Tell Ngugi ideologies of yesteryears were dumped

I saw a picture on the front page of two of our dailies and it got me thinking. It was the picture of Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o with former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Doing a little semiotic analysis, the first thing that came to my mind was that Mr Odinga was dressed casually. Of course the good professor has not been known to dress formerly the way we know official dress – suit and tie and so on – for a very long time if at all.

The second thing that came to my mind is that there was a time in this country when there was a clear distinction between leftist and rightist thinking. During those times, both Ngugi and Raila would, in my view, have been identified with the left side of things.

RURAL FOLK

In fact the circumstances that led to the professor’s detention in 1976 were those efforts he had put in place to sensitise rural folk — through theatre by themselves — about their fate in the face of the power of the owners of capital and political domination.

So I thought that perhaps Ngugi’s meeting with Raila at the earliest opportunity was intended to be reminiscent of those moments of critical thought that came from some form of Marxist influence and which, to a large extent, have had their own impact on our journey towards political transformation.

It is now about 13 years since we threw out the Kanu regime that perpetuated dictatorship and all the evils that go with it.

I would want to point out to good old Professor Ngugi that during those years and, while he was away, our political class as a whole has come out in its true colours.

That difference that would have been so noticeable right from the late 1960s to the 1990s is not so clear any more. In fact our politicians from both sides of the divide have demonstrated in no uncertain terms that they are all united by much more than what separates them.

VALUE SYSTEMS

One might add that whatever unites them is not always the most decent of value systems if the socio-economic development of the Kenyan people is what we are interested in.

More often than not it is about them and their personal resources which they will use to buy the next election and not about Kenyans.

Professor! In 1976, you and others like Ngugi wa Mirii — of happy memory — were trying to help the poor people of Kamirithu to develop their own hegemony through culture. Kenyans still need to be freed from an hegemonic force that keeps them disempowered so that they can vote it back every five years.

Fr Wamugunda is dean of students, University of Nairobi; [email protected]