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Daily Maverick
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Elegy for Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o – Weep not Africa, the devil is on the cross
the passing of the sage needs an elegy weaving his works into memory woven not from sorrow but from the titles he left us each a thread in the long cloth of liberation Weep Not, Child though Njoroge's dreams were drowned in betrayal still he hoped still he studied still he believed that books could set a colonised people free as the Petals of Blood drift down the River Between Kamina's cries echo through the valley where Waiyaki once stood torn between tradition and the hunger for change Devil on the Cross watches from a billboard in Ilmorog where Wariinga, mother, secretary, warrior walks tall past the businessmen who sold her country for a coin and a foreign tongue through the smoke of the Kenyan stage we hear The Trial of Dedan Kimathi his voice unbroken his spine unbowed his name restored to the tongues of children (did I say Kenya? No, belonged to the world) he spent his life trying to Decolonise the Mind not just from foreign flags flying through the occupied territories and the Dias but from self-doubt from the coloniser who lived behind our eyes whispering shame in our own languages he taught us the necessity of Moving the Centre from empire to earth from London to Limuru from ivory towers to village theatres I Will Marry When I Want, said Gicaamba and Wariinga not when the landlord says not when the priest demands but when freedom rings clear as a blacksmith's hammer and for saying so he was Detained left with nothing but a Writer ' s Prison Diary pages scribbled in secret where even silence was written in resistance yet even in exile he nurtured Dreams in a Time of War walking barefoot through his boyhood while bombs fell and books were rare as rain in the House of the Interpreter he listened to the scriptures of the empire read aloud by boys in uniform and asked what if we spoke of our own prophets instead the Birth of a Dream Weaver was not painless it came with betrayal with exile with his passport stolen and his tongue declared dangerous yet he kept Wrestling with the Devil not to destroy but to expose his weapon not violence but parable his armour not hate but laughter the sting in his pen penetrating and shattering tyrants, and masters the humility in his heart warming every freedom fighter in Africa and beyond Barrel of a Pen in hand wa Thiong ' o resisted repression in neo-colonial Kenya noting that the Mau Mau is Coming Back out of myth walked Matigari wrapped in rags and questions seeking truth in a land where justice had gone into hiding on a windy playground Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus took off lifting young minds beyond fences and flags while Njamba Nene's Pistol reminded us that courage can be held even in small hands his Homecoming was never a return but a revelation a replanting a radical remembering that the village has always been enough on every page he spoke with the Language of Languages from Gikuyu to Kiswahili to the silence between drums reminding us that no language is small when it carries a people's soul he dreamed of The Perfect Nine daughters of Mũmbi mothers of a nation their journey carved in myth and marrow walking barefoot into legend from Something Torn and New he stitched a flag that no coloniser could fold his ink forming stars his stories forming skies weep not Africa the devil is on the cross screaming in white houses the walls of the empire shaking from voices Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o son of Kenya father of African letters fellow traveller of Fanon comrade of Sankara brother in resistance to Biko rooted in Makerere's red soil where he stood among a chorus of East African minds Micere Githae Mugo, fierce and unbending Okot p'Bitek, singing Lawino into eternity Ali Mazrui, mapping Africa's global soul John Ruganda, building stages of truth Pio Zirimu, naming orature as power Grace Ogot, weaving ancestral memory into prose Taban lo Liyong, sharp as iron in a blacksmith's fire Shaaban Robert, a Kiswahili visionary the South and North African contingents the Dias, Walter Rodney and so many others teachers and poets farmers and firebrands the women and men of the people who did more than write back to empire they wrote forward with and among their people they imagined futures in the ashes of conquest they held language not as a tool but as a weapon as shelter as seed Ngũgĩ understood this he knew that the word could build a nation he knew the power of stories told in the mother tongue and like all true cultural workers he toiled not for applause but for transformation now he rests but Njoroge still dreams Wariinga still walks Matigari still searches Dedan still speaks Mazrui lives and children still rise on buses made of books he is not gone his story is not over a monument built on language, knowledge, culture, history this elegy is still becoming. DM
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, dissident Kenyan novelist who drafted a book on prison lavatory paper
