RECOLONIZING NGUGI WA THIONGO.

A reaction to Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Decolonizing the Mind:

Section One.
1.1 In 1984, Ngugi was invited to Auckland University, New Zealand, to give that
year’s Robb Lectures. The book under review id the publication of those lectures.
The main lecture in that book called: “The Language of African Literature”
though had been offered to four other separate audiences before it reached
Auckland.

In this article, I would like to discuss around some of the contentious points Ngugi makes
or reiterates. For, as Ngugi himself says in the introduction, the book is:“a summary of
some of the issues in which I have been intimately involved for the last twenty years of
my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism and teaching literature” (page 1).

In it are therefore brought together thoughts from Homecoming, Writers in Politics,

Barrel of a Pen, and Detained: A writer’s Prison Diary. A review of this book, therefore,
in a nutshell serves as a review of the other books as well.

I would also take the opportunity to make remarks about some of his creative works in so
far as they have a bearing on any of the themes the author touches on. From 1968, on and
off, to 1975, James Ngugi (before his conversion to Africanity) was a colleague of mine
in the English Department of Nairobi University. I shall draw upon my personal
knowledge of him on public matters which may illuminate some of his approaches to life.
As this not a biography, do not expect too much in that direction, In any case
Decolonizing the Mind already gives away more personal, intimate information about
Ngugi than he had given in interviews or the other books.

1.2 Like Okot p’Btek, Ngugi wa Thiongo is very impressionable. When Okot had
read Cry, the beloved Country, he was so impressed that straight away he wrote
hi Acholi language novella Lak tar miyo Ginyero wi Lobo (‘It is only because our
teeth are white that we laugh aloud’). In Kings College, Budo, where he was
chorister, Okot was introduced to European librettos, hymns, cantatas. The
composer he identifies with most was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He therefore
composed Acholi songs to the accompaniment of Mozartian tunes. The magic
Flute inspired Can-na- the misfortune of a girl called Acan. (Incidentally, Okot
had an only younger sister, called if I recall correctly, Acan, who passed away in
childhood). He also composed other songs, including the National Anthem of the
Acholi called “Lubanga gwok lawi Rwodi”. God save the paramount chief. There
was also Sit Samwel Baker Secondary School Anthem he composed whose chief
refrain was the philosophical injunction ‘Leave the world better than found it’.
But when the English Mistress i.e. the teacher of English lovingly read song of
Hiawatha to him, he resounded by composing Wer Pa Lawino, ‘Song of Lawino’.
He lived with this song from late forties, worked with it throughout his Mbarara
Teachers Training College Days, Throughout his Samwel Baker teaching days,
 throughout his great Britain study days, throughout his return to Uganda days, till
it was published in 1966 – some fifteen years. When in 1972 we were returning
from Moshi, Erlimu Njau’s home, I offered him a slim volume of the Chilean
poet’s work to do with Picchu Machu. He read it enthusiastically, then thrust the
book away.

He said he did not want to be influenced any more. Perhaps he did not want to be
influenced by President Attende’s socialist poetry.

1.3 Now when Ngugi was small, he had an Uncle he respected very much. That Uncle
was a Christian: His name was James. This was the name that Ngugi chose for his
own Christian baptism. James Ngugi grew up during the Mau Mau war. Ngugi
together with many others regarded Jomo Kenyatta as the leader, if not the
spiritual leader of Mau Mau. (When he was in State House, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta
tried very hard to dissociate himself from Mau Mau. Later historians, especially
those opposed to the rise of collaborators with neo-colonialism seem to have
given him the benefit of the doubt). But to James Ngugi, the then Makerere
University Student, author of his second novel (though published first), Jomo
Kenyatta was the promised deliverer. The young protagonist of his second novel,
a Kikuyu youth grows up during the Mau Mau days, goes to Makerere, like
Ngugi. The publisher emphasized on the traumas of the child, so they titled the
book: ‘Weep Not Child’. James Ngugi original title was: The black messiah.It
must have been written as an eulogy by a believer in Kenyatta’s powers of
deliverance of the black, of Kikuyu land from white rule. (There was still very
little idea of all-embracive nationalism for Kenyans: embracing all tribes, races
and faiths).

To Okot p’ Bitek, resurgent Christianity, leading to born again Christianity took place in
Budo. James Ngugi was born again Christian either in Alliance High School or Makerere
or both.
For both Okot and Ngugi there was dissatisfaction with the arrangement of things in this
world leading to a search for a better, more just, more enduringly permanent
arrangement. They had the moral fervor to go with it. Okot waned in middle-life. He was
on the verge of recovering it when death cut hi short. Ngugi’s has been relentlessly
pursued. He has taken up causes – especially when students are involved even when they
looked doomed to failure, or when an observer could have questioned the wisdom of total
involvement. (For my part, in the Christmas holiday of 1955 I went to attend Christian
camp at Nabugabo, South East of Masaka. In the afternoon when people were supposed
to be converted, or declared that they have seen the new light, I and a few other truant
boys were busy driving into Lake Nabugabo).

On thing you must credit Ngugi: Deep feeling about serious matters; seriously taking
matters up. So highly strung is he on these matter that he sometimes attains epileptic
states. But, depth of feeling, whilst it is an asset for a nebi, a prophet, hardly suits one
who has to or wants to live and operate in this rough political world of result getting at
any and all cost and within a minimum of time. Perhaps he should have contented himself
with remaining the moral force that undoubtedly he is.

In 1968 there was a student crisis in Nairobi University. It ended in the ring-leaders being
expelled. (I think they were later reinstated). But Ngugi had taken this war too much to
heart. He had to resign from English department in protest. He left Nairobi, headed for
Makere where he was made a senior writer in Residence. One year he was a visiting
professor in Northwestern University. He was there at the height of Black power
consciousness and was converted. He said one female student used to ask him: What is
your name? He would answer James Ngugi. They would tell him, Forget your slave
name. What is your real name: Common, now, tell us. Being a ‘homeboy’ you couldn’t
have lost it also. He had therefore to cast out James. Now for replacement. What name?
He then had to fall back into his ancestral name Thiongo. That is how Ngugi wa Thiongo
was born out of James Ngugi.

