Ng\u0169g\u0129 wa Thiong’o, the literary giant from Kenya and unflinching advocate for African languages, passed away on 28 May 2025, leaving behind a legacy that bridged continents and generations. For those of us who knew him\u2014whether through his words or in solidarity campaigns\u2014his life was a testament to the power of art as resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am deeply saddened to learn of Ng\u0169g\u0129’s passing. Ngugi did not just write books\u2014he declared war. War on colonialism and neocolonialism, on linguistic shame, on the very idea that African thought must be filtered through colonial grammar to be ‘literature.’ When news of his death broke, I felt bereft, always assuming that we would soon have our next conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I helped organize London protests for his release in 1978, we shouted his banned titles outside Kenya\u2019s High Commission. We prepared banners saying ‘Kenyatta sheds Petals of Blood’<\/em>, Waingereza walifunga Kimathi,<\/em> Mzee anafunga Ngugi<\/em>! (The British locked up Kimathi, Mzee [Kenyatta] locks up Ngugi!). Years later, when I visited him at his home near Kamiriithu, the site where the people’s theatre at which Ngaahika <\/em>Ndeenda was performed, and which the regime destroyed, he told me: \u2018You thought you were demanding my freedom? You were demanding yours.\u2019 He showed me the manuscript he\u2019d scribbled on scraps of paper in prison. ‘They gave me a pen to confess,\u2019 he laughed. \u2018I used it to imagine.’ ‘They thought they buried me in prison,\u2019 he laughed, \u2018but they planted a seed.\u2019 His warmth and clarity in person mirrored the fearlessness of his writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I always resented the fact that so much of his writings were relegated to the African Writers Series. True, the series brought attention to the wealth of writers from the African continent. But many of them were, like Ngugi, literary giants, not merely ‘African writers’. Their contribution to art, politics and and thinking were and are of universal relevance. The failure to recognize this universalism is perhaps one of the reasons that, despite being nominated several times, Ngugi was denied the Nobel prize for literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ngugi’s most important contributions was on language. His novels, essays, and unyielding belief in the dignity of African languages reshaped world literature. To call him merely a \u2018great African writer\u2019 would be to shrink his genius\u2014he was one of the most vital thinkers of our age, a voice who spoke from Kenya but to humanity. Ng\u0169g\u0129\u2019s decision to write in G\u0129k\u0169y\u0169 was not symbolic\u2014it was an act of intellectual insurrection. He tore down the lie that creativity required the approval of imperial languages. \u2018To think in my mother tongue,\u2019 he told me once, \u2018is to dream in freedom.\u2019 His G\u0129k\u0169y\u0169 works (M\u0169rogi wa Kagogo<\/em>, Matigari<\/em>) were not \u2018translations from English\u2019\u2014they were the originals, the canon itself. Beyond ‘African Writer’: Western obituaries will box him into \u2018African literature.\u2019 But Ng\u0169g\u0129 belonged to the same pantheon as Dostoevsky, Marquez, and Orwell\u2014writers who exposed power\u2019s machinery. Wizard of the Crow<\/em> is as universal as 1984; Decolonising the Mind,<\/em> perhaps as urgent as Fanon.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his Foreword to Daraja Press’ edition of Mau Mau From Within: The Story of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army,<\/a> he wrote: ‘We don\u2019t have to use the vocabulary of the colonial to describe our struggles, especially today when there is worldwide movement to overturn monuments to slavery and colonialism.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n For those of us who stood beside him\u2014in protest, in lecture halls, or in his Limuru home\u2014he was also a generous comrade, always leaning forward to listen, even as the world often leaned away from him. I admired how attentive he always was to younger aspiring writers. At conferences where we both spoke, I watched him corner young African writers, urging them to \u2018write dangerously.\u2019 He\u2019d ask: \u2018Who owns your language? Who profits from your silence?\u2019 His belief in them was visceral. \u2018Talent is common,\u2019 he told them. \u2018What\u2019s rare is the courage to use it.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his piercing 2020 interview<\/a> with Daraja Press, Ng\u0169g\u0129 laid bare his life\u2019s mission: \u2018Colonialism stole our land, but language was the theft of our dreams.\u2019 He recounted how, as a child, British teachers beat G\u0129k\u0169y\u0169 out of his classmates\u2014\u2018not just with canes, but with the lie that our words were small, ugly things.\u2019 His entire oeuvre, from his early writings as ‘James’ Ngugi, to Petals of Blood<\/em>, Decolonising the Mind<\/em> and Wizard of the Crow<\/em>, was a counterattack: \u2018I write in G\u0129k\u0169y\u0169 not to be provincial, but to prove that the universal lives in the particular.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kenya today claims Ng\u0169g\u0129 as a national treasure\u2014yet how recklessly it squandered him in his prime. No streets are named for the man whose books were banned in schools; politicians quote Decolonising the Mind<\/em> while gutting funding for indigenous-language education. When I last visited Nairobi, a young poet told me, \u2018They praise Ng\u0169g\u0129 now because he\u2019s no longer dangerous.\u2019 But Ng\u0169g\u0129\u2019s legacy is danger: the kind that outlives regimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Kiumbi kiaguo ikio ki, kiaguo ikio<\/em>. “A thing that forgets its origins will soon die.” Ng\u0169g\u0129, they jailed you, exiled you, misnamed you\u2014yet here you remain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rest well, comrade and friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sincere condolences to Ngugi’s family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Firoze Manji<\/p>\n\n\n\n Publisher, Daraja Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cantley, Qu\u00e9bec, Canada<\/p>\n\n\n\n 29 May 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ng\u0169g\u0129 wa Thiong’o, the literary giant from Kenya and unflinching advocate for African languages, passed away on 28 May 2025, leaving behind a legacy that bridged continents and generations. For those of us who knew him\u2014whether through his words or in solidarity campaigns\u2014his life was a testament to the power of art as resistance. 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