Africa News blog

Thiong’o's memories of a time of war

Ngugi wa Thiong’o had been hesitant to write his memoirs, but wanted to give his children a wake up call about what life was like when you had to walk miles to school - not to mention being a political prisoner.

A giant of African literature, he has never been afraid to challenge the establishment. Yet while he recounts his time in prison with humour today, he has never moved back to Kenya full time since going into exile nearly 30 years ago despite being one of the country’s best-known writers. 

Thiong’o was imprisoned without charge in December 1977 after peasants and workers performed his play “Ngaahika Ndeenda”,  which criticised inequalities in Kenyan society.

Thiong’o went into exile in 1982 and only returned in 2004, when he and his wife were assaulted in what he maintains was a politically motivated attack.

“If I had returned to Kenya during the Moi dictatorship, I probably wouldn’t be breathing today. But after the defeat of the Moi dictatorship …  my exile was over, because I know I can return to Kenya, I can visit Kenya, although I have to say that when my wife and I returned to Kenya for the first time we were brutally attacked by armed gunmen so I realised that the forces that had always been against what I stand for in terms of creating a more humane society, that those forces are still very much alive,” he told Reuters Africa Journal in Los Angeles.

“I was arrested in 1977 … when I was then professor and chairperson of the department of literature at Nairobi university. So, from being a professor and author of three novels, and so on, I found myself in a maximum security prison. On my left, were sections for the mentally deranged, and then the other side was for those who were condemned to die. So writers were somewhere between those two categories,” the 72-year-old told fans at Los Angeles public library, where he was promoting the first volume, “Dreams in a Time of War”.

Under Daniel arap Moi’s rule, dissent was crushed and those who opposed him were harassed and suppressed, many of them killed or subjected to Nairobi’s torture chambers.

PHOTOBLOG: Children in Kenya and Haiti forced to grow up fast, if they survive

I had a flashback the other day when I was looking at photographs from Haiti of 15-year-old Fabianne Geismar, shot dead in the head after stealing wall hangings from a Port-au-Prince store, crushed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The image of Fabianne sprawled on the ground, blood trailing over the paintings she’d grabbed, took me back to my own childhood in Nairobi and the sight of a 7- or 8-year-old-boy – probably the same age as me at the time – who was caught stealing sweets from a street vendor and was beaten and burnt with rubber tyres. They called it mob justice.

To this day, I’ll never understand why that poor boy had to die such a violent and senseless death for something so trivial. I feel the same way about Fabianne – she survived one of the most catastrophic events in living memory, only to be shot in the head for petty theft. And for stealing wall hangings where there are no walls.

Fabianne’s childhood was brutally stolen from her and it got me thinking about how quickly so many young people in places like Africa, Asia and the Americas have to grow up, forced to fend for themselves through child labour or prostitution, denied an education and exposed to violence, disease and hunger at an age when they should be learning and playing.

Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion live in poverty and experience violence annually, UNICEF figures show, meaning nearly half the children in the world don’t get to have childhoods. There are also an estimated 132 million orphans in the world, UNICEF says.

Children under 18 make up almost half of Haiti’s 9-million population and the country faces the highest rates of infant and child mortality in the Western hemisphere.

Officials fear thousands of children have been separated from their parents, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by child traffickers, being illegally adopted by other countries or forced into child labour in order to survive. Around 150 million children worldwide aged 5–14 are engaged in child labour.

“Would you please pass this bottle of water to Tom?”

“Would you please pass this bottle of water to Tom?” Lady Delamere asked me while we were waiting in court to hear the sentencing of her son, Tom Cholmondeley, who had been convicted of manslaughter for shooting a black poacher in Kenya.

After three years in prison, one of Kenya’s best-known white aristocrats was told he would have to serve a further eight months in jail in a case that has highlighted land, race, wealth and tribal tensions in the country.

I squeezed through the crowded courtroom to give Cholmondeley the water from his mother and returned to my spot where the Delamere family was awaiting the judge’s decision. It was the second time I had seen Cholmondeley in person and in court. A very tall man in a pressed suit with always the same impassive expression on his clean-shaven face.

It was an awkward experience for me and probably for most people in the court room where rich and poor, black and white have all, unusually for Kenya, been huddled together in one space.

Looking at Cholmondeley through his mother’s eyes humanised this seemingly unemotional man and made me wonder if he held onto that expression to hide any turmoil he was experiencing. He did after all try and help Robert Njoya, the victim, with first aid and transport to hospital, which suggests a compassionate side to his character.

This was the second such case against Cholmondeley, who was accused of killing a wildlife ranger, Samson Ole Sisina, in 2005. That case was dropped for lack of evidence.

When the judge gave his decision, the courtroom erupted with Masai tribesmen shouting, waving banners and demanding justice for the two victims’ families. Cholmondeley and his family were whisked away for fear they would be in danger if they stayed.

Zuma: some views from abroad

Jacob Zuma is cruising towards the South African presidency and the main question now is the size of the ANC’s majority.

So what do people from other African countries think of the man who will take over the continent’s most powerful economy?

Reuters Africa Journal asked a few.

