Daily Nation Kenya, Monday, January 6, 

2014

Kenyan author wins global literary prize

Writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o. The renowned writer has been picked for a literary award organised
by the Caribbean Philosophical Association. PHOTO/FILE  

In Summary

 President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association Jane Anna Gordon said the Kenyan
writer’s works exemplified “the intellectual and political boldness and courage that we
encourage”.

By NATION REPORTER
More by this Author

Renowned writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o has been picked for a literary award organised by the
Caribbean Philosophical Association.

Prof Ngugi won the Nicol Guilln Lifetime Achievement Award for Philosophical Literature
because of the global importance of his work, the awarding committee said.
The committee, which includes novelists Edwidge Danticat and Junot Diaz, said his
contributions to literary theory, philosophy in literature, African letters, post-colonial criticism
and the struggle for human dignity stood among the best of the age.

President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association Jane Anna Gordon said the Kenyan
writer’s works exemplified “the intellectual and political boldness and courage that we
encourage”.

Other winners were Prof Frieda Ekotto, who bagged the Philosophical Literature award because
of her contributions as a novelist, a theorist of race, sexuality, and criminality. Supriya Nair won
the Outstanding Book award for his book The Pathologies of Paradise: Caribbean Detours.

The Awards Committee said the book was a rich and compelling analysis of Anglophone
Caribbean literature from multidisciplinary, multi-genre and multi-theoretical perspectives that
include postcolonial literary theory, psychoanalysis, cultural studies theory, and transnational
Caribbean feminist theory.

_________________________________________________________________

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Divided opinion on call for Prof Ngugi’s

return
In Summary

 Some say Prof Ngugi would be better appreciated in the US than in Kenya.
 Others, however, hail him as a great inspiration and urge him to return.

By NG'ANG'A MBUGUA
More by this Author

Kenyans on social media were on Tuesday divided over whether renowned writer Ngugi wa
Thiong’o should return home.

Responding to the invitation that President Uhuru Kenyatta made to the writer who paid him a
courtesy call at State House on Monday, some said Prof Ngugi would be better appreciated in the
US than in Kenya.
Others, however, hailed him as a great inspiration and urged him to return.

“It is high time Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o came back to Kenya. The nation needs this icon of
literature to boost our learning institutions,” said Zacharius Okoth, responding to the story on the
Nation website.

Another reader, who only identified himself as Mulosh said: “Don’t try it Ngugi… I am very
talented. Have come back and I have lots of regret… I am considering leaving again soon.”

Others said Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o should be left to make a decision on his return.

The writer is in the country to celebrate 50 years since his first novel Weep Not, Child was
published. On Tuesday, debate about his two-week visit to Kenya was among the top 10 trending
topics on Twitter.

According to Nation FM, when Prof Ngugi met Mr Kenyatta on Monday, he asked the President
to prohibit teachers from punishing students who speak in their mother tongue.

The writer has been promoting vernacular languages and has asked the government to make local
languages part of the curriculum.

On Tuesday, the writer and a team from East Africa Educational Publishers, presented book
donations to Manguo and Kamandura Primary schools in Limuru, where he spent his early years.

At 2pm on Wednesday, he will give a talk at Eastleigh High School, Nairobi while on Thursday,
he will give a lecture at the University of Nairobi, from 2pm.

The title of the lecture is “Nurturing Literature in Africa”.

Kenyans speak: Reactions online

Cherono Masinkei: In principle, the message and call our president has given to Prof Ngugi wa
Thiong’o is a very positive and welcome gesture. This message is intended for all the Kenyans in
the diaspora, me being one.

Victor Richard: No Ngugi don’t come back. Al-Shabaab, grand corruption, tribalism just to
mention a few issues bedevilling our country.

Isaya Abiero: We can’t all be in Kenya. Even American people look for opportunities outside
their country. It is good invitation though.

Imboko Ndiranga: Return to Kenya? Why? How?

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Why the ‘liberated’ national theatre should

fulfil Kenyans’ deferred dreams

President Uhuru Kenyatta (left) chats with renowned writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o during the re-
opening of Kenya National Theatre on September 4, 2015. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION
MEDIA GROUP 

In Summary

 On the National Theatre stage today are President Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo
Kenyatta; and Mukami Kimathi, wife of Dedan Kimathi. So this space, this occasion, is
pregnant with memories of the past and the promises of tomorrow.
 The play was going to represent Kenya in the Second World Black and African Festival
and Arts and Culture (Festac) held in Nigeria in 1977, and to be fair, the Ministry of
Culture of the time, was very supportive.
 Contrary to the dire predictions of our detractors, for the three days allotted to the play,
the theatre was packed by men and women some of whom came from the so-called
Africa locations in Nairobi and its environs.
By Ngugi wa Thiong’o
More by this Author

The occasion of re-opening the revamped National Theatre is simultaneously a re-enactment of

the spirit of our history but also an enactment of its revival.

In 1952, the year this theatre was built, was also the year that Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the
Kenya African Union (KAU), was put in prison.

He had a theatre background. In 1937, he had acted in the film, Sanders of the River alongside
the great Paul Robeson, who sang Let my People Go.

It was also the year that Dedan Kimathi, leader of KAU’s armed wing, Land and Freedom Army,
which the colonial State renamed the mumbo-jumbo sounding Mau Mau, fled into the
mountains. He, too, had a theatre background: he founded Gichamu Youth Theatre at Karuna-ini,
Nyeri. It was a year of theatre.

On the National Theatre stage today are President Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Jomo Kenyatta; and
Mukami Kimathi, wife of Dedan Kimathi. So this space, this occasion, is pregnant with
memories of the past and the promises of tomorrow.

In 1975, Micere Mugo and I wrote a play, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi. You would have thought
that after Independence, Dedan Kimathi would have been hailed as the great liberator. Instead
there was marked silence about him and the heroic guerrilla army he led.

The challenge for us, as we wrote in the preface of the published script, was to depict the masses,
symbolised by Kimathi in the only historically correct perspective: heroically and as the true
makers of history!

