Ngugi and Kenyan History

8/13/2019 Ngugi and Kenyan History

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Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the Writing of Kenyan HistoryAuthor(s): Carol M. SichermanReviewed work(s):Source: Research in African Literatures, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 347-370Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3819170.Accessed: 19/01/2012 13:19

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NGUGI WA THIONG'O AND THE WRITING OF KENYAN HISTORYCarolM. Sicherman

When Heinemann decided to reissue some of the most successful itles of itsAfricanWriters Seriesin a new format, Ngugi wa Thiong'o took advantageof the opportunity to revise certain details and to add significantly newpassagesin A Grainof Wheat.' Two of the revisions,a change in politicalterminology and a correctionof a historicaldetail, hint suggestivelyat mytopic: the emergenceof Ngugi's matureunderstandingof the role of historyin Africanliteratureand of his own role in the rewritingof Kenyanhistory.Regardinga writeras the "conscience of the nation" (Darling 16), Ngugiintends to make his compatriotssee the historyof Kenya for the last hun-dred yearsas the storyof resistance o colonialism-and to neocolonialism.First,in revisingGrainNgugi has changed the term "the Party"to "theMovement." Bitter at the betrayalby the Kenyan AfricanNational Union(KANU) of its own ideals, he refusesto see it as the inheritorof the nation-alistic movement. The narrator'sexplanation at the beginning of chapter2 of Grain reflectspopular perception of KANU (founded in 1960) as theculmination of a political evolution stemming from HarryThuku's EastAfrican Association(founded in 1921):

... to most people, especially those in the younger generation, theParty[Movement]had alwaysbeen there, a rallyingcentrefor action.It changed names; leaderscame and went but the Party[Movement]remained,opening new visions,gatheringgreaterand greater trength,till on the eve of Uhuru, its influence stretched from one horizontouching the sea to the other resting on the greatLake. (11, 10)

But from the moment of Uhuru, as illustratedby the local MP in Grain,KANU bid good-bye to revolution and embraced neocolonialism. A self-serving Party-since 1969 the only party, and dejure the only partysince 9June 1981--it cannot be linked with the idealistic Movement whosemartyrsNgugi celebrates.Hence the pointed addition given to GeneralR. in therevised Grain. Following his comment "We get Uhuru today," he saysinthe revision; "But what's the meaning of 'Uhuru'? It is contained in thename of our Movement: Land and Freedom" (192, 221); thus the Move-ment is explicitly identified not with KANU but with Dedan Kimathi'sLand and FreedomArmy, commonlyknown as MauMau,which is of coursethe greathistoricaltheme of Ngugi's writing.Research n AfricanLiteratures,Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall 198901989 by the Universityof TexasPress,P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713


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348 CarolM. SichermanSecond, Ngugi has correcteda historicalerror. In chapter 2 the elderlyWarui is reminiscing about the brutal suppressionof the crowd demon-

stratingon behalf of HarryThuku in 1922;2the first version reads: "Threemen raised their armsin the air. ... Within a few secondsthe big crowdhad dispersed; nothing remained but fifteen crooked watchers on theground,outside the State House" (14, emphasisadded). The term "crookedwatchers" for the slain demonstratorss startlinglyevocative, but the errorin number is just as startling.Eventhe official coroner's igure-twenty-one-was higher; the most widely accepted figure is 150, which is what Ngugiuses in the revision(13) as well as in Detained (82) and Barrelof a Pen (30).This revision, like the change from "Party" to "Movement," implies notmere devotion to detail but a largermission that has come to dominateNgugi's thinking as a creative writer. Promisingmonuments to the MauMaufighters, the members of the Uhuru governmentinsteadbusied them-selvesaccumulating privatewealth. Ratherthan enact the ideal of the Landand Freedom Army, the governmentmemorializedits leader by renamingone of the principalshoppingstreetsof centralNairobi, lined with expensivestores and businesses,"KimathiAvenue." Kimathi'sprophecy n 1954that"portraitsand statues of our heroes" would stand in Kenyan cities while"those of the Colonialistswhichstandthere nowwill be pulled down" (qtd.in Itote, "MauMau" General146) has remainedunfulfilled. If the govern-ment reneged on its promise, Ngugi determined to fulfill it: his workscon-stitute a developing monument to the freedom struggle, a struggle thatNgugi now sees as stretchingfrom the earlyresistanceof Waiyaki(d. 1892)right into the undergroundmovement that (he hints in Devil on the Cross)took shapein the late 1970sand that now, calledMwakenya,challengesthegovernmentof President Daniel arapMoi. Although there is no evidence ofNgugi's participation n Mwakenyaactivities,3accusationsof suchparticipa-tion by the Moigovernmentcontaina symbolictruth, for his writinghas un-questionablybeen a major inspirationto the currentKenyanresistance.In order to understandNgugi's deploying of the historyof Kenyanresis-tance, we need to know its political, cultural,and historiographical ontext.We need, further, to recognize that Ngugi blursthe lines between historyand literatureand that, perhapsas a consequenceof this blurringof the twogenres, the distinction between Ngugi and his narrators nd certain charac-ters also becomes blurred.This is certainlythe case in the work on which Iwill focus, Petalsof Blood, in whichNgugi's ideas arevoiced by Karegaandthe lawyer aswell as by the collective "we" that at times assumesthe narra-tive function). I will need first to sketchthe evolution of Ngugi's handlingof historyand his emerging perceptionsof the kind of historyneeded forKenya, then to discuss his challenge to Kenyan historians(and to Ngugihimself as erstwhilehistorian), and finally to assesshis critiqueof the firstgeneration of Kenyan historians-who are, or course, Ngugi's age-mates.


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349 NGUGIANDKENYANHISTORYHaving describedthis background,I can proceed to discussinterpretationsof resistance,focusing first on Waiyaki, perceived as progenitorof the pre-presidentialKenyattaand of MauMauaswell, and then on Mau Mauasthelargest example. In both cases we will see an intermingling of historyandlegend-indeed, a transformationof legend into history-as well as fierceideologicaldisputes. A brief reflection on Ngugi's readershipwill bringthisessayto an end if not a conclusion; no conclusionis possible, for the storycontinues.

The "ideal" Africannovel, Ngugi told an interviewer n 1969, would "em-brace the pre-colonial past[,] . . . the colonial past, and the post-independence period with a pointer to the future" (Friedbergerii)-adescriptionof Petals of Blood, the novel that he startedto write the follow-ing year.By then he knew that, like his characterMunira,he "had to take adrasticstep that would restoreme to my usurped history, my usurped in-heritance,that would reconnectme with my history" (Petals of Blood 227).Whereas Muniraeventuallyretreats into religious fundamentalism, Ngugihas accomplishedthe reconnection.