“South Africa is one of the biggest democracies that we have and I have got a lot of confidence in their election process and what I think about Zuma,” said Phaenius Mushayi from Harare.

“I think Zuma is a very integral leader. I mean he has been there in ANC and he has stood behind the people, he has stood for the people and a lot of people have confidence in him.”

Another resident of the Zimbabwean capital, Mbuso Makodza, took a less rosy view.

“I think the future of South Africa, for me, they have got a lot of challenges. Of course they have got the independence in terms of ruling, but in terms of the economy, the economy is still controlled by a lot of whites and I still believe the black man doesn’t have a say in the economy.

Talk is not cheap for Kenya activists

In Kenya, it may be dangerous to speak your mind.

In a country that once prided itself on its freedom of speech and lively public debate, political activists now say their lives are being threatened, and a U.N. special investigator has said that Kenyan police systematically intimidate human rights defenders.

“Dozens of prominent and respected human rights defenders have been targeted in a blatant campaign designed to silence individual monitors and instill fear in civil society organizations at large”, said U.N. Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial killings Phillip Alston, in a report he released on April 7.

Alston was appointed in February to investigate allegations that at least 500 people have been victims of extra-judicial executions at the hands of Kenyan security forces since 2007.

Weeks after his appointment, two activists who had spoken out against police brutality were murdered in broad daylight when their car was blocked on a central Nairobi street and unknown gunmen opened fire on them.

The two men, Oscar Kingara and Paul Oulu, were outspoken critics of a police campaign against an outlawed religious movement known as the Mungiki, which has been accused of operating extortion gangs and committing gruesome murders.

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Going organic in Kenya’s biggest slum

A group from east Africa’s biggest slum has proved that you don’t need a big farm in the countryside to produce food crops for sale.

They’re planting organic vegetables on a small allotment in the middle of Nairobi’s Kibera slum that his been cleared out of an old rubbish tip.

A year ago, nothing grew on their patch of land. Today, tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins and kale flourish.

Kibera is home to nearly one million people, who mostly live in corrugated iron shacks with no running water.

Victor Matioli grew up a tough inner-city kid. He never imagined that one day he’d be a farmer with a passion for plants and for the soil they grow in.

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Kenya’s traffic – a daily adventure

The ancient truck labouring up the hill followed by a long queue of vehicles looked like a typical Kenyan scene — except for the legs protruding from under the bonnet. A Mafia hit? No, the legs were moving. Then I realised the bonnet was jammed slightly open and the man was adjusting some fault to keep the engine running while the truck proceeded.

Even for Kenya this was bizarre, but only slightly more unusual than the daily chaos on the roads, where almost anything goes; from enormous potholes capable of cracking the axle of normal cars, to abandoned or broken down trucks, to the swarms of battered, unroadworthy and brightly decorated matatu minibuses, driven by people whose brains appear to have been removed. A colleague recently saw a matatu swing across three lanes of traffic to smash into an unsuspecting car for no apparent reason. Matatus are the only available transport for many Kenyans but climbing into one is a daily and possibly terminal gamble. They are notorious for terrible accidents, often when smashing into oncoming trucks while overtaking on bends or hills. Matatus, like other vehicles, including huge trucks, often travel without lights at night. Matatus break down frequently, leaving a group of disconsolate passengers beside the road while the driver and tout (who takes the fares) try to change a wheel or mend the engine, creating another hazardous obstruction. Combined with the entirely selfish habits of other Kenyan drivers who think nothing of jamming a junction to get a slight advantage over other traffic, the minibuses cause the daily commute to frequently turn into a frustrating calvary with jams that last for hours. All this is made worse by regulations requiring drivers involved in an accident, even a minor shunt, to desist from moving their cars until the police arrive – which can be many hours.

The traffic police often seem only tangentially interested in the chaos, standing on the verge watching as cars, trucks and buses become increasingly interlocked in flagrant disregard for the law and traffic lights. Sorting out the mess seems important to only a few of them. That is perhaps because their main activity, according to most Kenyans, is to extort bribes to supplement their meagre wages. Their favourite victims are matatus and trucks who are allowed to pass, on payment of small bribes. Traffic experts say the delay caused by police roadblocks can add a day to the journey from Mombasa port through central Kenya to Uganda and neighbouring countries.

Like all criminal activity, this extortion of bribes increases at certain predictable times. On a recent one-hour drive to the lakeside town of Naivasha, northwest of Nairobi, I had to concentrate hard to avoid being stopped in one of at least eight police roadblocks. “Of course, it is Christmas, they need money,” said one Kenyan friend.

Elections also cause the roadblocks to sprout like mushrooms as politicians push police to raise money for their campaigns.

Before Kenya’s bloody election at the end of last year I was stopped at a roadblock, again on the road to Naivasha. Without even the usual desultory attempt to accuse me of some imagined misdemeanour, the policeman shoved his hand through the window and said only: “Two thousand shillings ($25)”. I protested and after much bargaining offered 1,000 as a compromise. “Oh no,” the policeman replied. “My boss says I have to get two thousand from everybody today.”