Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Dream Weaver

Editor's note: Kivutha Kibwana wrote this tribute on 1st June, 2024, while Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o was still alive. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o died on May 28, 2025, in Buford, Georgia, U.S. He was 87. 

“Ukiona vyaelea, vimeundwa” - Swahili proverb

At 86 and counting, Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, teacher, mentor, writer, translator, thespian, revolutionary, citizen of the world, and more, is a dream or vision weaver. The trajectory of the author’s life tallies with Jesus’s assertion as recorded in Mark 6:4. The Bible says: “Then Jesus told them, ‘A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family’ (New Living Translation). No wonder that of the 17 or so honorary degrees conferred on Wa Thiong’o, only 4 have been awarded by African universities.

Ngũgĩ's lifelong vocation has been to decolonize the African (and Black) mind, peoples, literature, languages, politics, economy, and everything ‘decolonizable.’ His artillery in this redeeming war for Africa’s soul has largely been his creative and non-fiction writing, teaching, theatre, and public elocution. Although he was the first East African writer to pen a novel in the English language in 1964, Ngũgĩ, as head of the Department of Literature at the University of Nairobi, made a 360-degree turn and commenced championing the teaching of literature from English literature to African literature. This revolutionary act had ramifications across most university literature departments in Africa and generally on the teaching of literature across the board. This, predictably, led to a resurgence of creative writing by African authors and the study of orature.

After his first three novels, our Njamba Nene argued for and popularized African languages as a suitable medium for creative writing. Caitani Mutharaba-Ini (Devil on the Cross, 1980) and Ngaahika Ndeenda: Ithaako ria Ngerekano (I Will Marry When I Want, 1977), co-authored with Ngũgĩ wa Mĩriĩ , opened this new phase of his literary oeuvre. In a sense, each work written in Gikuyu and then translated into English or other languages equals the labor of two literary texts. From personal experience, whatever I write in my first language, Kiikamba, is always richer than an English translation. There are words, phrases, idioms, etc., in my language that I cannot find the exact meaning of in English. No wonder, apart from Matigari ma Njiruungi (1986), Ngũgĩ has found it prudent to translate his works.

For waging the successful struggle to reposition African literature and African languages, including Kiswahili, onto center stage on the African continent and beyond, we immensely owe our Murathi. African governments must ensure that local languages and culture are mainstreamed into our educational systems and within society. For example, although Kenya’s Constitution guarantees the promotion and protection of the diversity of language of the people of Kenya, and the promotion of the development and use of indigenous languages, and recognizes culture as the foundation of the nation and as the cumulative civilization of the Kenyan people and nation (Articles 2, 7, 11), implementation of these provisions is illusory.

Sample this: official policy, laws, and other public documents and communications to citizens are primarily in the English language.

Some critics have argued that when Ngũgĩ writes in his first language, he favors his ethnic group by exposing the creative offering to it ab initio. Such an argument is tantamount to alleging that when you learn your mother’s language as a first language, you are a tribalist. Happily, the debate about promoting all languages in the academy is settled. Historically, all great writers wrote in their indigenous language, the language that conveyed their history, culture, and wisdom.

Ngũgĩ's first works chronicled how colonial experience ravaged Africans and all colonized peoples. In the late 70s and 80s, he trained his guns on neo-colonialism and the black bourgeoisie— Walalahai—supporting cast. Up to the present, wherever Ngugi’s workplace or whatever he writes and speaks, he is an ardent and consistent revolutionary who lends voice to the struggles of Walalahoi, the downtrodden. He acts as an inspirer and mentor of the new generation of African writers and activists who seek Africa’s freedom from enslavement. Predictably, Moi’s regime detained Ngũgĩ without trial, thereby denying him liberty in response to his agitation for the freedom of his country and her peoples. Even in 2004, when Ngũgĩ believed a safe homecoming to Kenya was possible, his family was subjected to state-sponsored brutality.

Ngũgĩ was imprisoned because he dared to proclaim that freedom was possible from neocolonialism and the dictatorship of the comprador bourgeoisie. His captors accused him, like Socrates, of corrupting the youth and thus picked Ngũgĩ's hemlock as detention without trial. Fortunately, Ngũgĩ braved the Kenyan Siberia reserved for the so-called ‘politically deranged.’ Detention without trial had, paradoxically, its silver lining. It offered Ngũgĩ a lived experience to enrich his work. He, for example, rationed the prison toilet paper they periodically gifted him with to write a searing novel Caitani Mutharaba-Ini, 1980 (Devil on the Cross), about his state jailors and their collaborators. 

