HISTORY is not the past, as it is taught in our schools, or, a mere record of events as narrated in books gathering dust in libraries and archives.

History is a living force in our lives as a people or nation.

It is the heartbeat of our health or sickness as a people or race.

A doctor listens to the heartbeat of a person’s family health history before he can administer a proper treatment.

History is the heartbeat announcing who we are, why we are, how we are, what we are, and where we are today as a people or nation or race.

No one discards their history and expect to live a healthy life.

No people can ignore their history and expect to be proud as a nation.

A tortoise carries its shell wherever it goes.

It cannot survive outside its shell or without its shell.

History is a people’s shell.

They cannot survive outside their history, worldview and values as a people or nation or race. Okot p’ Bitek explains this very clearly in his book, Artist the Ruler where he says:

The history of books, valuable though these works are, exists only as corpses in the graveyards called libraries.

Occasionally some curious fellow would refer to them, especially for examinations or research purposes.

But this type of history is not lived by men in society.

It has no impact or influence for the living of life here and now.

It is not celebrated in the songs or dances of the people in society.

In these books there are plenty of pictures, statues, ruins, and old coins bearing the heads of some ancient ruler or other.

But they do not stir the people in the way a living history does.

History, like all other arts in African tradition, is an integral part of culture.

They are carried inside the head to enliven the entire body of the individual or nation.

In Africa, our common human life is clearly divided into two sections.

The great number of our people live, highly and meaningfully organised lives in the countryside. For them, history is not some story taught by some fellow in the classroom, but a relevant commentary on important current events and issues.

Then there are those who call themselves the ‘middle classes’.

Is this a tacit confession that in their hearts of hearts, some White Chiefs are still the top fellows? Is this a hidden form of abusing their mothers and fathers that they belong to the ‘lower classes’?

When will our professional historians be real leaders, that is, men and women who will, by their contribution, make living, here and now, meaningful to the vast majority of African peoples? For, it is only then that their subject will become a living force in society.

The African of tradition is not much bothered about the distant past.

History to him is strictly a functional business.

He remembers the past which is meaningful; that is, those events and personalities that explain, make meaningful and justify the present.

To the African of tradition ‘history’ is not the record of all events that happened in the past.

It is the living of those events; wars, droughts, famines, migrations, eclipses, floods, the founding, flourishing and decline of chiefdoms, shrines, the rise of great doctors, scientists, agriculturalists.

These are what make history a living and lived experience in peoples’ lives, here and now.

If the cultured African is uninterested in the distant past, he is not interested, in the least, about the beginning or end of time.

History is life as lived by men and women in society.

It has impact, influence and importance for the living of life here and now.

It is celebrated in song and dance during people’s ceremonies as a lived reality which stirs in the minds and hearts of living men and women in the here and now.

History, like all other arts, is an integral part of culture which is carried inside the head to enliven the entire body of the individual in society as a living thing and progressive force.

The great number of African people lives highly and meaningfully organised lives in the countryside, for them history is not some story taught by some fellow in the classroom, but a relevant commentary on important current events and issues.

It is only then that history becomes a living force in society.

But, I suggest, this exercise will be futile, unless the concept of history or time as understood by our people in the villages is taken as the basis of our endeavours.

In African traditional thought, there is no concept of history moving ‘forward’ towards a future climax, or towards an end of the world.

The notion of a messianic hope or a final destruction of the world has no place in the traditional concept of history.

But what about the concept of ‘progress’, or ‘development’ as understood by our political leaders and so-called intellectuals?

In Uganda there is a political party song which goes: “Uganda, eh, Uganda! Uganda, Uganda! “We are going forward!”

Forward to where?

In Zimbabwe there is a party called Movement for Democratic Change.

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