Preoccupiedwith historyfrom the start, Ngugi has graduallyaltered hisview of the relationship of literature to history and the relationship ofhimself as creative writer to Kenyan historians. From the nationalist en-thusiasm of a student writerliving abroad,he has moved through the mid-dle groundof A Grainof Wheat to the forthright evangelismof The TrialofDedan Kimathi, Petals of Blood, and the later works-a writer tested bymature combat with the forcesof neocolonialism at home. It must not beforgotten that The River Between and Weep Not, Child were both writtenwhile he wasan undergraduateat MakerereCollege in UgandaandA Grainof Wheat while he was an MAstudent at LeedsUniversity n England.Theburgeoning of his political awarenessduring his yearsat Leeds (1964-67)certainlyaffected Grain but did not fully blossom until Trial.Ngugi's firstthreenovels, which look back in time, form a quasitrilogyinchronologicalprogression hat runs from TheRiverBetween (1965; draftedin 1960), Weep Not, Child(1964; draftedin 1962), and A Grainof Wheat(1967; completed in 1966)-runnning from the female circumcisioncon-troversy hat came to a head in 1929 and led to the developmentof Gikuyuindependent schools(River),throughthe Emergency 1952-56) declared tosuppress Mau Mau (Weep), to the critical moment of Independence(Grain). The next novel picksup chronologicallywhere Grain leavesoff: setduring the twelve yearsup to and including the veryyearswhen Ngugi waswriting it (1970-75), Petals looks at the present in the light of the past.Petalscontainsnot only manyreminiscencesof Mau Maubut alsopanoramic


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350 CarolM. Sichermanallusions to the more distant Africanpast and to the blackdiaspora, goingbackthroughwhat Ngugi calls "a huge spaceof time" to show "three dif-ferent phases of social formations:a long period of precapitalist,precolo-nialist, relations," then colonialism, and finally neocolonialism ("RWInterview"10). The wayin whichpast and presentare viewed is reversed nthe play The Trialof Dedan Kimathi (1976; written 1974-76), which looksat the past in the light of the present in an attempt to assessthe enduringlegacy of Mau Mau to independent Kenya. I Will MarryWhen I Want-the English title of Ngugi's first Gikuyu play, Ngaahika Ndeenda-lookssquarelyat the present, with an implied agenda for change. Finally,Devilon the Cross,his first Gikuyu novel (CaitaaniMutharaba-ini), ooks at thepresent in the light of the future, setting a satiriccritiqueof contemporaryKenya against a vision of a socialistKenya purged of neocolonialism-thefulfillment of Ngugi's early requirement that the writer "be preparedtosuggest" a future (Nagenda and Serumaga,"A Discussion" iii).References o historicalfiguresand events of earlierperiodsare nearlyasimportant as the historical settings. Except for his apprentice plays andearliershortstories,Ngugi's worksare dense with allusions to historicalper-sonagesand events, the density becoming most markedin Petalsof Blood.Even where the allusions are generalrather than exact-"Siriana," for ex-ample, although modeled on Alliance High School, is founded some yearsbefore the actual founding of Alliance in 1926-the fiction is deeply im-bued with history.From the beginning Ngugi deliberatelymixed fictionalnameswith thoseof historical characters, hoping to heighten the illusion of fictional"reality";4as he saysin the author's note to Grain, "fictitious" charactersexist in a real "situation and [among] . . . problems[that] arereal." Evenso, he apparently elt some uneasinessabout intermixinghistoryand fiction;the author's note also explains that historical figures "like . . . JomoKenyatta and Waiyaki are unavoidably mentioned." In his subsequentworks,there are no such apologiesand certainlyno avoidance; ncreasingly,the fictional characters ntermingle with historicalcharactersand events,functioning as illustratorsof history.In the earlierbooks, historicalallusions are vague and inaccurate.Therepresentationof the 1922demonstrationand massacren the firstversionofGrain,faulty though it is, at least reduced the extraordinarynderstatementof Weep: "People wereshot and three of them died" (42). After Grain, itwould seem, Ngugi read Kenyan historymore attentively, unimpeded bythe blinders of his colonial education. With MicereMugo he conductedsecondaryresearchn Englishand primaryresearchn Gikuyuwhile writingon The TrialofDedan Kimathi, a workof the imaginationthat purports ocontributeto the revisionof Kenyanhistorythat Ngugi regardsas essentialto his country'sliberationfrom the colonial legacy. Perhapsdoing historical


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351 NGUGIAND KENYANHISTORYresearchhelped hone the awarenessof historyand of Kenyanhistoriographypermeatinghis fourth novel.

PetalsofBloodis thick with allusions to worldblackhistoryand containsanumber of pointed historiographicaldisquisitions. Indeed, the aestheticsofhis fiction changes(forthe worse,some criticsargue),and thereis often littledifferencebetween the writing in certainpassagesof the novel and in theclosely related nonfiction written soon after (in particular,Detained). Thescope of historicalreferencehas widened in both time and space, rangingfrom the distant, legendary past "of Ndemi and the creators rom Malindito Songhai" to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-"the past ofL'Ouverture, Turner, Chaka, Abdulla, Koitalel, Ole Masai, Kimathi,Mathenge" (Petals 214; my italics indicate fictional characters).Against abackdrop of broadly sketched grandeur achieved long before by "thecreators,"the fictional charactersake theirplace among not only the heroesof Kenyan resistance-from the early twentieth century (Koitalel arapSamoei)to Mau Mau(Dedan Kimathi, StanleyMathenge)-but alsoamongthe heroes of resistancea centuryearlierelsewhere n Africa(Chaka)and theNew World (Toussaint L'Ouverture,Nat Turner). To contrastwith theheroes, Ngugi lists a demonology, with three historical figures from theearliertwentieth centurypreceding their fictional analoguesfrom the latertwentieth century: "Kinyanjui, Mumia, Lenana, Chui, Jerrod, Nderi waRiera" (Petals 214).The purposeof such collocationsof historicaland fictional characterss tomakeKenyanreadersreflecton theirown placein the continuum of history.Sounding like a miniature Karega, the wise young hero of Ngugi's firstchildren'sbook adviseshis classmateshow to find theirwayout of the forest:"We must . . . find out wherewe are, in orderto decide where we will gonext. We cannot know where we are, without first finding out where wecome from" (NjambaNene and the FlyingBus 19; cf. Petals 127-28). TheKenyanview of the past, Ngugi said in a 1978 interview, "up to now hasbeen distorted by the cultural needs of imperialism"-needs that ledhistorians to show "[first,] that Kenyan people had not struggled withnature and with othermen to changetheirnaturalenvironmentand createapositive social environment . . . [and second, that they] had not resistedforeign domination ("Interview" 10).The first omission to which Ngugi calls attention concernsthe historyofcommon people, who werecompletely ignored by colonial and postcolonialhistoriansdespite the professedinterestof the latterin "the historyof theinarticulate"(Temu and Swai3-5). Ngugi's call for a historyof the anony-mous masses reacts to the commonplacesof his early education, when itwas in the interest of colonial historians "to stresswhat they claimed wasthe naturallogic of Europeans n colonizing and dominating the Kenyan"(Wanjohi 668). SirPhilip Mitchell(governorof Kenya, 1944-52) saw "the


