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The National
2 days ago
- Politics
- The National
France's campaigning 'Lady Gaza' rallies support for a one-state vision
In a sea of political grey suits, Rima Hassan, a 33-year old migration lawyer and firebrand member of the European Parliament, has come to embody France's pro-Palestinian movement. Establishment views on her rise has mostly been sharply critical. Few in France's political mainstream are receptive to her post-colonial politics and campaigning for the application of international law to Israeli actions. Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has filed a complaint accusing her of supporting terrorism. A prominent comedian has derisively dubbed her 'Lady Gaza'. In June, the France Unbowed politician gained international visibility by joining a Gaza flotilla alongside climate activist Greta Thunberg. She was held and then deported after the Israel military boarded the boat off the Palestinian enclave. Days later, this boost in profile saw Ms Hassan ranked 44th in a Ifop-Fiducial poll of France's 50 most popular figures. In an interview with The National, Ms Hassan said she sees her role as a voice for the voiceless amid a rupture where, she says, those in power are not in sync with the new generation. 'I'm indeed very alone in [the European] Parliament, when you look at the average age and career path,' Ms Hassan said. 'I come from civil society. I am not shaped by politics. It's really a question of what kind of platform people have access to.' It's about re-framing the struggle Former Israeli negotiator, Daniel Levy On Instagram, where she is wearing the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh in her profile picture, Ms Hassan has amassed one million followers. That makes the left-wing politician more popular on the platform than 29-year old far-right leader Jordan Bardella, whose National Rally party came first in last year's parliamentary election. She uses her growing profile to push for a one-state solution that recognises both the Jewish and Palestinian Arab national identities, such as a Swiss-style confederation or a new type of umbrella state for two distinct nationalities. It is a proposal often dismissed as a heresy that imperils the existence of the Jewish state. 'There is nothing more pragmatic than the one-state solution,' Ms Hassan bats back. 'The question of a [one] state is a demand which for me is the most progressive. There is a generational rupture in the understanding of the Palestinian cause.' In an interview with The National, Ms Hassan said that the post-Oslo Accords generation, born in the 1990s like her, is rethinking what peace and justice must look like. 'There's a lack of understanding about the new generation and its ideals,' Ms Hassan said. 'It goes beyond nationalist causes. It's about equality of rights and freedom of movement.' Before her deportation in June, Ms Hassan cut an olive branch to carry back as a reminder of the land from which her grandparents were expelled during the Nakba, after the formation of Israel in 1948. Born stateless in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Ms Hassan, who moved with her mother to France as a child. She is often referred to as Syrian though she only holds French citizenship − a framing some see as an effort to erase her Palestinian identity. The olive branch memento now represents a personal triumph for Ms Hassan, who shed tears of rage when she failed to gain entry to Israel at age 18 having obtained French citizenship. Israeli security refused to let her on-board the plane at Charles de Gaulle Airport. She was not prominent at the time, though Israel often bars pro-Palestinians from travel. From the margins A one-state solution is an old idea first championed in the 1920s and later resurrected by the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The concept was seemingly eclipsed by the global recognition of the Oslo Accords in 1993, though even at the time there was criticism these did not impose the creation of a Palestinian state. While the Palestinian Authority fell short, it was the first-ever recognition by Israeli leadership of the existence of a Palestinian people. The rapid expansion of Israeli settlements and the increasing encroachment on the territorial integrity of that Palestinian entity, ultimately saw the Second Intifada break out in 2000. Years of stalemate and reverses on the ground, culminating in the Gaza war, has seen a groundswell among intellectuals and the younger Palestinian generation for a one-state pathway. 'I belong to a generation that starts from the observation that Oslo did not work,' says Ms Hassan. 