The play was going to represent Kenya in the Second World Black and African Festival and Arts
and Culture (Festac) held in Nigeria in 1977, and to be fair, the Ministry of Culture of the time,
was very supportive.

But we thought that Kenyans had the right to be the first to see what was going to represent them
abroad. And what better venue than their own National Theatre?

That was when a nightmare in daytime started. We could not get a foothold on our national
theatre space. But there was plenty of space for such plays as the French Ballet, Jesus Christ
Superstar, Anne Get Your Gun, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the [Roman] Forum,
and other imports from Broadway and West End. Eventually after a struggle, and frankly, some
press outcry about a handcuff for the Kimathi play, we were given three days.

Contrary to the dire predictions of our detractors, for the three days allotted to the play, the
theatre was packed by men and women some of whom came from the so-called Africa locations
in Nairobi and its environs.
Actually it was a sight to see: the space which previously had been the exclusive domain of
three-piece suited gentlemen and high-heeled ladies bedecked with pearls and imitation
diamonds was now occupied by a whole range of people, families, ordinary farmers, workers,
students, who after every performance would join the actors for the final procession that spilled
from inside the buildings into the streets.

It was amidst this euphoria over the successful run, that I was summoned to the headquarters of
the Criminal Investigation Department, and the first question really startled me: Why were we
interfering with European theatre? We were only doing African theatre, Kenyan theatre, and how
did that interfere with European theatre? I asked.

Because after Kimathi, there was relatively small attendance at the European comedies that
followed. I told him that Festac ’77, the name of the company that performed the play, had done
their Kenyan act, and left the premises. His parting shot was a warning: he would plant his men
inside our group. I began to understand.

The scene would repeat itself in 1982, when the men and women of Kamiriithu Community
Education and Cultural Centre, who in 1977 had performed the Gikuyu language play, Ngaahika
Ndeenda/I will marry when I want, co-authored with the late Ngugi wa Mirii, and which sent me
to Kamiti Maximum Security Prison for most of 1978, wanted to bring another Gikuyu language
play, Maitu Njugira/Mother Sing for Me, to this very National Theatre.

We had properly booked the theatre, met all the legal and financial requirements, but on the day
of the performance, we found the doors into the National Theatre padlocked and armed police
patrolling the area. Maitu Njugira remains a suspended dream, these last 30 years, for I could
never bring myself to have it done outside Kenyan soil.

I would like to see this National Theatre, by what it does, the tradition it sets up, always be a
tribute to the heroism of Kenyan men and women who made our history with their sacrifice of
sweat and blood.

This includes all those young men and women who were hounded to prison, exile and death
during the Nyayo era for exercising their right to organise.

Mr Thiong’o is a distinguished professor of English and Comparative Literature at the

University of California, Irvine. This is an abridged version of his keynote address at the
reopening of the Kenya National Theatre on September 4.

Saturday, September 5, 2015

It’s time we looked beyond Ngugi wa

Thiong’o
Prof Ngugi wa Thiong'o shows a copy of a story book written in vernacular to members of the
public and students who attended his public lecture at Kisii university on 31/08/2015. PHOTO|
BENSON MOMANYI 

In Summary

 But just like Egara Kabaji opined a few days ago; it’s time to ask a few hard questions on
Ngugi albeit different ones from the one he raised.
 Why is it that we are unable to produce good writers of Ngugi’s stature 50 years after he
appeared on the scene?

By JOSECK NYANTINO

A lot has been written about the state of creative writing in our country on these pages. Anytime
such a debate comes up, the name Ngugi wa Thiong’o inevitably keeps popping up and rightly
so.

He is the father of the Kenyan novel having pioneered and forever dominated that genre with his
first novel Weep not, Child and his other great novels. Weep not, child just recently celebrated
its 50th anniversary with Ngugi himself gracing the multiple events attending the milestone
moment. Ngugi is without a doubt the best novelist in Kenya and one of the finest in Africa. His
influence cannot therefore be overemphasized.
But just like Egara Kabaji opined a few days ago; its time to ask a few hard questions on Ngugi
albeit different ones from the one he raised. Why is it that we are unable to produce good writers
of Ngugi’s stature 50 years after he appeared on the scene?

Why is it that in the last two decades we can only brag about two truly great novels that can
stand shoulder to shoulder with the very best on the continent; that’s The River and the Source
by late Margaret Ogolla and Dust by Yvonne Owuor? Apart from these two, which other great
novels have we written? Ogolla’s novel went on to win the Commonwealth award for literature
in 1995 while Yvonne’s book was recently short-listed for a major global literary award this
year.

We have been fixated on Ngugi for far too long that we’ve failed in our duty to write good
books. Ngugi was home recently just to celebrate his writing history, his success and that of his
children. I didn’t hear much in terms of mentoring budding writers.

What tangible steps has he ever prescribed to improve creative writing? Did he even convene a
meeting with Kenyan writers? Apart from the highly publicised photo-ops with the high and
mighty, who else did he meet? And is the writing legacy he wants to bequeath just for his family
and not his legion of fans and admirers like me? Why don’t we for instance have Ngugi wa
Thiong’o Literature Prize? Why don’t we have Ngugi wa Thiong’o Institute of African
Literature at the University of Nairobi?

Mr Nyantino is the author of ‘Twists of Fate’

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Two weeks in hell: A retake of Nyayo torture chambers

Mr Jackson Maina (left) and Stephen Kitur who were torture victims inspect what used to be the
control room of the Nyayo torture chambers when they visited the site. PHOTO| FILE| NATION
MEDIA GROUP 

In Summary

 Ngotho wasn’t prepared for the Nyayo torture chambers. No one ever can... for torturers
are evil geniuses.
 He admits in the book that when training (intellectually) for the Revolution, they had
known that the enemy was tough, so they needed to be strong. But how does one survive
a waterlogged prison cell?

By TOM ODHIAMBO
It is about three decades from 1986 to today. It may have taken Ngotho wa Kariuki this long to
publish his memories of a two-week stint at the Nyayo torture chambers, but his is a burning
story. Ngotho’s book, Two Weeks in Hell Inside Nyayo Torture Chambers (Medi-Teki
Publishers, 2015), is a story for those who treasure liberty, justice, rule of law, individual rights
and equity.

