In what is affectionately or derisively called “Upstate New York”, devoid of the cultural diversity of New York City, Brooklyn, the Bronx or Harlem, Mῖcere Gῖthae Mũgo redefined and recreated African space in a myriad ways: creating community, being readily available when called upon to share knowledge, maintaining her national and international presence and commitment to Pan-African politics.

Not too long ago, Micere was invited at short notice to be the keynote speaker for a Pan-African Connections Conference at Cornell University’s Africana Center. Because she had been a visiting professor at Cornell, Micere insisted that she did not want to be paid. Though in difficult health circumstances, she saw her contribution at the ceremony to mark the retirement of Locksley Edmondson as giving back to Africana. This was significant because Edmondson had spent a  critical period of his career at Makerere University and knew East Africa well.

The result was her presentation, “Locksley Edmondson as An Embodiment of Pan-Africanist Connectivity and As a Scholar Rooted In Black/Africana Studies”, which was published in the collection titled Pan-African Connections co-edited with N’dri Assie Lumumba. In declining the honorarium Micere said:

“As I requested, kindly put the money into the fund that was being proposed at the Symposium, either for ASR&C, or for Professor Edmondson. If there is no fund being set up, then I would like to donate the amount to Africana. Micere.”

Micere exemplified Ubuntu praxis in these ways, as her book The Imperative of Utu/Ubuntu in Africana Scholarship testifies. Following on from the early theorizing of this concept by John Mbiti, Micere defines Ubuntu as the way of being fully human in the world that many African cultures still retain: I am, Because We Are. Ubuntu becomes an African pre-text to Western assertions of white masculinity as the equivalent of the entitled rights to the definition of the human that entails subordinating others.

Micere’s approach included care for the next generation as was evident in her love for imparting knowledge to students and teaching memorable classes even though she was someone used to lecturing to large gatherings at African Studies and African Literature Association conferences, and as a special guest speaker at countless universities.

Another example: To an invitation from my graduate students in Literatures in English at Cornell to take part in their symposium, “Words Walking Without Masters”: Conversations on the Creative-Theoretical, Micere responded:

“A very good Monday afternoon and week to you! I hope all is well with you and your colleagues. If I may make an observation, I really like the spirit of team/collective work that shows in the way the symposium planning committee members are taking turns handling business. I’ve been an activist since my teenage days and even at 79 years of age, I remain an “addict” of team/collective/community work. Please feel free to quote me as needed, assuming you will include an acknowledgment. All the best and stay well!

MMGM.”

Micere’s quote – which totally invigorated them and was one of the earliest endorsements that their project was worthy and the first to appear on the promotional material for the conference – remains on their website.

The pathways and actual experiences of living in the African Diaspora we know have not been joyous. The first-level African Diaspora was created via the brutalities of transatlantic enslavement and forced labour migration in order to build the “New World” that the Europeans wanted to create while decimating indigenous nations.

Micere defines Ubuntu as the way of being fully human in the world that many African cultures still retain: I am, Because We Are.

The second-level diaspora of voluntary or induced African migration often came post-independence because of economic or political oppression by African neo-colonial governments. Many of these second-level African migrants are not pan-Africanists ideologically as that philosophy was meant to be destroyed with the removal of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and the generation that included Patrice Lumumba of Congo-Kinshasa. Thanks to new technologies, historical examples, and the possibilities of family reunification under new migration legislation, members of this second-level African diaspora have been able to benefit from maintaining cultural connections that were not available to the earlier diasporas because of the deliberately instituted separations, or what Toni Morrison calls dismemberment, necessitating re-memory or, more recently, DNA-generated connections to prior African national or regional origins.

The pathways and actual experiences of living in the African Diaspora we know have not been joyous.

