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BY JOSEPH ADERO NGALA
NAIROBI-KENYA
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2011

After being away for slightly over a decade as a political refugee, Prof. Korwa Gombe Adar is back in Kenya and currently teaching at the United States International University- Africa (USIU) in Nairobi where he has taken up a professorship position in International Relations.

Talking about Prof. Adar, many students who encounter him do not forget him. His appearance generates electricity unmatched by few on earth. That explains for instance why in rural Luo Nyanza villages in Kenya where he hails from, many children and academicians alike have named and copied after Korwa Adar’s charisma. It may also be the only conceivable reason why some Luo musicians have featured him saying-Japuonj a Luo word meaning teacher against this background.

Korwa is one man who believes that rule of law, democracy and respect for human rights is a must in Africa and cannot be taken for granted. Years back when he took President Daniel Arap Moi while negotiating University lectures salaries- he famously said that “leaders in the other parts of the world, particularly in Africa, who have also displayed the tendency to think themselves indispensable, and the desire to hold on to power, must learn a singular lesson: The people must ultimately prevail.”

Prof Korwa Adar is a middle- aged man who walks very majestic and has combative nature which he belies his slight frame. He keeps himself very clean with his hair is always trimmed short and well combed. He mostly wears African short-sleeve shirts that make him very distinct from other lectures. He certainly looks like an academic militant. He is a gifted man with unconventional writing style and a humble personality that has established him as one of Africa’s political scientist icons.

Prof Korwa is unapologetic about what President Moi did to him by harassing his families and locked him in for some time until he was helped by the Minister for land Hon. James Orengo and his wife Betty Murungi to escape to South Africa through Jomo Kenyatta international Airport.

In a recent interview he was quoted as saying that he will always be very grateful to among others, Paul Muite, Gibson Kuria Kamau, and Gitobu Imanyara for sticking their heads to be his lawyers during those hard times under dictator President Daniel Arap Moi.

Prof. Adar must be a moral force. He was by unfazed by the widespread opprobrium that stemmed from his popular writings on International Relations and his clean-cut statements as he explained to me in an interview a month ago. “One sheer philosophical core is that it always goes back to the sanctity of the human being.”

In a year when so many people lamented on the decline in moral values or made excuses for bad behaviour, Adar forcefully set forth his vision of the good life and urged the world to follow such rectitude- or recklessness as his detractors would have it.

He is one of the best Academicians Kenya has produced in recent times. That is why Dr Musambayi Katumanga, one of his past students describes him as a Kenya giant of political science knowledge. His philosophy is here to stay for many years to come and he will be cherished by many political science students from this generation henceforth.

At the moment Prof. Adar is widely quoted by scholars who say this with a lot of pride after reading a lot of his work and also from being their teacher. They all have no second thoughts towards defending his academic excellence. Phoebeans Oriaro a graduate student in International Relations in USIU and an agricultural expert hails Prof. Adar as a strong Kenyan academician.

Prof. Adar is sometime dubbed the Kenya spring shocked President Moi when he called first Lectures strike of five public Universities in Kenya, an unbelievable feat that a small man like Korwa and a mere lecture at the University of Nairobi could call a strike. It was like a revolution, a feat that nobody could think off under President Daniel Arap Moi. He ought to be remembered on one “mashuja day” if Kenya is to live so many years.

His sentiments on the plight of lecturers during the Moi regime are captured in Korwa G. Adar – Human Rights and Academic Freedom in Kenya’s Public Universities: The Case of the Universities’ Academic Staff Union, Human Rights Quarterly 21.1 (1999) 179-206.

Prof. Adar is a man who believes that the wind of change that has been sweeping the African Continent since the end of the Cold War has rekindled and catalyzed demands for respect for human rights and the establishment of viable and durable democratic institutions. Talking in his small office at USIU where he heads the department of international Relations, a job he really enjoys, as well as him being a great researcher.

He says that these demands are, of course, not new or alien to the millions of oppressed people of Africa. The main difference however, are that the lone voices that have consistently challenged the autocratic, oppressive, and one-party regimes in Africa since independence are now being joined by a large number of groups advocating for human rights, democracy, and multiparty state systems.

During the Cold War, more than 90 percent of the independent sovereign states in Africa were ruled by autocratic civilian and military regimes. However, even with the absence of the Cold War, most of the African countries have still not laid the foundation for democratic rule.

A second reason that makes the current demands for change different is that the Western donor countries, which originally supported the oppressive and dictatorial one-party regimes in Africa during the Cold War now favour democracy and the rule of law.

As argued in one of his works, “the resurgence of the democratization movement in Africa in the post-Cold War era is gradually replacing authoritarianism with forms of democratic systems. These changes have put into question the traditional ‘big man’ image of African states’ foreign policy and foreign policy making.”

On his writing, Adar says, “yes l have done a lot of academic writing but surely one cannot live off writing whether fiction or academic in Africa. But that is not an excuse. Those of us who have salaries employment owe it to our society to write works of art and publishers too owe it to society to publish them.”

When he talks about President Moi he simply says it was common to identify the African state and its foreign policy with the belief, psychological or personal whims of the Africa president in power as best captured by an amusing play of words of a famous French phrase to describe the nature of Kenyan politics under President Daniel Arap Moi “L’Etat C’est Moi”

One of his prominent works is Globalization and Emerging Trends in African States Foreign Policy-Making Process: A Comparative Perspective of Southern Africa (Making of Modern Africa) co-edited with Rok Ajulu. The book was edited when he was down in South Africa where he was an Associate Professor of International Studies and Dr Rok Ajulu, Senior Lecturer of International Political Economy, both at International Studies Unit, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.

The text book is hailed as one of the first books of its kind to focus on the foreign policy-making process of Southern African countries in the era of globalization with instructive and rewarding case studies contextualize the increasing involvement of other internal actors in African states foreign policy-making process. Foreign policy actors such as the Presidency, Ministries of Defence, Foreign Affairs, Trade, Finance and the Intelligence Community, among others, are examined in a comparative perspective.

Prof. Korwa Adar was born in Sori south Nyanza in what is today called Migori country among the Luo community of Kenya. He started his studies in a simple school near his home village. That is to say that he was a more of a village boy brought up in a strict Seventh Day Adventist Church.

His mother is still alive, born of seven children. As a child he tendered the cattle and he knew them by their names and he played with his age mates. He was this is man from a humble beginning that rose to hit the headline during the dictator President Daniel Arap Moi era.

Prof. Korwa Gombe Adar received his MA and PhD in International Studies at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA. Prior to joining Rhodes University in 1997, he taught at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

His articles have appeared in numerous internationally peer refereed journals. He has also widely published text books and contributed numerous chapters in edited works. He was one of the recipients of the 1992 Fulbright Research Grant for Senior African Scholars.

He fled to South Africa where took his first job at the Rhodes University then moved to Cape town where he lived most of his life in exile until he returned to Kenya under the Kibaki regime. He is married to a Nyakach lady, Jane Adar and they have three children.

He is always very grateful for his wife’s support during their hard time in exile. She worked hard to raise the family and supported me in any way a mother should do. He also thanks many in Kenya, his former students who prayed for him and those people who worked so hard to see the second liberation.

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