A life of defiance: the celebrated Kenyan author's views were not without controversy but he inspired generations of African writers

The Hindu

02-06-2025

In 1962, a group of young men and women met at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, at the Conference of African Writers of English Expression. Decolonisation was in the air. Nigeria — represented by Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka — had gained independence two years earlier. Uganda — the host country — would become independent just a few months later. And Kenya — represented, among others, by Rebecca Njau and one James Ngugi — was one year away from its own transfer of power.
The debates at Makerere included, among other things, the question of what constituted African literature, and whether literature in non-African languages (including English) could ever be truly African. The controversy exerted a formative influence over the youthful James Ngugi, who'd used the occasion of the conference to hand over to Achebe manuscripts of his first two novels, Weep Not, Child and The River Between. The novels were published in 1964 and 1965, respectively, but James Ngugi would keep neither his name, nor the language in which he wrote.
By 1970, convinced that the English language was a tool of colonisation, and that real decolonisation was impossible without decolonising the mind (including the language), James Ngugi had changed his name to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Henceforth, Ngũgĩ would write in the language of his birth, Gikuyu.
Ngũgĩ, who passed away on May 28 at the age of 87, has left behind a rich, varied, and sometimes complex legacy. Taught at the jewel of Kenya Colony's educational system, the Alliance High School, Ngũgĩ was trained to become either a member of the colonial elite, or of the neo-colonial comprador bourgeoisie that would take over Kenya after the transfer of power.
Neither of these two things happened. Ngũgĩ was jerked out of his comfortable boarding school education when, at the height of the Mau Mau war for independence, his village was depopulated by the British as a form of collective punishment, his brother sent to a concentration camp, and Ngũgĩ himself briefly imprisoned before a fortuitous set of circumstances saw him freed. In his memoir, In the House of the Interpreter (2012), Ngũgĩ would paint a memorable — and at times, tragic — portrait of the English-speaking Kenyan intellectual elite, caught between two worlds, as the struggle for freedom intensified.
Argument against English
In the initial years after independence, this internal struggle continued, as Ngũgĩ achieved prominence as an African writer, writing in English, about distinctively African themes. The River Between, for example, examined the impact of colonialism on so-called 'traditional' practices, and the social havoc that that wreaks — in the mould of Achebe's Things Fall Apart(1958).
However, after 1970, when Ngũgĩ resolved this struggle in his own mind, he faced a different — external — struggle. Writing in his native language, and with his explicitly left-wing and anti-colonial attitude, he soon drew the attention of President Jomo Kenyatta and his authoritarian regime. When Ngũgĩ staged a play called I Will Marry When I Want in 1977, he was arrested and imprisoned. In prison — in an act that has since become a part of legend — Ngũgĩ wrote his next novel, Devil on the Cross, in Gikuyu, and on toilet paper.
Upon his release, Ngũgĩ went into exile, eventually settling into a teaching career in the United States. It was there that he developed his philosophy in greater detail, through books such as Decolonising the Mind (1986). Building upon arguments that had first been made in Makerere more than two-and-a-half decades ago, Decolonising the Mind made the case for abandoning English in order to achieve true decolonisation. Three decades later, in Secure the Base (2016), Ngũgĩ would develop this argument further, noting that 'each language, no matter how small, carries its memory of the world'. Suppressing language, thus, meant suppressing memory.
However, in this, Ngũgĩ's views were not without controversy. His Kenyan compatriot, Binyavanga Wainaina, made gentle fun of Ngũgĩ puritanism in his own memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place (2011). The Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera, whose own decision to write was inspired by Ngũgĩ, clashed bitterly with him over the question of writing in English. Ngũgĩ's views about decolonisation were powerful — but they were never uncontested.
Troubled legacy
Ngũgĩ's suffering at the hands of both the colonial and the post-colonial Kenyan regimes came together in what many people (including this writer) believe to be his masterpiece, Wizard of the Crow (2006). Set in an unnamed African country, the novel takes an unsparing, sarcastic, and darkly humorous scalpel to the cruelties, banalities, and venalities of the 'Independence' government, which masks its own failures and justifies its repression by blaming both colonialism and neo-colonialism — even as that same government is economically and militarily propped up by Western powers as a front against communism. To read Wizard of the Crow is to rage, to laugh, and to weep, all at the same time — a testament not just to Ngũgĩ's mastery as a writer, but to the life he lived and which informed his work, a life of defiance.
In the twilight of his life, Ngũgĩ's legacy was marred by allegations of domestic abuse. In a context in which towering literary figures are often treated as moral authorities — and Ngũgĩ certainly was — an obituary would be incomplete without acknowledging this, and noting the culture of silence that surrounds debates on literary legacy. For an honest assessment, we must hold these contradictions in balance, even as we celebrate the rich corpus of work that Ngũgĩ has left to us.
The writer and reviewer is an author, most recently of 'The Sentence'.