It was in the Northwestern University, too, I think, that his radicalism was awakened, or
re-awakened. The black consciousness movement was also a radical socialist movement.
And the next book he wrote after A grain of wheat (written in the James period) was
written after the American interlude. It was Petals of Blood.

James Ngugi together with Peter Nazareth, Grant Kamenju, Imme Ikkiddeh, Van and Pio
Zirimu etc.: had been postgraduate students in Leeds University. The School of English
there had the renowned Marxist Scholar Professor ARNOLD Kettle on its staff. Professor
Kettle seems to have impressed these students a lot. If some of them did not straight away
become Marxists/Socialists, at least they got huge doses of Marxism; Marxist outlook f
literature, criticism of literature and analysis of literature. And it was this Marxian fervor
that Ngugi absorbed that Ngugi added to his Christian fervor. But for Ngugi Marxism
became operative, or took over his creative faculties after long battle with Christianity. A
grain of Wheat has Christian ethos. This discussion with Mau Mau wars would have been
the best chance for a Marxian analysis. In later works he has tried to mine it i.e. Mau Mau
war for all it is worth.

But when he went Socialist, by trying to reach a larger audience, he had so dispense with
the technical rigour that is apparent in A Grain of Wheat. That novel, to me technically, is
Ngugi’s best. And as a truthful testimony of the human hearts torn apart by ravages of
war, it will remain useful after Marxism has come and gone.

1.4 When Ngugi’s year was coming to end in Northwestern, when I was in the now
reformed Department of Literature, in my capacity as a former colleague, I wrote
to Ngugi to come back from the States. I asked him to rejoin me in the Literature
Department if Nairobi University. After hesitation, he accepted. When Professor
Andy Gurr was leaving the chairmanship of Literature Department, there were
two of us vying for the post of senior lecturer. I recommended him for promotion.
Being a non Kenyan, I thought I had no overpowering need to head a department
in Kenya where I would make crucial national decisions affecting the destiny of a
state. After a year and a half. I left for Papua New Guinea. But after we
 succeeding in elevating Ngugi to chairmanship of Literature Department, two
people, one an undergraduate who had bouts of mental breakdowns, and the other
a mature post-graduate student cautioned me in almost similar words: Now that
you have made him chief, don’t leave him alone; he needs guidance. It was said
with concern like a warning to a parent who has given his teenage son a car: look
well after him, otherwise there will be accidents. I think the concerns these two
expressed were common in other people’s minds: For with all the moral fervor
which might blind him to the practicalities of daily maneuverings in the world of
action, would Ngugi be able to dodge traps and not make errors of judgment
which might lead to disastrous consequences to himself and others? Especially
others? I was willing to work with him. But he preferred the company of others.
So, feeling un-needed. I left.

1.5 Professor Arnold Kettle, as stated above, seems to have given Ngugi another
religion to follow. Ngugi became a convert to Socialism. And, instead of studying
for the higher degree, he spent the time completing his last Christianity-based
novel: A grain of Wheat which had been plotted earlier. When he returned to
Nairobi there was restlessness in his heart. He started doing research on the
settlers for a novel. He was also supporting the students cause. And in any case,
Ngugi has never felt happy at home. So the flight to Makerere was inevitable.
When he returned from North Western to Nairobi, at long last he had people he
could call friends, colleagues, collaborators, wards.
When Petals of Blood was published, it was a different Ngugi who came out. It
was the Ngugi of II Morog (the original Maasai name for Limuru?) Sort stories
who was born. It was a man who voiced the disenchantment of the student and
left-leaning intelligentsia with the goings-on in a neo-colonial state. It was a
socialist criticism of literature which was being substituted for the laissez-faire, or
capitalistic criticism of literature a la mode.

The warning I receive from my two students now acquired new dimensions.
Literacy criticism, like legal moots, I am convinced are supposed to be intra-
mural exercises. In the same sense that whereas a philosophy lecturer would teach
that truth-telling entails pointing out to his murderer a crouching victim hiding in
a cupboard, in real life you would think twice before doing so. In other words
should the academic insights we provide the students be looked as instruments of
practical application? In other words do you teach your classes the concept of
exploitation, or how they are being exploited? That is, how they are being
exploited and what they should do about it. Fundamental to this question is an
attitude to academic disciplines: Marxist countries seem to favor practical-
economies, literature, music, criticism. The problem with this is that in totalitarian
States it makes the writers and critics praise-singers of government; it pits the
teacher and his pupil against the State.
I for one do not think it is a serious matter; a citizen, taking a stand on any
national issue and challenging the new (even the review of government) . We are
still undergoing state-formation. We were Bari, Kikuyu, Luo, Oromo, Masai,
Chaga, Baganda, Iteso etc. Then in 1885 in Berlin, they drew boundaries on a
 map, and came out to read it on the earth-surface in Africa. That kept us under
their thumb for seventy or so years, and lifted the lid, we talked aloud for a
decade, and were handed a flag, nation, parliament, and money economy. And we
were supposed to live happily ever after. I think the challenge of nationhood is
coming now, and soon, we may redraw the boundaries, and agree on the terms for
our co-existence, and economic arrangements.

I left Nairobi because I knew I could not, and would not take such a stance. It
were better though, for a Kenyan to stop his country from being messed up or to
help in messing it up. In either case he would live with consequences of his
inaction, or action, unlike the foreigner who is a bird in the flight. (I ma reminded
of that morning in Acholi Inn, Gulu when Minister Felix Onama was deciding on
a secretary general for Acholi District. I wanted to offer my services, after my
return to the State (1968). Liyong, my mother had asked me: was your umbilicus
buried here so that you contest chieftainship here.

But I am skeptical about one thing by and by. I do not mind an intellectual
pursuing a theme, a line of thought, an ideology. I do not mind an intellectual, a
writer, a philosopher, a clergyman mediating to the highest level of his intellect.
But I am not sure if the teacher in the classroom is justified in making his students
hostages to hi viewpoint. I am not sure if a priest in the Church oh his order has
the right to preach his personal brand of religion or politics. In short I think the
undergraduate programmes of literature, philosophy, politics, sociology,
anthropology are there to expose the students to a variety of outlooks in those
disciplines. And it would only be in ideological institutes, parochial institutions,
advanced classes, specialized colleges that knowledge will be slanted to suit
whatever ideology is preferred.