'And that there is a new paradigm which is that of apartheid," she added, referring to a notion backed by rights organisations that rules applied to Palestinians and Arab Israelis regarding freedom of movement and treatment by the judiciary amount to systemic discrimination. Ms Hassan acknowledges that her vision remains marginal in UN and diplomatic circles. French President Emmanuel Macron has in fact promised a boost to a two-state solution with French recognition of a Palestinian state soon. Foreign Affairs spokesman Christophe Lemoine told The National the term 'one state' was legally vague and politically impractical. Behind closed doors, Ms Hassan said, some European diplomats privately concede that the two-state solution is no longer viable. 'They tell me: I am obliged to support the two-state solution because it is the policy supported by the EU. But as a diplomat, my personal opinion is that it is not possible,' she said. 'We have to get out of this paralysis.' She points at Jewish organisations around the world that share her vision. Current Israeli cabinet members oppose both a one-state and a two-state solution, and a number have called for the expulsion of Gazans to unspecified destinations. The country is currently negotiating a Gaza ceasefire, but it has not meaningfully engaged with the Palestinian authority in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's present term. Ms Hassan believes in severe international pressure in response. An arms embargo and an end to privileged trade relations between the EU and Israel are among her main demands. Former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy argued Ms Hassan's self-proclaimed radical approach is essential to change power dynamics and become a worthy adversary to Israel – even if it takes a long time. 'It's about reframing the struggle,' Mr Levy told The National. 'This is not about a solution that gets implemented tomorrow, because tomorrow you're not going to have two states. You're not going to have one state.' 'You frame the conflict in the way that Israel has now framed it, which is to create an apartheid state. And you challenge that. Then once Israelis realise there's a cost to it, they may change their position.' We have to get out of this paralysis. French MEP Rima Hassan Others are less generous. Mr Bardella has described her as the ' Hamas ambassador at the EU,' a label rooted in her assertion that Palestinians have the right to armed resistance under international law. While she has condemned as war crimes the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israeli communities in which about 1,200 people were killed and 240 abducted, Ms Hassan's output on X is a succession of sharply worded posts describing Israel as a terrorist and genocidal state. Almost 58,670 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's Gaza strikes and ground offensive since the war began. When asked, Ms Hassan says her focus on Palestinian rights during the explosive post-October 7 period is unapologetic. She has unsettled a political consensus that has seen relative disengagement of French diplomacy in the Middle East since late president Jacques Chirac left power in 2007. She has also been criticised for her muted criticism of the crimes of the former Assad regime. Historic juncture Ms Hassan's voice is part of a broader generational shift, said Leila Farsakh, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The brutal images coming out of Gaza are changing the global narrative. 'The one-state solution's moment has arrived,' Ms Farsakh, a specialist of the Palestinian statehood question, told The National. 'We are today at a historic juncture − as important as 1948 or 1967 − and Israel is trying to reassert the supremacy of Jewish rights,' she said. 'But Palestinians are much more vocal and present than in 1948 or 1967. They are able to articulate their rights and refuse subjugation.' In French academia, scepticism is strong. Jean-Paul Chagnollaud, president of the Institute for Mediterranean and Middle East Research and Studies think tank in Paris, called a one-state model an 'absurd dream'. 'The nature of a Jewish state entails a Jewish majority,' he said, pointing at demographics of seven million Palestinians, including Arab Israelis, and seven million Jews. 'That means that even the most moderate Israelis would reject the idea of a Palestinian majority state.' Like Ms Farsakh, Ms Hassan often cites the views of Palestinian intellectual Edward Said that Israeli state policy as 'apartheid ' was comparable with South Africa's historic racial segregation. Israel rejects the use of the word apartheid and says separate legal and permitting measures or designations are linked to security concerns. Western countries, including France, resist using the term 'apartheid' in relation to Israel. For Ms Hassan however, it is the fundamental reality that must drive a solution to the conflict with her lifetime. 'It is the paradigm of apartheid that really makes us understand demands to put forward a one-state solution,' she said. 'I don't see what's difficult to understand. The Oslo agreements were perhaps relevant at the time they were signed. What is the relevance of still referring to agreements that have constantly shown us that they have failed for the past 30 or 40 years?'