It is a stark reminder of what can go horribly wrong when a society forgets its humanity and
turns on itself.

Ngotho had served the country as a professor of accounting at the University of Nairobi and as
Dean of the Faculty of Arts. In 1986, he was teaching at the Eastern and Southern Management
Institute (Esami) in Arusha. He had just returned to Kenya when, on March 6, he was ‘visited’ by
officers from then Special Branch of the police. This was the beginning of a harrowing two
weeks in detention.

First, the “visiting officers” spent many hours in Ngotho’s house looking for “seditious”
documents, books and publications. Seditious generally meant any material with words like Karl
Marx, Marxism, Socialism, Libya, comrade and Cuba. These were subversive words — and they
were known to be portent among university staff and students.

Indeed, some University of Nairobi staff and students were sympathetic to the 1982 coup attempt
and had been were on the wrong side of government. Ngotho was charged with being funded by
foreigners to destabilise the government, associating with other subversives like Ngugi wa
Thiong’o and Micere Mugo, being involved in training guerillas and buying and stocking
ammunition. The big problem, though, is that evidence didn’t exist.

The security agents relied on self-incrimination and false confessions wrought by torture.

WAS NOT PREPARED

Ngotho wasn’t prepared for the Nyayo torture chambers. No one ever can... for torturers are evil
geniuses. He admits in the book that when training (intellectually) for the Revolution, they had
known that the enemy was tough, so they needed to be strong. But how does one survive a
waterlogged prison cell?

What nerves of steel does one muster to drink fetid water reeking of human waste? Which man is
strong enough to endure hot pinpricks, burning cigarette butts, and steaming water sprayed on
one’s private parts? What does it take to endure sudden gusts of hot and cold air, or flooding,
freezing and steaming water in one’s cell?

How does one remain calm in a secluded room with safari ants or snakes for company? Ngotho
says these were staple torture methods at Nyayo chambers. This barbarism is what the
unfortunate guests of the infamous Mr Opiyo (Ngotho spells his name as Opio) suffered every
day till release or death. However, Ngotho says the most vicious of all the torture tactics was the
“game of waiting and wearing out”.

Endless interrogation was meant to tire the detainee, to make him long for freedom, to break him
down mentally and to lead him to a “confession.” Records show that there are those who were
broken and told their torturers what they wanted to hear. They were convicted on the basis of
such sham evidence. Records also show, as Ngotho recalls, that the human spirit can endure the
most creative of evil.

For Ngotho and many other detainees then, mere knowledge that the interrogators were fellow
human beings against whom he could test his survival skills seemed to give him hope. He argued
with his tormentors; fought back, threatened, stuck to his story, lived in the knowledge that his
friends — such as Maina Kiongo — were in the same predicament, and remained committed to
outlasting the police.

One of the detainees’ enduring tactics was to sing Mau Mau songs, vowing, “... never to say
again what happened to us; nor to the others. Those who’ll survive to tell the story to their
children will tell of the horror of Nyayo House, a den of terror. Then those generations will know
that the second liberation of Kenya was won by blood and sweat, just like the first one.”

Indeed, Two Weeks in Hell recounts the horror that people will experience when fellow humans
become obsessed with protecting personal interests.

But evil can beget good. It is the evil of the years that Ngotho talks about that planted the seeds
of justice and freedom in the new Constitution. It would be remiss today for anyone to support
any argument about the lessening of freedoms that the Constitution guarantees, considering the
suffering that Ngotho writes about.

Unfortunately, though, Two Weeks in Hell is unedited — with absolutely unforgivable mistakes,
including misspellings of the names of Ngotho’s close friends, incomplete sentences, poor
grammar, and incoherence. It seems like the publishers simply printed a raw manuscript.

But maybe we need to read the text as it is — a tortuous remembering of a time of betrayal,
inexplicable violence, shattered dreams, lost jobs, separation from family and friends, starvation,
blood and death. Such stories of hell are difficult to tell coherently.
 The writer teaches literature at the University of Nairobi.

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Push for vernacular use in schools unlikely to

succeed

Class One pupils at St George’s Sianda Primary School in Kisumu. FILE PHOTO |  NATION
MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

 While they made perfect sense in the immediate post-colonial period when the majority
of the population was illiterate and depended mostly on oral literature to pass on the
wisdom of the ages, these ideas apply only to a small segment of the population today.
 Many young people in Kenya have been brought up in cosmopolitan environments where
the emphasis is on multicultural upbringing, rather than exposure to any one
“indigenous” culture.
  While exposure to vernacular ensures that a child can communicate with its parents and
those in the immediate environment, it is not a prerequisite for the ability to learn new
concepts.

By LUKOYE ATWOLI

Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the celebrated Kenyan literary icon, was recently quoted
promoting the use of local languages in educational and other public institutions.

He opines: “If you know all languages in the world but you don’t know your mother tongue, or
the language of your culture, then that’s colonisation, but if you add all the languages of the
world to your mother tongue, that’s empowerment.”

This is a view that seems to be shared by many in the political establishment, and many
academics also agree with it.

A two-fold rationale has been proposed for promoting the use of vernacular in political and
academic discourse. Firstly, there is the argument that promoting “colonial” languages at the
expense of indigenous forms of expression maintains a form of mental bondage.

This theme forms the pillar of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s thesis on “Decolonising the mind”. Use of
vernacular supposedly enables one to connect with their culture and prepares them to understand
the world around them better than use of “foreign” languages.

Secondly, in academia, the use of vernacular is meant to ease the translation of knowledge for
the consumption of the population. Ngugi argues: “Now we have a breed of highly educated
individuals with skills they cannot impart to the rest of the population because they cannot find a
mode of communication ...” The assumption is that without the ability to communicate
competently in vernacular, a scholar risks becoming a thing of irrelevance, of no value to his
community.

These arguments sound extremely convincing, except that they ignore the only thing that is
constant in the human experience, change over time. While they made perfect sense in the
immediate post-colonial period when the majority of the population was illiterate and depended
mostly on oral literature to pass on the wisdom of the ages, these ideas apply only to a small
segment of the population today.

