Indagasi's sly dig at Micere more about his failure than her intellect

Prof Micere Mugo gives a public lecture at the Riara University on in 2015. [File, Standard]

Death is a common occurrence, but the reaction to it depends on the stature of the person when alive on earth. The remains of the rich and famous get more attention and better treatment than those of the rest of humanity who might be thrown away like trash.

In pre-colonial days in the Mount Kenya region, for instance, the ordinary were reportedly left in the wilderness for hyenas to devour and help keep the environment clean. The treatment was, however, different when a rich man died because a bull also died in order to cleanse the homestead and provide ‘muguguta’ or wet hide in which to wrap the rich man’s body before burying it.

There are also separations in the academic world when academics die. Those who made big impact and have influence get intellectual as well as other acknowledgements. Two Kenyan academics received global intellectual treatment when they died.

The two were first Ali Mazrui, the Mombasa boy who loved verbal combat and second Micere Githae Mugo, the Kirinyaga girl who loved pricking official conscious. When Mazrui died in 2016, Micere was there in New York to break Islamic tradition and speak in a Mosque, a non-Muslim woman, in honour of Mazrui. Micere Mugo, like Mazrui before her, died in New York and attracted a lot of attention from academics and political activists.

By using their intellectual prowess to advocate political activism and reportedly ‘speak truth to power’, they had made academic brilliance a weapon of intellectual warfare to advance social justice. In death, they were both honoured in New York and in Nairobi. Although Mazrui was not there in 2023, many who had joined Micere to honour Mazrui were similarly there to honour Micere. There appeared to be competition to honour her in Syracuse, New York and in Nairobi.

Brilliant and beautiful

The University of Nairobi, once Kenya’s intellectual hub, and the National Theatre that was once colonially exclusive, opened their doors to celebrate Micere’s life. In both places, it was in social change propelled by letters that captured the Micere imagination. She was one of their own who, as Ngugi wa Thiongo remarked, was brilliant and beautiful.

Not all academics, however, were impressed. At the University of Nairobi, Henry Indagasi was her junior colleague in the Department of Literature and does not think highly of her both as an intellectual or a person. He was part of a team of academics, along with William Ochieng who seemed to have a mission to defend the ‘state’ against intellectual Mau Maus who included Ngugi, Mazrui, and Micere.

Ochieng enjoyed lambasting Ngugi as ‘tribalist’ and Mazrui as overrated when compared to his academic mentor, Bethwell Ogot. Ochieng’s beef with either Mazrui or Ngugi was that they attracted more attention from the world of scholars as intellectual troubleshooters than he or his establishment ‘friends’ could. And they knew their intellectual distance. Indagasi was therefore not alone in the noble occupation of defending the establishment against ‘intellectual Mau Maus’ of which Micere was a respectable member.

In a 1984 lecture at UCLA on “The Battle of the Mind: A Matter of Life or Death”, Micere lamented universities losing their intellectual mission. As thinkers went to prison, argued Casper Awuondo Odegi in “The Rise of the Cheering Crowd”, those who remained struggled to keep safe distance from Kamiti Maximum Prison.

Micere dedicated her lecture to Mau Mau defender Maina wa Kinyatti, one of those in jail. For her, jailing thinkers robbed Africans of control of their intellect in a life and death ‘battle of the mind’. In the long-running battle over who should interpret Africa, Micere wanted Africans to do the interpreting. Her critics differed. Upon Micere’s death, Indagasi’s quick attempt to disgrace her person and intellect roused questions about his own honour and sense of ‘utu’.

His problem, it turned out that he was a man of the establishment practically defending the institutions that she had targeted in her intellectual activism. Micere was not the first to face the wrath of Indagasi’s literary pen; he had also used it on Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Micere’s colleague in intellectual socio-activism. Together, Ngugi and Micere had written a play, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, making the Mau Mau leader and the war heroic.

Although not everyone in the establishment was amused, their stature in the world of literature and social activism went up and elicited much envy. Indagasi was probably among the envious and his commentaries sounded like sour grapes. His fault, however, was not in faulting Micere, it was in doing something fundamentally un-African; attacking the dead. Indagasi was alone in disrespecting the dead, although he at least received the attention he probably desired, to be placed next to Ngugi and Micere as people of the pen.

The others either kept their respectful silence or joined in acknowledging Micere’s contribution to social activism through thinking. Not even his students at the University of Nairobi wanted anything to do with Indagasi’s personal attack on one of Kenya’s literary icons. She had, instead inspired them into intellectual activism, the activism of the mind confronting orchestrated injustice.

Among her admirers were former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga and current Chief Justice Martha Koome. Royal Media owner SK Macharia who had also suffered State harassment as a family member and friend gave her appropriate media coverage in and outside Kenya. Celebrating her life as a woman of letters, and her ability to prick social consciousness was his befitting send-off to a beautiful, brilliant, and brash Kirinyaga girl named Micere Githae Mugo.

Prof Munene is a scholar of history and international relations