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352 CarolM. SichermanNative ashampered by a past in which he has been notoriouslyslowto meetwhatDr. Toynbeehas describedasthe challengeof his environment,"evinc-ing "a singular incapacityeither to devise for himself or to adopt fromothers the means of improving his material or intellectual life" (LordHailey, in Mitchellxiii). "Nothing, except a little gradualchange," had oc-curred o the "ignorantand primitive population" in East Africaduringthethirtythousandyearsbetween StoneAge man and Dr. Livingstone Mitchell18-19)-a conception of Africa as "primitive, static, and asleep or in aHobbessianstateof nature" that has long since been exploded(Boahen 23).Given his premise,Mitchellnaturallycelebrates"what an enlightened colo-nialism can do for the dark places" that still preservethe static barbaricpast (268). In contrast, Kenyan historians today note the ability ofprecolonialpeoples to adapt to difficult material conditions.The second element neglected by colonial historians-resistance toforeign incursions-divides into two parts:the historyof mass movementsand the historyof heroes. A focus on certain heroes and on the creationofnation-statescan help supportthe newly independent Africanstates, led byheroes like Kenyatta, so that the postcolonial becomes, in Ngugi's terms,the neocolonial. Thus the new historians,wittingly or not, becomeservantsof the state: ". . . we are," William R. Ochieng' has ratherpompouslybutcorrectlydeclared, "the founding fathers of the Kenyanation" ("ColonialAfrican Chiefs" 46). Nation building necessarily nvolves myth building,and myths, as the Tanzanian historianNelson Kasfirhas said, may "de-colonise African peoples by restoring their dignity" (qtd. in Neale 48).It is the choice of myth that is crucial. Manyof the intellectual clashesincontemporaryKenya are between rival mythologies-very often betweenconflicting myths of Mau Mau but also between the historians'myth of apast splendid insofaras it rivaled white successes,and Ngugi's myth of thepeople's centuries-long "heroic resistance. . . their struggles to defendtheir land, their wealth, their lives" (see Neale 49, 106; Were and Wilson44; Ngugi Petals 67).

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Although Ngugi's conceptionof Kenyanhistoryand his chargesagainstthehistoriansareopen to some question, the call for actionwith which he con-cluded the interviewquoted earlierhas obviousrelevance o his ownpracticeas a novelist:Kenyan intellectualsmust be able to tell these stories,or histories,orhistoryof heroic resistance o foreign domination by Kenyan people. . looking at ourselvesas ... as a people whose historyshineswiththe grandeur,if you like, of heroicresistanceand achievementof the


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3 53 NGUGI AND KENYAN HISTORY

Kenyanpeople. ... I feel that Kenyan history, either pre-colonialorcolonial[,] has not yet been written. ("Interview" 11)That history,he saysin Detained, will show the "historyof Kenyan peoplecreatinga . . . fight-back,creativeculture" (64). Becauseof the deficienciesof professionalhistorians,Ngugi argues,at the presenttime this storycan bebetter told throughliterature.Petals of Blood insists at some length on revisingKenyanhistoriography,first through the futile efforts of Karegato find suitable historytexts for hispupils-a genuine difficulty, accordingto Neale (see ch. 2)-and then inKarega'sappealto the lawyer or help in his quest for "a vision of the futurerooted in a criticalawarenessof the past," an awarenessmore specificallyofeconomichistory(198). The lawyer endshim "booksand a list of other titleswrittenby professors f learningat the University,"the sameuniversitywhereNgugi taught. But the books fail to answerhis questions.In a calmlymagisterialreviewof "Three Decades of HistoricalStudies inEast Africa, 1949-1977," Professor Bethwell A. Ogot, doyen of Kenyanhistorians,remarks ronicallyon those who have been disappointedin theirsearch for "a usable past," people who "are seeking freedom to tacklepresent-dayproblems . . . without constantly ooking over their shoulderforprecedentsfrom the dead and irrelevantpast" (31). But the past is neitherdead nor irrelevant o the searcherwho seeksthe roots of the present in thepast. Ogot forgetsthat the past may become "usable" if suitablyconstructed.His own mainlybiographicalHistoricalDictionaryofKenya (1980), usefulforwhat it contains,is badlymarredby its omissions,lackinganymention of thenotoriousdetention campsand significantlyomitting some of the "heroes"and "traitors" whom Ngugi has increasinglyinvoked-Laibon Turugat,StanleyMathenge,FennerBrockway Kenyanizedas Fenna Brokowi n Grain56; 63), and many others-as well as some of the important episodes ofresistance,such as the GiriamaRising of 1914. In other "neocolonialist"texts, the pastis, fromNgugi's point of view, distorted:MauMaufightersaredepictedas "extremists";the colonialgovernment,as an agentof "constitu-tional advance" leading to "a multi-racial society" (Were and Wilson270-72; cf. Buijtenhuijs,Mau Mau 75). Precolonialhistory,according o theMitchell-like"professors f learning," depicts"wanderlustandpointlesswar-farebetween peoples" evincing "primitivity"or "undercivilization" Petals199). Ngugi mayalludehere to Ochieng',who seesAfricanhistoryup to 1900as the story of "migrating hordes" and says that Africa failed to become"civilized" ("Undercivilization"2-3, 5, 8, 16).In contrastto this approach,there is Karega'scapsulehistoryof Africa:

In the beginninghe [Mr.Blackman]had the land and the mind and thesoul together.On the secondday, they took the body awayto barter t


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354 CarolM. Sichermanfor silvercoins. On the thirdday, seeingthat he wasstill fighting back,they broughtpriestsand educatorsto bind his mind and soul so thatthese foreigners could more easily take his land and its produce.(Petals236)

The binding of mind and soul, Ngugi maintains,still existsand is the reasonKenya needs a new historiography.Karegaspeaksfor his creatorwhen hetells Munira:Our children must look at the things that deformed us yesterday,thataredeformingus today.Theymustalsolook at the thingswhichformedus yesterday, that will creativelyform us into a new breed of menand women who will . . . struggle against those things that dwarfus. (Petals 247)