Besides, I do not think that the various clergymen of the various faiths have
taught us all they know about life, morality, God, creation, duty, salvation, spirit,
sin, forgiveness, anger, man-slaughter, jealousy, provocation, doing things in spur
of a moment, momentary blindness etc. from their pulpits in order to take time off
to discuss politics with their own personal ideological slant. The danger is there: it
is real. If in a predominantly Christian land, this is done, what if a country with a
Moslem majority turns the table against Christians? Would the fundamental
Christians who have been meddling in matters of state have the moral right to
speak against Moslem radicals in a next-door country? If Marxists or socialists
indulge themselves in tearing, unscrupulously, capitalistic, neocolonial States,
why should they shout human rights when the state also answers unscrupple with
unscrupple?

1.6 For Ngugi, his ideological teaching was brought to an abrupt stop. In his last
lecture given before his detention on 31st December 1977, he told his third year
students: Next year… I want to attempt a class analysis of Chinua Achebe’s
fiction from Things Fall Apart to Girls at War. I want in particular to trace the
development of the messenger class as actual messengers, clerks, soldiers,
 policemen, catechists and road foremen in colonialism as seen in Things Fall
Apart and Arrow of God, to their position as the educated “been-tos” in No
Longer at Ease; to their assumption and exercise of power in A Man of People; to
their plunging the nation into intra-class civil war in Girls at War. And before we
meet to discuss all these problems, I urge you to read two books without which I
believe it is impossible to understand what informs African writing, particularly
novels written by Africans. They are Frantzn Fanon’s The wretched of The Earth,
mostly the chapter titled, The pitfalls of national consequences and V.I Lenin’s
Imperialism the Highest State of Capitalism. (p63).

I think courses should not have titles: they should alos have outlines, approved by
the department or senate and council. But I for one would not use Achebes
writings to illustrate intra-class civil war however tempting it is to left-handedly
use Achebe’s negative capability in socialism. Achebe’s books have a right to be
studied in the spirit in which he wrote them, for the thrust he gave them. If Marx
came to stand Hegel on his head, Achebe came to show Joyce Carey, the author
of Mister Johnson how Africans should be portrayed in fiction. It was a case of
honest portrayal, and all that went with it.

Alex la Giuma is there, well established as a Marxist thinker, activist and writer.
He has And A Three Cord Rope, the Fog’s End and The Timer of The Butcher
Bird. Sembene Ousmane if there, long established worker, having been a docker,
and written about it. He has celebrated socialist cooperation in God’s Bits of
Wood besides a lot of other works. Besides he has gone beyond Marxism to
discussing position of the blacks, the Africans and their traditions in reformed
Marxism new word. Ayi Kwei Armah is also one of those beyond-Marxism
writers who have accepted race as a factor to be given a place in our mobilization
of new world order-Marxist or otherwise. Read Two Thousand Seasons. In poetry,
David Diop is uncompromising in singing of socialism. Then there are plenty of
younger Nigerian poets. So, it is not as if there were no Marxian/Socialists texts
that the professor has to bend Achebe Eastwards in order to make him serve as a
Marxist example. (If there are no African Marxist/Socialist texts produced yet,
why not fall onto Marxist Internationalism? Use Cuban, North Korean,
Vietnamese, Chilean texts. That way when you give your students the real thing,
they would know what it really is, and those amongst them who would like to feel
the dearth of Marxist novels will have ready examples).

But, hunting, combing through Arrow of God to discover a socialist morsel or

two, to say the least is to destroy the enjoyment of Achebe’s wholistic African
life.

1.7 I am ill-at-ease about intellectuals who not only prescribe cures, but also use
captive patients (audiences, students, and congregation) as guinea pigs or hostage
soldiers. If a national election is fairly contested, and a party got a majority vote
for its programme, for the duration of the government their programme should be
given a chance. So long as fair play rules the game, the national interests are kept
paramount by both government(s) and opposition(s).

But the other nationals who are directly engaged in the politic of governing or
loyally opposing, those who are civil servants brought out in the west to execute
the national programmes of the government of the day, or academicians who are
to teach all the alternatives to the country youths, so that government leaders of
various ideological bents may arise there from to keep the ship afloat from
westerlies or easterlies, the world is one and short: dispassionately do your duty,
dispassionately teach all the alternatives. And leave it to the eggs to hatch into
whatever reptiles, birds, fishes they are destined to become.

The Nation, its life, entity, survival, welfare: these should be respected and made
to guide in our dealing with it.
Those in governance of the state should be conscious of it longevity and the
sacredness of its institution, preserved by the Chief secretary. And it is treason,
treason against the state, not against the wiles of dictatorial regime or juntas that
rules us in keeping the sacred secrets of the state. They are not for sale. Even if
the state is in murky waters, the institutions of State should shine like the lotus
plant and flower in a dirty pond. At the height of his disenchantment with former
president Keneth Kaunda, his successor, a trade unionist who rose up from the
rabbles, revealed to the world the secret routes of Zambian president.

The scholar, the thinker has his talents measured out for him.: to excel in the
affairs of the intellect. He was not equally endowed with the ability to put into
practice his thoughts. Every Christ needs a Paul, every Nehru needs his Gandhi.
And there is no Marx without an Engels, a Lenin and for variety sake, a Stalin and
Trotsky. Even Ghadafi needs his Jaloul. Or the other ones needs the other. Mao
did not make many blunders till he lost Chou en Lai.
For, what then if the students, congregation, in a national crsisis took to the street,
then put in practice what were taught, commandeered buses, organized the
redistribution of the wealth from the front-streets to the shanties? What if the
enforcers of law and order became trigger-hapy and mowed down the same?
Especially when one is not there in the street with them? How does one feel? Any
guy with the state? or oneself?

If one craves the martyr’s role, one should stand up and suffer; one should block a
tank with ones moral strength. If one craves a hero’s role, one should take up
arms like Museveni, Nujoma, Garang, Castro and fight it out with powers that be,
be with the fighting people in the thick and thin. He should also be ready to court
martial and shoot his erstwhile colleagues dead: he should allow himself to accept
the reports his informers bring him: he should be ready to take life in half-truths.
Because the argument goes, if he is to await ascertainment, he would be dead
before the truth is known. Hardly a prospect to keep moralists snoring in his bed
at night. But to advocate human rights and reap the common cheer from the
Western World whilst advocating Easternism; to urge others to lose their posts,
 leave their families whilst one enjoys air conditioned accommodation in Western
homes and hotels looks like a veritable picture of immorality, irresponsibility to
me.