Still, at the personal level, bearing the loss that exile brings in both personal and public ways, Micere experienced a doubled and unparalleled grief and pain of that first exile and could empathize with the African and Caribbean experience from her personal experiences, and with the indigenous communities with whom she identified. Micere’s understanding of this loss was compounded by witnessing the rapid decline in health of one of her daughters; while Micere always maintained an elegant presence and a gracious smile for those she encountered, that pain lingered in her eyes.

As I worked in Upstate New York during Micere’s time there, we maintained a friendship even though we did not see each other often, her quick-witted emails shot through with wry jokes and commentary about the demise of US democracy, particularly during the last presidency. Several of these emails still exist and could be the source of a whole other discussion. Poignantly, one contains her last words to me after we honoured her via a virtual African Literature Association forum just weeks before her passing.  It reveals the grace that I describe above:

“Hugs, dear sister Carole! Your summary, in terms of coverage by the Roundtable could not be neater.  All of you were stunning and your presentations, WOW!  Sisters, you know how to uplift and empower a sister. For this I say: Asè! Afya! Moyo!

I love you all!

Micere”

Because my most recent work was on Black women’s leadership across the African world – which led to the publication of Black Women’s Rights: Leadership and the Circularities of Power – I thought it important in this piece to engage with what Micere had contributed on this topic.  I know she had written about the role of women’s leadership as intellectuals, as creative writers, and in community activism, and her book of poetry included some poems about women’s historical leadership.

In reflecting on her work with Ngugi wa Thiong’o on The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, Micere describes women’s role in the struggle as captured in the play thus: “As for women in the struggle, one of the play’s main characters is a woman who coordinated messages from town to forest,  and she trafficked guns. For women played a very dangerous role in the struggle and were hardly cowardly.”

Years ago when I was a graduate student at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, I bought an issue of a popular journal called Africa Woman. I was pleased to find it among some files as I moved office and while looking through its pages found an interview featuring a photograph of a beautiful young Micere Mugo  titled, “Dr. Micere Mugo, Kenya’s Outspoken Intellectual and Academic Critic Talks to Nancy Owano”. The quote above is taken from that interview.

Then a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi, Micere would go on to become the first and youngest woman Dean but was even then described as “One of the most outspoken academics in Kenya today… an intellectual gadfly … who had won many critics as well as supporters with her ideas on women’s oppression, African Socialism and ‘literary imperialism’”.

But even reading the interview today, it is gratifying to see how timely and advanced her discussions were as she spoke even then about some of the bases of the African feminist politics of her generation. The yet relevant “simultaneity of oppressions” linking the need for socialist praxis as it combines with women’s rights was already revealed. Thus, it is important to note that Micere’s identification of African women’s leadership preceded contemporary scholarly articulations such as mine that were generated out of the African Diaspora experience.   Over the years, she, like her co-madre/commère (in Caribbean parlance) Ama Ata Aidoo, would often in her presentations indicate the long list of women who have advanced liberation struggles. Additionally, both never shied away from identifying feminism as an ideological position to which they subscribed.

Micere’s analysis offered a dynamic first-hand praxis presented with amazing grace and charm.   Her self-defined vision for the future, which has still not been realized – “I see a system where all  the oppressive institutions are dismantled – politically, socially, for the sake of men and women” – offers a discussion in which she affirms that there was/still is a distinct combination of  oppressive systems. Thus is revealed one of the clearest identifications of a simultaneity of oppressions analysis that appears in some of the most progressive African feminist assertions:

First of all, let me note that we cannot only speak of women’s oppression by men. In capitalist systems, women tend to be exploited by the very nature of the society particularly the working and peasant women, just as men are exploited. The difference is that women are hit particularly hard.  Their most obvious hardship is being educationally disadvantaged.  Then you have forms of abuse that cut across class lines:  sexual abuse, wife-beating and the fact that men take advantage of woman’s role as child-bearer. But I won’t give the impression that I foster any illusions.  Sexual abuse, rape, etc., do take place in socialist societies, whose conditions of maldistribution and ownership tend to breed many social problems.