Ngugi's understandingof his majortheme, the historyof resistance,hasbroadened since his undergraduatewritingwhen his knowledgewaslimitedto the Mau Mau rising and to a few majorfigures or episodes-Waiyaki'sresistanceand death in the early1890s, HarryThuku'scampaignagainstco-lonial restrictionsn 1921-22, the female circumcisioncontroversyof 1929-31. In these works, legend carriesequal weight with documentablehistory.Particularlyn The RiverBetween and Weep Not, Child, he emphasizesthe prophecyof the seerMugowa Kibiro,with its dual messageof the com-ing of the white man and the folly of resistance; hereis an implicationhere,as Gitahi-Gititi has observed, that aside from Mau Mau and a few otherepisodes, "the Gikuyupeople offeredno resistance o colonialpenetration"(36)-an implicationthat Ngugi began to correct n A Grainof Wheatandwholeheartedlyattacked n The TrialofDedan KimathiandPetalsof Blood.From 1976 on Ngugi has made plain his determination to participate nthe decolonizingof Kenyan history.Indeed, in his laterworkshe deliberate-ly has dealt with periodsand figuresneglected by professionalhistorians,aswhen he set his suppressedmusical MaituNjugira("Mother Sing to Me"),in the 1930s, a period "almost totally ignored by Kenyan historians"(Gachie 13). Maitu Njugira dramatizes"actual history" based on Ngugi'sresearch nto "the actual laws and ordinances"of the 1930s (Gachie 13)."These things of the past cement the present," said one of the actors qtd.in Gachie 19); they createlinks to the future and at the same time implica-tions too unpleasant for the government to countenance. "Writers aresurgeonsof the heart and souls of a community" (Decolonising ix), but of-ficial Kenya declines the operation, retainingthe old Kenyan history.But what does the phrase "Kenyan history" mean? KarariNjama de-scribes he pre-highschoolcurriculumat AllianceHigh Schoolin the 1940s,where Ngugi studied a decade later:


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355 NGUGIAND KENYANHISTORYIn History we had been taught all the good the white man hadbrought us-the stopping of tribalwars, guaranteeing security . . .good clothings, education and religion, easy waysof communicationand travel . . . and, finally, better jobs that would make it easy toraise the standardof living above the uneducated Africans. ... Inteaching Kenya History,the question of land was cunninglyomitted.(Barnett and Njama 96)

This is the backgroundfor the school strike in Petals: "We wanted to betaught Africanliterature,Africanhistory, for we wanted to know ourselvesbetter" (170). Why should a student seeking an "education that will fit[him] in [his] own environment" be given instead "a lot about EnglishPirates and English Kings, and practicallynothing of his local geographyand history '-an educationthat makeshim "a misfit in his own communi-ty?" (Kakembo 7).Historywas the field that offered the most scope to African intellectualinitiatives in the 1940s and 1950s, but these had to take place outside ofofficial confines because for an Africanto take "an interest in his people'spast was unhealthy, . . . a betrayalof the civilizationto which he attachedhimself when he was educated and baptized a Christian" (RosbergandNottingham 132). Well beforeIndependence, however,nationaliststirringsprovided unofficial alternativeeducation at Alliance High School, where asecretpolitical and educationalorganizationtaught "how the English peo-ple acquired their supremacy, how they came to our country, how theyalienated our lands, and how hypocriticalthey are in their Christianity"(Barnettand Njama 100).

Although the official historyof colonial times has gone, no comparablyassuredversion has replacedit,5 for three main reasons:first, the particularhistorical bias impartedin the waning daysof colonialismto the firstpost-Independence generation of African intellectuals, a bias incorporatedinlanguage; second, the absence of substantial written documentation formuch of the precolonialpast, which poses formidable problemsof recon-struction from oral, linguistic, and archaeologicalsources; and, third andmost important, the continued politicizing of intellectual discourse n theperiod following Independence.The colonial view of historydid not simply disappearat Independence,when Europeanscholars of African history began to be replaced by theirAfricanpupils. "The historyof EastAfrica," wroteSirReginaldCouplandin 1938, "is only the historyof its invaders"; it is thus the historyof "thecomings and goings of brownmen and white men on the coast," behindwhich stretches the Conradian "inpenetrable darkness" of Black Africa(14). Trevor-Roper'sow-classicormulationof this attitude(9), utteredonlytwo months beforeKenya'sIndependence, is, as Feuserhas shown(53-54),


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356 CarolM. Sichermantypical enough of Europeanattitudes then and for a more than a hundredpreviousyears.

Deeply imbued with European values, the nationalist historians whoemerged in the 1960s often took their mentors' historyand produced "theolder versionturned upside down, with manyof its faults intact" (Neale 4;cf. Temu and Swai 154). They took it for grantedthat progresswas evolu-tionaryand that "unity is the basis of progress"(Neale 3-21, 155), the latterassumption familiar in Kenyatta's theme-slogan, "We all fought forUhuru" (cf. the Politicianin Trial47 and Kimeria n Petals 153). The carry-over of European assumptionswas, however, masked by an appearanceofAfrican nationalism. In the 1960s-the "golden age of consensus" (Temuand Swai63)-historians dwelt on three themes: "the bliss that was Africanlife before the coming of the Europeans"; "the injusticeof colonialism";and "how gloriously the African fought his way to Uhuru" (AtienoOdhiambo, "'Mind Limps"'7-8).Ngugi himself, with his automaticadjective"glorious," seemsto fall intothis self-congratulatory atternof thinking when he has his narrator eflect:

[Ilmorog] had had its days of glory: thriving villages with a hugepopulation of sturdypeasants who had tamed nature's forest ....And at harvesttime. ... the aged would sip honey beer and tell thechildren,with voices taut with pridefulauthorityand nostalgia,aboutthe founding patriarch. (Petals 120)Although the phrasesroll out automatically n this passage,laterKaregare-jects such "worship" of the past in a passagethat sounds like Ngugi's ownrecantation:"Maybe I used to [worship]it: but I don't want to continueworshippingin the temples of a pastwithout tarmacroads,without electriccookers,a worlddominated by slavery o nature"; the people who "tamednature'sforest," he feels, had become nature's slaves(Petals 323; cf. Trial72). Furthermore, Ngugi's sharp distinction between traitors and col-laborators aveshim from the tendency of historiansas well as politicianstopaint all colonial peoples as somehow resisters see Neale 107-08)."Neocolonial" historians-Ngugi names "[Bethwell A.] Ogot, [God-frey] Muriuki, [Gideon] Were and [William R.] Ochieng"-are merely"following on similartheoriesyarnedout by defendersof imperialism"who"insist that we only arrivedhere yesterday"(Petals67). "Arrival"for suchhistorians,Ngugi implies, means arrivalof the "modern" (i.e., Western-style) nation-even though, as John Lonsdale has remarked, "the mostdistinctivelyAfricancontribution to human historycould be said to havebeen preciselythe civilized art of living fairly peaceably together not instates" ("States and Social Processes" 139). There are, consequently,"many questionsabout our historywhichremainunanswered,"suchas the


