Remembering the father of East African poetry

The death of Prof David Rubadiri has robbed Africa and indeed the world of a truly phenomenal literary figure.

According to his son, Kwame, Prof Rubadiri broke his hip two months ago. He was recovering at home, “but died very suddenly from what appears to be the impact of a blood clot in his lungs.”

Born in 1930, Rubadiri had celebrated his 88th birthday on July 19.

Poet

With his poem ‘An African Thunderstorm,’ Rubadiri was the sole Malawian contributor to Modern Poetry of Africa, the 1963 Penguin anthology edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier.

Rubadiri also represented his country with another poem, ‘Thoughts after Work,’ which was published in You Better Believe It: Black Verse in English from Africa, the West Indies and the United States, yet another Penguin publication.

Other anthologies that also carried Rubadiri’s poetry included A Book of African Verse published by Heinemann in 1964; Poetry from Africa, published by Pergamon Press in 1969 and Drum Beat, published by East African Publishing House in 1967.

Although the floodgate of Rubadiri’s fecund creativity would later burst open, as one commentator puts it, he had made his entry into the literary world much earlier, in the late 50s, when his poetry was published in Penpoint, the Makerere college magazine.

In consequent years other Rubadiri poems would be showcased in such prestigious international publications as Transition, Black Orpheus and Présence Africaine.

Memorable moments

Speaking about his connection with Kenya and Uganda, the author, known for such memorable poems as “Stanley Meets Mutesa”, said he would be in the latter country during the following year to marry off one of his daughters.

The poet attended King’s College, Budo, in Uganda from 1941 to 1950. It was while there that the creative bug first bit the young Rubadiri after his African and British teachers planted the seed of love for literature.

After Budo Rubadiri joined Makerere University College, where he was between 1952 and 1956, studying for a BA in Literature, History and Geography, and graduating with a first class honours degree in 1955.

After leaving Makerere, Rubadiri joined Bristol University in England, where he studied from 1956, earning a post-graduate diploma in Education and winning the poetry prize.

Soon afterwards he headed back home to Malawi and began work at Dedza Secondary School, a new institution south of Lilongwe, where he was to remain for several years teaching Literature, History and Geography, his majors at Makerere.

Later, between 1960 and 1962, he was at King’s College, Cambridge, where he earned an MA in English Literature.

It was while at Makerere that the budding poet married Gertrude, his first wife. In later years Rubadiri, the quintessential African, was to take a second wife, Janet. A Ugandan nurse of Rwandese origin, she was working at the famous Mulago Hospital, and still lives in Kampala.

A teacher and diplomat

During the 2013 interview, Rubadiri remarked that too many writers of his generation had died, among them his old buddy John Ruganda, Chinua Achebe and Cyprian Ekwensi. Also gone was the Cameroonian Ferdinand Oyono, another writer-diplomat who had been his colleague at the United Nations.

Ironically, Rubadiri had himself been ailing for some years, and was not in the best of shapes. In fact, he had come to Nairobi for treatment, in addition to touching base with his progeny.

At Malawi’s independence in 1964 Rubadiri was appointed his country’s first ambassador to the United States and the United Nations.

However, in 1965 he left the Malawian government and broke ranks with President Kamuzu Banda. He was reappointed to the position soon after Banda’s death in 1997.

On completing his diplomatic tenure, Rubadiri was named vice-chancellor of the University of Malawi in 2000.

Years earlier he went through a life of exile, teaching first in Uganda, then Kenya and Nigeria.

Before his death, Rubadiri was living in quiet retirement on a two-acre plot located five hours by bus from Lilongwe, not far from his ancestral home of Likoma Island, on the northern extremes of Lake Malawi.