It is gratifying to see how timely and advanced her discussions were as she spoke even then about some of the bases of the African feminist politics of her generation.

Seeing the need to maintain a collaborative vision for Africans generated from within African cultures, “I Am Because We Are: The Imperative of Utu/Ubuntu for Transformational Scholarship” became the title of one of her lectures and appears in her book Writing and Speaking from the Heart of My Mind: Selected Essays and Speeches. Clearly written with a recognition that this had to be one of the available sources for her documented body of thought for subsequent generations, it contains essays organized in categories as follows: Autobiographical Touches Using A Black Feminist Brush; Orature, Literature and Creativity Through a Black Feminist Lens, Culture, Class, Gender, Pan Africanism and Human Development; Democracy, Empowerment and Construction of New Sites of Knowledge.

The author’s descriptive summary in another succinct and clarifying assessment of the role of women in society describes the essays as collectively a book that “highlight[s] women as indispensable resources in society and a major driving force in every aspect of human development.  The essays advocate more than just women’s inclusion in this historical process, reiterating the absolute need for their full participation, representation and empowerment in all areas of life”. 

One sees right away the repeated language of feminist assertion in titles like a “Black Feminist Brush” or “Black Feminist Lens”, for, clearly, like Ama Ata Aidoo, Micere did not shy away from an identification with Black or African feminism as an ideological position but advanced with clarity that each cultural location engenders its own way of defining its approach to women’s rights. In many ways, these early stances contributed to the friendship and “mutual comradeship” between the two writers, honed in their early and instinctive lifetime friendship, seasoned in their joint exile in Zimbabwe.

In her collection of essays, and relevant to this discussion, is Micere’s assertion that a re-reinterpretation of Amilcar Cabral’s Return to the Source means returning to African women’s location as they are the source of knowledge, sustenance, creativity and life. And above all, if Pan-Africanism is to have real actuality, it must come through women’s full engagement with this assumption, philosophically. Thus, for her, “The renegotiated Pan African project has to redress this imbalance”.

Micere asserted that the leadership of African women has been consistent through the historic role of African women as leaders who have  provided emotional resources to their communities and, above all, guidance in tangible ways. “Some of Africa’s great leaders were resources in community spiritualism,” she asserts.  By way of recommendations for the future, she identifies some of the aims of the formation of a PAWLO – Pan African Women’s Liberation Organization  – that she helped to design (and that still awaits full implementation) at the 7th Pan African Conference held in Nairobi, which engaged women’s absence from Pan-African theorizing with the following goals and principles: To promote solidarity between women by building an umbrella organization uniting women and women’s organizations that have a Pan-African agenda; to promote fora through which women can bring about effective changes to their lives in a democratic and emancipatory manner; and to equip women with the knowledge, expertise and confidence to challenge all structure of oppression; to increase women’s awareness of their ability to resist all forms of oppression as well as providing the necessary support services to assist them in their resistance; to provide a forum for women to consider issues which have a direct impact upon them  and hinder their ability to effectively participate as equal citizens in their society; and to rewrite African women’s history  with an emphasis and focus on women as agents rather than as victims of society.

If Pan-Africanism is to have real actuality, it must come through women’s full engagement with this assumption, philosophically.

It is important to say here that, as Micere passes into ancestry, some of these ideas that she endorsed or affirmed need to be carried over and not be lost to new generations who often think they have to start from scratch when there are available templates such as this one;  this is the intent of listing them here.

A committed pan-Africanist and feminist, Micere saw the necessity of bringing these ideological positions together for the benefit of women; even if at times they have had to be effected as separate positions, now there is a mode of engaging them also as collaborative stances and ideological positions. This is one important approach  that typifies the simultaneity of oppressions analysis that is a hallmark of black feminist politics and was Micere’s position, and is even more clarified today as we see it in practice visibly in the US and in other parts of the world. Micere’s discussion of gender in her chapter on “Gender, Ethnicity, Class and Culture”, critiques the predominantly male leadership as presiding over a world “characterized by war, destruction, homelessness and other forms of inconceivable insecurity”.

