The rebirth of what Ngugi resisted in the 70s and 80s

In September 2023 I had occasion to read for the umpteenth time Ngugi wa Thiongo’s memoir: Detained: A Writers Prison Diary. I was serving a 10-year prison sentence for a crime I knew nothing about; a crime I never committed. I clung to the promise of God that the appeal I had filed at the High Court Milimani would restore my freedom. 

My prayers were answered — I was released on appeal.

In prison I drew courage from the story of Prof Ngugi and scores of others who suffered incarceration during the Cold War era, when Kenyans squirmed under the vicious one-party grip.

Prison cells

Structurally, nothing much had changed in prison since 1977, when Ngugi was detained at the Kamiti Maximum Security prison. The high walls and narrow prison cells were designed to hold, isolate and constrain men.

But we forged connections stronger than iron bars. Here, among the mix of hardened criminals, innocent men awaiting trial, and individuals from all walks of life, grew a brotherhood.

In prison, survival, endurance, and resilience live side by side with hope.

In many ways I was luckier than Ngugi and those detained without trial during the over 30 years of independence party — Kanu. I had books I could read. I had notebooks in which to capture my thoughts, experiences and observations.

Ngugi was forced to record his, on toilet paper. Prison, however, has remained a dark dungeon, an unpredictable world where a day could swing between boredom and sudden upheaval.

I met hundreds of young men, many barely 18 rotting away. Thousands who were once petty offenders are undergoing prison training into hardened into vicious criminals. 

It saddens me that Ngugi has permanently closed his eyes before the ideals he fought for have been realised.

Kenyans are still fighting for freedoms and democratic space. Extrajudicial killings are on the rise.

The dreaded Special Branch police Unit of yore seems to have been reborn. We still live in the era where those opposed to the government must live in fear of abduction, murder, economic and political persecution

Once envisioned as a structure of rehabilitation, the prison has transformed into a site of torment. Dark corridors echo with the cries of the oppressed, while guards — entrusted with maintaining order — become the perpetrators of violence.

After I was moved to Kamiti I was allocated the cell that Ngugi was held back in 1977, cell 16: As I am led to the cell, literally opposite the Chief Wardens office, I kept on wondering if I will be the sole occupant of this dreadful place, presided over by a youthful looking superintendent and a jelly fleshed warder. No other human in sight. No sound.

Amidst a sepulchral silence, the warder ushers me into my new residence and he locks the door from outside. He then stuffs a piece of blanket into the slit on my door so that I cannot see anybody and nobody can see me. Then suddenly, the silence is broken by wild shouts, ‘it’s Ngugi, its wa Thiong’o’, in Gikuyu and Kiswahili”

Cell 16 was designed to torture its residents mentally. The isolation block for madmen and the block for those already condemned to hang.

Sisal stuffing

Ngugi documents his chilling experience: “It is past midnight. Unable to see the prickly bristles of see through blankets on a mattress, whose sisal stuffing has folded into innumerable lumps as hard as stones, I am at desk, under the full electric glare of a hundred watt naked bulb, scribbling words on toilet paper. A long the passageway which separates the two lines of Kenyatta’s tiger cages, I can hear the heavy bootsteps of the night warder. He is going on his rounds’

To survive in prison, one must quickly form alliances and friendships.

In Kamiti Ngugi was in good company. There were other men who had given government grief. There was Koigi wa Wamwere, Martin Shikuku and the longest serving detainee then, Wasonga Sijeyo. It is Sijeyo who welcomed Ngugi to prison with sandals and a comb, precious items in prison even today.

“Ngugi and I would only meet once in a while when we were allowed a few moments of the morning sunshine. Otherwise, they kept us isolated to try and break us emotionally and mentally,” Shikuku would tell me years later.

“We developed a code. We knew what it meant when someone knocked on his cell wall or scratched the wall. Our biggest prayer was that Kenya’s first president Jomo Kenyatta would die. We believed that it was only his death that would earn us our freedom” said Shikuku one day during a visit to my home. We were conducting interviews for his memoir.

Ngugi’s prison memoir explores his experience as a political detainee. It chronicles the harsh political climate, the pathetic prison conditions and his role in the struggle for democratisation and freedom in Kenya.

Today, just like in Ngugi’s time, different sectors, religions, group and communities are represented in prison.

While Ngugi and Shikuku were rotting in Kamiti, George Moseti Anyona was at Manyani and Jean Marie Seroney was slogging it off in Shimo la Tewa prison.

Kamiti burst into joy, celebration and tremendous uproar, when news broke that Kenyatta had died. In December 1978, three months after Kenyatta’s demise, Ngugi and others were released. 

Ngugi says in his prison diary that Sijeyo encouraged prisoners to stay hopeful; “What is life without hope?” he would ask. They clung to hope, even to hope in the death of a president.

On toilet paper, Ngugi started putting together his first Kikuyu novel, Devil on the Cross, in which he lashes at capitalism and takes a swipe at corruption and greed which engulfed Kenya soon after independence.

Ngugi and other intellectuals had become enemies of the State. The enmity that ran through the regime of Jomo Kenyatta, became a smelly wound in the heart of the Moi government. Between December 1977 and December 1978, Ngugi was incarcerated at Kamiti. He was detained without trial after being accused of engaging in activities that posed a danger to the government.

Upon release, his former employer, University of Nairobi denounced him and refused to reinstate him. The government made his life hell on earth turning him into an unemployable character. He fled the country to Europe and then the US where he settled till his demise on May 28, 2025.

In the Cold War era, anyone who was associated with Communism and the Marxist theories was considered dangerous.

Ngugi leaned to the Marxists ideologies despite making a living in a fully capitalist society of the US.

Jomo Kenyatta, had greatly let down young Ngugi. In the 1950s and early 1960’s, Ngugi had hailed Kenyatta as a liberator, “The Black Moses”.

But upon gaining power, Kenyatta’s regime started swimming in land grabbing and amassing of wealth. By denouncing capitalism, Ngugi had declared war on Kenyatta’s government.

He documented the theme of betrayal and sacrifice in his novel, A Grain of Wheat. The novel delves into the ambiguities of society as it shifted from colonialism into independence. He viciously fought neo-capitalism, social injustices and imperialism, yet it is from the heart of imperialism, the US, that he unleashed his intellectual missiles.

By 1966, Ngugi was so angry with colonial powers, he decided to start writing in his native Kikuyu language. Ngugi’s language shift inspired many among them Professor Egara Kabaji.

Writer and scholar

Kabaji in his recent Facebook tribute says: “Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o was a literary giant, a fearless intellectual and a man whose words shaped the very core of my being as a writer and scholar.’’

Kabaji describes Ngugi as his guiding light and mentor whose decision to abandon the colonial tongue and: “embrace Gikuyu, ignited in me the courage to embrace and write in my mother tongue Maragoli. He taught me that language was not just a tool of expression but a vessel of identity and power.”

After his release from prison, Ngugi had an ugly spat with Hilary Ngweno over what the writer described as unfair and biased coverage of his arrest and detention. He says in his memoir that Ngweno’s Weekly Review, published; “an astonishing accusation that I was the only detainee who had not said thank you to the president for releasing me. An ingrate of an ex-detainee, I was once again guilty of the sin of omission.”

He quotes a memo from Hilary to his Weekly Review magazine staff dated October 19, 1979, telling them that due to government hostility and withdrawal of advertising; “this memo is to let you know that at the moment the future of our operations is not bright at all.”

What Ngugi described of the media situation then still holds water today. From the era of Mwai Kibaki through Uhuru Kenyatta to the current regime, the media has suffered persecution, threats, intimidation and blackmail.

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