NGUGI WA THIONG'O'S FIGHT AGAINST COLONIALISM

AND NEOCOLONIALISM: AN EXPLORATION

OF THE THEME OF BETRAYAL

by
James Stephen Robson
B.A., Simon Fraser University, 1972

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
in the Department
of
English

0 James Stephen Robson

SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
December 1987

All rights reserved. This work may not be

reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy
or other means, without permission of the author.
 APPROVAL

NAME : JAMES STEPHEN ROBSON

DEGREE : MASTER OF ARTS
TITLE OF THESIS: NGUGI WA -THIONG '0's FIGHT AGAINST COLONIALISM AND NEO-
COLONIALISM: AN EXPLORATION OF THE THEME OF BETRAYAL

EXAMINING COMMITTEE : Chairperson: David Stouck

Ma1 colm Page.

S e n i o r Supervisor
P r o f e s s o r of Engl i sh

Chin Banerjee
Associate Professor o f English

Diana Brydon
External Examiner
Associate P r o f e s s o r of English

Date Approved: December 4 , 1987

 PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE

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T i t l e o f Thesis/-

Ngugi Wa Thiong ' s Fight Against Colonial ism and Neo-Col o n i a l ism:
An Exploration of the Theme of Betrayal,

Author :
(signature)

(date)
 iii
A B S T R A C T

The literary work of Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a socio-

political tapestry of the hardships and divisions present in
both the birth and the struggle of a colonial and neo colonial
Kenya.

As a revolutionary writer, Ngugi has, through both fiction

and nonfiction, illuminated the problems of underdevelopment,
class exploitation, and state repression.

In his first four novel's Ngugi has consistently explored

the political division created in the Kenyan nation, community
and family from the consolidation of cclonialism in the 1920's
to the problems of class conflict in the post-colonial state of
the 1970's. The most serious problem on Ngugi's literary
landscape has been the issue of betrayal.

The divided community in The River Between is in part

already structurally separated by the Honia River before the
arrival of colonialism; yet the independent community of Kaneno
and Makuyu are further weakened by the betrayal of the forces
of traditionalism, evangelicalism, and colonial education.
Weep Not Child explores the betrayed community from the point
of view of the victimized family of Ngotho. The near
destruction of his family results from inaction, lack of
leadership and colonial exploitation.

A Grain of Wheat presents the village of Thabai as a

community whose characters are obsessed with the discovery of a
betrayer of the "Mau Mau" Revolution in the week before Kenyan
independence. While uncovering the "Judas" betrayer other
betrayals of the community are explored.

In Petals of Blood, Ngugi's elaborate attack on neo-

colonialism identifies two levels of betrayal: the personal
betrayal of the four protagonists who are victimized exiles
within their own country, and the political betrayal of the
parasitical national bourgeoisie who abuse and exploit those

they have sworn to protect.

Ngugi's pursuit of the betrayal theme in his first four

novels combines the political didacticism of a "living past"
with the need to promote a revolutionary resistance for the
future. The obstacles to a betrayed Kenya are not permanent

and can be overcome by cultural and political renewal initiated

by the community itself.
 T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Approval ............................................ ii

Abstract ............................................ iii-iv

Chapter One:
i) Ngugi wa Thiong'o - A Revolutionary Writer:
........................
Background and Focus
ii) Ngugi and Historical Tradition of Resistance .
iii) Ngugi and the Critical Response .............
Notes ............................................
Chapter Two: The Land and Colonialism: The Foundation
of Betrayal and Resistance in the Novels of Ngugi
wa Thiong'o ......................................
Motes ............................................
Chapter Three: The Seeds of a National Betrayal in
A Grain of Wheat .................................
Notes ............................................
Chapter Four: A Country ~ e ibd:
f The Neo-Colonialism
of Betrayal in Petals of Blood ...................
Notes ............................................
Conclusion ..........................................
Notes ............................................
Bibliography ........................................
 NGUGI WA THIONG'O'S FIGHT AGAINST COLONIALISM
AND NEOCOLONIALISM: AN EXPLORATION
OF THE THEME OF BETRAYAL

Chapter One
INTRODUCTION: i) NGUGI WA THIONG'O - A REVOLUTIONARY WRITER:
BACKGROUND AND FOCUS

Kamiriithul village has been the centre of Ngugi's life.