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357 NGUGIAND KENYANHISTORYhistory of international trade before the Portuguese "ushered in an era? . . that climaxed in the reign of imperialismover Kenya" and the resul-tant "heroic resistance"(Petals 67).An evaluation of Ngugi's chargesagainstKenyanhistoriansshould startwith the correction mplied in his own more recentwork.Detained, indeed,stands in mild reproofto the authorof Petalsof Blood, for in the later bookNgugi demonstratesresearch in books like Ghai and MacAuslan'sPublicLawand PoliticalChangein Kenya (seeDetained 44) and, moresignificantly,in works by the very historianshe reviles in Petals, including Ogot andOchieng'.6 A work by another of the supposed "neocolonial" historians,Gideon Were's WesternKenyaHistoricalDocuments, stands as an exampleof importantresearch n oralhistory;Were's use of the word "documents"to describe the contents of his book implicitly challenges the notion thathistorians depend on written documents (see also Vansina 173-202;Mazrui, CulturalEngineering4-7; Temu and Swai 113). Finally, the treat-ment by GodfreyMuriuki of the earlycolonial paramountchief Kinyanjui,in a widelyrespectedstudy focusing on precolonialGikuyu history,standsasa good exampleof preciselythe kind of historythat Ngugi callsfor. Muriukimakesplain that Kinyanjui-one of the "traitors" who were "collaboratorswith the enemy" (Detained 55) to whom Ngugi repeatedly refers(Petals214, Trial 32, Detained 82)-was typical of those chiefs created by theBritish out of "nonentities in the traditional society": men who, ingratitude for their masters' donation of power, were willing to supportBritish interest "at all costs in order to bolster up their position and in-fluence outside the traditional structure"(Muriuki, History 93). Yet whileMuriuki's own accomplishment as a historian is impressive, he himselfacknowledgesthat historicalstudies in Kenyahave accomplishedlittle and,in fact, are in crisis, with student enrollment plummeting and researchfunds nonexistent ("Historiography"205, 213).Besides the ideological or political-prudentialreason for the absence ofconsensus on Kenyan history, there is another and very practical cause:eventsand people lackinga connection with Europeanswere also often lack-ing writtendocumentation, and the historian must unravel oralhistoryandanalyzephysicaland linguistic evidence in orderto assemblea coherent ac-count of historicaldevelopments. Ngugi's narratorexplains: "Justnow wecan only depend on legends passed from generation to generation by thepoets and players . . . supplemented by the most recentarchaeologicalandlinguisticresearchesand also bywhat we canglean frombetween the lines ofthe recordsof the colonialadventurers" Petals67-68). It remainsto be seenwhetherthis kind of history,necessarilyocal and tribal, can be incorporatedin a truly "national" history,one that would achieveNgugi's goal of unify-ing the country.These problems of documentation, although imposing, pale before the


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358 CarolM. Sichermanthird cause of historiographicaldifficulty: contemporarypolitics, which ofcourse involves the dominant neocolonial ideology. What one of Ngugi'sprincipal intellectual antagonists, William R. Ochieng', has said of De-tained-"to Ngugi history s simply a propaganda nstrumentin the serviceof a chosen ideology" ("Autobiography" 97)-could be said generallyofhistoricalwriting,althoughin bothgenresthe bestwritingrejectspropagandafor legitimate and knowledgeableinterpretation.A month before KenyanIndependence, Ali Mazrui observed (echoing Ernest Renan) "that oneessentialfactorin the making of a nation is 'to get one's history wrong,' "to be "selective about what did happen" so as to build nationalunity (OnHeroes21). Characteristicf the 1960sand early1970s, the vigoroustone ofthe statement, as well as its content, is a direct contradictionof the colo-nialist historians' claim that knowledge is neutral, a claim that deflectedany challenge on ideological grounds.There areno "pure facts"; everything"involve[s]interpretation"(Petals246). But writersmust be conscious that they are interpreting.Writersonhistory must recognize that the basic terms of historical writing-"col-laboration," "resistance," "nationalism"-still need definition, andNgugi gives them a nudge in this direction. "The government says weshould bury the past," the betrayerMugo says in A Grainof Wheat, butGikonyocries:"I can't forget. ... I will neverforget" (59; 67). It is there-fore essential to "choose your side" (Petals 200). This injunction marksadistinct change in Ngugi's fiction; the experience of detention and hismore extensive reading in Kenyanhistoryhave helped him recognizethat"an intellectual is not a neutral figure in society" (Omari 1).

Interviewing Ngugi shortly after the publication of Detained, EmmanOmari suggested provocativelythat in his "extremity the objectivity isburied": "You have melodiouslyclapped handsfor active resisters ike theKimathis;and . .. you havesnapped at the Mumias"(Mumia,an earlyco-lonial chief patronized by the British, was their enthusiastically). Ngugiacknowledged Omari's implications: "When writing history for ourchildren, which things do we want them to admire? Should they emulatetraitorsor heroes?" (1). And Ngugi knowswho is who, with Waiyakifore-most in the pantheon of heroes and Kinyanjui, Waiyaki'sbetrayer,promi-nent among the traitors. This either/or mentality unfortunately charac-terizes much of the intellectual and political discourse in Kenya today,despite appeals for finer discriminations.The issue, as Ngugi sees it, is whetherKenya'srulerswish to lead a trulyindependent country, or whether they are-as he charges-merely lackeysfor multinational businesses, the "thieves and robbers" of Devil on theCross.Although historianshave a particularresponsibility o attempt clear-headed analysis,most remainpartisan: ike theirown colonial teachers,they"delighted in abusing and denigratingthe efforts of the people and their


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359 NGUGI AND KENYAN HISTORY

struggles in the past" (Petals 199). Despite his bias, Ngugi's challengemakes Petals of Blood "compulsory reading" for African historians(Neale144), while at the same time his own efforts have met with considerablecriticism,partlyfor scholarlyreasonsand partlyfor politicalones. Establish-ment criticsaccusehim of negativismin his earlierworksand lackof artistryin his more recent, "committed" writing:as soon ashe "seemed to have anaxe to grind"-that is, afterA Grainof Wheat-"he . . . ceased to be acreative writer" and wrote mere "propaganda"(" 'Exiled' Dissidents" 4,7).

3Displaying their profession'scommon inability to accept literary nterpreta-tions of their field-rejecting that "blending of fact and fiction [that] . . .is preciselywhat makesit important" (Fleming 20)-historians object bothto Ngugi's carelessnesswith details and to his promoting myth as history.Ngugi is consciousof this element in his writing:"This HarryThuku [whosefollowers, demonstrating against his arrest,were massacredby police] hasalreadymoved into patrioticheroiclegends and I havetreatedhim assuchinthe early chaptersof A Grain of Wheat" (Detained 82). But Ngugi alsoknowsthe historicalThuku, who fought against"forced labour,female andchild slavery, high taxationwithout even a little representation, ow wages,and against the oppressivekipande [pass]that the workerswere obliged tocarrywith chains around their necks" (Detained 81)-all, except for themention of "slavery,"elementsof Thuku'scampaignfrequentlymentionedby historians.Literaryreatmentsof history nclude legend aswell as "facts"becausewritersseek to discover"not only what has happened"-the his-torians' task-"but the waysin which things arefelt to happen in history"(Neale 187). And the waysin which things are elt to happen may actuallyaffect the way things do happen. Ngugi's Kenyan readers know full wellhow indistinguishable the exploits of Dedan Kimathi the historicalfigure(1920-57) are from those of Dedan Kimathi the legendaryfigure, and howthe legend in turn inspiredmilitaryaction-facts-by Kimathi's followers.Another majortwentieth-centuryhistoricalfigure who became mytholo-gized isJomo Kenyatta,who is referred o a number of times in A GrainofWheat and Weep Not, Child-often by his popularname, "The BurningSpear," a characteristicmythologizing appellation. Ngugi's treatment ofKenyattawas the subject of another paper by Ochieng' at the 1984 con-ference, a reprooffor the mythologizingportrayaln the earlynovelsand anattack on Ngugi's later analysisof Kenyattaas a failed hero, one who be-trayedhis country. Again controversyensued, with Ochieng' defended byhis colleague HenryMwanzithrough the same technique that Ochieng'hadused in attackingNgugi's depiction of the Mau Mauas a nationalliberation


