Remembering Ngugi: Denial, lessons from my literary teacher

I was in denial when I heard the news that Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o had passed away. This was despite knowing that Mwalimu Ngugi had been unwell for some time. I quickly reached out to his son, Tee Ngugi, to verify the heartbreaking news. He confirmed that the great Mugumo tree of African literature—my teacher—had indeed gone to be with the ancestors.

“It is true, bro. He is no more,” Tee told me. He was calm, but tense. Memories of my interactions with the Mugumo tree came flooding back.

Ngugi’s appointment to teach in the Department of Comparative Literature at Yale University, while I was a graduate student in Linguistics there, was momentous for me. He was in exile and critical of the excesses of the Kenyan government and the deep-rooted corruption among the political and economic elite. He was part of a network of public intellectuals imagining a more just country. I was anxious to meet and learn from the literary giant whose creative works powerfully intertwined the personal and the political.

I had started reading Ngugi as a young man growing up in Kipkelion Township, Kericho County. Through the character Njoroge in Weep Not, Child, I saw the promise of education, not just to liberate the individual, but also households and entire communities. I admired how Ngugi consistently drew on history to understand the present and envision a just, equitable future.

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In The River Between, Ngugi explores the cultural tensions individuals face when choosing between conflicting traditions. Yet the thread of liberation runs through his post-1960s writing.

Ngugi championed the use of African languages as vital tools of knowledge production and transmission. In Decolonising the Mind, he critiques global language hierarchies and argues for the integration of indigenous knowledge systems into inclusive development.

His intellectual rigour, humility, and unwavering belief in artistic freedom as a force for social change are legendary. As a young writer, he penned radio plays and short stories before turning to longer narratives. Around the time East African nations were gaining independence, awash with citizen optimism and nationalism, his play The Rebels aired on Uganda Broadcasting Station, and The Black Hermit was performed publicly. He later completed This Time Tomorrow, a lesser-known play, and published his first novels, Weep Not, Child and The River Between.

Ngugi’s legacy is that of an unyielding intellectual who insisted on speaking truth to power, in language that belonged to the people. His stories, full of historical insight and moral clarity, continue to inspire generations to think critically and act boldly.

Ngugi went to Leeds University for further studies and soon after published the novel A Grain of Wheat in 1967.

By the late 1960s, decoloniality—an approach to knowledge production recognising multiple sites of engagement—was gaining ground in Kenya. Returning from Leeds full of intellectual vigour, Ngugi was employed to teach literature at the University of Nairobi. In 1968, together with Henry Owuor Anyumba and Taban Lo Liyong, he submitted a memo to the University Senate proposing the abolition of the English Department to prioritise African literature in the curriculum. This marked a crucial step in decolonising education and emphasising academic freedom.

In 1972, Ngugi released Homecoming, a thoughtful collection of essays affirming Pan-Africanism and encouraging debate on how Africa could restore its creative glory amid neo-colonial pressures. This call to “come home” and confront pressing national issues inspired his subsequent works, including the play The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (written by Micere Githae Mugo), the novel Petals of Blood, and Ngahika Ndeenda [I Will Marry When I Want], a Gikuyu play performed to large audiences in Limuru—works that eventually led to his detention by the Jomo Kenyatta government.

Themes such as the colonial encounter, land ownership, workers’ and peasants’ rights, the pursuit of freedom, and the Mau Mau liberation struggle deeply inform Ngugi’s imagination and narrative. Whether in Devil on the Cross, Wizard of the Crow, Moving the Centre, or his memoir Dreams in a Time of War, his central concern remains the pursuit of justice for all, regardless of social status.

Ngugi was arrested on December 31, 1977. Besides his work with the Kamiriithu Community Educational and Cultural Centre, he was Chair of the Literature Department at the University of Nairobi. After his release by President Daniel Arap Moi, the university refused to re-employ him. He recounts his struggles to return in Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary.

Not one to surrender, Ngugi, unable to return home after a trip to London, joined the Release Political Prisoners Pressure Group, campaigning for detainees’ freedom, many of whom were academics and students.

He became part of an international network of writers and social justice advocates. Drawing on personal experience, colonial oppression, post-colonial betrayal, and elite greed, his writings powerfully tell the struggles for freedom, using dialectical materialism as his framework.

Anchoring his work in material reality, economic factors, dialogue, and argumentation, Ngugi crafted art revealing multiple perspectives on the world. Using the pen as his weapon, he showed writers could engage in politics without compromising art. For him, African artists and intellectuals could not be passive in the face of oppression. He arrived, performed a powerful dance, and exited the stage.

Prof Kimani Njogu is a linguist and cultural scholar.