Born there on January 5, 1938, Ngugi has used this centre both
as a model for the results of political change in Kenya in his
novels and as an experiment for a communally developed theatre
between 1977 - 1982. Kamiriithu village is just 12 miles north
of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Ngugl, although not actively
involved in the 'Mau Mau' independence movement, experienced
the division that this revolutionary period produced within his
own family. Much later in life, Ngugi would seek to activate
memories of this anti-colonial period to act as a touchstone
against a government which he felt had betrayed the people of
Kenya. Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre was
a short-lived attempt to provide alternative theatre which
would be community based, created with the help of the village
of Kamiriithu itself. Nqaahika Ndenda (I Will Marry When I
Want) in 1977 and Maitu Njugira (Mother Sinq for Me) in 1982
were two attempts to have a Kamiriithu community relive the
tradition of resistance in the colonial and neo-colonial stages
of Kenyan history.
 2
The son of a tenant Gikuyu farmer and one of twenty-eight
children in an extended family, Ngugi was able to observe a
number of conflicts and divisions within his family that
reflected the struggle against the British Colonial government
in the Emergency Period 1952 - 1962. The closest we can come
to understanding the significance of the Emergency Period as an
early catalyst to Ngugi's writings is in a summary account of
the problems and conflicts within his own family in the preface
to Secret Lives:

As I write I remember the nights of

fighting in my father's house; my mother's
struggle with the soil so that we might
eat, have decent clothes and get some
schooling; my elder brother, Wallace
Mwangi, running to the cover and security
of the forest under a hail of bullets from
Colonial policemen; his messages from the
forest urging me to continue with education
at any cost; my cousin, Gichini wa Ngugi,
just escaping the hangman's rope because he
had been caught with live bullets; uncles
and other villagers murdered because they
had taken the oath; the beautiful courage
of ordinary men and women in Kenya who
stood up to the might of British
imperialism and indiscriminate terrorism.
I remember too some relatives and fellow
villagers who carried the gun for the white
man and often became his messengers of
blood. I remember the fears, the
betrayals, Rachael's tears, the moments of
despair and love and kinship in struggle
and I try to find meaning of it all through
my pen2

Because of his elder brother's involvement in the Land and

Freedom Army ("Mau Mau"), Kamiriithu village was destroyed.
Ngugi described his reaction to the rubble that was once his
village home and to the construction of a "new Kamiriithu"
within the structure of the colonial government strategic
hamlet policy in 1955:

I came back after the first term and

confidently walked back to my old village.
My home was now only a pole of dry mud-
stones, bits of grass, charcoal and ashes.
Nothing remained, not even crops, except
for a lone pear tree that swayed in sun and
wind. I stood there bewildered. Not only
my home, but the old village with its
culture, its memories and its warmth had
been razed to the ground ....
Kamiriithu was now no longer the name of a
trough with a defiant pool of water
surrounded by a few Swahili houses, but the
name of a new 'emergency village' on one of
sloping ridges next to the path I used to
follow on my way to Kamaandura. I walked
through the present site of Kamiriithu
Community Theatre. All around me, I saw
women and children on rooftops with hammers
and nails and poles and thatch, building
the new homes because their men were in
detention camps or away with the people's
guerrilla army (73-7413.