Many young people in Kenya have been brought up in cosmopolitan environments where the
emphasis is on multicultural upbringing, rather than exposure to any one “indigenous” culture.

The language of our culture is also rapidly evolving to more and more resemble urban culture
anywhere else in the world. A Kenyan youth in Nairobi might be more at home in other world
capitals than in his own cultural or ethnic backyard (ushago).
In today’s world, the language and currency is information, in whatever form it is held. The
language of expression seems to matter less than the content, and the ability to reach a wider
audience is more important than fluency in expression.

A lot of important work is being accomplished through collaboration in online spaces involving
people in many different countries and with very diverse backgrounds.

While exposure to vernacular ensures that a child can communicate with its parents and those in
the immediate environment, it is not a prerequisite for the ability to learn new concepts.

This is actually encouraged by early exposure to other people’s cultures and modes of
expression, and the realisation that one’s ethnic or cultural group is only one of a huge collection
of ethnicities and cultures in the world.

Finally, over three quarters of our population has no personal memory of colonialism, and new
explanations must be found for our failings as a society without constantly flogging the theme
that everything “foreign” is evil.

Prof Atwoli is associate professor of psychiatry and dean, Moi University’s school of medicine;
lukoye@gmail.com

Friday, September 4, 2015

The devil is innocent; it’s your tax that leaders steal

Children wash copper on July 9, 2010 at an open-air mine in Kamatanda in the rich mining
province of Katanga, south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). FILE  NATION
MEDIA GROUP
In Summary

 The Angolan Pepetela (Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos), who like Ngugi
beautifully writes within a Marxist tradition, does not discount the role of spirituality in
liberation struggles.
 For Pepetela, especially in The Return of the Water Spirit, the liberating spiritual power
resides in traditional African religious beliefs, not Judeo-Christian lies.

By EVAN MWANGI
More by this Author

I  was shaken to the core last week when a young acquaintance of mine, who wants me to
sponsor his hip-hop debut, admiringly asked me upfront if I was an illuminati and a devil-
worshipper.

As you probably know, the “illuminati” is a name for several secret societies (e.g., Freemasons)
purported to control the affairs of the world by planting agents in powerful positions in organs of
government, economic institutions, and major corporations. 

Its members are said to be stinking rich and politically powerful. Flashy celebrities and
formidable world leaders are rumoured to be members. Even literary icons like William
Shakespeare, Mark Twain, John Milton, Lord Byron, and John Keats are usually included in this
category of Satanists.

The reason the boy thought I worship Old Nick is that I am a “sonko” (a rich man). He was
mistaken about my financial status, but I don’t walk around town telling everyone I meet that
I’m not a rich man.

Laughable as it is, the boy’s question illumined to me that the ruling elites have succeeded in
making poor Kenyans believe one gets material wealth from supernatural powers.

With such a mind-set, every attempt to liberate our doomed country that is addicted to self-
destructive habits and superstitions will abort. None of our wishes will ever be fulfilled; we’ll
always be a hotbed of failure and unfulfilled desires.  Completely destroyed, we can as well
declare all of us dead.

Our athletes will win gold medals internationally, but that amounts to nothing materially.  You
will continue being ruled by your beloved thieves and murderers.

Before he lost the way and started wallowing in mythical utopianism, the great Ghanaian writer
Ayi Kwei Armah had captured succinctly the kind of state we are in in a novel he published in
the late 1960s, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.

In Armah’s masterpiece, the African nation is presented as a man-child, a strange being whose
organs don’t develop regardless of the passage of time. To Armah, even biological disability like
that of the man-child is a social and political condition; there’s nothing supernatural about it.
Unfortunately, religion has been used successfully to make us accept our “man-child” status as
supernaturally ordained. To his credit, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, has since the 1970s, when he adopted
socialist realism, exposed the misuse of religion to exploit factory workers and peasants in such
texts as the famous 1977 play I Will Marry When I Want (co-written with Ngugi wa Mirii).

A keen observer of material conditions and a believer in scientific change, Ngugi suggests in his
Christianity-inflected novels the possibility of the use of religion in the liberation struggle. His
heroes are quite well versed in the Bible and, in Wizard of the Crow, other religious texts.

ROLE OF SPIRITUALITY

The Angolan Pepetela (Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos), who like Ngugi beautifully
writes within a Marxist tradition, does not discount the role of spirituality in liberation struggles.
For Pepetela, especially in The Return of the Water Spirit, the liberating spiritual power resides
in traditional African religious beliefs, not Judeo-Christian lies.

Sadly, in the real Kenya we live in today the ruling class is so powerful and manipulative it
would be hard to achieve the kind of liberation that Ngugi foresees in his writing.

Politically dead, this is a country where you’re unlikely to win an election if you’re not a thief, a
murderer, or a rapist.

The diabolical dictator Jomo Kenyatta laid the foundation for the reigning kleptomania.  Poor
and well in his 70s when he became the independent Kenya’s leader in 1963, the 1891-born
Kenyatta  (unlike you and me) suddenly became so hardworking that by the time he died in
1978, our dear first head of state had amassed for himself and his cronies huge tracts of land and
prime properties across the nation.

Unlike in Ngugi’s narratives of liberation, if any conversion will ever happen, it will most likely
be into zealotry, where intelligent people decide to abandon rationality and follow dubious
prophets or their tribe-mates in power. They will preach to us hope and optimism while the
reality shows a steady slide into the horrors of the heart of darkness.

Because we’ve been steadily killed since the 1960s, to us social death doesn’t sound a bad thing
anymore, not even in our universities where nepotism and cronyism is the order of the day. Evil
is presented as virtue we should now celebrate.

That’s why, without a godfather, a young man’s only hope to make a breakthrough in the arts is
in devil worship. Yet most people claimed to be devil worshippers in Kenya are low-life thugs
who encourage rumours about their buddy-buddy camaraderie with Shetani to hoodwink us from
questioning the material sources of their wealth.

