How Ngugi's pen landed him in prison and later sent him into exile

Author professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o during an interview with the standard on 7/2/19. [File, Standard]

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a man whose pen entertained, annoyed, dazzled, and made English sound as if it was Gikuyu, has departed the earth. He saw the ending of territorial colonialism and was part of the transition excitement that escorted colonialism out and ushered independence in. He wrote 'The Way I see it' column in the newly established Nation newspaper as James Ngugi.

At Alliance High School, Carey Francis drilled pupils and staff on two issues. First, he stressed the goodness of British universities while disparaging American education. Second, he conditioned his students to be suspicious and to despise the Gikuyu as a people, mainly because of the Mau Mau War. If independence came, he warned, the “Kikuyu” would dominate other tribes. Subsequently, Benjamin Kipkorir later wrote that he confronted his classmates to know which one would dominate him.

From Alliance, Ngugi went to Makerere and started writing plays, short stories, and novels such as 'The River Between' and 'Weep Not Child' which pupils in primary and secondary schools started reading with enthusiasm because they could relate with them.

With independence, Ngugi systematically changed into a critic of Kenya as an emerging neo-colonial state. While in Leeds University for graduate studies, he wrote 'A Grain of Wheat', expressing disappointment in politicians who collected money to buy land only to cheat and own the land.

In Nairobi University’s English Department, he agitated for change of orientation from ‘English’ to ‘Literature’ in order to cater for literature in Africa and other regions; he succeeded. More than forcing change in the university academic orientation, he wrote plays and books that were increasingly critical of the post-colonial state that neglected its Mau Mau freedom fighters.

He staged plays in which ordinary people acted themselves, in voicing their unhappiness. He praised historian Maina wa Kinyatti as the voice of Mau Mau while others appeared to condone the suppression of what Mau Mau represented. His play, 'Ngaahika Ndenda', and the novel 'Petals of Blood' landed him in detention.

His detention was in line with the 1968 constitutional changes that allowed the government to detain anyone it thought was a threat to the State. Using his pen, Ngugi was such a person; a rebel of the mind. He spent time in jail writing, reportedly, on toilet paper 'Caitani Mutharaba-ini', an anti-neocolonial book.

The detention of Ngugi in 1978 was world news, portraying Kenyatta as an intolerant man in his last days on earth. Thoughts of Kenyatta’s potential death had dominated Kenya’s potential succession power play and probably accounted for strange deaths including those of Tom Mboya and JM Kariuki. The politics of Kenyatta’s death had started while he was in jail, remained through the Mboya-Oginga Odinga Cold War tainted power rivalry, and informed post-colonial behaviour.

It explained the 1966 upheavals within Kanu that chased Odinga from the vice-presidency into forming his own political party, the successful 1968 constitutional changes, and the 1976 failed ‘Change the Constitution Movement’. The failure ensured that the sitting vice-president, Daniel arap Moi, would succeed Kenyatta should ‘Mzee’ eventually die. Although Attorney General Charles Njonjo had decreed that it was treason to think that a president can die, Kenyatta died in August 1978 and Moi stepped in. Among Moi’s first acts as president was to release political detainees, Ngugi among them.

Ngugi, unable to get his job at the university back, found solace and accolades outside the country where his mind continued to produce books that became required readings in many universities. His other books included 'Writers in Politics' and 'Decolonising the Mind', in essence calling for writers to engage in liberation politics. Debates about Ngugi and the Mau Mau led sociologist Casper Odegi Awuondo to write 'Rise of the Cheering Crowd' in which academics did their best to keep a safe distance from Kamiti. By then, Ngugi had become ‘diaspora’ and remained so till his death. He was unique.