I am of course conscious of the fact that matric logic has or may have a way for
explaining such a situation to its perpetrators so that the conscience worn is kept
quite asleep.

1.8 Weep not child ends with the young protagonist going way to Uganda, to
Makerere, to refuge. When Ngugi had his troubles with Nairobi University, he
also departed Makerere to Uganda, to refuge. Later, to America. After he was
detained, a decade later when Uganda was in chaos he departed for England and
then to America, to refuuge for well being life, financial assistance, technological
infrastructure with which to bring about even a socialist revolution exist only in a
capitalistic Western World. Why then not become a capitalist? Why not love the
West for moral stand? For having Amnesty International? For having Africa
Watch? For these are no Marxists equivalents of these things which give up hope
in immunity… Why not urge western capitalism to change to accommodate your
misgivings? Or why not transform capitalism in your own country? That is, why
not produce a brand of capitalism in your won country which would take
particular note of your own societal peculiarities? (As for these questions, as well
, I am sure the Marxists ideologues have or may have already worked out ready
answers).
You run to ports of peace. Why not create peaceful conditions in your land? I
know, there will be the rejoinder: there has to be the inevitable surgery. (By now,
reader I am sure you have met me in my pet ‘themes and modus vivendi’. I
believe that a critical public figure deserves to be critically examined. Any other
approach would be abusive of his intelligence. In a way, too I am making up,
belatedly for the assistance I was supposed to have given Ngugi some fifteen
years ago. When Ngugi and other socialist activists, critics, writers subject other
writers and political leaders to their own stringiest tests, they should be served
back their very drug. Otherwise when they are left alone, they may think they are
deities, or are imbeciles with whom no intelligent social communication can be
conducted).

1.9 Secondly, Karl Marx had come to oout do Hegel; to turn Hegel on his head. To
re-evaluate as Friedrich Nietzsche would repeat yers later, all values. In which
case I say: Welcome 1990: the year in which Africans are to take stock of
themselves. To take stock of the years of African Independence; of the years of
African Colonization; of the years before decolonization ; of the years Nubia
ruled the Middle East, Meroe ruled the Middle East, Egypt ruled the Middle East;
of the years when Zinjanthropus walked the land, sent his children abroad. Study
the whole lot you who desire to look at Africa’s destiny in proper perspective.
Criticize Moi, De, Barre, Diouf, yes. But also criticize Museveni, Rawlings,
Mugabe, Cesano. Crticize Bush, Thather, Mitterand, yeas.
But also criticize Castro, Kim il Sung, Gorbachev. Capitalism is bad. Yes but
rigorously hold socialism to the same stringiest test. If Christianity is bad at least
you have been able to rest under it and kept your minds and eyes open. Open so
that you can see socialism and learn about it. At least you were left intelligent
enough to desert Christianity and seek another God socialism. Control under
socialist regime is or was worse. If capitalism is bad there is also humanism.
African or western as an alternative. There was the story of goose that laid golden
eggs. One farmer not content with waiting for the daily laying of eggs at the
chicken’s regular time, thought he should cut the goose open and scoop out the
fully formed eggs. He killed it. Of course the eggs were not there. Not there yet.

Now, man has to be given encouragement, support, so that he does his best. Both
for profit and prestige. Now how do you hope to push people to do their utmost
when the brand of students socialism that is here worship mediocrity? When the
common man is the lowest social denomination ? When the common man’s
uplifting takes up most of your energy and time?

Should your socialist concern not embrace the whole society? Including looking
at the role of various classes in context as well as unison? Should worry only
about the fates of the poor or workers? And not their employers, rulers and former
mates? In short, are we not at the beginning of inquiry once more? Asking the
question what is man?

Wouldn’t it have been better if you trained the up lifters first and then sent them
to do the uplifting? That is if is uplifting that rules your dreams and deeds? It is
out of such quests that new religions arise. Perhaps we are at the threshold of
another religion.

We are all differently endowed. In fact, if Jehovah of Judaism made man in his
own image, then the sight of Jehovah should excite laughter when we see the
topsy-turvy humanity that reflects God’s image. God must then be the craziest
looking tapestry in the world. There is inequality in it.
Through and through. In the family, village, work-place everywhere. There is
intellectual inequality: we do not possess intellect to the same degree to help us
even comprehend God’s words, leave alone man’s. Even in matters of sensing,
some of us are half-deaf, half blind, pachyderm, insensitive. In these organs for
apprehending the truth, leave alone receiving instructions, or judging between
what is wrong and right, there are differences.
Long live the differences. Long live the inequality. Three cheers for humanity.

Every engineer of social institution of social institution has to start from the given
and see how to minimize the effects of the bad ones on others especially the
majority of the people, or how to exploit them for the social good. So, it is not as
if we were back on creation day and needed to produce a new race of completely
beautiful ones; we have these many ugly, so-so, and passably beautiful ones to
 work with, to start from. So we must begin to look at society realistically from
there: not as magical world, not as world created by devil. But as a world for
balancing forces: ameliorating the suffering of one group, and suppressing the
greed of another. For none was born greedy, except the societal controls were
relaxed or not yet created to let him do so to harmful state. The greed is there in
the heart of man: It is not a class sin. Weakness is there in the human being: it has
to be curtailed or given the chance to reduce itself. The state should be compared
to a symphonic performance. Where the ruler is the conductor and all the other
musicians and their instruments, workers in their shops. It is the overall effect that
is needed. It does not matter if the oboe is sounded only twice today, but the piano
almost over-used, followed by violin. Tomorrow the trumpet will sound; the drum
will rumble and the guitar will twang.