I wouldn’t care if they got their money mysteriously from occult worship of statues, naked in a
secret temple, or if their money multiplies every time they sacrifice their children in grisly road
accidents.
 But this is not the case. The so-called devil worshippers steal from you and me to accumulate
their wealth. They are likely to be in poaching, smuggling, drug trafficking, land grabbing,
terrorism, pirating, and sex trade.  In a word, they don’t get a single coin from Lucifer, his wife,
or any of his relatives.

Friday, September 4, 2015

READERS CORNER: Read widely to

sharpen your writing skills, pull audience

Writing, regardless of the genre, entails story telling. To be a good writer therefore, one has to
master the art of storytelling. PHOTO | FILE 

In Summary

 Vast reading will ease the feelings of frustration budding writers have been forced to
contend with whenever their ‘masterpieces’ are rejected by publishers as they do in most
cases.
 Besides, reading what other people have published does not kill a writer’s spirit but fuels
his dreams to be a prolific writer.
Read widely to sharpen your writing skills, pull audience

Nobert Ndisio

 Writing, regardless of the genre, entails story telling. To be a good writer therefore, one has to
master the art of storytelling.

In this age that lacks grannies and aunts with the luxury of time to plant the golden seed of oral
art in us, books remain the straight  answer to all our creativity questions. In fact, to increase the
chances of carrying a writing career dream to fruition, a budding writer must set all his heart on
telling the story in the best way possible.

And to be a master story teller, one has to read widely. There is  no crime in a writer drawing
inspiration from  other writers provided he does not duplicate other writers works.

Vast reading will ease the feelings of frustration budding writers have been forced to contend
with whenever their ‘masterpieces’ are rejected by publishers as they do in most cases.

Besides, reading what other people have published does not kill a writer’s spirit but fuels his
dreams to be a prolific writer.

In my case for example, the number of articles I have written that were never published is a
subject that only the editor of this page and I can best talk about.

My experience, to say the least, has however endeared me to the works of Vivere Nandiemo, a
regular writer in these newspaper. I have consequently followed his internet trails and consumed
all his articles with a third eye – an eye trained on finding out why he has so many publications
to his name. I hail him for exuding a really rare confidence with his pen. 

Reading Biko Zulu, who has lately been a feature in the conversations in this page, any budding
writer would easily tell how far he still is from or how close he is to being an accomplished
writer. Interestingly, even Biko himself in his article, ‘This book causes a hangover’ professes
his appetite for good books.

In the article, he treats us to a list of some of the memorable books he has read and the memories
the books left him with – in the form of the characters, when he started reading which book,
where he finished reading it and the feelings after reading.

The long and short of all this is that, for one to get a space in the writers’ hall of fame, one must
read as many books as possible. 

Literature practitioners, from the lowest to the highest levels, must lead the pack when it comes
to reading. It’s absurd to have high school literature teachers whose only source of analyses is a
guide book. It’s even tragic to have a literature lecturer who has only read Francis Imbuga’s
Betrayal in the City and consequently has not a single book title to his name.
A lecturer or teacher who has read widely anchors his arguments in a variety of sources and in
the process whets the reading appetite of his learners. Such learners are highly likely to take the
cue from their teachers to read and become good writers in future.  This way, the students will
also enjoy the same level of authority and confidence as their teacher. 

It’s only when we read widely that we will tell our stories differently. The literary gurus opine
that one who reads what everyone reads, tells the same stories as every other person.

Let’s go an extra mile. Let us read widely and build a rich and strong word bank which is the
best war chest one requires in a highly competitive literary battlefield. 

I rest my case.

 The writer is based in Migori

***

Ngugi should help Kenya address many other challenges chocking the country

Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s recent address at Kisii University and witnessing the opening of the
refurbished Kenya National Theatre were   highlights of his latest visit to Kenya. However, just
how significant has his presence been to the country?

For starters, Ngugi is a monument on the Kenyan social landscape on at least four accounts: He
has a legacy of creative works. He has also kept the literary discourse alive by originating
notions and propositions which he has gone on to defend sustainably. He is also promoting use
of African indigenous languages, even for creative writing. In an earlier visit, he urged the State
to ensure teachers do not punish learners for using their mother tongues in school.

Ngugi has gone down history as having suffered State harassment in the course of his literary
practice. He used literature to fight ills such as dictatorship and inequality. His play ‘Ngaahika
Ndeenda’ cannot be forgotten in this regard.

Then, needless to say, Ngugi is a major personality in the history of Kenyan written literature.
Ciugu Mwagiru’s article, ‘They put Kenya on the world map, so why the hatred?’ (Saturday
Nation, August 22, 2015), reminds us of this history.

Mwagiru talks about white settler authors Karen Blixen, Elspeth Huxley and Mirella Ricciardi.
Ngugi led an attack on these authors, terming them racists. Ngugi has always fought colonial
domination of Kenya.
Ngugi started fighting dictatorship and other ills perpetrated by the leaders. This would land him
in detention and later exile. Ngugi is making his way back to his motherland, about which he
recently noted, “I am happy with the changes going on in the country and the democratic space
existing in Kenya’s politics.’’

While what he said sounds fine, Kenya today has other serious challenges, including corruption
and tribalism. National cohesion is far from being achieved. This, in particular, is a subject no
one wants to touch on, for to do so would be to poke the soft underbelly.  

A student leader at Kisii University who spoke before Ngugi’s visit on August 31 was spot on:
“Ngugi has mingled with people from all walks of life and we think he can help address tribalism
in our institutions.’’

We are a democracy. We are free to say what we want without fear. However, what ought to be
done to address these challenges must be done.

Writers exist to push certain collective social agenda. Things are not all right in our nation. A lot
is yet to be done. Thus, for Ngugi’s latter-day contribution to have greater impetus, he ought to
embrace the spirit of our time, the spirit of displeasure at the myriad ills of this time.

The writer is the president of Alyp Writers Organisation and author of the Masterpiece English
series

***

Tough choices facing  Kenya’s budding creative writers today

Timothy Muchunku

A number of contributors in the forum have been urging upcoming writers to up their game.
However, most of them don’t seem to understand  the challenges most budding writers are  faced
with. Some of them have manuscripts of creative works but don’t know what to do with them.

Some of the contributors have given these writers several options including self-publishing, e-
book platforms and networking.

