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“The way I take it, a writer is a part of the intellectual community, and the way I define an intellectual is a worker in ideas.
“Since intellectuals, as well as writers are working in ideas, it is of course very important that they try to articulate a world view which is consistent with the values of liberation . . . writers and artists, both consciously and in practice, should be on the side of liberation, because art assumes freedom” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o cited in Kumar, 2001: 170).
Art, indeed, assumes freedom; the freedom of expression and to determine how one should live, and not how one should avoid living. It is this that constitutes liberation in view of the role of the artist in society.
Often, the separation is not clear, on whether the liberty to express one’s self constitutes freedom in the broader sense of the word, for expression is one thing, and facing the consequences is another issue. It is this thin line that artists frequently cross to reach out to their audience — the people, in an attempt to articulate their gagged voices.
The artist is not a dealer of cards, but he/she is only too conscious of how life has a way of dealing the same cards from its deck to the same people, with corresponding results; and awarding the same trophies for both losers and winners.
As an artist-intellectual, Ngugi wa Thiong’o has often crossed what others would call the red line because of his beliefs and the desire to uplift the feeble and vulnerable.
In his latest book “Wrestling with the Devil” (2018), the writer revisits his detention at Kenya’s Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. The prison memoir begins 30 minutes before his release from prison on December 12 1978, after almost 12 months. Before unravelling the reasons for his incarceration, the artist-intellectual takes the reader into the claustrophobia that comes with imprisonment; all forms of caging that emanate from the physical confinement within enclosures; be they psychological, emotional, physiological or mental.
“Mine is cell 16 in a prison block enclosing 18 other political prisoners. Here I have no name. I am just a number in a file: K6,77,” Wa Thiong’o intimates.
Drawing the reader into the tiny space that creativity rewards him with, he highlights the colour blindness of oppression in such a way that even shames the metaphorical devil pervading his people’s experiences.
He writes: “The menacing bootsteps come nearer. I know that the prowling guard cannot enter my cell — it is always double-locked and the keys, in turn, locked inside a box, which promptly at five o’clock is taken away by the corporal on duty to a safe somewhere outside the double walls.”
But who really is responsible for this suffering of a fellow human being and why? It is this that makes Ngugi wa Thiong’o a champion of the African story of toil, expectation and expunged hope.
The reversal of roles that he explores in his works, especially “I Will Marry When I Want” (1977), “Devil on the Cross” (1980), “Matigari” (1986), “Petals of Blood” (1977) and “A Grain of Wheat” (1967), is rooted in the fact that Man is inherently oppressive, brutal and avaricious regardless of creed, ethnicity and/or socio-cultural background.
In “Wrestling with the Devil”, Wa Thiong’o goes beyond the restrictions that come with imprisonment, to capture the resilience that comes with it, especially for an artist.
It is kind of cathartic when read at the level of creativity, where escape from captivity becomes a captivating experience. Regardless of the debilitating nature of detention, the artist refuses to allow his spirit to be broken down.
It is interesting to note, however, that the reason for his detention is the play he co-authors with Ngugi wa Mirii, “Ngaahika Ndeenda” later translated to “I Will Marry When I Want”, which gives a vent of escape and a veneer of hope to the peasants of Kamirithu through collective effort premised on the theatre of experience fictionalised in the play.
For giving them hope, and telling them that they matter as much as any other citizen regardless of their presumed backwardness; and that they can map their own destiny out of suffering through determination and unity of purpose, the writer irks the authorities.
The reader’s spirit is dampened here when the hand behind all this is revealed. It is a challenge that the postcolonial nation state of Africa has to grapple with; oppression in black skin and white masks as well as neo-colonialism.
This rationale is evident in the dialogue between the writer and one of the prison guards, who asks him:
“Professor, . . why are you in bed? What are you doing?”
Ngugi responds: “I am writing to Jomo Kenyatta in his capacity as an ex-political prisoner.”
When the guard insists that Kenyatta’s “case was different” and that “it was a colonial affair . . . now we are independent”, the people’s writer puts it to him: “A colonial affair in an independent country, eh? The British jailed an innocent Kenyatta. Thus Kenyatta learned to jail innocent Kenyans. Is that the difference?”
Curiously, the detention order was signed by then Minister for Home Affairs Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi on December 29, 1977. Moi later became the second president of independent Kenya from November 8, 1978 to December 30, 2002, following Kenyatta’s death on August 22, 1978.
Detention, used by colonial governments to silence political dissent became a default mode for leaders in the postcolonial nation state of Kenya.
It is in detention at Kamiti Maximum Security Prison that the idea behind “Devil on the Cross” is conceptualised and put to toilet paper; yes, he wrote the entire book on toilet paper using stolen time in detention.
At Kamiti, he reveals, “virtually all political prisoners are writing or composing something, on toilet paper, mostly.” Creativity enabled him “to defy daily the intended detention and imprisonment of (his) mind.”
The deception, hypocrisy, individualism, materialism and avarice prevalent in the postcolonial nation state cannot escape the competent artist’s gaze, no matter the consequences.
This is why a reading of Wa Thiong’o’s “Wrestling with the Devil” (2018) is apt, as it reveals the philosophies behind most of the writer’s many works. It is a kind of encyclopaedia that any serious follower of the artist-intellectual should not miss out on.
It is more than just a book, but a reflective mirror on how it means to be an African, in Africa that is, writing about that which divides or brings the people of colour together as a people.
In this story, the coloniser’s hand remains an albatross around the necks of black people trying to sharpen hoes in preparation for the great harvest that comes with reclamation of their ancestral land.
However, this dream remains logged in the pipeline as the land that liberation fighters epitomised by the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), derogatorily known as the Mau Mau, laid their lives on the block for, is still in the hands of erstwhile colonisers, or their runners.
It is this devil and his incarnates that Ngugi wa Thiong’o is forever engaging with in a wrestling bout that is short on victors and has a glut on victims.
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