Time writers who went to bed with Kanu paid for their silence-Mukoma wa Ngugi

Former dictator Daniel arap Moi must be smiling all the way to the political bank. His emboldened intellectual surrogates have dusted off their fimbo ya nyayo pens and are crawling out of the woodwork of political irrelevance.

They are out to rewrite Moi’s history of corruption and oppression and their role in it. In the process, they want to redefine the role of the intellectual into that of an apologist for oppression and misrule.

Such was David Maillu’s ‘Open Letter to Ngugi’ (Saturday Nation, January 4, 2013).

Ostensibly it is an emotive attempt to ask Ngugi wa Thiong’o to return home, but it soon becomes a record of how Maillu, at each critical turn in Kenyan history, chose silence and intellectual hypocrisy.

These critical moments include 1978, when Moi took over power and promised to follow in Jomo Kenyatta’s footsteps; the 1980s when the Moi dictatorship was at its most flagrant; and the third during Kenya’s turbulent transition to democracy in the 2000s.

Maillu seems very proud of his attempts to recruit Ngugi and others into his way of silence. His advice to the newly released Ngugi from detention is that it is better that Ngugi waits out the Moi regime rather than continue his struggle against the systematic repression of Kenyans.

So he tells him: “Brother…You are a very special person to Kenyans. Save yourself for us by diverting from writing raw-nerve books like Ngahika Ndenda in order to buy time for the hostile regime to cool down.”

What Maillu is really saying is that in time of oppression, it is better to be silent.

What is the lesson here for my generation of intellectuals and writers? That if the Kenyatta-Ruto regime or any other were to turn oppressive, that we should remain silent and all will be well?

Look at his encounter with Ngugi in Stockholm. The contrast is telling. Ngugi, languishing in exile, is spreading awareness of the intensified repression at home. But Maillu, well-nourished by silence, asks Ngugi: “Why do you tell these white people such things about your mother country when you know too well that even if the white people were murderers they would keep silent about it to outsiders?”

The fastest way of silencing intellectuals outside their country is to accuse them of washing dirty linen in international public. Yet without international pressure on oppressive regimes, political change would be slow and more arduous.

Hundreds of European intellectuals spoke out against Hitler and Franco and Mussolini. Some even joined the military effort against dictatorship.

The international pressure that followed, whether through the London-based committee for the Release Political Prisoners or Amnesty International, was necessary to procure the release of those detained without trial or railroaded through kangaroo courts, like Willy Mutunga, Alamin Mazrui, Edward Oyugi, or Maina wa Kinyatti, to mention a few.

Theirs was not simply a case of airing dirty linen in public; the international and internal pressure was crucial to the eventual demise of the Moi regime. The efforts of Ngugi and Micere Mugo and others in exile allied with those of Kenyans within, were ultimately successful.

In his letter, Maillu insidiously attempts to put a wedge between Kenyans abroad and those at home. So he asks Prof Evan Mwangi of Northwestern University — Illinois: “Why are you working in America instead of coming home to help build the nation intellectually?”

But there are more useful ways of asking the same question. What role can the Kenyan diaspora play in the intellectual and economic development of Kenya? Or can Kenyan professors in the West get their institutions to work with our Kenyan universities? How can Kenyans at home and abroad start scholarly journals that will contribute to the diaspora and Kenyan intellectual spaces?

Or even better, since it is no longer a secret that with immigration laws tightening in the United States that life is getting harder for Kenyans – why not ask the one question I have not yet heard anybody ask: What should the Kenyan government do to ensure that Kenyans abroad are accorded the same dignity and welcome that our country accords to white European and American workers and visitors?

So desperate is Maillu to rewrite himself into relevance that to his five or so followers, he has taken to calling out Ngugi on twitter.

To Ngugi he says: “How about starting ‘Intellectual Elders Club?’” I assume he would be part of it. In another tweet he says: “Ngugi, come, let’s start ‘Insurance for Creative Writers.’” In another tweet he says “Ngugi, how about Kamirithu Drama Institute?”

And yet in another tweet that shows he is getting obsessed with tying to clean his name through intellectuals who have stood on the right side of history, he asks Prof. Micere Mugo: “How about setting up something like Micere Mugo Institute of Gender Studies?”

The better question is this: Why would intellectuals like Ngugi and Micere, who have dedicated their lives to fighting against the exploitation and oppression of the Kenyan people and have suffered detention and exile, want to align themselves with Moi apologists?

It is important to make a distinction between Maillu, the writer of popular fiction to whom I even dedicated my first novel, Nairobi Heat, and Maillu, the political intellectual apologist.

It is Maillu the political apologist who needs to first tell Kenyan people why he was silent as his colleagues were being detained, exiled and even killed.

Instead of the Moist intellectuals trying to rewrite themselves into a history of struggle by bringing down those who fought against Moi and today fight against Moism without Moi, they need to air their dirty political laundry in public, in our full view.

They need to account for their silence when Kenyans needed them most.

Mukoma Wa Ngugi is an Assistant Professor of English at Cornell University (USA), the author of Black Star Nairobi (Melville, 2013) and Nairobi Heat (EAEP, 2013)