John Sibi-Okumu takes on Kenya’s towering revolutionary Bildad Kaggia as the subject of his robust new activist play about empowerment — how personal strength and honesty can transcend a destructive social system and the lure of material wealth. PHOTO| COURTESY
Although well-known to older Kenyans, Bildad Kaggia’s life trajectory may be less familiar to post-Independence generations. Kaggia was born into a dystopic world of European imperialism in 1932 in Murang’a (Fort Hall) to subsistence farmers.
He grew up under Britain’s toxic system of colonial capitalism whose economy, ideology and social norms often, if inadvertently, turned ordinary men and women into monsters.
As the same system was carried over into the post-Independence era, it produced the same kind of people.
John Sibi-Okumu takes on Kenya’s towering revolutionary Bildad Kaggia as the subject of his robust new activist play about empowerment — how personal strength and honesty can transcend a destructive social system and the lure of material wealth.
Against insuperable odds, a few gutsy men and women chose honour — remaining true to an alternative moral universe despite the consequences.