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who has died aged 87, was a Kenyan novelist whose work could manage to be both poignant and darkly funny as he challenged authority in many forms – political, economic, cultural and, most significantly, colonial. In 1964, the appearance of Weep Not, Child in the UK made him the first East African writer to have a novel appear in English. This came about with the help of Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author of Things Fall Apart. They had met at the African Writers Conference that took place in Kampala, Uganda, in 1962, when Achebe was advisory editor for Heinemann's African Writers series. Although the two novelists could often be muddled by the ignorant, and Ngũgĩ paid generous homage to Achebe when he died, their different approaches to writing would come to represent one of the biggest debates faced by African authors. The question was: which language should a post-colonial writer use? Should it be the language of the former imperial power – an approach one could characterise as 'The Empire Writes Back'? Or should it be the writer's original tongue? At the 1962 conference, Chinua Achebe and his fellow Nigerian, Wole Soyinka, argued for English. However, Ngũgĩ was beginning to think differently, and by 1977, a dramatic sequence of events confirmed his belief. That year he collaborated on a play in his native Kikuyu, whose English title is I Will Marry When I Want, and staged it in Kamiriithu, the community where he had grown up. The play concerned a rich, venal couple called, not too subtly, Ahab and Jezebel, who intimidate a local family, blackmailing them into changing their lifestyles while condemning their daughter for adopting fashionable, westernised dress. It was an immediate hit, and played to full houses for six weeks, before Ngũgĩ was arrested without trial. His house was raided, and his books – some of them Marxist – were confiscated. He was imprisoned for a year, among other political dissidents; they were allowed an hour of sunlight a day. He used government lavatory paper to draft his next novel, The Devil on the Cross, this time in Kikuyu. The response to his play had convinced him that if he wanted to upset the authorities, and to take his audience with him, then his mother tongue was the surest way. He crystallised this thinking in his most significant academic book, Decolonising the Mind (1986), in which he argued that the choice of language is every bit as important as what you say with it. By now, he was more openly critical of Achebe's approach, and relations between the two became less cordial as a result. Even so, Ngũgĩ's own writing went for an ingenious and highly effective compromise: he would write his books first in Kikuyu, and later produce his own English translations. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o was born in Kamiriithu, in the Limuru region, on January 5 1938, and baptised James Ngugi. His father, Thiong'o wa Ndũcũ, had four wives at the time: Ngũgĩ was the fifth child of the third one, Wanjikũ. She left the farm with her children when a livestock disease led Ndũcũ to become increasingly drunken and violent. In 1947, Wanjikũ single-handedly raised enough money to send Ngũgĩ to school. In 1955 he attended Alliance High School, about 12 miles from Limuru. In a memoir, Dreams in a Time of War, he describes how he and his brother would walk to school separately, because he would be in British-style school uniform and his brother in tribal dress; and for the author, two rites of passage – his Christian baptism, with the name of James, and his circumcision by a river – happened around the same time. The struggle for Kenyan independence left a profound mark on Ngũgĩ, and on his work. One half-brother joined the Mau Mau uprising with the Kenya Land and Freedom Army. Another, who was deaf and dumb, was shot because he hadn't heard a soldier command him to stop running. By the time Ngũgĩ left school, it was safer for him to continue his studies at Makerere University College, in Kampala. Here he found a more progressive intellectual environment than in Kenya, and a university with more Africans in positions of authority. Ngũgĩ produced his first writing at Makerere. He wrote a short story because he had bragged that he could, and then had to deliver it. He drafted The River Between, which would be his first completed novel (but the second to appear in print) because the East African Literature Bureau was offering a prize of £50. The first published novel, Weep Not, Child, presents the often harrowing events of the 1950s from a young perspective, and is based closely on the author's own experience of family life, with violence both outside and inside the home. In 1964 he left for Leeds University, where he embarked on an MA on Caribbean writing. He never finished it, but he did write A Grain of Wheat, set during the days leading up to Kenyan independence in December 1963. For all the influence of social and political Marxism, the book looks sceptically at the more heroic versions of the struggle that had quickly emerged in Kenya. He returned to Kenya in 1967, and changed his name permanently to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He joined the Department of English Literature, and campaigned successfully for its abolition. An African Literature department appeared in its place, with a curriculum that included oral as well as written literature. Ngũgĩ's arrest in 1977, and his decision to write first in Kikuyu, can be seen as the logical conclusion of this activism. Detention brought Ngũgĩ fame, and Amnesty International urged the Kenyan authorities to release him. President Jomo Kenyatta died on August 22 1978, and his successor, Daniel arap Moi, freed Ngũgĩ in December. But Moi's administration was to become Ngũgĩ's biggest target. Nairobi University did not reinstate the novelist, and he left as an exile, first for London, where he would become writer-in-residence for Islington Borough Council, and later for the United States. There he taught Comparative Literature at Yale, New York University, and later, on the west coast, at Irvine University. Although he visited South Africa during this time, he had to wait