Section Two

2.1 I do not mind a revolutionary. I mind only those who do not have the courage of
their conviction. I do not mind Fidel Castro going to the bush and roughing out
with the boys. I do not mind Mao, remaining a scout boy, and ejaculating at the
end of the day that ‘Power comes from the barrel of the gun’. But I mind a
revolutionary who believes or acts as if power comes from the barrel of the pen. If
one believes in the pen rather than the sword (or gun, for that matter) then one
remains or should remain scholar, a servant, an ivory – tower philosopher, a
garret, poet a writer in residence, a celebrity as conferences, of writers, artists,
scholars. A think tank. A speculator. A theorist. An idealist. Especially since these
are few. The builders, practical men of action, were supposed to comb the tomes
from the ‘ivory tower’ for in deduction of practical solutions, plausible
explanations for pressing problems.

2.2 Someone used to talk about the gifted 10% in any community. This view was also
backed up by W.E.B. Du Bois and amplified by him especially in the connection
with the uplifting of the blacks in Americ. To expect a society, and a lowly one at
that, to spring up all of a sudden was to believe in the miraculous. But since
statistically any group depends. And the various classes have their 10%. All
solders have their 10%. All professors – yes even they have their 10%. Men have
their 10%. Women have their 10%. Students have their 10%. Workers have tgheir
10% . Politicians have their 10%.
Cream off the first 10%, is constant, there is bound to come up another 10% to
replace it to different levels effectiveness, inevitably.

The snag is that you replace one leadership, say the moneyed one and all
privileges and corrupt practices with another leadership, say of trade union leaders
(10% of workers, or speakers of workers language, resonators of workers’
aspiration) and these will slide naturally in the houses of privilege, cars of
privilege, offices of privilege, corruption of those in privileged positions that their
predecessors had enjoyed. What has simply happened is change of leadership at
the top. This had happened in the USSR, China, Eastern Europe, East Asia, Latin
America, Africa, leave alone the capitalist European and North America: It does
not fully address itself leave alone the capitalist European and North America: It
does not fully address itself to human tendencies, weakness. No system has. But
others accept their inability to cure all. It prefers to blame class and greed. It
prefers to excuse scientifically of the left handed acts of man the human animal
whose roots do not necessarily lie in materialistic craving. The materials acquired
are like garments used to cover an inner nakedness. However gaudy the dresses
are made, however heavy the overcoat, we know the essential purpose of a dress
is to cover a naked body.

At least traditional African philosophies, traditional African religions, or even

Christianity, left room for the study of nakedness of man-the heart of man, the
stomach of man , the head of man. They talk about belief about superstition. They
plant a regular one in ones head, heart, mind and soul. And that regular rebukes
one when one is attempted to go astray. Call it conscience: the reminder for
keeping to the right, approved good ways, and warns one to shun the wide, easy
way of not much exertion restrain. The old traditional African social engineers
gave us such strong religion. Christianity and Islam had no way of maintaining.
Hence Christianity diluted tradition, and Islam even went many steps further,
especially in regard to conscience.

Karl Marx in turning his back on religion-traditional religion of Judaism or

Christianity released man from self accountability, self blame; took away the
individuals responsibility for his self-salvation, self-upraising, and instead created
a pack-law: class struggle. A man who blames others, and others alone for his
property, his failure, his sufferings, his underdevelopment: a man who has no
retrospection, self examination, self doubt is a dangerous creator of the world. For
he feels no guilt. He is like legendary Maasai who feels that all the cows were
given to them only them by Ngai. And when he meets cattle of the Wandorobo,
the Kikuyu, of the Kaburu; or Somali, Ankole, Baggara or American mild-west,
Latin American tampas, Russia steppes, he must appropriate them and drive them
to Ngong’ Hills.

For Marx all property including sweat, seems to have belonged to the workers. So
workers were urged to re-appropriate them to reclaim them. To fight the property
owners who are who are lazily fattening themselves as a result of workers’ sweat.
But if somebody does not want to work, to sweat, he could easily sit and not
sweat. And then w shall see what good that does to his muscles, what his sweat
can do for him to his health. That a worker should get good wages for his sweat, I
back. But that workers should be turned to enemies of factory owners, industrial
states, is wrong-headed. For, nobody stops workers from establishing their own
shops, industries. If others are less human and exploitative, surely workers’
business activities and employment policies should show us the way. It is the
wallowing, miserable wallowing in blame after blame of exploiters, bourgeoisie,
etc. who are riding hard on the backs of petty traders, peasants, workers, that goes
on ad nausem that I do not like.
 Why don’t the gifted 10% of the socialist establish their own business concerns
like the nation of Islam has done in America? And with experience of good
management, honesty, thrift, industriousness, they could take over trade in their
countries. The workers will belong to them, anyway. They could then become the
virtual rulers. After providing how good things could be under their dispensation.
But this is difficult. This is in the realm of work: And not mere talk, mere
blaming. What the socialist campus talkers do all over Africa is to turn or try to
turn every worker into sullen, disgruntled, half-hearted, half delivering worker.
And haters of their governments which are said then to be evil, exploitative,
capitalistic.

2.3 Ngugi was converted to oral literature by the women in Limuru , he reports in the
book who had asked him to produce a play for them. That was in 1980, over 40
years after he was born. But some of us have lived with literature all our life.
Have written all our life. Written about them all their lives. Okot p Bitek did it all
his life. Birago Diop did it all his life. In all the traditional African literature that I
know, there is always never a literature that has only one genre. There are songs
or poetry foe dances, merry occasions like rites of passage. And special religious
occasions like hunting, famine, drought, epidemics.

There are songs of praise of heroes, or personal praises and village anthems. So,
there was never one literature of disgruntlement only.

There are folktales and a vast variety of them. Some of them were veiled attacks
on the privileged people of the day. The privileged and corrupt people. Some
stories were rebukes on the lazy person who never worked hard enough. Or who
were never able to keep hunger away from their families: husbands who stayed
away from home or left the upbringing of their children to their wives. So,
folktales were not a gallery of class wars. There were inevitable those which
pointed fingers at the chief-the lion. But no lion had any disillusionment about the
limits of his power: If all the animals of the jungle co-operated, he could be
deprived of his powers. So even lions mended their ways. Or were pushed out of
throne.
Now to comb African tales merely to find examples of class wars is missing the
point, is impoverishing them, is reducing them to store house of popular
discontent against the rich, employers, rulers, the better to do. When the Greek
world was at its intellectual highest level, dualism was the order of the day. Even
Greek dramatic performances needed the wearing of tragic and comic masks. But
where is entertainment in the world of African Marxist? At least Jesus Christ told
folktales, cracked jokes and restrained his over-zealous disciples. But where is
humor in Marx? The harsh realities of this world can only be faced with laughter.
The happiness of the native, the happiness of the black Americans, these were
defense mechanisms, antidotes to the harshness of the unnatural demands on the
son of man. Even in funerals, there are laughters. People get bored being preached
to, even by their saviors, even for their salvation.
 (Ngugi I am glad to report, 2006) has moved to the oral mode of narration.
Unfortunately, he drafts the African comic mode into socialist by burdening it
with socialist ideology. In this process, he has characters whose smiles come out
distorted like frowns).