Zawya
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Zawya
A Year On, Guinean Activists Still Missing
Guinea 's military authorities should credibly investigate the disappearances of two political activists, make their whereabouts known, and either charge them with a recognizable crime or release them immediately, Human Rights Watch said today. One year ago, security forces arbitrarily detained three members of the opposition coalition National Front for the Defense of the Constitution (Front National pour la Défense de la Constitution, FNDC), Oumar Sylla (known as Foniké Menguè), Mamadou Billo Bah, and Mohamed Cissé, in Conakry, Guinea's capital, and transferred them to an unidentified location. Human Rights Watch received credible information, confirmed by national and international media, that security forces had tortured the three men. Cissé was released on July 10, 2024, while Sylla and Bah remain missing. 'It's been one year since Sylla and Bah went missing, and the Guinean authorities have yet to carry out a credible investigation,' said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch. 'Guinean authorities should thoroughly and independently investigate the disappearances and prosecute those responsible.' The authorities have opened an investigation into the disappearance of the three men. But they have denied any responsibility and failed to acknowledge the men's detention or disclose their whereabouts, despite requests for information by lawyers representing the men, and by international and national human rights organizations. On July 9, 2024, dozens of soldiers, gendarmes, and armed men in civilian clothes, stormed Sylla's home and arbitrarily detained him and the others. The security forces repeatedly beat the three political activists, then took them to the gendarmerie headquarters in Conakry, and then to an army camp on Kassa island, off Conakry's coast. The FNDC has been calling for the restoration of democratic rule in Guinea following a military coup in September 2021. In August 2022, Guinea's junta, headed by Gen. Mamady Doumbouya, dissolved the FNDC on politically motivated grounds, but it has continued its activities. On the morning of his disappearance, Sylla, who is the FNDC coordinator, had urged his supporters to go out and protest on July 11, 2024, against media shutdowns by the authorities and the high cost of living. Sylla was one of a number of people arrested in 2022 on charges of 'illegal protest and destruction of public and private buildings' following violent demonstrations in Conakry in which at least five people were killed. Bah, the FNDC outreach coordinator, was previously arrested in January 2023 on charges of 'complicity in the destruction of public and private property, assault, and battery' for taking part in protests. Both were released in May 2023 and cleared of all charges. Since taking power, the junta has suspended independent media outlets, arbitrarily arrested and forcibly disappeared journalists and political opponents. Security forces have used excessive force, including tear gas and gunfire, to disperse peaceful protesters, leading to dozens of deaths since January 2024. On June 21, gunmen abducted and tortured Mohamed Traoré, a prominent lawyer and former bar association president, in apparent reprisal against his decision to resign from the National Transitional Council, the junta's leading transitional body. The military authorities promised to hold elections before the end of 2024, but failed to meet the deadline, sparking opposition-led protests in Conakry in January. Following the protests, officials announced a new election timeline. Gen. Doumbouya has set September 21 as the date for a constitutional referendum and Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah announced in May that presidential elections would take place in December. 'Four years into military rule, the suppression of rights and freedoms has only intensified,' said a prominent FNDC member who is in hiding. 'The government has stifled free expression and assembly; it has incapacitated the political opposition through arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearance, harassment, and intimidation. Enough is enough.' Enforced disappearances under international law occur when people acting on behalf of the government arrest, detain, or abduct people and then refuse to acknowledge the act or conceal their whereabouts or what happened to them. International law prohibits enforced disappearances, which violate fundamental rights to liberty and security and the right to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. The International Convention for the Protection on All Persons from Enforced Disappearances provides that 'no one shall be subjected to enforced disappearance' and imposes an absolute ban on secret detention. It also requires countries to end abusive practices that facilitate enforced disappearances including arbitrary incommunicado detention, torture, and extrajudicial executions. Guinea is not a party to the treaty but is still bound by international human rights law prohibiting unlawful arrests, abduction, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment of detainees, and other due process violations. It guarantees victims of abuse the right to an effective remedy. 'When authorities deny knowledge of the detentions, they deprive detainees of any protections and make them vulnerable to even worse crimes, like torture,' Allegrozzi said. 'The authorities should take immediate, concrete steps by credibly investigating the disappearances and ratifying the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.' Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Here's what the Democrats can learn from Zohran Mamdani
