As Kenya celebrates the ninth Mashujaa Day since the promulgation of the new constitution, it is only good to turn our eyes back and remind ourselves about the real 'mashujaas' whom despite their past persecutions continue to stand firm for the causes they believed and still believe in.
In this particular story, we focus on the award-winning Limuru author Prof Ngugi Wa Thiong'o who was forced to flee abroad in the late 1970s after he fell out with President Jomo Kenyatta's regime due to his critical stance on his administration.
But what was the genesis of Thiongo's persecution by the regime and his eventual fleeing to the USA where he continues to live up to today?
Well, according to Gikuyu Centre for Cultural Studies (GCCS), in 1977 Ngugi and other villagers at his Limuru home had established the Kamirithu Education and Cultural Centre.
The centre had an open-air theatre with the actors drawn from the workers and peasants from that village. While working at the University of Nairobi (UoN), Literature Department, Ngugi together with a colleague Ngugi Wa Mirii, wrote and directed a renowned Gikuyu play known as 'Ngahika Ndenda' (I Will Marry When I Want).
"Buses of university students and villagers from far and wide came to watch the play. It was considered highly critical of the post-colonial government’s handling of the repercussions of land consolidation as well as being seen as politically inflammatory," GCCS documents.
GCCS notes that after the screening of the play, Ngugi was arrested and detained at Kamiti Maximum Prison while his educational and cultural centre was burnt down by government security operatives.
Ngugi was also sacked from UoN but this did not break his spirit. Upon his release after over a year in the coolers, GCCS adds, Ngugi completed building a house he had started before he was detained.
It is inside this new house that bears traditional Gikuyu architecture where he wrote his prison memoirs, 'Detained, A Writer's Prison Diary'. He also wrote the much acclaimed Gikuyu novel 'Caitani Mutharaba-ini' (Devil on The Cross).
"The novel, which was read in Kikuyu rural homes around the fire like traditional storytelling, was a thinly veiled critique of Kenya’s elite and political class that thrives side by side with the slum and village peasantry. With rumours circulating that this time the government was out to eliminate him, he fled the country for Britain and later USA where he has been in self-exile since," GCCS further documents.
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