Omtatah: Why I quit seminary and rejected offer to join university

If one did not know any better, one might attribute playwright Okiya Okoiti Omtatah’s ebullient activism to rebelling against an unconscious perceived childhood hurt — that of being dressed as a girl.

“I was the first son to arrive after four girls, and the sibling that followed me was also a girl. My grandmother believed that people would have an evil eye out for me and so, to protect me, she ensured that I was dressed as a girl in my early childhood.”

Perhaps the most memorable figure of him is that of January 2008. Images of the voluble and agitated activist chained to the outside of the police headquarters on Harambee Avenue were flashed all over the world as he protested police killings during the post-election crisis.

These scenes of action, fisticuffs, chains and vociferous yells are certainly a far cry from the frocks and petticoats he had been trussed in in earlier life.

While known widely for the gusto with which he takes on unwieldy powers, be it the government, corporations or other institutions of authority, many are not aware that Omtatah is also a writer of depth, with solid credentials to his name.

LITERATURE WORTHY OF PRIZES

He has published four plays — Voice of the People, Lwanda Magere, Chains of Junkdom, and March to Kampala. His works have received critical attention, too; Lwanda Magere is a set book in the Ugandan and Tanzanian school syllabi, while Voice of the People beat many other contenders to be awarded the Wahome Mutahi prize for literature in 2008.

Voice of the People is a critical analysis of power and the dynamics of politics and warfare. In the play, Okoiti tackles the illusion of poverty alleviation and the development agenda, portraying poverty as a vibrant industry on its own in Third World countries.

Some of Omtatah’s texts are also in use in the Rwandan and South African markets, others in circulation internationally and studied in black literature courses in America.

Other plays he has written are Producing General Iddi Amin Dada and An Exchange for Honor. Omtatah has also written a yet to be published novella and is currently working on his first novel, which chronicles the March 2013 election in fiction form.

Lwanda Magere reads like the Psalms of the Bible. One wonders, is King Solomon is the play-wright’s hero? “No, it is protest literature.

It came as a response to a Dutch teacher who, before teaching us metaphysics, said that it would be hard for us to understand because we were Africans and more used to material concepts.

When he started talking about questions of free will and predestination though, it reminded me of the stories my grandmother told me of Lwanda Magere and I wrote the play as a response of how African cosmology explored metaphysical issues.”

ORIGINS OF A FIREBRAND

Growing up in Kwanga’amor in Busia, Omtatah went to St Peters Seminary Mukumu, and then Tindinyo college and form 5 and 6 in Kapsabet.

It was after this that he rejected an offer from the University of Nairobi to study for a Bachelor of Commerce degree, opting to join priestly training at St Augustine Major Seminary in Bungoma to study philosophy.

An injury received while playing soccer meant that he had to drop out to pursue treatment. While recovering, he joined the Kenya Polytechnic to study engineering, a course which he completed but had no interest in.

Omtatah is now completing a masters in African Development at Tangaza College.

Does he write to change society in line with his activism? “I write to entertain myself and to leave evidence that there’s a story to be told. Our problem is that we don’t have a story.

If you look at strong societies, you find a long story. We do not have a story that makes us aim for the stars to make us better than the other generations.”

His plays have been staged numerously in Kenya and Tanzania and he often tries to be involved in the staging.

He, however, avers that he has lost touch with theatre over time, noting that whereas the Kenyan audience appears more interested in bedroom farce, his writing is more aligned toward tragedy.

ALWAYS BEEN OUTSPOKEN

Of his activism, Omtatah avers that the bug did not strike at any particular time, he has always been outspoken.

He attributes his outspokenness to some of the schools he attended where respect was encouraged rather than fear of authority.

“At Tindinyo, we had ‘the stone of wisdom’, a big slab in the school where people could sit round and take on the teachers in discussion.

When on it, you enjoyed immunity. We learnt to take on authority then and this gave me a distinction between fear and respect. Our teachers wanted us to respect them, not fear them.”

Omtatah, who is also the head of the Writers in Prison committee of PEN international’s Kenya Chapter, has been victimised countlessly for his activism.

Messages and telephone calls threatening his life are not a rare occurrence. Indeed, he narrowly missed death a year ago when he was accosted and beaten up on the streets of Nairobi by two men armed with iron rods.

With blithe ease, he reveals that he has also been locked up in all police stations in Nairobi and spent nights in a few police stations in Mombasa.

He is also no stranger to the courts. “At one time, I had up to 28 cases in the magistrate’s court. But I won 25 of those and have three left now.”

WHY DO IT?

Despite the danger, why does he still do it? “What would I be doing anyway? I could also die in a matatu anyway.”

As he was being attacked last November, his assailants taunted him for not taking money to drop the case on the procurement of BVR kits, a situation he reveals is quite common.

“I’ve been offered a lot of money in the past — 10, 20, 30 million shillings, to call press conferences and take back my words. But we don’t do this for money.

Besides, I don’t need the money, I spend very little on myself; it takes very little to satisfy me.”

The organisation, Kenyans for Justice and Development, with which he carries out some of his projects, was registered in 2010 but has been in existence from 2007.

It draws its membership from across the country, some of the executive committee members being Ndhiwa MP Agostinho Neto and Senator Emma Mbura from Mombasa.

Omtatah’s first involvement in activism was in 1991 at Uhuru Park among mothers and wives of detained activists. It was there that he encountered Wangari Maathai who inspired the play Voice of the People.

“Watching Wangari Maathai opened up my eyes to the power of an individual and the idea that you don’t need an army to change things.”

He later found himself the individual alone against power when in 1994 he was arrested for organising a protest against the grabbing of the National Theatre for conversion into a car park.

PAYING FOR ACTIVISM

Omtatah generally funds the cases he takes on himself or seeks funding from the communities he sometimes represents. Costs can run anywhere from Sh50,000 to Sh600,000 per case.

To minimise costs, he regularly files cases, and does the paper work and legal research himself.

His success in winning some of the court cases in public interest matters show the power an individual can wield in the social sphere.

Some of his previous wins include the forcing of the lifting of the court ban on the Butere Girls school play, the resumption of the 999 police emergency number, the return of over 10,000 acres of grabbed KARI land in Naivasha, and the cancellation of the dubious 20 billion shilling tender for police surveillance equipment.

Despite this, his political ventures have not been as successful, coming number six out of 10 in the Nairobi senate race in the March election. He has nevertheless not given up his efforts, and recently started a political party, the Justice and Development Party.

Omtatah brings to mind idealistic writers who merge writing and protest. Indeed, if Ngugi wa Thiong’o had a local heir in his conceptualisation of the writer as an activist, it could be said to be Omtatah.

His vigorous intellectual analysis and strident spirit of protest is reminiscent of Germany’s playwright Bertolt Brecht and South African poet Dennis Brutus.

Omtatah’s advice to aspiring writers is to imitate those who write well. “The best way to learn is to imitate. You want to learn to write- read other writers and imitate them.”