Thus, Micere’s advice to those of us able to advance progressive political positions for women’s rights, “African women should spearhead the launching of a truly gendered, mass-oriented, youth-empowered, re-envisioned Pan-Africanism.”

“The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.”  Paulo Freire

This essay creatively blends a piece I wrote for this edited volume with other reflections and email conversations with Mwalimu Micere Mugo, my mentor, teacher, and former colleague from – as she called me – her young friend.

My first ‘encounter’ with Professor Micere Mugo – my Mwalimu – was enthralling, poignant, exceptional. I first met the illustrious Mwalimu through her works, particularly the literary masterpiece My Mother’s Poem and Other Songs: Songs and Poems. This gripping and inspiring collection of poems spurred my inquiry into her life and continues to be a source of inspiration for me. I met her in person a few years later and our association morphed from mentorship to friendship. I continued to visit and communicate with her almost a decade after I left Syracuse University.

How did I end up in Syracuse? The 2007/2008 Kenya Post-Election Violence (PEV) occurred shortly after I graduated from the United States International University-Africa in Nairobi with a degree in International Relations as a self-sponsored struggling student. My interests in courses about conflict and peace studies were both academic and personal, having survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and other instances of violence in the Great Lakes region. Trepidation ensued as the PEV unfolded with the ruckus of rowdy youth passing from the Kibra slum through the Kilimani suburb, bearing crude weapons and baying for blood, so to speak.

Despite not being the target this time, the clamour in the neighbourhood rekindled deep-seated traumas within me. I spent days and nights asking questions, writing poems and other materials in the different languages resonant with my heart – my English vocabulary could not fully express my anxieties, anguish and search for peace. The crisis repurposed my life, and brought clarity. If I was going to delve into why such conflicts transpired in Africa, I needed a different learning environment and this time not as a self-funded student. So, I applied to pursue a Master’s degree in Pan-African Studies at Syracuse University on a two-year scholarship. As scholarship recipients, we were required to work as teaching or research assistants in the department with different professors and learn from them. In the second year of my graduate course, I was accepted as Mwalimu’s teaching assistant (TA). An African American student who had previously worked with Mwalimu lauded her as the best professor any TA could hope to work with. Each professor could only work with one teaching or research assistant at a time, so I was excited to be next in line!

While working as Mwalimu Mugo’s teaching assistant at Syracuse I learned three key lessons that have transformed my personal and professional life: How to decentre power in a learning environment; how to humanise the process of knowledge production and exchange; and how to share power, creativity, and decisions.

At that point, we had only met a couple of times as she was recovering from an illness. I arrived at her office to a warm reception and was ready to hit the ground running. However, her approach was divergent and heart-warming; she wanted to know about my family and life journey in a creative (not forceful or invasive) manner. Surprisingly, she also shared a little about her life, which was refreshing after working with supervisors who were not so open. We established that traumatic events underscored both our lives and that a friend of mine, an academic in Nairobi, was actually her nephew. In that moment, I learned that collegiality was not a mere buzzword to be relegated as an adjective to colour one’s resume. Mwalimu taught me how to introduce myself to colleagues and build rapport by letting people know that they matter. From her, I grasped what it meant to responsibly engage with questions of power differentials in the academy and, especially, how to work with students to ensure quality.

Nothing takes the chill out of the New England winter like receiving a compliment from your supervisor and s-hero! After a few preparatory meetings for the course, Mwalimu told me how excited she was to have me as a TA. Imagine that! She reassured me that I would receive the benefit of all her thirty-six years of teaching experience, despite the challenges and constraints brought by her illness. Mwalimu had just been discharged from hospital and was still attending some sessions with the doctors. Her resilience, commitment to students, and discipline were simply awe-inspiring. She understood how to maximise her reserves, which meant being wise enough to rest when it was time to rest.