The same period and horror gave birth to prison memoirs. Kenya’s founding president, Johnston Kamau wa Ngengi, also known as Jomo Kenyatta, exiled Ngũgĩ to Uganda and the USA in 1969. Daniel Toroitich arap Moi banished the son of Thiong’o from his motherland in 1982. Within a handful of years, Ngũgĩ will have lived estranged from his homeland for half a century, indeed, most of his productive life. Kenyan leaders have denied the Kenyan youth the opportunity to directly interact with Ngũgĩ and, by extension, the African youth on their continent. Africa has sacrificed millions of its best sons and daughters to the Diaspora, where they suffer misery or develop other lands. In my estimation, if even half of the African Diaspora returned home, they, together with resident Africans, could propel Africa into unimaginable prosperity. In the meantime, African leaders are happy to cast away what they deem as potential troublemakers but expect remittances from them. In most African countries, these earnings are the number one contributor to the GDP and its foreign exchange component.

Exile denies African writers and thinkers the geography, culture, language, customs, art, music, village/community, family, relatives, friends, networks, environment, history, nuance, etc., which form the basic material for storytelling and thought leadership. Often, a diaspora-based writer must rely, to a large extent, on second-hand information, especially if he or she cannot occasionally touch base with home. Some African writers who live abroad write creatively from an AfroEuropean standpoint.

As a staunch believer in Pan-Africanism and African renaissance, still, Ngũgĩ must work divorced from the crucible of the African struggle for emancipation. And yet, he continues to be faithful to his community of origin, native language, culture, country, and continent while also being a global citizen—all wrapped in one. He serves, like Thomas Sankara and other change makers, as the Upright (Wo)Man dedicated to disrupting Africa so as to ‘secure the base’ and ensure that her majority population can be genuinely free at last. Ngũgĩ’'s work has also focused on children and young adults. He has been committed to raising a generation of firebrands who will continue the Nyerere, Nkrumah, Nasser, Lumumba, Gadaffi, Kaunda, Senghor, Sankara, Cabral, Machel, Neto, Mandela, etc., dream of freeing Africans from neo-colonialism and imperialism.

Wa Thiong’o has, during his career of six decades, believed in artistic innovation. One notable theatrical invention was the Kamirithu Community Education and Cultural Centre, where peasants and workers literally took centre stage to co-create with Ngugi a drama about their own lives. The power of such art became apparent to official authority, leading the Kenyan government to shut down and demolish the Centre as well as ban the performances. The powers that be were taking no chances. But like the Phoenix of old, Kamirithu is rising from its ashes. You cannot kill an idea whose time is ripe and here. The great writer, in the allegorical The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi (2020), grapples with the divinity mystery. He unveils a transcendent Giver Supreme who stands for the oneness of world faiths. Loving the African people—indeed all oppressed people—the way Ngũgĩ does, as expressed through his life’s craft and mission, this once prisoner of conscience who sits among the pantheon of African writers alongside, to name but a few, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Okot p’ Bitek, Noemia de Sousa, Kofi Awoonor, Dennis Brutus, Ferdinand Oyono, Antonio Jacinto, Shabaan Roberts, Mvula ya Nangolo, Nawal el Saadawi and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, is a man of unshakable faith.

His life and times, as articulated in his memoirs, reflect his profound metamorphosis into a sage whose personal experiences offer enduring lessons to the world. In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir (2012), he reveals his formative years at Alliance High School in Kenya, a period marked by the contrast between the oppressive colonial environment and the intellectual freedom within the school. This juxtaposition underscores the dichotomy between colonial imposition and indigenous resilience, shaping Ngũgĩ’s early worldview.

In Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer’s Awakening (2016), Ngũgĩ recounts his time at Makerere University, where his political consciousness and literary ambitions were awakened amidst the vibrant socio-political dynamics of post-colonial Africa. This memoir highlights the genesis of his commitment to writing as a form of political activism and cultural preservation. Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir (2018) is a narration of Ngũgĩ’s detention without trial by the Kenyan government, detailing his psychological and physical struggles in prison and his creative resilience, epitomized, as remarked before, by writing Devil on the Cross on toilet paper. These works collectively illustrate Ngũgĩ’s transformation into a revered figure whose life lessons and unwavering commitment to social justice, cultural liberation, and the transformative power of literature continue to inspire and educate globally.

Is Ngũgĩ a saint? Saints are usually declared posthumously. No living human being can be a saint, like the ones I believe are found in the ancestral land beyond.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo, Murathi, Njamba Nene, Dream Weaver, Interpreter, I dare not salute you with a mere five ululations. As a revolutionary son of the African soil, we salute you with twenty-one Ngemi. You have lived a life echoing the Somali proverb: “Wisdom does not come overnight.”

Nairobi, Kenya 1st June, 2024

Professor Kivutha Kibwana is a distinguished Kenyan academic. His area of expertise is Law and Constitutionalism. He is also a human rights activist and politician. He served as the 1st Governor of Makueni County from 2013 to 2022 and as a cabinet minister in the national government. He is currently a professor at Daystar University, where he leads its Master of Laws Programme.