Then consider the epics, the epical episodes or praise-songs. The ebyebugo of the
Bakiga or Banyakore, or the isibongo of the Xhosa, or the epics of Shaka or
Sundiata. You find full-life, full bloodedness sung about. The war is a contest
over territory, it is a solution to social increase or social congestion. It is also a
test of personal bravery. It is a solution to social increase or social congestion. It
is also a test of personal bravery. It is ‘us’ ranged against ‘them’, ‘our’ heroes
against ‘their’ heroes. It is cementing of relationship, a celebration of
camaraderie. It is the coming together of the whole society in the teeth of adverse
social and natural conditions: epidemics, funerals and other disasters. I say,
traditional wars were fought for territorial expansion: Ndorobos shrinking the
world of the Gumba; the Maasais depriving the Ndorobos their hard-won
territory; the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru expanding into Maasai territory. Then there
were Wahois from dispossessed Maasai and Wandorobos. But to talk about class,
you need a full range of categories including in pre-colonial days to make it
meaningful. Otherwise you would be stretching a point.

Or take Kintu. He is said to have descended into Buganda from Ethiopia, like
Gikutu na Mumbi in their own ways, and establishe himself king. On top of the
original Baganda social arrangements, Kintu came in then with his countries and
lorded it over. That Baganda social system which resulted, which attracted Arabs,
Indians, Europeans, Anglicans, Moslems, Catholics, had order and successful
governance. Whatever initial social location, however totalitarian it had been, had
long been forgotten.

The system that Kindu established cased for Buganda to have prominence in East
Africa, in Uganda particularly.That is why Makerere University was established
there. That is why the hero of Weep Not Child had to run to Uganda. And even
Ngugi liked it.

2.4 If we care very much for the worker, the farmers, the petty traders – if we care
very much for the “messenger class” to use Ngugi’s words, we would let them
open their minds, their mouths, and say exactly how they feel, what they feel. We
would encourage them to tell their stories: their dreams and aspirations, fears and
hopes, judgments of what we and other say about them. We would then publicize
their ideas for them by turning into cassettes or records, publishing in books. But
we should not unsurp their minds of the world for them, and station ourselves as
“spokesmen for the people”. The politicians we so much berate did exactly that.
And with what due consequence? And when we move into the world of our
African traditions, the word of oral folks, why should we pollute with ideology,
why should we contaminate with Marxist or Western ideology the wholesome
 stories that reinforced our traditional values? Why do we have to offer to Marx te
fruits of our cultural genius?

For the Marxist writers/critics are bust smuggling into the socialist criticism of
African traditional culture (with literature as the main component) tenets from
socialist realism. Now when one reads an African tale, one is supposed to look out
for class conflicts, exploitation. One is supposed to find therein that the boss is
blamed, the worker, sinless as he is, goes scorch free, the peasants are suffering
from the yoke of feudalism and the seeds of revolt have been firmly planted.

2.5 School educated Africans have uneasiness about the European type education
they got, and the urbanization that ensued. Lawino ranted about these things some
thirty years ago. And, she did it in the same name of mother Africa. Twenty years
later, Ngugi takes up the song.

But he now does in the name of Marx. In 1966, I said it loud and clear: Lawino is
inedu(cated). She has limited outlook to modern life that has been complicated by
colonization in order to be able to judge fairly well what she was criticizing. Okot
replied me by writing Song of Ocol to repudiate all that Lawino has said, to justify
him in the eyes of the world. It did not come off; it could not come off: Okot was
too committed to Lawino to repudiate her.

Now, when I was teaching Ngugi’s book in the course called “East African
writing at its Social Background” in the new literature Deaprtment in Nairobi
University, I noticed that the strong always won and the weak lost. In Weep Not
Child, The River Between, The Black Hermit, and more so in A Grain of Wheat,
the story is the same. I asked Ngugi why this was so. He answered: Is it not
always so in life? I then realized that Christian logic was to blame for this. That is
where the strong are always those who could turn the other cheek or accept death,
because then their blood when they are martyred would manure the soil for the
next successful seeds to germinate, grow and bloom. Christianity succeeds by
sympathy.

But perhaps Ngugi was meaning: the powerful always won under the conditions
they had created: conditions which made it absolutely possible for them to
succeed.

2.6 The bible story says that when Nehemiah had to raise an army to confront a large
enemy concentration, he reduced the army even further by eliminating the
unwary. His test for military readiness and awareness was simply this: observe the
soldiers drinking water from a stream. Those who knelt down and drunk their fill,
out. Only those who asked their thirst whilst holding their weapon on one hand,
and surveying the land for possible enemy surprise attacked were selected.

But selection must always be there. There should be test for intelligence, for
prepardness, for discerning the eggs that will hatch, this has to be done. We have
to make categories, based on qualitative premises. In China they begin to scout
for talents right from nursery in 1977.
Now, much as I dislike English, some qualitative criteria have to be made for
identifying our sons and daughters who should do the most mentally rigoriuos
work. Like understanding relatively and the secret of the bomb. (Sadam Hussein
has already made a breakthrough in this regard). For even if we end up just
understanding relatively that is enough exercise for the mind. The coming
confrontation with capitalism requires a high base of scientific development. And
for this we need the best brains that our genes have produced, to prepare us for the
scientific breakthrough. Now much as I dislike English, (or French for that
matter) I am convinced that we should teach English for our children for the
following reasons: it will keep the children in the community of those who have
mastered science; it will keep them members of the vast English speaking world,
it will also help for eliminating those who would not cope in the international
arena. For these we should then design other things for them to do (those who
cannot cope with English or French).

