Kenya’s most famous writer Ngugi Wa Thiong’o mastered the African power squads over the hate

« He has made an indelible impression on how we think about our independence, social justice and the use and abuse of political and economic power, » President William Ruto responded to the death of what is probably the most impressive East African writer. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, who died in the US on Wednesday at the age of 87, had a chance to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His tone was often satirical and he mocked the clownish and corrupt practices of government leaders.

It was in 1986 that the then Kenyan President Moi reads something about a certain modigari who has returned from the mountains to examine the waving ideals of the struggle for independence in an unnamed country, he immediately gives the order to arrest the man. However, it appears that the man is a character in the novel of the same name by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. The president takes his loss, draws the order, but lets all the books removed from the market.

It is one of the many stories that characterize the life and work of the novel and playwright, essayist and activist Ngugi Wa Thiong’o whose life and work was dominated by the anti-colonial agitation and struggle for dignity.

Kenya’s most famous writer was born in the countryside in 1938 as one of the 28 children who had had his father with his four women, and also the only child who was allowed to go to school. At home and at primary school they spoke the language of the Kikuyu, until in 1952 the British colonizer closed all schools where no English was spoken. Those who wanted to learn further, had to do that at an English -language school – anyone who spoke with a classmate Gikuyu, got a plate around the neck with the words ‘I’m stupid’ or ‘I’m a Donkey’.

Writing on toilet paper in the cell

The idea that the Spirit is colonized by penetrating a language and culture. A realization that becomes stronger when he grows up from 1952 to 1962 at the time of the War of Independence. When Ngugi makes his debut in 1963 with the play The Black Hermitthat happens in English. He still goes through life as James Ngugi, the name that he was assigned to school. In the late 1960s he will make short work of it and go through life as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.

The same applies to all his work until 1977, which led to a complicated situation. He describes the problems that belong to imposing a language in a culture that is not suitable for this in his beautiful essay Decolonising the Mind (1986): His characters quote TS Eliot, speak excellent English and are at odds with the lives of his characters. That doubleness leads to the play in 1977 Ngaahika ndeenda (I will mary when I want) About the post -colonial era. Families are exploited by the British, and on the other hand, the government delivers the country and its subjects after independence in 1963 to multinationals such as Japan and America.

The colonization and decolonization were also central to the novel A Grain of Wheatwho takes place in a small village where a rebel leader has to live with the consequences after he has been betrayed to the British. Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah called this book his « most human and convincing novel. »

The piece is a resounding success and finally Ngugi reaches the audience he had in mind. However, it also leads to an arrest. On New Year’s Day 1977 he ends up in a heavily guarded prison in cell 16, where he starts his novel Caitanei Mutharabaini (Devil on the Cross). In the absence of writing paper, the toilet paper in the cell gets a different function than usual.

Best book in exile

When Ngugi is in England to promote this novel in 1982, he does not get the tip to return to Kenya, because he will be arrested immediately on arrival. It is the start of an exile, in which he exchanges England in 1989 for the United States, where he will teach at the University of California in Irvine.

Although he was now a well -known writer, his best novel still had to appear. It is 2004 when he Murogi wa Kagogo (or Wizard of the crow) completed, written in the Gikuyu. He had started it nine years earlier, a year before Moi resigned after 24 years of his presidency. The novel opens with the rule: « There were many theories about the strange disease of the second leader of the Free Republic of Aburiria, but the theories that were most often mentioned were five. »

Not only Moi, but many dictators are in this satirical book model for the leader in the fictional country ‘Free Republic of Aburiria’. The leader of the country (Ruler He has been called) has been in power for some time than any other can remember. This ruler determines everything, up to and including the course of time: ‘People Make History, The Ruler Makes His Story. ‘ To please the leader, it is decided a ‘Marching to Heaven« Starting.

It was in this book that he first waived social realism. In an interview with The Guardian He explained that the subject of this novel simply made it impossible to write realistically: « How do you make a satire from someone like Moi, who asks his ministers that they are parrots? »

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