There are those who feel the writers can succeed on their own as long as they have the necessary
skills to produce quality work. The other group believes writers cannot achieve much on their
own as they require some players such as publishers. Yet another group has expressed 
reservations with some of these options.
And so, the question has always been: which path should the young writers follow? My take in
this case is that it all depends on the writer’s background. Those with finances can attempt to go
it alone without necessarily relying on networks of other writers or publishers who in most cases
have ignored young writers.

However, those from humble backgrounds must have the necessary networks to succeed as they
await a publisher who is willing to risk printing a fictive tale that would not sell.

Thus, we need to seriously think about the fate of creative writers in Kenya. Whether a writer
will opt for self-publishing or publishing through a firm, both have their own challenges. It is
possible for someone’s writing talent to die due to lack of a willing publisher.

***

Young authors deserve a chance to publish

Makhulo wa Makhulo

One of the challenges facing upcoming authors is  opportunities to publish their works. Most
publishing firms are rarely willing to engage young writers whose works they consider a risk.
Thus, preference is given to the more established writers.

Publishing firms are guided by capitalistic principles where they assume publishing the works of
established authors is sure to fetch them good returns. Yet by so doing, we end up killing young
talent.

Sometimes, publishers would hold onto the manuscripts of the upcoming writers for too long at
times exposing them to theft.

We have heard of the many cases where even the established authors have stolen the ideas of the
young writers. Time has come for the young writers to be given the opportunity to publish their
works. We will need them when the so-called established authors are long gone.

***

There’s hope for poetry as  stars emerge

Michael Macharia
 

A visit to any traditional publisher would make any young poet want to quit. The excuse has
been poetry doesn’t sell.

However, it is encouraging  many young poets have chosen to continue writing and performing
rather than lament. They are so many, it would be hard to list them.

Many people enjoy listening to music in languages they do not even understand yet they go on
perpetuating the myth that poetry is hard to grasp.

David Cook and David Rubadiri from England and Malawi respectfully, put together Poems
From East Africa in the 70s which are still used in our schools. Anthologies such as Boundless
Voices and Echoes across the Valley, meaning there is a market for poetry. 

The social media gives young poets a window to be heard without midwifery by publishers who
decide what should be printed and readers are free to judge the quality.

It is a revolution. Last year, a Kenya won the Babishai Poetry competition organized by

Mamushika Besigye in Uganda.

The writer is based in Laikipia

***

Students can perform well in literature

We blame teachers when students perform poorly in literature. However, this should not be the
case as many factors are normally at play. For instance, students don’t read as much these days
and this impacts.

Reading skills should be developed from an early age. However, it’s never late to start and
teachers have a great role to instil a reading culture in students.

We should also emphasise  on imaginative writing which can sharpen students’ writing skills.
Students should be guided to grow their skills by teaching them on proper use of English,
including sentence structure. 

We must reignite a reading  culture in students. Teacher, parents and mentors should
recommend  books students can read. Some of these books should be given as holiday
assignments after which the students should write short summaries and lists of vocabularies they
have encountered in their course of reading.
Students should also be introduced to newspaper to get in touch with current affairs.

Daily Nation 29 August 2015

Kenya: The Return of 'Matigari', the Story of

Two Kenyattas and Ngugi's New Role
By Peter Kimani

There is nothing fishy about the coincidences, but the first time I met Prof Ngugi wa Thiong'o,
we both had rock shrimp for lunch. The setting was California, in December 2003, when he was
still an exile, a dissident isolated from his motherland for over two decades.

This week, in Nairobi, we both had fish for dinner -- something going by the fancy name of
barracuda -- but which proved such a chewy affair, my eyes were teary when I was done.

On both occasions, Ngugi picked the tab. The only difference is that this week, he segregated the
bills: my meal and those accompanying me would be settled using his credit card; his meal and
his wife, Njeeri's, would be charged to his hotel room account.

Again, nothing sinister about this arrangement save for that the hotel bill will be paid by the
Government of Kenya. Reason, Ngugi is in the country as a guest of the State.

"From the airport, we had a police escort with a siren wailing," Njeeri chimes in, "it wailed all
the way to the hotel."

The last time Ngugi enjoyed a similar status, that is, a guest of the State, was in December 1977,
when he was taken into custody and detained without trial. His jailor: President Jomo Kenyatta,
the first President of Kenya. Ngugi's crime remains unknown to this day, although speculation is
rife that his play, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which ridicules the emergent,
political elite with a ravenous appetite for public resources, may have precipitated his
incarceration.

Ngugi's host on this trip is President Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Jomo Kenyatta. Ngugi's
engagement with Uhuru, started in June this year, when the author arrived to mark 50 years of
the publication of his seminal novel, Weep Not, Child.

Ngugi paid a courtesy call on the President, followed by a second, private visit, during which
Uhuru invited him to participate in the official re-opening of the Kenya National Theatre, which
was recently refurbished at a cost of Sh100 million.
The KNT is the hallowed space that Ngugi could not easily access in 1977 to stage plays such as
The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, co-authored with Micere Mugo.

"At a time when theatre in Kenya is trying to reflect national history and a national struggle,"
Ngugi wrote in the Daily Nation in October, 1977, and reproduced in his essay collection,
Writers in Politics, "The foreign management of our cultural centre is selling Christmas cards
that commemorate the KNT as it was in 1952, flying a colonial flag... "

MOVED THE CENTRE

Ngugi then decided to move the centre, by joining hands with other villagers and some
academics from the University of Nairobi, to establish a community theatre in Kamiriithu, in his
village in Limuru, and stage Ngaahika Ndeenda.

The play enjoyed massive attendance during its short run before its licence was revoked and the
makeshift structure demolished by armed policemen. The rehearsals of Ngugi's post-detention
play, Maitu Njugira (Mother Sing for Me) at the University of Nairobi, was similarly disrupted
in 1980.