Perhaps each African Country should be urged to teach both English and French
to their children, provided that both brought up under French colonialism would
add English to their repertoire, and vice versa. Arabic or Spanish or Portuguese
would form the second category. And, in the faculties of science: German or
Russian.

Lat we let then die by default, each African language should be used for mother
tongue education in nursery and kindergarten schools up to primary three. This
used to be the case when we were young. Then either English or French would be
introduced for the next three years. And it would become the medium of
instruction in the intermediate school. That too, is when the next language is
introduced. When the students are in secondary school, those who are to go for
science should then be introduced to German and Russian. And in the Universities
the scientists should have at least four semesters of German or Russian; the
Arts/humanities scholar, would have one of these: Italy, Spanish, Arabic,
Portuguese. The social scientist would have either French or English. Students of
languages can please themselves.

We have to move to higher language planning if we are not to be bogged down on

national/nationality language debate; or the instance to ram down Arabic to the
throats of Southern Sudanese and seek to silence their vernaculars the way some
Northern Sudanese are first loosing theirs. Or Nigerians fearing that populous
North may want to impose Hausa into Ibibio, Ijaw, Igbo, Yoruba territories. And
with Kenya having gone through the period of Kikuyu ascendary when a major
writer throws his weight behind Gikuyu – and not Swahili – there could be
suspicions that hegemonic sentiments are at pla. Proposals from members of pre-
dominant tribes must always be examined thoroughly before being accepted: they
must pass the nationalism let test, not the narrow nationality one only. For, unlike
the man from a minor tribe, the big tribes man has a sleeping constituency in his
 that is ready to spring to dominance any time a new ideology comes along which
aids its cause.

2.7 As the tribal chauvinism breeds another, and , as the direction f thought van not
be controlled – what tribal tresure people whisper in their tribal languages – when
one calls for literature in the vernaculars, one had better make the call an open
ended one. Let all creativity bloom: let all genres be utilized, let the religious
literatures compete for people’s allegiances, let the different ideologies have a
field-day.

Let the people, after exposure to all these, choose their best books. Writers,
ideologies, religions. Let there be no name calling. Let Marxist not reserve the
name ‘patriot’ for themselves only. Let Governments not call those who differ
with them ‘traitors’. Let believers in one faith not call the other in a different faith
‘unbelievers’. The lady we have all come to woe is the reader, the audience, the
nation. She will marry whom she chooses. She needs feeding, housing, caring,
protecting; she needs respecting, and leeway to develop her talents. She needs an
arena to display her joy. Let the suitors be gentlemen. Let them come to her,
respecting one another. Le them court her fairly. Let the lady finally choose who
she loves. And let her choice be respected. Those who are not chosen should go
and reexamine their suits.

2.8 Literacy movements come, literacy movements go. Soon readers will be fed up
being called, urged, to maintain a war pose, an eternal armed struggle. It may be
good for them to retire from the fight now, it will be added. But, the body can
bend in one direction that long, and no further. In the U.S. the need for civil rights
is greater nor than it was twenty years ago. But who cares for civil agitation any
more? Martin Luther King Junior. Came – the error has spawned him, and thrown
him up. The era grew, reached its zenith, and waned. People are now busy doing
something else.
Of course the gains of the civil right days have been taken in stride in the long
march of the people of the United States towards a juster country. But even
conscious goes to sleep. And perhaps we should not jungle nerve too much, rattle
bones too much last they develop a premature reaction.

2.9 It is best that human spirit be given its full play, its full spectrum of expression for
the left extreme to extreme right. Passing through the dormant majority in the
center. It is then for the center, immobile unless shaken to wakefulness-to mediate
between the pulls towards left right.

Or, to change the figure for speech a little. Let the human spirit be represented by
a circle. And the core is where the majority opinion is. Once in a while a
movement comes up, and pulls the spirit towards it like the gravitation that pulls
the universe towards a passing powerful star. When that starts influence is felt. Its
power affects changes in the universe. Soon or later, it passes on its magnetism
wanes and the universe dances to another tune, reacts to contrary or adjacent pull.
 All pulls are living experiences the living organisms have gone through: the living
organism has acquired as parts of living history, working experience. Therefore a
Catholicism of attitude towards literacy traditions, ideologies, histories, genres is
urged. Don’t cry for democracy when you mean to campaign for the common
cheer of rabbles, workers. That is but one constituency to benefit from the
largeness of democracy. And that constituency: it does not have permanent
members. Bank-robbers arise from there to become millionaires. All those people
who have seen anger in the face, or slept with it in their stomachs would be the
last people to remain poor to remain hungry. They have their dreams too. And
who can blame them? The worst we can do is to keep them down as exhibits, or
urge them to love their lot. The most we can do is to assist most of them to better
their lot, and some of them jump out of their squalor and to work their sharp
brains for them.

2.10 The West’s liberal education gave us a taste of everything. Because all is there for
display, one can so to speak, pick and choose. One could decide how far one
wanted to go and within what profession, discipline or trade. Though authority
frowned on some sectors, it was still possible to have some knowledge on them.
One could learn about Communism, Trotskyism, Liberalism, Ku Klax Klan,
Black Caucus. But in any Communists’ world and now (2006) or radical Islam,
for that matter, it is radicalism all the way; it is communism all the way. After
years of keeping screw on man’s other emotion, the frying pan busted. Gorbachev
could not maintain it any longer. Eastern Europe could not sit tight on its other
human feature any more. Even the USSR could not be blackmailed to remain
communists anymore.

I say: let a thousand flowers bloom.

2.11 The new morality, the new agenda, seems this: accelerate, by all means at all
costs, the advent of new communist day. Praise all things radical. Blame
everything non-radical. Destroy those against radicalism, at all costs. Lie in the
name of radicalism; cheat in the name of radicalism. Strike a blow for radicalism.
Show no mercy against anti-people (Who are these under!) Don’t doubt. Help the
‘progressive’ forces of the whole world in bringing world communism into being.
(The same thing could be said about radical Islam). What a blinkered vision,
view, plan, view, plain, vista. At least the old time religion was better: it won its
wars through compassion. This one seeks to win us by the sword, the lie, the
repression, dictatorship. Communism is one-dimensional monorail. It blinkers its
advocate to begin with (Same with radical Islam).

