Beyond tributes: Kenya's unfinished duty to Ngugi wa Thiong'o

On Friday, June 20, 2025, we gathered at the University of Nairobi’s main campus where, at the iconic Taifa Hall, the family of the late writer and scholar Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the university’s Literature Department under Professor Miriam Musonye, and East African Educational Publishers co-organised a day-long celebration of the life and work of the man of letters, who had died in the United States in late May aged 87.

Commemorations of Ngugi’s life were set to continue, with further events planned in the United States and at his home in Limuru. Yet a troubling question lingered: are such ceremonies all that Kenya intends to do to honour one of its greatest intellectuals?

One speaker lamented that roads in Nairobi and other cities have been named after almost everyone, including tyrants and jailers of thinkers, but not Ngugi. Yusuf Hassan, who was the guest of honour of the day was urged to use his influence in Parliament to secure a more fitting national tribute.

How best to honour Ngugi should concern those whose path he cleared: literature scholars. Having read, taught and written extensively on his work, they are uniquely placed to amplify the socio-political vision that defined his thought. From 1973 to 1977, Ngugi served as the first Kenyan chair of the University of Nairobi’s Literature Department, helping to de-Anglicise it alongside Liyong and Owuor Anyumba.

Ngugi articulated a vision of a self-reliant Kenya, opposed to cultural and economic dependence, placing him at odds with post-colonial elites. Only institutions that value literature as an instrument of social change can honour him.

The University of Nairobi, where Ngugi taught and organised, is duty-bound to memorialise him by renaming its Literature Department in his honour or erecting a bust in his likeness for generations of students to come.

Is it not for equally revolutionary ideas that departments have been named after—and busts erected in honour of—revered historical figures such as Gandhi and Confucius on our university campuses?

Are there busts commemorating, or departments named after, Ngugi or even Tom Mboya, on university campuses in China or India? Does this not reveal how we have neglected the finest minds of our own region in favour of others, and why Ngugi was right to insist on the urgent necessity of the decolonisation of the mind?