In that moment, I learnt that collegiality was not a mere buzzword to be relegated as an adjective to colour one’s resume.

Mwalimu allowed me to take charge of the classroom. She would sit at the back and to the students’ surprise, put me in the driving seat. I would conduct a lecture and she would participate in class like everyone else, before giving me feedback later. She taught me how to listen to students, to encourage participation, to ensure the power of teaching and learning was shared so students could become co-creators not mere recipients, but without abandoning my teaching and supervision role. Our course was on creative writing, so she encouraged me to allow the students to write about anything – literally anything they wanted – as long as they used the writing techniques we learned. In powerful sessions where we debated students’ writing and gave feedback, I had to learn and re-learn the meaning and role of a teacher. She taught me how to manage the classroom which, in her view, was as important as the teaching materials. I learned that power is not guaranteed simply because one stands before students. Power is shared in a classroom. Respect is earned and nurtured. You help the students to be more present in their work and encourage their creativity, knowledge, and talent. Mwalimu Mugo was not only an artist in her work, but also in her approach to training those who worked with her.

The second lesson from Mwalimu Mugo involved how to mentor students. She was an ardent believer that students are human beings. Students (like their teachers) have pasts, individual personalities, and different abilities. She encouraged me to be open and pay attention to the students throughout the semester, including by getting to know as many of them as I could. This technique proved especially useful when I taught seminars or breakout groups. During each session that semester, we all had to display our names, which she memorised in a week! She had several tricks up her sleeve when calling upon students. She would use the colour of a student’s clothes or someone’s smile or attitude as an example to teach us how to write. I was bad at memorising names and shied away from this exercise. However, her gentle prodding pushed me to alternative ways to learn students’ names. Mwalimu urged me to associate each name with the writer when marking student essays and to make a habit of reading out the students’ names when handing back assignments. I have held on to that practice and now encourage students to use each other’s names to cultivate a support network in class. We shared the grading of each student’s work and discussed the grades we had awarded and the rationales behind them. This taught me how to read in detail and assess each student’s work without shortcuts. Mwalimu did the same and was always ready to change her mind on a grade if I argued my case convincingly.

Thirdly, I gleaned the power of words from Mwalimu. It did not matter how little time we had, we would always begin by checking on each other as individuals before discussing professional matters. She was genuinely interested in how I was fairing and was, in turn, open about her well-being or otherwise. It was in these brief exchanges that I learned to humanise my professional interactions and not only focus on the work. Moreover, Mwalimu Mugo was a very busy person, but you could never feel it because when you were with her, you were all that mattered. On the few instances where she had to take a phone call, she would politely excuse herself – a stark contrast to my previous experiences. In her world, manners and politeness mattered with both students and colleagues.

One snowy day, in the middle of the Syracuse winter, Mwalimu greeted me with a smile when she found me waiting outside her office. I was perplexed by the boldness of the students’ essays and was quite eager to express my opinions about them. True to form, she began by asking how I was as we walked to class. We arrived rather early, which gave me ample time to voice my sentiments about the essays. One particular essay had kept me up the night before since the student had used vivid language to describe the trauma of a violence-laced event in her teenage years. The student’s blatant elucidation of events had roused my own teenage trauma. Mwalimu listened intently but did not say much.

However, in class, we had a lengthy and spirited discussion about the essays on traumatic experiences and complicated pasts. It was an emotionally intense class during which Mwalimu gave a lecture on the use of creative writing as an artistic tool to express deeply embedded traumas and find healing. This was one of the best lecture sessions of my entire university career. It left many of us in tears because Mwalimu allowed us to process our emotions without shutting us down. After the class, Mwalimu asked me to share the poetry I had written during the Kenya Post-Election Violence period with the class. I emailed the class a copy of my poem with the simple message “see bellow” (sic.) in reference to the attachment. Mwalimu noticed my error and replied with a detailed email explaining the power of words and, in this case, of that one letter. She asked me to determine the meaning of “bellow” and “below” and get back to her. In that instant, I learned that I had been using the wrong “bellow” all my life without anyone correcting me. She cared enough to notice and to make sure I benefitted as a result.