2.12 Who is being realistic now? Where there are classes-well established and not
stand-in ones; where there are workers, bourgeoisies and lords – real ones and not
some uppity nouveau riche who sold charcoal yesterday and has a million in his
account today; where there are classes, I say, you can then name categories with
their right names. But where things are still in a flux, you are romantic to say the
least, in hunting for classes amongst broad category of peasants.
2.13 When the writer, the thinker, the philosopher, the artist moves into the world
politics, he should watch out. There are sharks there. There are those already
entrenched in state-houses; There are those who have worked out a modus vivendi
in leading the opposition and are well poised to move forward when the time
comes; there are the dark horses, they who hijack movements at the eleventh
hour, kill to reach there. Be modest in the assessment of your importance and
ability or capability; accept it that you are not alone on asking for the lady’s hand.

2.14 Now, whether we like it or not there will be Africans using English language,
French language, Portuguese language for long time to come. Some of them,
businessmen will need these languages for commerce. Some of them, journalists
will need to be informed through them in order to inform around or back. Some of
them, teachers and lecturers, will have to go on acquiring knowledge and
transmitting it through these European languages. As to whether the writers –
poets, essayists, novelists, dramatists, folklorists – are to be frightened of these
languages into silence or crash adult education in native tongues, I do not know.
But the choice I Am sure, will be individual and audience, subject matter,
publishing practically – as well as linguistic competence will matter a lot in the
choices.

2.15 I have more than once pointed out that my heart bleeds for the common man, the
worker, the masses, the lowly. For the only thing that separates me from is the
accidental school education I got. Otherwise, I the last child, the only school
educated one, with all members of my family being unschooled we are peasants.
From my study of social sciences, and the development process, I know that most
of Africa before colonialism was a land of peasants. And the colonialism for
better and to worse, brought into this continent a lot of things: new religion that
made salvation and individual rather than a communal effort; money economy
which favored the person who ready or able to break ranks with the his
compatriots; new ways of administration where the European or Asian, white or
brown, was now equated with sources of power and the blacks had no choice
except to kowtow.

But Christianity and Islam also brought their own forms of group solidarity for
their member. If one discounted the racial ‘superiority’ and accepted second -rate
category, one could share in the camaraderie that existed amongst one’s fellow
believers from other races. Christianity foremost, and Islam second have their
own form of moral concept, ethical considerations, which because they were more
widely spread through imperialism tended to mask the native versions. Wrongly.

But I am most concerned about the following: the conflicts in the river between
have been reenacted allover Africa and the third world. Whereas a new religion, a
new culture – or foreign – has been introduced, a wedge has been driven into that
which was one. Then when things started falling apart, and because we could not
avoid it, we tolerated one another by sharing the waters of the rivers between.
 That old man’s injunction to his son: go to that place, see what they do there and
be our eyes. For it is none of ours joints, what shall we do when powers of faults
have shifted there?

My only regret is that there was never another old man who sent an investigation
team to assess the new setup and come and deliver their report for general
discussions by the elders. Had our elders held conferences each time a new school
arose ,perhaps there would have never developed the individual traumas we
pioneering spirits went through .

2.16 I grant that the whole educational system needs thinking over. And when I say it
needs thinking over, I do not mean we are to give or leave the task to the radicals
,the socialists .The socialists are not centrally poised to develop Africa .They are
more interested to move it to the left .And the colonial Capitalists had already
created this world with all its faults. What was denied was the primacy of African
traditions in developing African peoples. So, what is needed according to me, is a
return to African ways. We have to design educational system that arises from
African sensibilities, African communal ethos, African world view at the center.
And these – call it neo African – personality, if you like would then be projected
in everything that Africans do and elaborated in all sorts of ways till it becomes
the universal African way. In short, starting from Africanity, or Africanism, one
returns to serve Aficanity, Africanism. The effort of all education would be to
elaborate on it, to disseminate it, to give it the widest outreach, to imbue it with
vitality and longevity. The end result of education would be to realize the highest
ideals of Africa humanism.

Admittedly this is more complex then merely to extend the thought of Marx in
order to merely wrest power from the incumbents of state houses.

2.17 I admit that concerns for the underdog have to be articulated. For the underdogs
are helpless and needs our help. But I also know that to cry and cry for their
salvation as an end and itself can stop us go to hunt the meat with which to feed
them, design the industries in which they are to work out their salvation. There are
two ways to help the helpless: one is to merely draw attention to their plight; the
other is to create the means for bettering their conditions-to create work so that
they may thereby earn there living there from, to create social institutions and
economics lows which give them the chance to realize their ambitions.
That can not be done in simplistic ways.

I am afraid the campus Marxist from Nairobi to Ibadan are bent on heckling the
capitalists who are doing all they know how to better their own positions as well
as those of masses. If they could only be realistic let them cast a glance
Northwards to the sahel belt from Somalia through the
Sudan,Chad,Nigar,Mali,BurkinaFaso,Guinea,Senegal,Mauritania in order to see
how better off socially or culturally black Africans are.
 Introduce Marxist instability and you will leave to regret it, if you lived at all. (Or
radical Islam (now 2006) then u have real course for rethinking African
development).

2.18 In Tanzania, a linguistic retreat from English to Swahili was accompanied by

retreat from rigorous pursuit of Industrialization in to lazy Ujamaa-sit down, have
a god yarn and a cup of coffee.
With socialization of Africa, other and higher ideals are being sacrificed for the
common cheer of the ‘broad’ masses of the people. When only Marx, Engels,
Mao, Fanon are the only philosophers allowed in the arena; when only one
philosophy Marxism – is allowed, and it is resurgent Marxism at that, then it is
time we involve the spirit of our ancestors to save Africa. Resurgent Marxism,
like all up and coming philosophies and religious sects, is rough with its
competitors. It cheats, lies, kills in order to establish itself. For the sake of Marx,
all methods of winning followers are allowed. To the man drunk with Marxism,
Marx is greater than God. In absolute terms, Marxism is immoral. (I know they
would murmur ‘amoral’). (Or radical Islam for that matter). (In discussing
Marxism through Chidi Amuta’s essay, and Ngugi wa Thiongo’s essay, I am sure
I have given vent to all misgivings).