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360 CarolM. Sichermanmovement-bald assertion. It is difficult to write history about legends.Kenyattamay not have been the "fire-spitting nationalist that Ngugi im-agined him to be" (Ochieng', "Ghost" 10), but Ngugi's imaginationwasnot peculiar o himself, as Ochieng' acknowledges;he grew up with "myths"and "tribalgossip" about Kenyattathat then becamepartof historywhenpeople acted upon their beliefs (Ochieng', "Ghost" 3, 10).A fascinating example of such mythologizing occursin the history-orstory-of Waiyaki, a Gikuyu leaderof resistanceagainst the Britishin theearly 1890s. Whether Waiyaki was consistently such a leader is open todoubt, as are the circumstancesof his death. But in A Grain of Wheat,doubts matter far less that what Ochieng' disparaginglycalls "rumor" or"gossip"-the legend of "Waiyaki and other warrior-leaderswho] tookarms" against the "long line of other red strangerswho carried,not theBible, but the sword"(Grain 12; 12). Defeated by the superiortechnologyof "the whiteman with bamboo poles that vomited fire and smoke,"Waiyakiwas

arrrestedand taken to the coast, bound hands and feet. Later,so it issaid, Waiyakiwas buried alive at Kibwezi with his head facing to thecentreof the earth. . . . Then nobody noticed it; but looking back wecansee that Waiyaki'sblood contained within it a seed, a grain,whichgave birth to a political party. (Grain12-13; 12; emphasisadded)

The weight Ngugi gives to what "is said," to "rumor" and "gossip" asagents in forming the imaginativelife of his people, makes it clearthat heknows that actual historical force of what "is said"-its role in politics.Mythsmade things happen during the Emergency.The "facts" regardingWaiyakiaredifficult to come by. He probablywasnot buried alive head downward.The most plausible hypothesisto accountfor the legend is that of T. C. Colchester, a colonial official, in an un-published note. Colchesterobserves hat until the 1930sthe Gikuyudid notordinarilyburytheirdead;Waiyaki'sburial would have seemed so abnormalas to suggest that he had been "killed by burial," and, as Colchesteradds,the coincidentaldeath and burialat Kibwezi some yearslater of Waiyaki'santagonist, William J. Purkiss,might have fed the legend (2). As far asWaiyaki'scharactergoes, Muriuki s no doubt historicallycorrect:"He wasneither the 'scheming rogue'-breathing treachery, ire and brimstone-ofthe company officials, nor was he the martyr" imagined by nationalists(149). But what is finally most important,whereNgugi is concerned, is notthe evaluationof historiansbut Waiyaki'srolein Gikuyufolklore-Waiyakias martyr,"tortured . .. fighting for his country," an avatarof "the sec-ond discipleof God . . . Jomo Kenyatta" (MauMausong qtd. in McIntosh99 n. 129).


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361 NGUGIAND KENYANHISTORYWaiyaki-or his legend-caused future events: "When he died, he left acursethat we should never sell our land or let it be takenfrom us" (Gikoyo

35). The impossibility of confirming the deathbed curse is less importantthan the belief that people had in its truth, a belief that influenced eventssixty yearsafterWaiyaki'sdeath. WaruhiuItote (a leading Mau Maugeneralknown as "General China") describes a Mau Mau reprisalmodeled onWaiyaki's legendarymartyrdom,a reprisal hat particularlynflamed Euro-pean opinion. Having been told by a witch doctor that to win the wartheMau Mau "must burya Europeanalive with a blackgoat," a MauMaudidpreciselythat in 1954: "They buried him [Arundell Gray Leakey]with hisface downwards, as we hear Waiyaki was buried by the Europeans atKibwezi" (Itote, Mau Mauin Action 26-27; emphasisadded). The phrase,as we hear, like Ngugi's so it is said, testifies both to the strong Gikuyuawarenessof their own historyin the Mau Mauperiod and to the powerofmyth to affect events.The nearer to the present day the historiansget, the more obviouslyem-broiled in controversy heir task becomes. The most immediate questionsabout the relationshipof past to present have been provokedby the MauMau rising; among the most urgent is the question whether Mau Mau wasmerelya manifestation of local (Gikuyu)nationalismor, as Ngugi argues,acentraland catalyticevent in the struggleforKenyan ndependence.WhereasEuropeansspoke of Mau Mau as a barbaricand atavisticreversionand manyeducated Africans recognized intelligent and ruthless adaptation, thefighters themselves, agreeing with neither view, commonly saw a mainlylaudable and certainlynecessaryre-creationof the past-a mistake, in theopinion of KarariNjama, himself one of the few educated Mau Mauleaders(Barnettand Njama 413, 336-37). To counter that view, partof the job offirst-generationhistorians was to develop comprehensionof the past as notstatic (the view of illiterate Africans as well as of Europeans)but dynamic.In their common enterprise of national interpretation historians andwritersshould supportone another, carryingout what the AmericanscholarSt. Clair Draketold Ochieng' wasthe "sacredduty .. . to redeem our racethrough the written word" (Ochieng', "The Scholar"). Such cooperationdoes exist; one testimony, indeed, to Ngugi's skill as a literary-historicalr-tist has been citationof his novelsby socialscientiststo illustrate theirpoints(see, fortwo of manyexamples,Wanjohi668 and Furedi355). But too oftenthe two professionsmanifest a kind of sibling rivalryevident duringa 1984conference of the Kenya HistoricalAssociation devoted to "The Histori-ographyof Kenya: A Critique," which included analysesof literarytreat-ments of history. The literarycriticswho attended the sessions were quickto point out their colleagues'deficiencies as literaryanalysts.The historians,said the critic ChrisWanjala, "showed lackof basicunderstandingabout theway literatureworked" (31). In a riposte to Wanjala, the historianHenry


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362 CarolM. SichermanMwanzi dismissed "Ngugi's fans" for having "an emotional attachment tothe man" that blinded them to "his falsification of our history." In fact,some historians' political antipathy to Ngugi preventsrational discourse.Ochieng' roundlyadmitsthat he cannot bearto readNgugi (his "styleboresme to death"), but his aversion did not stop him from writinga review ofDetained that concludes: "Ngugi is operatingbeyond the limits of his roleas a writer. He is terrorising us ("Dignitaries Not Spared" 47-48).Ochieng's difficulty in reading Ngugi stemspartlyfrom the disablingeffectof his animus and partlyfrom too narrow a conception of "history," ex-cluding the contribution of legend from its purviews.