until Moi's forced retirement before returning to his homeland, having been warned about the risks to his life from the 1980s onwards. When he did return to Kenya, on August 8 2002, his reception was triumphant, and then horrific. Crowds of admirers welcomed him at Nairobi airport; but three days later, four burglars broke into his apartment. They burned him with cigarettes, and then held him in one room while they raped his wife in another. He felt the attack had to be political, and also that if it had happened under Moi's presidency, they could both have been killed. He returned to his settled life at Irvine, California, where he wrote more memoir than fiction, but won wide acclaim for Wizard of the Crow (2006), an epic in six books in which a tramp takes on magic powers. He uses these to help mock his identifiably Kenyan rulers, before they co-opt him to fulfil their dreams of ultimate power, which prove to be their undoing. Ngũgĩ's plots and characters are rich in Biblical reference: for example, the tyrant who is the butt of the invective in Wizard of the Crow decides to build a Babel-like tower so tall that he can climb it for his conversations with God. Often, though, these vie with traditional Kikuyu stories. His last fiction, a verse novel called The Perfect Nine (Kikuyu 2019; English 2020) celebrates the mythical daughters of his tribe's founders. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is survived by his wife Njeeri, and by nine children from previous relationships. Some of these are novelists who write in English. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, born January 5 1938, died May 28 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Wire
5 days ago
- General
- The Wire
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: The Kenyan Icon Who Wrote For Freedom Till the Very End
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Culture Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: The Kenyan Icon Who Wrote For Freedom Till the Very End Nandini C. Sen 36 minutes ago Ngugi chose to write in his mother tongue Gikuyu and argued that his stories need to reach his own people and stir their nationalist consciousness. Ngũgĩ-wa-Thiong'o (1938-2025). Photo: Wikimedia Commons Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute now 'The condition of women in a nation is the real measure of its progress.' ― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o The world of literature and activism lost one of its best with the demise of the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Ngugi was that rare writer who stood for everything he preached – respect for women, love for the mother tongue, standing up against the colonial mindset, standing up for one's rights and revising the historical wrongs of the British Colonial regime. This came at a great price – incarceration and banishment from his home country Kenya and a lifelong war with the powers that be. I was introduced to Ngugi's Decolonising the Mind (1986) in my Master's class at JNU and it gave me a whole new way to look at the world as I knew it. I realised that the 'freedom' that I had taken for granted was not something one could take lightly. It was something one had to fight for constantly. One also learnt how the nature of colonialism had changed – it was no longer a story of the White dominance over the Blacks/Browns but an insidious takeover by the corporates who enslaved our minds and held us hostage. This colonisation had a worse stranglehold because it was difficult to identify the coloniser since they now looked like us. Ngugi shot into fame with his debut novel Weep Not, Child (1964), the first novel to be published from East Africa. Ngugi's oeuvre can be compared only to that of Chinua Achebe's who was responsible for reading the manuscripts of The River Between and Weep Not, Child which were published by Heinemann with Achebe as its advisory editor. It was with Achebe that Ngugi's famous 'language debate' gained prominence and became a staple for every student of postcolonial studies. While Achebe chooses to write in English in spite of it being the language of the colonisers, Ngugi argues against it and chooses to write in his mother tongue Gikuyu. Ngugi argues that his stories need to reach his own people and stir their nationalist consciousness. To this effect he and Micere Mugo wrote the famous play on the Mau Mau leader Dedan Kimathi. The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) taught in Delhi University, until very recently, recreates the indomitable courage of the Mau Mau revolutionary and his right-hand person – a woman warrior. While Kimathi remains in jail, it is 'the woman' – representing Kenyan mothers – who tries to free him and in turn train the next generation for the struggle. The role of Kenyan women in the Mau Mau movement (Kenyan freedom struggle) is a historical reality. Ngugi's female characters are strong, bold and determined – towering over the men in sheer brilliance. In his world view, the mothers of the nation rule supreme, challenging the existing stereotypes of dependent women. These women do not exist merely to take care of their home and hearth; they work towards nation-building. He creates them in the mould of Mother Africa, thus adhering towards the Negritude Movement. In A Grain of Wheat (1967), Ngugi writes about Wambui, who 'believed in the power of women to influence events, especially where men had failed to act, or seemed indecisive… Let therefore such men, she jeered, come forward, wear the women's skirts and aprons and give up their trousers to the women.' Wambui helps the Mau Mau warriors, and it is her conviction that her land can only be free