his final rest?

I thought it befitting, however, to reflect briefly on the profession that Henry Chakava mightily practised among us, and which made him unreservedly loved and admired wherever the book is respected.

As with all those fully consumed by a passion for what they do, Chakava lifted publishing way high up above a job and a profession. For him, publishing was a vocation, a calling, a mission. But I just said I would not talk personalities.

Let us get back to publishing, tracing it back to the time Chakava entered it, and following it down to where it is today. The publisher, you see, is a kind of midwife to the pregnant writer. When the writer or author conceives the baby of his or her story, s/he needs the services of the publisher to have that baby safely delivered to the world of the reader.

The process is long and complex, comprising many stages and activities, such as manuscript commissioning, assessment, editorial advice, technical production (including designing, setting and printing, storage, distribution), promotion, marketing and author contracts and remuneration.

The professionals will fill us in on the details. I can only speak with confidence on what I have experienced as an author with my publishers, and what I think could improve our relationship. Looking back on the East African scene, publishing local works by local authors was not, initially, the main aim of the international publishers who set up shop, mainly in Nairobi, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Their purpose was to import their European-produced books and sell them to us, who were their colonial dependants and subjects anyway.

A few notable divergences from this norm might be noted, with due credit. First, the missionaries went early into book production and publication, with the obvious aim of spreading the “Word” that had brought them to the continent. Thus you got the faith-based printing and publishing centres, like those in Kabgayi in Rwanda, Marianum in Kisubi-Entebbe in Uganda, Biblia Husema in Kijabe, Kenya, and Peramiho in Tanzania.

Secondly, with the rise of nationalism and political awareness, there came the secular productions, especially of periodical materials, of wananchi, who were increasingly realising the power of the printed word. Scholars and researchers are still enlightening us about the Grogan (Kirinyaga) Road publications, and, of course, the highly respected Gakaara Press of Karatina.

It was probably in recognition of the power of these local language publications, that the East African Common Services Organisation (a forerunner of the East African Community) set up the Eagle Press (later the East African Literature Bureau), to publish texts mainly in Kiswahili and other indigenous languages.

The revolution that Chakava and his contemporaries spearheaded at the multinational publishing houses consisted in publishing texts in local languages but also in encouraging East Africans to write prolifically in English. After all, English had been accepted, however grudgingly (shingo upande), as one of our main languages of communication.

This transition might look easy and obvious today, but it was not so in the 1960s and 1970s. A classic illustration of the struggle is the legendary series of rejections that Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino received from international publishing houses. When it was taken up by the then-obscure local East African Publishing House, it became “one of the best-selling (English) poems” of the twentieth century!

Fast forward to the present, I speak from the struggling author’s point of view. We have many good reasons to pride in the publishing industry that Henry Chakava, John Nottingham, Abdulla Ismailly, Jonathan Kariara, Ellen Kitonga, Fred Ojienda and their contemporaries built on the foundations of international publishing. Those of us who had the good luck of working with these luminaries and lovers of the published word remember the tenderness and respect with which we were treated by our publishers.

Our publishers were our friends, our benefactors and our protectors. You have heard how Chakava stood up for and defended his authors in the harsh times of the open persecution of writers and other intellectuals.

The halls and boardrooms of publishing houses were places of regular retreat and repose for us, admittedly occasionally chaotic authors. These days you often have to fight through multiple physical, electronic and human barriers before you can get to your editor or publishing manager.

Above all, publishers respected and adhered to the contracts they made with authors. Royalty statements were regularly dispatched to authors every year, and if there were payments to be made, they were promptly settled.

The best of our publishers still abide by these good practices, and a few of us are lucky to be working for such decent people. But stories of errant and negligent operators abound in the field. Tired of the indignity of having to beg for their royalties, some authors resort to working in stone quarries for their survival.

“It’s painful not only to starve penniless as an author,” a fairly well-known author said to me recently, “but also to be ashamed of your publishers because they don’t pay your royalties.” The greatest honour that we can do for our Founding Parents in publishing is to ensure that such lamentations are never heard again.

- Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and [email protected]@yahoo.com