<ccs@beattie.uct.ac.za>
Date:   20 August 1998


===============================================================
The following obituary, by Mary Burnett <adbb@warthog.ru.ac.za>
appeared in a Grahamstown paper. Mary Burnett has kindly
agreed to let it be posted on H-Africa.
===============================================================


Professor Emeritus John Omer-Cooper (66) died after a short illness
at his retirement home in New Zealand on July 31 this year.

The following appreciation of his life has been compiled from the
recollections of Associate Professor Dorothy Page, head of the
department of History at the University of Otago, New Zealand; Dr
Julia Wells, acting head of the department of History at Rhodes
University and his sister, Phoebe Carnegie.

When someone asked John Omer Cooper why he had become an academic,
he said it was because his handwriting was so awful: in South Africa,
where he grew up, applicants for jobs were required to apply in their
own handwriting. It is a story that John's colleagues, and now more
than two decades of his students who have struggled to decipher his
particular style of hieroglyphics, will relate to. But the stories
people tell about themselves are always revealing and the
self-deprecating, whimsical touch of this one is entirely typical of
an appealingly modest man. It was not from John we learned that during
a lecture tour of Southern African universities in 1991 he was greeted
by students, brought up on his work at secondary as well as tertiary
level, as a 'living legend'.

John Omer Cooper put down deep roots in two countries, his country of
upbringing and his country of adoption. Born in Newcastle-on-Tyne in
1931, he went as a small child to Grahamstown, South Africa, when his
father became Professor of Zoology at Rhodes University.

He matriculated top of the class at St Andrew's College, Grahamstown
in 1948 and read for a first degree at Rhodes, majoring in History and
Philosophy, followed by an Honours degree in Philosophy. He was one of
many students to benefit from the teaching of Professor Winnie Maxwell
John went on to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he took a BA
(subsequently MA) in History in 1955. Three years later he gained an
MA, with Distinction in Philosophy, from Rhodes for a thesis on
'Freedom in the Political Thought of John Locke and John Stuart Mill'.

The years 1955 to 1965 were spent in the History Department at
University College, lbadan, Nigeria, where he taught courses in the
History of Political Thought to students taking the General and
Honours degrees of the University of London, and subsequently degrees
of the University of lbadan. He played a major part in devising the
degree structure of the Arts Faculty when the University College
became a full University. He was the first editor of the journal of
the Historical Society of Nigeria, and also founded a more popular
journal of African history for teachers and the general public. As a
member of the History panel of the West African Examinations Council
he wrote one of the new syllabuses for African history '0' level and
for two years was Chief Examiner.

In 1966 John became foundation professor at the newly-established
University of Zambia, in Lusaka, the year the first students were
admitted. John built up the History department from a one-person
operation to a complement of eleven staff. He was the first president
of the Historical Association of Zambia, in which capacity he produced
visual and documentary material on Africa for schools.

During his years at Lusaka, until 1973, John was the first Dean of the
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, served as a member of the
University Council and the Senate Steering Committee and a number of
planning committees. From 1971 to 1973 he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor and
on several occasions, some extensive, acting Vice-Chancellor. John's
opposition to apartheid kept him out of South Africa, but at the same
time it was not easy for a white academic in the emergent states of
black Africa. John had worked in Nigeria over the distressing period
of the civil war there, and in Lusaka there was a near miss with a
letter bomb. The time came to move to a more liberal and less volatile
society.

In 1974 John took up a chair in the History Department at Otago
University, New Zealand and set about developing the African history
courses which gained a large and enthusiastic following among students
and which are unique in New Zealand. Generously giving his energies to
teaching in other areas as well, John also served as lad of Department
for three terms, for five years from 1977, for eighteen months in
1986-7 and from 1993 to 1995.

John's list of publications is distinguished. In addition to a
number of chapters in books, including The Cambridge History of
Africa, he has produced two major works that are used wherever
African history is taught. The Zulu Aftermath (1966), the only
comprehensive book on the Southern African Mfecane, has classic
status. The History of Southern Africa (1987), which appeared in a
completely revised edition, to critical acclaim, in 1994 , is used as
a text in major universities in the United States, as well as in South
Africa.

John's commitment to his country of adoption was strengthened by his
marriage in 1982 to Shirley, a New Zealander. They shared a love for
Central Otago and enjoyed cross-country skiing, tramping or canoeing,
according to season -but especially fly fishing, a skill John
developed to a very high degree.

He spoke Xhosa fluently and when he came home to South Africa after
many years absence could immediately converse with African people in
their own language.

His sister remembers him as a man of substance with many interests
trout fishing, scuba diving and archery. "He was a wonderful
counsellor and was much loved by his students. He was a very active
man and spent his last few weeks dictating the last few chapters of a
book he wanted to complete".

Dr Julia Wells remembers: "He once spoke to my students at the
University of Zimbabwe and nearly moved them to tears with his
account of how he came to dedicate his life to the study of African
history. He described his early childhood in Kenya and then the shock
of moving to South Africa where racial attitudes were so much more
firmly ingrained. It was his own sense of pain and injustice that
prompted him to do all he could to promote a positive image of the
African past."

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