Micere Mugo: Liberation literature icon takes final bow

The late Prof Micere Mugo died on June 30, 2023, at the age of 80. [File, Standard]

Micere Githae Mugo, who has died at the age of 80, was a pioneering Kenyan author and academic at the vanguard of Kenya and Africa's artistic and cultural revival. It's a role that she discharged without wavering, first in 1961, when she was deployed to join then white-only Limuru Girls High School in colonial Kenya.

In a virtual celebration to mark her 80th birthday last December, Micere said the intent of the multiracial experiment was to confirm that African students were as bright as whites. This is not conjecture; the Eugenics movement in colonial Kenya of 1930s held that the mental development of a grown African compared to an eight-year European boy.