"There were armed policemen waiting outside the Norfolk, while others waited outside the
Central Police station," Ngugi says, pointing in the direction of the two establishments, his hand
touching his forehead, lingering on for a moment, rubbing the eyes, before he stared ahead in a
blazing, clear gaze. It's a gesture that Ngugi repeats over the next three hours as I seek to know
what he makes of the overtures from the President and what that says of our political evolution.
Ngugi is returning to the KNT, where he was banished 35 years ago. And the son of the man
who jailed him is now his host. The dissident has become the distinguished.

What does all this mean to him? Is the son atoning for the sins of the father?

"It means learning from history," Ngugi says quietly, before his gaze turns to his glass of water.
There is a fizz inside. An insect has dipped in before he can take the first sip.

As the waiter disappears to fetch a fresh glass, I ask of Jomo, which somewhat explains his
dalliance with his son. Kenyatta, after all, is the mythical figure in his seminal novel, Weep Not,
Child, while kiama, the party, which echoes the independent party, Kanu, provides one of the
controlling metaphors in A Grain of Wheat.

"The old Kanu was a very progressive party," Ngugi says, explaining its tenets were to eradicate
poverty, ignorance and disease. And the man who led it, Jomo Kenyatta, had different facets to
him: Kenyatta the pan-Africanist, who took the Kenyan cause beyond its shores; Kenyatta the
nationalist, who was jailed in Kapenguria, and Kenyatta the community leader who served as the
first principal of the Githunguri College.

"The year 1952 was very crucial," Ngugi says, fixing his gaze beyond the stylish Lamu door
before his hand returns to the eyes. "It was the year that the campaign to crush locals' efforts at
self-reliance began in earnest."
Ngugi enumerates the destruction of the Githunguri College, the towering symbol of indigenous
efforts to educate Kenyans, was turned into a gaol where the Mau Mau fighters were hanged; a
towering symbol of hope reduced to a monument of shame.

Ngugi says his return to the KNT "is very important," and he is grateful the President has opened
the door for him.

Some critics claim Ngugi's dalliance with the President reflects a "softening" of his once radical
stance. The answer to this question is deductible from his observations, as he rode from the
airport.

"Is there any pride in saying, the Chinese built this or that for us? Are the Chinese training local
engineers, so that there is skill transfer to ensure we manage our affairs, in a few years?

"I'm not saying it is wrong to have connections with others, but it's important to do things for
ourselves because, what happens when the foreigners go away, or withhold their support?

"The foundation of this country was self-reliance. The Mau Mau struggle against the British did
not enjoy external support. It relied upon local support. Kamiriithu was about self-reliance. We
fuelled our vehicles to drive there, and paid for the theatre construction using our resources."

Ngugi pauses, looks wistfully ahead: "When foreigners mark our land to claim their role in this
or that project, that's modern-day slavery. It's the master marking his name on the slave body."

Some food for thought. Ngugi has finished his barracuda; I give up on mine. He takes a sip of his
tea but pushes it away; he says it is too strong and will keep him up all night.

I claim his tea-pot and ask for a fresh cup. I take the tea. As he ushers us out, Ngugi makes an
order for peppermint with honey to be dispatched to his room.

Quite some mellowing, I think; Africa's greatest living writer will need some good night sleep. I
want to stay up and contemplate his words.

The KNT will be reopened on Saturday, September 5.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Despite the criticism, Ngugi is ‘still Africa’s

best writer’
Author Ngugi wa Thiong’o poses with his book, Dreams in a Time of War, during its launch at
the National Museums of Kenya. Jennifer Muiruri | NATION 
In Summary

 The most famous indigenous East African writer, this ‘warm, witty and unassuming’
literary giant carries not only the Nobel dreams of his native land, but also those of the
entire African continent

Advertisement
By EVAN MWANGI mwangi@afrikanews.org

Even after missing the Nobel Prize for Literature by a whisker this year, Ngugi wa Thiong’o
remains East Africa’s best bet if the prize is ever to come to the continent again. Other likely
African winners would be Algerian female writer Assia Djeber and Somali novelist Nuruddin
Farah.

Ngugi would have been the fifth African writer to win the coveted prize, after Nigerian Wole
Soyinka (1988), Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz (1988), and white South Africans Nadine Gordimer
(1991) and JM Coetzee (2003).

Other Nobel winners with an African connection are African American novelist Toni Morrison
(1993) and black Caribbean poet Derek Walcott (1992) and VS Naipaul (2001), who lived in
Uganda in the 1960s and has written, albeit cynically, about Africans.

Although Ngugi’s Leninist-Marxist ideology and endorsement of violence as a therapeutic

method of fighting oppression might not amuse the staid libero-humanist Swedish Academy
judges any time soon, international literary circles had picked the radical writer as their favourite,
with the British gambling company Ladbrokes placing him top of the pack.

The prize went to Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, who, like Ngugi, is overtly political in his
writing, but believes in real-life activism and politics, having run for president in his country in
1990. Wole Soyinka, too, has joined active politics and might run for president in Nigeria.

The most famous indigenous East African writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o was born in Kamiriithu,
Limuru, in Kiambu District, Central Kenya on January 5, 1938 to Wanjiku wa Ngugi and
Thiong’o wa Nducu, a polygamous man.

The young Ngugi went to school barefoot, attending Kamaanduura and Mangu schools near his
home for primary education in the 1940s.

After the separation of his parents in 1947, Ngugi was brought up by his mother, a fact registered
in his writing through his sensitivity to the plight of women in Kenya and Africa.

His deaf-and-dumb step-brother was shot and killed by the colonial government forces in 1954,
and is immortalised as Gitogo in the novel A Grain of Wheat.
His experience of the Mau Mau has marked almost everything he has written, especially as he
tries to correct what he considers as misrepresentations of the freedom fighters in colonial and
neo-colonial history books.

In December 1960, he married Nyambura, with whom he got six children. Ngugi later got three
other children, including two with Njeeri, to whom he got married in 1991 in a civil ceremony
while in exile in the US.

Upon return from exile in 2004, he consecrated his marriage to Njeeri according to Gikuyu
traditions. Separated from Ngugi for 14 years, his first wife, Nyambura, died in 1996 in Kenya.