In a lifetime of activism, I have canvassed and phone-banked, raised money, and twisted arms for dozens of political candidates. Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Indian-Ugandan democratic socialist and presumptive winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, is the only one I've both supported without reservation and believed could win. Volunteering for a campaign always teaches you something. Often, it's discouraging – like the moment my partner and I saw Hillary Clinton's team selling lawn signs for $25 instead of blanketing Philadelphia by distributing them free, and predicted she'd lose. But the lessons of Zohran's victory are hopeful for the left and the Democrats – if the party takes them to heart. 'A city we can afford.' Zohran's slogan is unremarkably moderate and unabashedly progressive. In a city whose median income is rising sharply in spite of a 25% poverty rate, only the rich are comfortable, while everyone else, from students to firefighters to families with more than one kid struggle – or leave. Asked by a local Fox TV interviewer what a democratic socialist is, Mamdani answered: 'To me it means that every New Yorker has what they need to live a dignified life – it's local government's responsibility to provide that'. His platform includes a rent freeze on the city's 2.3 million regulated apartments; free childcare starting at six months; no-fare buses; and a $30 minimum wage – about the city's living wage – by 2030. Basically, he believes life in the city can be easier and happier. This platform resonates. When you canvass, you ask people what concerns them. A woman with a baby on her hip nodded toward the baby and sighed. I got what she meant. At a shabby industrial building surrounded by new glass towers, a woman descended four flights because the landlord won't fix the buzzer, or anything else; he's trying to push out the tenants and sell the lot. She said cheap rent allowed her to start a business, which she feared Mamdani would tax to death. I told her he supported a crackdown on bad landlords and commercial rent control. 'Hmm,' she said. By the conversation's end, I entered 'leans yes' in the canvassing app. Mamdani's ideas are not pie-in-the-sky. The rent guidelines board, appointed by the mayor, voted 0% increases on some leases in 2015, 2016, and on all leases in 2020, during the pandemic. Democratic mayor Bill De Blasio got universal pre-kindergarten staffed, funded, and full almost immediately upon election in 2014. Chicago and Atlanta may be moving ahead with municipal groceries. A 2023 pilot program waiving fares on five New York bus routes was largely successful, and its failures can inform the next attempt. How would Mamdani pay for all this? Impose a 2% tax on the top 1%–residents earning more than $1m annually; and raise the top corporate tax rate to match neighboring New Jersey's, to 11.5% from 7.25%. New York has the resources. Nationally, corporate profits have risen 80% since the pandemic. In New York, 34,000 households, a thin skin on the Big Apple, take home 35% of the earnings. Other cities and states have tapped the windfall that companies and the rich have reaped from federal income tax cuts. Combined with such Republican-sounding ideas as eliminating waste in procurement and boosting small business by cutting red tape, Mamdani says these reforms can bring in $10bn in revenue, pay for the services that improve city life and ultimately grow the tax base. 'From each according to their ability, to each according to their need': that's socialism 101. 'The greatest good for the greatest number': old-fashioned utilitarianism. These policies are also sensible municipal management. Since founding his college's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, Mamdani, an east African Muslim, has been a vocal critic of Israel's occupation. A week after Hamas's attacks – which he calls a war crime – he joined Jewish Voice for Peace in a protest of Israel's outsized response. For this position, his closest rival, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, and the rightwing press have hammered Mamdani as an antisemite and a Holocaust denier; on one mailer, his photo was doctored to make his beard bushier and longer. Cuomo kept mispronouncing his name, insinuating that Zohran Mamdani is inscrutably, dangerously foreign. Establishment Democrats – Kamala Harris, Cory Booker – keep running from condemnation of what most of the world calls Israel's crimes against humanity. This is not just a moral failing. It's politically unnecessary. A recent Pew poll found that almost seven in 10 Democrats – and half of Republicans under 50 – have negative views of Israel. In a couple of months of canvassing, I met only two people who wouldn't vote for Mamdani because of his position on Israel-Palestine. One had Hebrew tattooed on his forearm. Among the volunteers, several who were drawn to Zohran for his stance on Palestine, were Jewish. The question may be moot. In an Emerson poll, 46% of New York voters said their candidate did not need to be pro-Israel. The journalist Peter Beinart believes that Mamdani's victory suggests that the movement for Palestinian freedom has entered mainstream politics and can be an asset to Democrats. Confronted repeatedly by false accusations of antisemitism, Mamdani has been frustrated and hurt. Yet he is neither defensive nor evasive. 