once it is rid of the colonisers. Unlike many men who are seen to be supporting the British policies, Wambui is clear-headed about what is best for her people. About the dual nature of colonialism, Ngugi wrote, 'He carried the Bible; the soldier carried the gun; the administrator and the settler carried the coin. Christianity, Commerce, Civilization: the Bible, the Coin, the Gun: Holy Trinity.' Ngugi spent his entire life exposing this unholy trinity through his powerful writing. Ngugi, christened James Ngugi at birth, was one of the 28 children born to the four wives of his father in precolonial Kenya. Growing up, Ngugi witnessed the forced takeover of lands by the British imperialists; he was witness to multiple arrests and tortures his people were subjected to, and he also witnessed the harassment his own father had to face. It was then that he slowly realised that the colonial forces were there to destroy and not to build. His evolving worldview led him to give up his Christian name, and he started to go by the name of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. He argued that the English departments in Kenyan Universities should start to focus on the study of indigenous languages of Kenya. Challenging the 'centrality' of London and the 'othering' faced by colonised countries, Ngugi argued in favour of centring Africa and studying other cultures in relation to it. Ngugi was a strong advocate on Fanonist Marxism. 'Language as culture is the collective memory bank of a people's experience in history.' writes Ngugi in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature where he argues in favour of the indigenous languages because he sees language not merely as a means of communication but as a carrier and repository of culture. To this end, he gave up writing in English and wrote in his mother tongue Gikiyu. His co-authoring of a play in Gikiyu, I Will Marry When I Want (1977), which dealt with the controversial themes of poverty, gender, class and religion in the post-colonial context, led to his incarceration. While in his cell, where he was housed with other political prisoners, he wrote The Devil on The Cross (1980) on prison-issued toilet paper. It was here that he thought more closely about the language question and decided to continue writing only in Gikiyu. Ngugi was the first in his family to be educated, though he spent the better part of his life in exile, where he served as visiting professor of English and comparative literature at Yale University and later a professor of comparative literature and performance studies at New York University where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He served as distinguished professor of English and comparative literature and was the first director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine. Ngugi will continue to be missed. I was fortunate to be able to meet him in person at the African Literary Association Conference in Accra, Ghana, in 2008. A mild-mannered and unassuming person, he waxed lyrical about the unity of African cultures. Ngugi was deeply interested in India and in his novel The Wizard of the Crow, he mentions The Gita, the Upanishads and the women writers of India. A prolific writer and an activist till the very end, Ngugi was also a perpetual contender for the Nobel. Commenting on the current governments and drawing parallels, Ngugi wrote, 'Our fathers fought bravely. But do you know the biggest weapon unleashed by the enemy against them? It was not the Maxim gun. It was division among them. Why? Because a people united in faith are stronger than the bomb.' His words reflect what we see playing out in our modern societies, which allow for totalitarian regimes at the cost of the divisiveness of their people. Nandini C. Sen is a professor of English at Delhi University who specialises in Anglophone African Literature. Make a contribution to Independent Journalism Related News Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the Giant of African Literature, Dies at 87 Entries Invited For Third Edition of Rainbow Awards for Literature and Journalism The Politics of 'Heart Lamp' Is Profound, Urgent and Reflects the Lived Reality of Millions Interview | Tracing Maithili Writer Shivashankar Shrinivas's Literary Journey 'In Honour of William Shakespeare': Tagore in the Garden of Shakespeare's Birthplace A Decade of Living Dangerously: The Wire Marks its 10th Year with Pressing Unmute in Naya India Daud Haider, Bangladesh's First Poet to be Exiled, Passes Away at 73 Listen: India's Reaction to Turkey is Understandable, But We Should Not Give Up on Diplomacy with it 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' Is an Operatic and Reverential, but Bloated Farewell About Us Contact Us Support Us © Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
Indian Express
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 1938–2025: The writer who redefined African literature
