Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Kenya’s most famous man of letters, is dead. In the coming days, weeks, months and even years, literary discourse in Kenya and around the world will be dominated by the question of how much he contributed to art and impacted the collective lot of humankind.
That he was a hero of artistic activism is an understatement. He won numerous awards and was at the forefront of our country’s artistic representation globally. He co-sponsored the de-Anglicisation of the Literature Department at University of Nairobi, and sought to point us in the direction of identitarian reclamation by incessantly making the case for a return to vernacular languages in our literary expression as an important, potent tool of cultural assertiveness.
His literary works were mostly inspired by and based on events in our country that have united us continually for close to 80 years—the struggle for independence from colonialism; the pinpricks of post-colonial landlessness, corruption, tribalism and underdevelopment; the long-hoped-for fidelity to constitutionalism, integrity, competence, meritocracy and best practices on the part of holders of public office; and the collective yearning for good governance, equal development and equitable representation.
How we treated Prof Ngugi, however, remains a reflection—and a sad commentary—on our relationship with genius, art, truth and the free expression of the self. Those in power, especially, sought to blunt the socio-political effect of his artistic activism by having him arrested and, ultimately, exiled. They were inexplicably made uncomfortable both by his living in Kenya and the staging of his plays here. And the fact that the rest of the world conspired to deny him the distinction of being a Nobel Prize winner likely made those who felt threatened by him gleeful.
We named neither a road nor a college department after him. Many of us never read his books. And some of his fellow scholars, who were compatriots of his, famously impugned his literary prowess. His own son even dredged up a past episode of marital disharmony that some injudiciously turned into a goad to derogate his credentials as an artist of note, prize-worthiness and respectability.
Ngugi has rested like a war hero whose exploits on battlefields abroad his countrymen can only distantly relate to. Many will recall the intellectual slug-fest a few years ago, that pitted American literary critic Carol Sicherman against our very own Prof Henry Indangasi, spawned by differences of opinion on the “acclaimworthiness” of Ngugi as a writer and thinker.
It is in our national nature as Kenyans to pretend to celebrate our heroes and heroines only after they are dead. Ngugi won’t be an exception. We only put up a statue in honour of Tom Mboya a few years ago. And Wangari Maathai had a road renamed after her following years of State-sanctioned victimisation for her conservation work. Some, such as Pio Gama Pinto, JM Kariuki and Chelagat Mutai, however, have yet to be properly feted. Ours is regrettably a society of after-death heroes and heroines.
Ngugi was not under-celebrated because he did not win the prestigious Nobel Prize. He was not because we refused to recognise and embrace him for the true son of Kenya and hero he was. In fact, he would have felt happier and more fulfilled for our recognition and celebration of him and his talent than for Nobel Prize-level reverence by the outside world. He blazed the trail for many on the local literary scene. And it was partly thanks to his unmatched artistic renown that even his persecutors came to appreciate the magical nature of storytelling.
His rich literary corpus across multiple genres includes the novels ‘Weep Not, Child’ (1964), ‘The River Between’ (1965), ‘A Grain of Wheat’ (1967), ‘Petals of Blood’ (1977), ‘Devil on the Cross’ (1980), ‘Wizard of the Crow’ (2006) and ‘The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi’ (2019); short story anthologies ‘A Meeting in the Dark’ (1974), ‘Secret Lives and Other Stories’ (1976) and ‘Minutes of Glory and Other Stories’ (2019); and plays ‘The Black Hermit’ (1963), ‘This Time Tomorrow’ (1970), ‘The Trial of Dedan Kimathi’ (with Micere Mugo, 1976), ‘I Will Marry When I Want’ (with Ngugi wa Mirii, 1977) and ‘Mother, Sing for Me’ (1986).
Other titles include the memoirs ‘Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary’ (1981), ‘Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir’ (2010), ‘In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir’ (2012), ‘Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer’s Awakening’ (2016) and ‘Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir’ (2018); essays and non-fiction ‘Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics’ (1972), ‘Education for a National Culture’ (1981), ‘Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya’ (1983), ‘Writing Against Neo-Colonialism’ (1986), ‘Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature’ (1986), ‘Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms’ (1993), ‘Pen points, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa’ (1998), ‘Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance’ (2009), ‘Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing’ (2012), ‘Secure the Base: Making Africa Visible in the Globe’ (2016) and ‘The Language of Languages’ (2023); and children’s books ‘Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus’ (1986), ‘Njamba Nene and the Cruel Chief’ (1988), ‘Njamba Nene’s Pistol’ (1990) and ‘The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright’ (2019).
That Ngugi—with all his genius and love for this country—lived and died abroad for political hostility back home is a testimony of our reputational pretension as the land of “hakuna matata”! Our treatment of him and his works, in contradistinction to the relative favour he received and enjoyed abroad, is an indictment of our own belief in the character hue that both makes and defines Kenya.
By Mulang’o Baraza