'At the core of my position about Israel, Palestine, anyplace in the world, is consistency, international law, and human rights,' he told Fox. 'I believe that justice, freedom, safety – those are things that should be applied to all people.' In his victory speech, he said: 'I cannot promise that you will always agree with me, but I will never hide from you.' He would 'wrestle with' opinions that differed from his own, he added, implying he meant feelings about the Middle East. Mamdani is a gifted politician – and an honest man who doesn't dismiss those he disagrees with. A person can be all these, and win. Mamdani's campaign was partially, appropriately, fueled by economic anxiety. But try as his detractors did to shift the focus, it was not fueled by fear of crime. He does not advocate defunding the police. Instead, he's proposed a department of community safety, to deal with volatile mental health crises in the subways and to attack hate crimes at their source, leaving cops to pursue violent crime. He recognizes that good public services and personal economic stability, not more police, constitute public safety. More striking, Zohran mobilized civic pride, solidarity, and joy. These too are winning political emotions. At the beginning of a canvassing shift, everybody introduces themselves and says why they're there. I am usually the oldest. As a white person, I'm one of maybe half the group. Many of my comrades' genders are less recognizable than my own. As a homeowner with an adequate income, I'm in the minority. 'I can't even afford the Bronx' – the cheapest borough for renters – a recent college graduate with her parents moaned, to knowing laughter. A pregnant woman has 'a panic attack' whenever she contemplates paying for daycare. A man in his 30s who drives an Uber 12 hours a day would like to be home when his kids are awake. A first-generation Chinese American fears for her undocumented parents and feels an obligation to elect someone who will protect them. Their jobs are precarious, their credit cards overcharged. They have no health insurance and wonder if they'll ever retire their student debt. They come from mixed immigration status families and imagine middle age on a broiling planet. And they are the young voters who turned out overwhelmingly for a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. If the Democrats want the same results, they need to offer these voters, who personify America's troubled working and middle classes, a progressive vision. Mamdani crushed it in presumed Cuomo strongholds throughout the five boroughs. Of course, he ruled in the youth-dominated 'commie corridor' from Astoria, Queens to Bushwick, Brooklyn (80%). But he also carried communities such as Asian Flushing, Sunset Park, Elmhurst, and Chinatown Queens, by no means presumed progressive. In February, Cuomo polled at 33% of potential votes; Zohran had 1%. By primary day, the pro-Cuomo Super Pac, bankrolled by billionaires including Trump supporters like Wall Street bigwig Bill Ackman, had spent $25m, largely on smear ads. Mamdani's Pac spent $1.2m, and a Working Families party affiliated Pac put in $500,000. Mamdani had as many as 50,000 volunteers, who knocked over a million doors. Cuomo avoided the public and the press. Money isn't everything. The general election will be tougher. Mamdani beat a badly compromised rival with only 432,000 votes in a city with 4.7 million 'active voters' in 2024, not all of whom vote. If Cuomo runs as an independent, he will double down on the Islamophobia and red-baiting. So will now independent mayor Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa, founder of the quasi-vigilante Guardian Angels. The Republican party is already making Mamdani the poster boy of a Marxist, terrorist, criminal immigrant Democratic party. Wall Street is preparing for battle. But whether Mamdani wins or loses, pundits on all sides will avow that what happens in liberal New York stays in liberal New York. It can't transplant to national, or even statewide, elections. That's a cynical error. In his primary night speech, Mamdani promised to use his office 'to reject Donald Trump's fascism, to stop masked Ice agents from deporting our neighbors, and to govern our city as a model for the Democratic party. A party where we fight for working people with no apologies.' This is not today's Democratic party. But it has everything to gain from watching Zohran Mamdani and the extraordinary coalition of superhumanly enthusiastic volunteers he has inspired. Theirs are the faces of a political party that democracy, and Americans, deserve. Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books