The literary world mourns the loss of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, the Kenyan novelist, playwright, and essayist whose revolutionary vision reshaped African literature. He died on May 28, 2025, at the age of 87. Few writers have wielded the pen with such political urgency or linguistic daring. From his early, searing portraits of colonial Kenya to his later, sprawling satires of dictatorship, Ngũgĩ's work was a lifelong act of defiance—against empire, against oppression, and against the very language in which he first wrote. Born in 1938 in Limuru, Kenya, under British rule, Ngũgĩ came of age amid the Mau Mau rebellion, an experience that seared itself into his fiction. His debut, Weep Not, Child (1964)—written while he was a student at Makerere University—was a landmark, the first English-language novel published by an East African. Its lyrical yet unflinching depiction of a boy's shattered dreams in a war-torn land announced a major new voice. But by the 1970s, Ngũgĩ had begun to question the language in which that voice spoke. His 1977 play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), written in Gikuyu with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii, marked a turning point. A scathing critique of Kenya's neocolonial elite, it led to his imprisonment without trial. In detention, he composed Devil on the Cross (1980) on prison-issued toilet paper—an act of literary resistance that would become legend. Upon release, he fled Kenya, living in exile for over two decades. Yet his literary output never slowed. Works such as Matigari (1986) and Wizard of the Crow (2006)—a magisterial, genre-defying satire of dictatorship—proved that African-language literature could be as ambitious, as experimental, and as globally resonant as any written in English or French. His 1986 manifesto, Decolonising the Mind, remains essential reading in several countries, including India, is a blistering indictment of the 'cultural bomb' of colonialism and a rallying cry for linguistic sovereignty. 'Language,' he wrote, 'is the most important vehicle through which that power fascinates, holds, and blinds the African.' Though often tipped for the Nobel, he never received it—an omission that speaks less to his stature than to the biases of literary prestige. His influence, however, is immeasurable. Writers from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Binyavanga Wainaina have cited him as a beacon. Ngũgĩ's life was not without controversy—allegations of domestic strife shadowed his later years—but his literary legacy is unassailable. He was a writer who dared to imagine a world where African stories were told in African tongues, where the novel could be a weapon, and where art was inseparable from justice. In an era when African literature too often caters to Western expectations, Ngũgĩ's work reminds us that power can also lie in the untranslatable—the stories only he could tell, in the language only his people could claim. Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
Indian Express
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is no more: 5 must-read works that cement his legacy as a ‘towering giant of African literature'
The literary world mourns the loss of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, the revolutionary Kenyan writer who redefined African literature. He passed away on May 28, 2025, at the age of 87, leaving behind a body of work that challenged colonialism, dictatorship, and the very language of storytelling itself. From his early novels in English to his later works in Gikuyu (the language spoken by the Bantu ethnic group in Kenya), Ngũgĩ's writing was a lifelong act of resistance—one that continues to inspire readers and writers across the globe. To honour his towering legacy, here are five must-read books that capture the brilliance of one of Africa's greatest literary minds. 1. Weep Not, Child (1964) Why read it? The first English-language novel by an East African, this poignant coming-of-age story follows Njoroge, a boy whose dreams of education are shattered by Kenya's violent struggle for independence. It was his first novel, published in 1964 under the name James Ngugi. Weep Not, Child is set during the Mau Mau Uprising. 2. Petals of Blood (1977) Why read it? It was Ngũgĩ's last English novel before his linguistic shift to Gikuyu. It is a scathing indictment of postcolonial betrayal, it follows four interconnected characters navigating corruption and inequality in newly independent Kenya. The government banned the novel and imprisoned Ngũgĩ without trial for its critique of the ruling elite. Devil on the Cross (1980, Gikuyu), written on toilet paper in prison, was a allegory critiques capitalism through a folkloric tale. 3. Decolonising the Mind (1986) Why read it? More than essays, this radical manifesto changed global conversations about literature and power. Written during exile, it presents Ngũgĩ's famous argument that African writers must reject European languages to achieve true liberation. 'This book is my farewell to English as a vehicle for any of my writings. From now on it is Gikuyu and Kiswahili all the way,' he wrote. Analysing language as a tool of colonial control, Ngũgĩ makes a passionate case for African languages as vehicles of cultural sovereignty. 4. Wizard of the Crow (2006) Why read it? Widely considered Ngũgĩ's magnum opus, this 700-page epic represents his most ambitious literary achievement. Written in Gikuyu and self-translated, it creates the fantastical dictatorship of Aburiria, where a corrupt ruler literally swells with greed while a mysterious 'Wizard' inspires resistance. Blending magical realism, biting satire, and African oral traditions, the novel tackles globalisation, gender, and tyranny with unmatched scope. Its publication marked a high point in Ngũgĩ's international acclaim, with many viewing it as his most Nobel-worthy work. Why read it? This Booker-longlisted epic poem in Gikuyu reimagines the origin story of the Gikuyu people through feminist retelling. Its lyrical celebration of African mythology demonstrates the creative potential of indigenous languages on the world stage. As Ngũgĩ's final major work, it serves as a powerful testament to his lifelong mission – proving African languages can carry universal stories with beauty and profundity. The nomination made history as the first for a work originally written in an indigenous African language.