It was an emotionally intense class during which Mwalimu gave a lecture on the use of creative writing as an artistic tool to express deeply embedded traumas and find healing.

Upon completing my studies at Syracuse University, Mwalimu Mugo recommended that I continue with graduate studies and nudged me to submit applications to a variety of PhD programmes in different parts of the world. I was fortunate to benefit from her evaluation of my teaching and research skills. She was one of three individuals whose mentorship led me to carve out a career in teaching and research.

I still employ Mwalimu’s techniques in my classes and share her influences. Students have commented on my teaching approach in instructor evaluations, particularly on the three aforementioned lessons. However, whatever my students appreciate in my approaches or whenever anyone appreciates my writing, I acknowledge that it is because I stood on the shoulders of Mwalimu Mugo, the greatest teacher, mentor, and researcher of all time.

I continued to foster my relationship with Mwalimu by visiting whenever possible and keeping in touch via email. It has been a delight to share some of my publications with her, and I look forward to dedicating an anthology of my poetry to her. In the meantime, I strive to pay it forward, to give back to the youth what I have learned from her. While I doubt I will ever match Mwalimu, it will not be for lack of work to put her lessons into practice. For instance, from 2010 to 2015, I organised and delivered a mentorship programme at her alma mater, Limuru Girls School. I made a habit of starting the event by telling the students of a young lady who once attended their institution as the first African and black student and went on to become an acclaimed scholar, a celebrated teacher, and an influential Pan-African activist.

In the meantime, I strive to pay it forward, to give back to the youth what I have learnt from her.

One time, after sharing this publication, which was specially dedicated to her, Mwalimu responded with a lovely and funny email. As always, her words made me smile, even in the middle of COVID-19:

“And then: what a great coincidence that you would email me at a time when you have been so much on my mind! Let me explain. For the last month or so, MSNBC has been running a commercial that is accompanied by “You are my sunshine…” the song that you and I once sang for our Creative Writing class to demonstrate the abundance of metaphors, symbols and imagistic language in “Song” as an orature genre. I shared with Mumbi how tickled the young people were by the free performance from their professor and TA. My intention was to email you and remind you what an amazing TA you were, but I have been battling some health hiccups. So, you got “there” before me.” MMG

This was the Mwalimu who never ceased to give compliments – even a decade after we held classes together, she was still always giving encouraging words.

I emailed her many times, especially when I published works to honour what I learned from her or when I started projects that built on her ideas. She expressed joy and congratulated me when I sent news that I won a European Research Council Grant for the TMSS project. She loved that I built on her work on orature to win major funding, and for a project that would allow for collaboration amongst many scholars and people who have faced displacement. She even asked to share the email with other colleagues in our networks. She celebrated everyone she mentored and gave generous support whenever she could. This essay discussed her impact on my academic and personal life.

When I heard the news that she had passed away, I immediately shared the following words on social media. They poured from my heart:

“My dear professor, mentor, friend who was still laughing with us, chairing a meeting recently, has left us after fighting a long illness…

Professor Micere Githae Mugo (born Madeleine Micere Githae in 1942) was a playwright, author, activist, instructor and poet from Kenya.

A mentor of mentors, a teacher of thousands who have taught thousands, a critical decolonial Afro-feminist leader … will live on through many!

Read her work!

Pole to my sister Mumbi, the family, and all lives she touched, and pole to Kenya and Syracuse Pan-African community for your loss…

Mwalimu welcomed me in Syracuse. She was having a tough time with her health in 2009–2010… We laughed. We shed tears in her office, in restaurants, on my most difficult days dealing with my own traumas.