The warsof the intellectualsand the post-Uhurubattle for recognitionofthe ex-freedomfighterswere linked in February1986 during the first com-memorativemeeting of ex-MauMaufighters. One purpose of the meetingwas "to find waysto writethe historyof the MauMaumovement" as a na-tional phenomenon, refuting non-Gikuyuhistorians'allegations "that theMauMau wasa tribalmovement ora civilwar"(Mutahi 13). To the veteranstheirhistoryseemed to have vanished.Ngugi's career-longemphasison MauMau has to be seen as a form of resistance o this betrayalby oblivion, as amonument in words to the heroesof the forests.Remembering for Ngugi requires the painful acknowledgmentof im-perfection. The heroic Mau Mau model, as readersof A Grain of Wheatknow, fits few actualfreedomfighters;for everyKimathi-styleKihika,theremay be dozens or hundreds of Mugos. If the writingof history depends onthe truth-tellingof the survivors,how dependent arewe on the Mugoswhoconceal the truth?There are records:even while in the forest, the freedomfighters kept "records[that] would form a book of historywhich would beread by our future generations," a leitmotif in KarariNjama's memoirs(Barnettand Njama 326, cf. 334). These recordsshowed an effort to placecontemporaryhistoryin a wider context, although the ill-educated writersoften knew little of that context. The writerof "A Book of ForestHistory"-a Mau Mau document capturedby Britishforces-reported a meeting inthe foreston 5 December 1953 duringwhich he "learnt a lot of new thingsand ideas," chiefly concerning alleged English parallels to Mau Mau ac-tivities: from the Romanperiod through the seventeenth century, it seems,the British took oaths and entered the forest, staying "about 120 years"under the Romans("Book" 2-3).7 Britishresistance o Romanimperialism,byofferinga precedentto Kenyanresistance,validated the laterresistance oBritishimperialism.But Kenyanhistorianshave either avoidedthe MauMau recordsaspoliti-cal hot potatoesor have been so partisanand careless-as in Mainawa Kin-yatti's Kenya's Freedom Struggle, which omits essential documentation-that they have not advanced our understanding. When previouslysecretofficial documentsrelatingto MauMau becameavailable n 1984 underthe


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363 NGUGIAND KENYANHISTORYthirty-yearrule, the Standard, a Nairobi daily, published reports of the"top-secret Mau Maupapers" that focused on Britishpolicy. Despite theirfairly innocuous content-the first article, with front-page banner head-lines, discussedBritishthinking behind theJune 1953 banningof the KenyaAfrican Union-the dispatchesarousedsuch official ire that the Standardceased its reports(see 14 Feb., 1, 6; and 20 Feb., 20). Populardistrustofprofessionalhistorians is consequently endemic. One speakerat the MauMau commemorativemeeting urged "that the books and papersauthoredby ProfessorOchieng be banned from Kenyanschools, a proposalthat wasthunderouslysupported" (Mutahi 14) although hardly likely to take effect,especiallysince Ochieng' had just published the first textbook of Kenyanhistoryand wasshortlyto assume the chair n historyat MoiUniversity.Fur-thermore, PresidentMoi contributed to the 1986 controversyby declaringthat the historyof the Mau Mau should not be written.In the same year, a time of sharplyescalatedrepressionof intellectuals,Moi made clear his choice of patriotichistorianby naming ProfessorOgot,who sees Mau Mau as a narrowly ribalratherthan as a nationalstruggle, tothe position of chairman of the Posts and TelecommunicationsCorpora-tion.8 There could be no better confirmationof Temu and Swai's assertionsthat the so-called "new history . . . hasresultedin the productionof historyto serve a new classof exploiters"(53, 81; cf. Wrigley123). "Smallwonder,then," add Temu and Swai, "that side by side with the development ofpostcolonialAfricanisthistoriographyhas developed a crescendoof intellec-tual McCarthyism" 53)-a remarkparticularlyapt to Kenya in the periodfollowing Ngugi's necessaryself-exile, imposed in 1982. One of the sad ifunderstandableresults of the repressivepolitical climate in Kenyahas beenthe drying up of creativewriting, a theme of R. N. Ndegwa's reviews(or"laments," as she callsthem) of the year'swork,published in theJournalofCommonwealth Literature see 20.2 [1985]: 2 and subsequent years).These are not merely professionalbut deeply personalmatters. Ngugi'spolitical ideas result from an effort to foster an organicconnection betweenhis past as the child of peasantssteeped in traditionand his presentasan in-ternationalauthor, the kind of connection that Karegahas maintained andthat Munira has lost. A spectator of both public and his own privatehistory,Munirasuffers from an inability to feel an organicand constructivelink to the past: "The repetitionof past patternshad always rightenedhim.It was the tyrannyof the past that he had alwaystried to escape" (Petals249).Involvement in personal history seems to be a prerequisitefor involve-ment in public history.Muniraasks, "Could I resurrecthe pastand connectmyself to it, graft myself on the stem of history even if it was only myfamily's historyoutside of which I had grown?And would the stem reallygrow, sprouting brancheswith me as part of the great resurgenceof life?"


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364 CarolM. Sicherman(244). But Munirahardly knows his siblings, feels both rejectionand ad-miration of his father, is remote from his mother. Nonetheless, despite hisclaim to be disconnectedfrom his past, he is overwhelmedby his discoverythat Karegawasthe loverof his sister(the only siblingwith whom he felt anyconnection) and that she killed herself soon afterbeing told by her father tochoose between Karegaand her family. He also is distressedby the link be-tween Karega'sfamily and his own: Karega'smother was an ahoi on hisfather's land, and Karega'sbrotherNdung'iri was probablya member ofthe Mau Mau gang that cut off his father's ear. Only by working throughthese connections, by convertingdistress nto understanding,could Munirabecome reintegrated;nstead,he retreatsnto a crazed,ahistorical eligiosity.And there is a societalparallelto Munira'sdislocation, in the transforma-tion of the religiouscenterof Ilmorog,"whereMwathihad once lived guard-ing the secretsof iron worksand native medicine" (Petals 281), into an ar-chaeological museum, "a site for the curious about the past, long longbefore EastAfricatradedwith Chinaand the Indies" (266). "The mythicalMwathi" (302) in one sense does not exist and in another existsperenially,his traditionalwisdom voiced, we deduce, by his spokesperson,Muturi;hethus standsfor the continuity of past with present, which is broken by theearth-movingmachinesand the archaeologists'scientific labeling. It is thevoice of Mwathithat Ngugi's later workstrivesto transmit.

