Like Mzee Kenyatta, Ngugi became the towering figure of African literature, fighting against the same European and American imperialism.
Ironically, it was Mzee Kenyatta who started the persecution of Ngugi, a job President Daniel arap Moi finished by exiling him in 1982.
A lot of ink has been spilt on Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o since his passing two weeks ago at the ripe age of 87. So, I won’t plough those fields, or tread on roads already travelled. Instead, from my perch as a native of Kenya and fellow academic with him in the United States, I will shine some light on a few things. The first is to say Ngugi was simply an incredible writer and an unrelenting giant fighter against the subjugation of Africans by the West. The man didn’t give a damn what his detractors thought of his life-long political project fought in the vineyards and battlefields of letters with the barrel of a pen.
I came of age in Kenya just as Ngugi was being hounded and persecuted by the regime of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. Ironically, the professor and Mzee Kenyatta – dubbed the Burning Spear – were ideological soulmates in history. In his academic sojourn in the United Kingdom, Mzee Kenyatta became a leading Pan-Africanist, gracing the anti-colonial Fifth Pan-Africanist Congress in Manchester in 1945.