She stood up for us to keep our studies’ funding… Oh, Mwalimu, you really cared!

She sent me emails telling me that my spelling mistakes in English could result in disasters. I learned she wrote a paragraph in a recommendation letter for my PhD application criticizing my spelling mistakes. I was so upset but later, I came to learn, as a teacher myself, that it’s not good to lie about a patient when they can be treated. I am still improving my writing. Oh, Mwalimu, I will miss you…

When I thought I liked a girl on campus, I asked her what to do from a feminist perspective. She teased me so much and laughed, then gave me some of the coolest advice.

She pushed me to go volunteer in prison, like she had done, to help those who are abandoned, ashamed, condemned by society. It is here where I got my current research question for the TMSS project. She showed many of us how through studying Art we can understand many things in societies. She guided me and gave me the confidence to apply for a PhD.

When I finished at Syracuse, I went to do mentorship to honor her at Limuru Girls School in Kenya every year for five years. She was the first Black Kenyan girl to go to that school. I took many of my friends there to work on guiding girls in transition to University.

I am grateful to have gone back to Syracuse many times and to have met in Kenya to celebrate life with her. I have the most lovely emails and humour in my inbox from our exchanges over the years. We would always sing our song “there is no sunshine when she is gone”, and indeed, there is no sunshine today! She is gone but a good teacher lives on in her students…

Prof Ndirangu Wacanga has a book of essays from many of us who walked with Mwalimu and it is such an honour to be in conversation with great minds and global icons to honour her work, life, and love.

I followed all her last hours. She went voluntarily without pain, and surprised many with her grace, leaving doctors and nurses with lessons. What else can we say but we celebrate Mwalimu…

Rest in Power, Mwalimu. You lived with so much grace. I wish for a small dose of it in my own life.

Read her poems and works”

Indeed, Mwalimu was an artist, a teacher, and an educator who epitomized Paulo Freire’s assertion, “What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.” I am myself because I encountered Mwalimu Mugo and others like her.

It is only fitting that I wrap up my essay with one of Mwalimu’s poems, which embodies why her students will always celebrate her life, friendship, and mentorship!

“I Want You to Know” in Daughter of My People, Sing! 

I want you to know
how carefully
I watered the tender shoots
you planted
in my little garden.

Flowers now adorn the ground
the fruits are ripe

Come
bring a strongly woven basket
and bring with you also
the finest palm wine
that your expert tapping
can brew

We must feast and wine
till the small hours
of our short days together

Joy and love
shall be our daily
harvest songs.

I remember that morning with Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo. It was in the corridors of the new Department of Literature at Nairobi University, which was born out of the abolition of the English Department. We lamented the fact that Jomo Kenyatta, the erstwhile hero of the independence struggle, had surrounded himself with Anglophiles and colonial loyalists like Charles Njonjo. Dedan Kĩmathi and the heroes and heroines of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army were being taken off the calendar of the very independence they had sacrificed their lives for. Mĩcere and I had the same thought. Write a play about Dedan Kĩmathi. But where and how to begin?

We drove to Karũnainĩ in Nyeri, Kĩmathi’s birthplace. We met men and women, some of whom had been Kĩmathi’s students. They pointed at a spot in the forest. That was where he was shot and wounded by an African traitor. In the course of our talks, I mentioned something about Kĩmathi’s death, thinking of his execution by the British in 1957. One of the women turned cold eyes at me. Dead? Then go and show us his grave.

That peasant woman gave us the theme of our play. To Kenyan people, Kĩmathi was still alive. Jomo Kenyatta and his cohorts of neo-colonials could not erase his memory from the grateful workers and peasants of our country. The Trial of Dedan Kĩmathi would depict a defiant Kĩmathi, refusing to plead guilty or not guilty, thus rejecting the legitimacy of the laws of the colonial system. I will not plead to a law in which we had no part in its making, Kĩmathi tells the colonial judge.