From 1954 to 1958, Ngugi was a student at Alliance High School, Kikuyu, where he was
admitted because of his outstanding performance. The school is registered in his work as Siriana,
a probable Kikuyu anagram for “Alliance” (Arayansi); the language’s speakers pronounce ‘l’ as
‘r’ and their ‘y’ is usually silent.

He described his struggle to enter Alliance during the state of emergency in his childhood
memoir, Dreams in a Time of War.

Although his writing career started in earnest later during his college years at Makerere
University, it was at Alliance High School, a Protestant missionary institution, that Ngungi
started writing short stories, influenced by Western children’s writing, including Robert Luis
Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

Great tradition

He joined Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, in 1959, graduating in April 1964
with a BA in English. In Makerere, the region’s top college at the time, he imbibed the “Great
Tradition” of English literature.

After graduating from Makerere, Ngugi worked briefly for the Daily Nation. Advocating for the
recovery of African cultures destroyed by colonialism, Ngugi’s articles also criticised tribal
chauvinism and urged the newly independent nation to be selective in the pre-colonial traditions
it sought to retain.

In September 1964, he joined Leeds University, UK, on a British Council scholarship. He did not
complete revisions suggested by his dissertation supervisor, and therefore did not receive a
degree. However, sections of the dissertation covering African, Caribbean, and African
American writing were published in his collection of essays, Homecoming (1972).

Honouring courage

Leeds was later to offer Ngugi an honorary degree. In response to the honour, Prof Martin
Banham of Leeds — who taught Soyinka in the 1960s — said Ngugi’s choice to write in Kikuyu
was “a political move, a one courageous move. We were honouring courage.”
In Homecoming, now out of print, he seems critical of moderate black liberators like Martin
Luther King, Jr. Following Frantz Fanon, author of The Wretched of the Earth, whose works he
encountered at Leeds, Ngugi sees the use of violence to liberate one’s nation and race as noble.

Echoes of Fanon are heard in his later works, including A Grain of Wheat (1967) which he wrote
as a student at Leeds. Like his characters Kihika and Njamba Nene, Ngugi abandoned his
postgraduate studies at Leeds after the supervisors of his thesis declared him incapable of
rigorous academic work.

In July 1967, he returned to Kenya and became a Special Lecturer in English at the University of
Nairobi, resigning in 1969 in protest against violations of academic freedom at the university.

He rejoined the university in 1971 after teaching and fellowship stints at Makerere and
Northwestern, the latter being an elite institution which, at the time, lagged behind other US
institutions in rejecting racial policies. He doesn’t seem to have been very happy at
Northwestern, where he started writing his magnum opus, Petals of Blood.

Ngugi became the first African head of the Literature Department at the University of Nairobi in
1973. Baptized James in the 1940s, he dropped his given name in the early 1970s to renounce
Christianity, which he saw as implicated in the colonisation and enslavement of Africa.

He legally changed his name to “Ngugi wa Thiong’o” on September 21, 1977. However, in spite
of this renunciation of Christianity, Ngugi’s fiction and drama resonate with its impulses in both
obvious and subtle ways.

Biblical imagery and African mythology are woven together to signal possibilities of synthesis
between different cultural practices and the possible use of anti-colonial Christian theology for
the purposes of political and cultural liberation.

Cultural conflict

His creative works cover the late colonial period, the era of decolonization, and the post-colonial
period. The three short plays in the collection This Time Tomorrow (1970) deal with the themes
of cultural conflict, dehumanization of Africans by their governments to please foreigners, and
traumatic memories of the fight for independence and the return from liberation war to a
betrayed romance.

The tension between colonialism and pre-colonial African culture is reflected most powerfully in
his novel The River Between (1965) and the play The Black Hermit (1969), first performed in
1962 to celebrate Uganda’s independence. Weep Not, Child (1964) is a semi-autobiographical
story of a young man’s struggle to acquire an education against the backdrop of the Mau Mau
war (1952-1956) and colonial terror at the time.

Ngugi was detained without trial in December 1977 as a result of his political activism and
involvement in indigenous-language community theatre.
Upon his release in December 1978, he was denied his job as a professor at the University of
Nairobi and his works were removed from secondary school syllabi. In Detained (1980), he
narrates his experiences as a political prisoner. The detention and political harassment by the
state radicalised him even further.

An important moment in Ngugi’s life and career is represented by his decision to stop writing in
English, opting to write in his mother tongue, Kikuyu. The play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will
Marry When I Want) was co-authored with Ngugi wa Mirii in 1977 and published in Kikuyu and
English 1980 and 1982 respectively. It dramatises the exploitation of workers and peasants in
post-independence Kenya.

Maitu Njugira (Mother, Sing for Me) was an equally radical play that fused traditional song and
dance in its critique of neo-colonialism in Kenya. The actors were barred from technical and
dress rehearsals at the Kenya National Theatre on February 15, 1982.

However, although the play was never formally performed or published, over 10,000 multi-
ethnic spectators from across the country watched the Kikuyu play during continuing rehearsals
at the University of Nairobi before the university banned it from its premises. The government
withdrew the performance license and razed to the ground Ngugi’s open-air theatre at
Kamiriithu.

An indefatigable worker, Ngugi can write for hours on end without rest. At 72 years of age, the
author of seven novels, numerous essays and several plays still believes he is yet to publish his
best book yet.

Ngugi has taught in major universities in the world, including Yale University and University of
New York. He has bagged many awards, including the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian
Cabinet.

He is currently the Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the

University of California, Irvine, where he also serves as Director of the International Center for
Writing and Translation.

Full of praise

His colleagues at the University of California are full of praise for the Kenyan writer as a warm
and collegial worker. “Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o (“Ngugi” to everyone here) is an
extraordinary colleague for all of us at the University of California, Irvine,” says the chair of his
department, Prof Susan C Jarratt.

“Ngugi is warm, witty, unassuming, always eager to share ideas and his amazing experiences. He
brings equal measures of creativity, integrity, and tenacity.”

Ngugi’s essays examine the intersection of art, language and politics. Like in Homecoming
(1972), the essays collected in Writers in Politics (1981; 1997) address the role of politics in
cultural production, emphasizing the centrality of indigenous languages and pre-colonial values
in modern Africa.