First attending Kamaandura School until age 11 and then

Karing'a Independent School in Maangua, Ngugi later entered
Alliance High School, a model used for Siriani school in Petals
of Blood and other novels. Reverend Livingstone from Ngugi's
first novel, Weep Not Child, was modelled partially on Carey
Francis, a principal of Alliance School. "Boro's" circumstances
in that novel also bear resemblance to Ngugi's brother, Wallace
Mwangi. The name and the death of Ngugi's stepbrother, Gitogo,
parallel that of the plot in A Grain of Wheat, Ngugi's third
novel . 4
 Alliance School's Christian teaching gave NClugi a thorough
knowledge of the Bible which he acknowledges to Micere Githae
Mugo in her thesis:

Gikuyu society is lacking in mythological

background. The Bible provides a
convenient framework. For example, the
idea of destiny with regard to the
Israelites and their struggle against
slavery. Gikuyu people have had similar
experiences .=

As the only student from the region of Limuru to attend

Alliance High School at this time, Ngugi later looked back at
this school as a training ground for colonial administrators:

In his lectures [Carey Francis] .... would

always emphasize that we were being
educated to rule. ..as responsible human
beings who would not become political
agitators. What he actually meant was that
we were being trained to become obedient
servants of Her Majesty the Queen of
England, to serve her and the British
Empire, and never to question the
legitimacy or correctness of that Empire.
Therefore politics were frowned upon:
African nationalists were castigated, they
were seen as irresponsible agitators, as
hooligans . 6

One humiliating memory for Ngugi was the punishment of students

who were caught speaking Gikuyu instead of English:

The culprit was given corporal punishment-

three to five strikes of the cane on bare
buttocks - or made to carry a metal plate
around the neck with inscriptions such as I
 AM STUPID or I AM A DONKEY. Sometimes the
culprits were fined money they could hardly
afford. And how did the teachers catch the
culprits? A button was initially given to
one pupil who was supposed to hand it over
to whoever was caught speaking his mother
tongue. Whoever had the button at the end
of the day would sing who had given it to
him and the ensuing process would bring out
all the culprits of the day. These
children were turned into witch hunters and
in the process were being taught the
lucrative value of being a traitor to one's
immediate c~mmunity.~

Ngugi followed his studies at Alliance School with an

inspirational stay at Makerere University of Uganda. Here he
began writing short plays as part of a competition in the
university, followed by his first major play in 1962. The
Black Hermit was an undertaking requested by students at
Makerere to celebrate Uganda's independence. Not published
until 1968, this play was the first major play to be written in
English by an East African and was the first performed at the
Uganda National Theatre.8

Ngugi published his first short story, "The Fig Tree"

among others in the literary magazine, Penpoint in 1960. Other
stories were published in 1961 and 1962 in the conservative
settler magazine, Kenyan Weekly News as well as in the Sunday
Post and Sunday N a t i ~ n . ~Also during this productive period he
wrote his first novel, The Black Messiah, renamed The River
Between. Weep Not Child, although published first was his the
second novel. The former was published in 1965; the latter in
1964. Of importance to Ngugi intellectually was The Conference
 6

of African Writers held at Makerere in June 1962. Here Ngugi

met for the first time other African literary figures of
significance: Chinua Achebe, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okibo,
Wole Soyinka and many others. According to Ngugi his readings
of Achebe's Thinqs Fall Apart, George Lamming's In the Castle
of My Skin and Peter Abraham's Tell Freedom were instrumental
in stimulating his reading of West African, Caribbean, and
South African Literature. After graduating from Makerere,
Ngugi worked as a columnist for the Daily Nation, producing
articles under the heading, "As I See It." Cook and Okenimpke
see these articles as "A chronicle for us [of] the early stages
in the formulation of his ethical and political viewpoint."1

Post graduate work at Leeds University in England in 1954

followed his work at The Daily Nation. Cook and Okenimpke call
this phase in Ngugi's writing "... a period of maturing vision
... a focus on events such as "Mau Mau", capitalism, socialism
and nationalism. [An earlier phase at Makerere is referred to
as one where he] ... evinces an essentially moralist humanist
outlook on human affairs.""