The guest of honour on the opening night of the play at the Kenya National Theatre in 1976 was Mũkami Kĩmathi, whom we brought to Nairobi from her home in Njabini. Mĩcere Mũgo played the character of the defiant woman, modelled on Mũkami. Patrick Shaw and his squad of murderous police sat at the terrace of the Norfolk Hotel. The Kĩmathi hunter, Ian Henderson, portrayed in our play as Shaw Henderson, used to stop there for a drink and receive applause from the white settlers for a job well done in the hunt for Dedan Kĩmathi.

The Trial of Dedan Kĩmathi would depict a defiant Kĩmathi, refusing to plead guilty or not guilty, thus rejecting the legitimacy of the laws of the colonial system.

At the end of the play, the real-life Mũkami Kĩmathi stood up and screamed: “That was my Kĩmathi,” and she stayed long into the night telling stories of the time to university students.

Later Mĩcere Mũgo would accompany the other actors to Festac’77 in Nigeria, revealing Dedan Kĩmathi to Africa. Kĩmathi and the Kenya Land and Freedom Army were the first to break the global tread and arrogance of white settler colonies in the Americas, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, declaring themselves independent. Kenya showed the way. Zimbabwe and South Africa would follow the example of Kenya.

Later I was called to the CID Headquarters in NairobI. They asked me: Why were Mĩcere Mũgo and I interfering with European Theatre at the Kenya National Theatre? A year later, I would be hauled into Kamĩtĩ Maximum Security Prison, and Mĩcere Mũgo into police cells for torture. Dictator Moi would force us into exile.

Mĩcere never gave up her struggles for social justice. Wherever there was a people’s struggle, like the armed struggle in Zimbabwe, Mĩcere was there. The generals of Zimbabwe’s struggle knew of her: she had organised for clothes and money to be sent to Zimbabwean freedom fighters, thus following in the footsteps of the woman character she portrayed in The Trial of Dedan Kĩmathi.

The play itself, The Trial of Dedan of Kĩmathi, was performed by ZANU guerrillas and the militants of the ANC. Wherever a people fought for human rights and social justice, even in exile in the USA, Mĩcere Mũgo was there, driven by her belief in Utu: I am because you are. She had a great sense of humour, and amidst her years of struggle with cancer, Mĩcere would still crack a joke.

The play itself, The Trial of Dedan of Kĩmathi, was performed by ZANU guerrillas and the militants of the ANC.

There is another moment I recall. Uhuru Kenyatta invited me, Micere and Mũkami Kĩmathi as his personal guests at the opening of the refurbished Kenya National Theatre. Imagine this: The son of Jomo Kenyatta had brought Mĩcere Mũgo and Mũkami Kĩmathi to Nairobi as his special guests. The embrace between Mĩcere Mũgo and Mũkami Kĩmathi was touching to behold; perhaps both remembered the opening night of The Trial of Dedan Kĩmathi with Mĩcere Mũgo playing the character of the woman very much modelled on Mũkami Kĩmathi. Both have passed on in the same year.

Yes, the woman who had fought the British so that a woman like Mĩcere could be the first African woman to be admitted to the whites-only high schools in Kenya, and who had fought so that Mĩcere would eventually become the first African woman PhD in Kenya, the first African woman Dean of the arts at any University in Kenya, yes, Mũkami Kĩmathi and Mĩcere Mũgo have passed on the same year. But their spirits will live on in all those who take up the fight for our collective Utu.

–

With permission from Daraja Press

Daraja Press is a not-for-profit publisher, based in Québec, Canada, that seeks to reclaim the past, contest the present and invent the future. Daraja Press seeks to build bridges, especially bridges of solidarity between and amongst movements, intellectuals and those engaged in struggles for a just world.