4The very density and casualness of Ngugi's allusions to Kenyan historicaleventsand figuresin his workpublishedafter 1975-as well as the prolifera-tion of untranslatedGikuyu wordsand phrases-accords with the decisionhe made, upon completing Petals of Blood in October 1975, to write hiscreativework in Gikuyu. Further,he asserts hat "the true beginning of myeducation" took place in "the six months betweenJune and November of1977" when, developing his first Gikuyu workin concert with Kamiriithupeasants, he "learnt [his] language anew" and "rediscoveredthe creativenatureand powerof collectivework"(Detained 76). With DecolonisingtheMind in 1986, he said farewell to all writingin English(except, his practicehas shown, journalism). Some months later, in September 1986, Heine-mann Kenya published his second Gikuyu novel, Matigarima Njiruungi,but readersof Gikuyu had little chanceto buy it: in February1987, in yetanother act of intellectual supression,the Kenyan governmentconfiscatedall copies in bookshops.Implicitly, the main audience forNgugi's work now in both his languagesis Kenyan-not just readersof Gikuyubut those Kenyanswho must relyonEnglish (there have, however, been some translations into Kiswahili, en-couragedbyNgugi). With the switchto GikuyuorKiswahili,"I candirectly


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365 NGUGIAND KENYANHISTORYhave dialogue with peasantsand workers,"for he is now "not only writingabout peasantsand workersbut ... for peasantsand workers" Omari 15).Thischangein audienceclearlyhas had an effect on the intermixedgenresofDevil on the Cross.Readersunacquaintedwith Gikuyuwill increasinglyde-pend not only upon translation but-in the case of nonKenyansat least-upon a more extensive cultural nterpretation.The book is not closed on theinterrelationships etween literatureand history;Ngugi has, however,turneda new leaf.9NOTES

1. The additionsand correctionsare included in MS 337272 in the libraryof the Schoolof Oriental and AfricanStudies, Universityof London.This isactuallya number of separate tems; I referhere to the copy of the firstver-sion of Grain,markedby Ngugi forrevision,and the typed list of correctionsto be incorporatedin the revised 1986 edition. The manuscript is fullydescribed n my Ngugi wa Thiong'o:A Bibliographyof Primary nd Second-ary Sources: 1957-1987 (Oxford: Hans Zell, 1989). Page referencesgivenhere to Grain are first to the first edition, second to the revision.2. Oddly, Ngugi does not correctthe erroneous date of 1923, which heuses in Grain(13, 73, and 208) and SecretLives(43).3. He is, however, currently he chairmanof Umoja, an umbrellaorgani-zation of dissident groups abroadthat supportsMwakenya.4. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, interview, New York, 20 Oct. 1986.5. Ochieng' 's A Historyof Kenya is a text intended for Kenyan 0-levelstudents; the articleA in the title is significant, acknowledgingthe im-possibility of writing The History.6. Forexample, Ogot and Ochieng' published their articleon Mumboismin 1972, nine yearsbefore Ngugi completed Detained, in which he men-tions "the Mumboist leadersMuraawaNgiti, Oteyno, Ongereand othersinthe 1920s" (49); all of these relativelyobscurefigures are treated by Ogotand Ochieng' (153, 157, 160-61, 172), whose articlemay be the source ofNgugi's allusion.7. I am grateful to W. H. Thompson, who "captured" this documentand deposited it at RhodesHouse, Oxford(Mss.Afr. s.1534), forpermissionto quote it.8. He has since been named chairmanof Kenya Railways.For his view ofMau Mau, see "Politics."9. This research was supported (in part) by two grants from the PSC-CUNY Research Award Program of the City University of New York,number 6-66038 and number 667040. In revising the essay, I havebenefited from conversationswith academicsand others in Kenya whom Icannot thankby name becauseof the political sensitivityof the topic, as well


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366 CarolM. Sichermanas from readers'reports.Two majorhistoriographical tudies that have ap-pearedsincecompletion of this essayin mid-1987 areBogumilJewsiewicki'simmense paper "African Historical Studies as Academic Knowledge:Radical Scholarshipand Usable Past, 1956-1986" commissioned by theACLS/SSRCJoint Committee on African Studies for presentationat theAfrican Studies Associationmeeting 20-22 November 1987, and the June1987 issue of the AfricanStudiesReview(30.2, published in 1988), devotedto "AfricanHistoryResearchTrends and Perspectiveson the Future." Anadditional workawaitingnon-Gikuyu readers s Wangui wa Goro'sEnglishtranslation of Matigarima Njiruungi (Heinemann, 1989), which promisesto carryon Ngugi's concernwith history;speakingas a choricvoice, the titlecharacter,Matigari, declaims: ". .. I was there at the time of the Por-tuguese, and the time of the Arabs,and the time of the British," provokingthe black neocolonialist to whom he speaks to interrupt: "Look, I don'twant historylessons" ("Matigari" 93).WORKSCITEDAtieno Odhiambo, E. S. "'Mind Limps after Reality': A DiagnosticEssayon the Treatment of HistoricalThemes in Kenyan Writings sinceIndependence." Paperdeliveredat the annual conference of the Histori-cal Associationof Kenya, 1976. Typescript. Pp. 1-33.."Seven Theseson Nationalism." Lecturedelivered16 Oct. 1981atNairobi branch of the Historical Society of Kenya. Typescript, North-westernUniversityLibrary.Barnett, Donald L., and KarariNjama. Mau Mau from Within: Auto-

biographyand Analysis of Kenya's PeasantRevolt. New York: MonthlyReviewPress, 1966.Boahen, A. Adu. African Perspectiveson Colonialism. Baltimore:Johns

Hopkins UP, 1987."A Book of Forest History or War in the Forest and Attacks Here andThere." Englishversionof paper capturedfrom MauMauduringbattle.Mss. Afr. s.1534. RhodesHouse, OxfordU. 8 pp.Buijtenhuijs,Robert. Mau Mau TwentyYearsAfter: TheMythand the Sur-vivors.Forewordby Ali. A. Mazuri.The Hague: Mouton, 1973.Colchester,T. C. "A Note on the Association between the Death of ChiefWaiyakiin 1893 [sic]and the LeakeySacrificeduringthe Mau Mau Emer-gency." Typescript dated 16 Mar. 1966. MSS. Afr. s.742(3). RhodesHouse, OxfordU.

Coupland, Reginald.EastAfricaand Its Invadersrom EarliestTimesto theDeath of SeyyidSaid in 1856. Oxford:Clarendon, 1938.Darling, Peter. "My Protest Was against the Hypocrisyin the College."SundayNation, 16 Mar. 1969: 15. [Interviewwith Ngugi.]


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