Daily Mail
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Goldie Hawn's 'nepo baby' breaks silence on claim he was viral protestor during LA riots
A Hollywood ' nepo baby ' has broken his silence on sensational claims he was the protestor in a video that went viral during the Los Angeles riots. In the clip, a protestor is seen yelling at some of the National Guardsmen whom President Donald Trump dispatched to quell the mob violence that has broken out in response to a raft of ICE raids targeting illegal immigrants. 'You're on the wrong side of history,' he bellows. 'We know you got a job to do, but you took an oath to the Constitution, not to the fascists in the White House.' As the footage circulated, a wild rumor took hold that the man was in fact Wyatt Russell, the 38-year-old son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. Now Wyatt's spokesperson has officially put the kibosh on the speculation, saying categorically: 'This is indeed NOT Wyatt Russell, and we have been working to try and correct the mis-identification,' via the Independent. The person in the video turns out to be a left-wing political activist called Aaron Fisher who used to be a staffer for the Ohio House Democratic Caucus. has reached out to Wyatt's representative for comment. Wyatt Russell has broken his silence to refute the sensational claims he was the protestor in a video that went viral amid the Los Angeles riots; pictured in London this April Aaron Fisher is now a partner at the Florida-based firm Statecraft Digital, which bills itself as a 'holistic digital communications agency & strategic partner to candidates, political organizations, non-profits, and movements,' on LinkedIn. In the viral video, Aaron upbraids the National Guardsmen posted nearby, asking them whether they feel 'feel tough with your assault rifles and your sticks?' He adds: 'You should be standing here with us. You're on the wrong side of history. We know you got a job to do, but you took an oath to the Constitution, not to the fascists in the White House. Aaron shouts: 'Think about what you're doing now. Think about what this means. Coming into our community, peaceful f***ing community, people working their job. 'They send in men in military fatigues, weapons of war, into our communities, and you stand here and you allow it. I am sick and tired of it. You should be sick and tired of it.' He then demands: 'You think any of these people in the White House sending you these commands give a f*** about you? Not one of them do! They laugh at you!' Urging them to 'think about your place in history,' he says: 'Ask yourself when you wake up tomorrow. I don't know if you have kids. Ask yourself the future you want for your children. Is it this? You can answer me. Is it this? Do you feel good about this?' After the video spread online and Aaron was roundly mistaken for Wyatt, the protestor was asked about the confusion and said: 'I found the mixup to be pretty humorous, and glad it helped to amplify the message.' The protestor turns out to be a left-wing political activist called Aaron Fisher (left), rather than Wyatt, who is pictured (right) at the premiere of his film Thunderbolts* in April He added: 'The proliferation of the words themselves, and the movement behind it, is what matters most. The deployment of the National Guard against the wishes of our Governor is dangerously un-American, and I will continue to peacefully protest in my community,' via Entertainment Weekly. Wyatt meanwhile has followed his parents' footsteps into the acting profession, acting on shows like Black Mirror and in movies like Everybody Wants Some!!. He is now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, playing a character called John Walker whose aim is to become the next Captain America. Wyatt has played John in the series The Falcon And The Winter Soldier and the movie Thunderbolts*, and will also feature in Avengers: Doomsday. He has worked with Kurt on the Godzilla show Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and has been cast in an upcoming Steven Spielberg movie about UFOs, alongside such names as Emily Blunt, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo and Josh O'Connor. Before he became an actor, Wyatt was a professional ice hockey player in Europe, but suffered injuries that forced him out of the sport in 2010. Although Wyatt is the only child Kurt and Goldie had biologically, Kurt has also become a father figure to Goldie's other children. Her son Oliver Hudson and daughter Kate Hudson, whose biological father is the musician Bill Hudson, both refer to Kurt as 'Pa.' Goldie and Kurt, who both went through divorces before becoming an item, never married each other despite spending four decades together. During an appearance on Loose Women in 2015 Goldie quipped that 'we've been married before, it didn't work, so why do it again?' Wyatt has been married to his second wife, As The World Turns actress Meredith Hagner, since 2019, and they share two sons.
