Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Unbowed

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o /Photo©GARY CALTON

A scathing critic of Kenya's post-independence political elite, author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o was imprisoned for his views. Four decades later and on the eve of Kenyan elections, Ngũgĩ talks to The Africa Report about politics, democracy and his life's work.

In 1968, the British charity Save the Children commissioned film-maker Ken Loach to make a documentary on its work in Kenya.

But Loach, already making a name for himself as a leftist film-maker, turned the project into a sharp critique of capitalism, neocolonialism and the darker side of philanthropy.

imagination is not only possible through English, French or European languages

It featured commentaries from young Kenyans including writer James Ngũgĩ and his university colleague Ben Kantai, who pointed out the contradictions of white capitalist privilege in a country happy to open its doors to Western investment even as its working classes remained mired in colonial-era squalor.

The film was eventually canned and remained on the shelves of the British Film Institute for the next 43 years until it was at last shown in 2011.

Ngũgĩ, who later changed his name as a rejection of colonialism, appeared determined to profane the official narrative of newly independent Kenya, a country that opted to go West in its search for development, disregarding the brutal liberation war that had raged barely a decade before.

In 1968, Ngũgĩ had just published A Grain of Wheat, his searing critique on the betrayal of the independence struggle by the elites around founding-president Jomo Kenyatta.

He was, going by the running commentary on Kenya in the Loach documentary, already organising the ideas that would lead him to Petals of Blood (1977), and detention soon after it was published.

To assess the import of the commentary in the Loach film, one must appreciate the youthful courage it took to confront the Kenyatta dictatorship, where a surveillance state would use detention by decree, assassinations, disappearances, financial inducements and personal economic sanctions to silence dissenting voices.

Unable to silence Ngũgĩ, the Kenyan dictatorship would then run him into exile in Europe and the United States from the early 1980s.

Unbowed, Ngũgĩ has, over the intervening decades, widened his critique of the post-colonial situation, seeing it as a condition from which the oppressed can only achieve liberation by taking control of their own narrative.

In 1983, his breakthrough book-length essay Decolonising the Mind advocated the rejection of colonial languages as a means to freedom.

Panned at home by the middle-class elite – the products of the West's economic engineering project – Decolonising the Mind nevertheless gained cult-like status abroad.

From South Africa to Scotland, among the Maori in New Zealand and beyond, the prospect of the post-colony writing to and about itself in its own tongues fired the imaginations of writers, students and activists.

Now 74 and living in California, Ngũgĩ stands at some remove from the Kenya he has prophesied about during his 50-year literary career.

The 1960s critique has held true: the Western-backed project to create a middle class, while celebrated by the neo-liberals, exists alongside an ever-widening gulf between rich and poor.

Ngũgĩ's endorsement of Mwai Kibaki in 2007 surprised many, as it appeared to have been motivated by ethnic concerns, with Ngũgĩ seeming to have strayed markedly from the left-nationalist championing that had defined his writings.

Five years later and on the eve of an election as potentially disruptive as the last, Ngũgĩ now seems to have become more circumspect.

What are your own hopes and expectations for the March election?

NGŨGĨ WA THIONG'O: I hope that it will be peaceful. I'm not worried that there are many views in a country or political parties. I have no problem with that. As long as the process of voting and counting votes is open. Let people choose in a manner that is apparent.

Would it be fair to say that strengthening the Independent Electoral Commission would be key to strengthening Kenyan democracy?

We could strengthen the commission but we also need to enrich the culture. Not just democracy but the culture of democracy has to be part of our system. Government and power comes from the people and should be used for the people. Power is not there for the leaders. That notion could be very, very important when it becomes ingrained in the minds of African people.

There have been many developments in Kenyan democracy in recent years. There has been a new constitution for example. Is that something you are satisfied with?

The new constitution is the right thing, but it's only a beginning. It's a protection of very important words. But the life contained in those words has to be lived, the constitution has to be a living document. If we see it as just a beginning, we shall be all right. But if we see it as the end, then it's useless and it won't solve our problems.

You've been described as a pioneer of indigenous African literature. How do you feel about that?

I'm not really a pioneer, I'm part of the process. The debate between writing in European languages or writing in African languages goes way back to South Africa in the 1930s and 1920s. There was a lot of debate already then about writing in African languages. One of the most important African scientists and historians, Cheikh Anta Diop, talks quite strongly about the need for intellectual production in African languages. So you could argue that I was only taking up the baton in a race that was already on the road long before I came into it.

Rabindranath Tagore said of Bengali: "The language wasn't there, I had to invent it." Was this the same for you in Gikuyu?

Writing for me has been a kind of adventure: it has been discovering my language again and discovering its possibilities and its limitations. Some of its limitations are that the Gikuyu language has not always been in use. I have problems when discussing scientific matters such as astronomy or exploration of the moon. This is where the issue of coinage and borrowing comes in. If you find that you don't have, for example, a word for a newly discovered star, you find you utilise a word that is used in English or any other language. You wrestle with words and ideas, and wrestling with words and concepts is good for the language.

There seems to be an inherent contradiction in the way that Western institutions approach African literature, a colonial vanity whereby English, French and Portuguese publishing houses opt mainly for authors writing in European languages while preaching that they want to promote indigenous literature. Should African studies departments change their approach to how they understand African literature?

Obviously. The colonial powers ruled through French, English and Portuguese, and they've continued that after independence. We didn't question the fundamentals of the colonial policy, we simply nationalised them – we called them African overnight. They were suddenly really African languages. What we really need is an alliance between good government policy, writers taking the pen and writing in African languages and publishers willing to publish African languages. The institutions that say they support African literature must stop saying that imagination is only possible through English, French or European languages.

You've faced many well-documented security issues. Do you continue to face security threats?

It's just part of the occupational hazard, it's not a particular African problem. Throughout history writers have been burned on the stake. Even in the Old Testament, many of the prophets got into problems because of words. Many had to flee. Why? Because of words. I want the word to be respected and be given the freedom of operation●