The Guardian
30-05-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘In his company you could not be lazy': remembering my friend Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Among the African writers who emerged in the middle of the 20th century, the most political undoubtedly was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Born in Kenya while it was still under British rule he was anti-colonialist, a communist, anti-dictatorial, and an almost militant proponent for African languages being used for African literature. His best works exist at the interface between the political and the personal. His first book of essays, Homecoming, is at once engaging and polemical. His early novels Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat look at the impact of colonialism and the Mau Mau rebellion on individual lives. He was strangely at his best with the personal and the intimate, but his reputation grew more from his political stances – first against the British government, then against the dictatorship in Kenya in the 70s. He was jailed not for a thundering political text but for a play in Kikuyu called I Will Marry When I Want. In prison he wrote his memoir on toilet paper. When I first met him I expected to meet a socialist firebrand but instead encountered a genial, engaging man who had read some of my writing and asked about my influences. I was genuinely surprised by his warmth, his humour and his friendliness. He was at ease with white as well as black people. He loved a good drink, enjoyed conversation and had a genuine love for literary small talk. I first knew him after his release from prison during his time in London. At the African Centre he would have a coterie of political acolytes and well wishers who wanted to ease his time in exile. I had conversations with him about literature. He was interested in my reading. I remember one particular conversation. At the time I had only published my first two novels and I was in my early 20s. 'What novels do you read?' he asked. 'All of you.' 'Who else?' 'Tolstoy, Dostoevsky.' 'Which Dostoevsky?' 'Crime and Punishment.' 'Did you read that before or after you wrote your second novel?' And I froze. The question made me aware of something that I had not considered before: the implied relationship between the greatness of the books you have read and the quality of the books you write after reading them. I suddenly felt ashamed that the novel I had written did not do that reading justice. Whatever answer I gave was a chastened one. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Ngũgĩ would paralyse you with an innocent-seeming question. They said Bertolt Brecht was like that too. In his gentle way Ngũgĩ compelled you to come up with cogent answers to the probing remarks he made about African literature and the question of language, a question of authenticity. In his company you could not be lazy. He also took an interest in my pool game and would often place bets on me in pubs in Covent Garden. Between frames we would talk about books. He had an almost mystical awe for what Achebe achieved in Things Fall Apart. Looking back to a time when the only literature being taught at universities was Dickens and Conrad et al, he made me feel how thrilling it was to read for the first time this novel that had found a language to express the yearning of Africans for their own story. By that time he had become a slightly portly figure with interrogative eyes and ready laughter. He tended to wear African tops and western trousers. One got the feeling with him that he had done a lot of his political thinking early but was open to the discoveries that his work led him into. He began his writing life as James Ngugi, and metamorphosed into Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He began writing in English and ended by writing in Kikuyu, often having to translate himself. His anti-capitalist stance didn't stop him becoming one of the most feted African writers in America. And in all of this, the one constant was that he remained a likable man without pretensions, and always with a feeling for the common people. Towards the end of his life, he became a perennial favourite to win the Nobel prize, and like Borges, had to endure the rise and fall of expectation every October. Family tragedy also marred his later years. But perhaps my fondest memory is of sitting with him in a Cambridge college during a Callaloo conference. We began talking about music and literature and he surprised me by saying that he was learning to play the piano for the first time. He was then in his mid-70s. He talked about the wonder of going from being unable to play a note to being able, within a few months, to play some Mozart, Chopin and Bach. It was very affecting to hear this seasoned revolutionary take on a youthful glow as he talked about this new-won skill. There happened to be a piano in a corner of the hall, and we went over. To this day I can still see him with a light smile on his face as the Bach notes tinkled into the hall.