Ngugi's M.A. work at Leeds was in Caribbean Literature

under the supervision of Douglas Grant. Ngugi's first draft of
his thesis was supposed to be revised. He did not do this, but
instead he continued work on his third novel, A Grain of Wheat.
At this time Ngugi was exposed to a radical environment at
Leeds. He credits Grant Kamenju with introducing him to Frantz
 7
Fanon's Wretched of the Earth in 1964. Political conditions at
Leeds and the world at large were sources of radicalization for
Ngugi :

The Vietnamese people's struggle had a lot

of impact on the students at Leeds, as did
the Palestinian struggle. The beginnings
of a student's movement all over Europe
also had an impact on us at Leeds. As for
socialist writers, my first exposure to
Karl Marx's works and ideas was at Leeds
University. Reading novels like Robert
Tressell's The Rauued , Trousered
Philanthropists and Brecht's works was also
important to the development of my ideas.12

One recent revelation by Ngugi in this period in his life

is the technical growth of his novel, A Grain of Wheat was
undergoing. Unhappy with the simple linear plot structure of
Weep Not Child, Ngugi experimented with variations in narrative
voice in which he acknowledges the influence of Conrad's use of
"multiple voices" that brought more "evidence" or "information"
on an "event."13 Lamming's work was also inspiring for Ngugi,
especially the use of: the omniscient narrator, drama, the
diary, reportage, third person narration and direct authorial
intervention. The role of personal conversations also
influenced Ngugi, especially in the areas of "interventions,
digressions, narrative within a narrative and dramatic
illustrations." '4

Together these techniques produced in A Grain of Wheat a

new novel form for Ngugi, one beyond the linear narratives of
The River Between and Weep Not Child.

By July 1967 Ngugi had returned to Nairobi to accept a

lectureship in English at Nairobi University. Over the next
year he was deeply involved in a debate over the creation of a
new World Literature Department which was designed to replace
an outmoded curriculum left over from colonial Kenya. Ngugi,
Henry Owaor-Anyumba, and Taban Lo Liyong proposed that African
literature be the core study area.lS

The proposal to replace the English Department was not

accepted. A University crisis ensued which divided the
academic community and the students. Ngugi resigned because of
the suspension of five stud eat^.^^ While not successful in re-
orienting the English Department at Nairobi University in 1968,
he found his new role as Fellow in Creative Writing at Makerere
was more satisfying as the African literature programme there
had already entered an advanced stage.

After a year there, he did not return to Nairobi, but

instead went to Northwestern University in the U.S.A. in the
fall of 1970. He refuses to discuss this period other than to
say he taught African literature." However, what is clear is
that Ngugi preferred exile to censorship and repression at home
in Kenya. His own views were becoming more radicalized: In a
paper written in June 1969 for a UNESCO conference on cultural
policy in Africa he defined the necessity of a socialist
economy for the development of National C u l t ~ r e . ~ ~

A Year later Ngugi had begun writing his fourth novel,

Petals of Blood at Evanston, Illinois. It would take him five
years to complete it, encompassing time spent at Northwestern,
at home in Limuru, and later at Yalta in the Soviet Union as a
guest of the Soviet Writer's Union. Ngugi discusses his
experimentation with narrative techniques begun in A Grain of
Wheat in Decolonizina the Mind:

Petals of Blood had taken a stage further

the techniques of flashbacks, multiple
narrative voices, movement on time and
space and parallel biographies and stories.
The technique allowed me to move freely in
time and space through the centuries and
through all the important landmarks in
Kenya's history for the early times and
back to the twelve days duration of the
present of the novel.lg

At the launching of Petals of Blood in July 1977, Ngugi

bluntly explains his motive for writing the book:

... I came to realize that Kenya was poor,

not because of anything internal, but
because the wealth produced by Kenyans
ended in developing the western world... .
Their aid, loans, and investment capital
that they gloat about are simply a chemical
catalyst that sets in motion the whole
process of expropriation of Kenya's wealth,
with, of course, a few leftovers for the
'lucky' few....
This was what I was trying to show in
Petals of Blood: that imperialism can never
develop our country or develop us, Kenyans.
 In doing so, I was only trying to be
faithful to what Kenyan workers, peasants
and workers have always realized as shown
by their historical struggles since
1895.20

This public display of resistance to the established

political order of Kenyatta must have contributed to Ngugi's
detention without trial six months later. Earlier in October
1976 Ngugi had publically criticized the Kenyatta government in
an article in the Daily Nation for cramming The Trial of Dedan
Kimathi, a radical play written jointly by Ngugi and Micere
Githae Mugo, between two imported shows, Jeune Ballet de France
and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Ngugi felt
that The Trial of Dedan Kimathi deserved better treatment as it
was a national selection to compete at the Pan African Festac
'77 in Nigeria in six months time.21 In addition to this
public critique, the content of the play was used as an attack
on the national bourgeoisie's betrayal of "Mau Mau":

The authors have used the historical

Kimathi as raw material because of their
attitude in the fight against colonialism
... they see certain characteristics which
are crucial to any creative political
fighter against the present-day [neol
colonialism.22

Brian Crow sees it in a similar way:

Dedan Kimathi is an expression of radical

left wing nationalism, vociferous in its
denunciation of neo-colonialism and the
 Kenyan bourgeoisie's collusion in it, and
its overt aim is to stir up the Kenyan
masses to fight, by violent means if
necessary, against it 2 3 ,...

Ngugi had been active in the University of Nairobi since

his return in August 1971 and had been named Chairman of a
newly created Literature Department in 1975. Yet the
publication of The Trial of Dedan Kimathi: and of Petals of
Blood as well as the production of Naaahika Ndeenda (I Will
Marry When I Want) at Kamiriithu, all undertaken in 1977, was
more than the government of Jomo Kenyatta could tolerate. In
an interview with Anita Shreve in July 1977, Ngugi attacked the
capitalist system in Kenya which he saw as:

... the root cause of evil. Our economy is

dependent on international capitalism. And
capitalism can never bring about equality
of people. The exploitation of one group
by another is the very essence of
capitalism. The peasants and workers are
very much exploited in this country. They
get very low pay, very poor housing, and
unemployment effects them more than anyone
else. Now, women form the majority in this
category of peasants. Women are doubly
exploited and oppressed.24

Most likely the decision to intern Ngugi arose because of

the success of the Gikuyu language play, Naaahika Ndeenda.2g
The play was a community production in which workers and
peasants contributed additions and adjustments to the original
script. They designed the open air stage and the audience
seating. As Ngugi suggested, it "... was part and parcel of
their own lives and history."

Ngugi has never been given any official reason for his
detention,26 but it is likely because of this play. Two
reasons seem apparent. Firstly, the play was not just a
radical presentation to an isolated academic community; it was
a grassroots community production in an indigenous language and
therefore more threatening to the national bourgeoisie.
Secondly, its theme dealt with the struggle for land and
freedom, a sensitive issue that led to the "Mau Mau" revolution
in the first place, but one also persistent in land speculation
and peasant alienation in Kenya today.27

Ironically, Ngugi's detention, designed to ostracise and

punish him for challenging the establishment, had the opposite
effect. In jail he produced two important works, Detained: A
Writer's Prison Diary and Gaitaani Mutharabaini (Devil on the
Cross) .

The detention order was signed by Daniel Arap Moi, the

Minister of Home Affairs and now Prime Minister of Kenya. Yet
Ngugi, since he was released after December 12, 1978, has been

careful not to blame individuals for his imprisonment, but the

ideological system of "dependent c a p i t a l i ~ m . " ~ ~Detained adds
clear insight into the nature of political detention and
repression in Kenya as Ngugi was not the first or last to be
imprisoned for political and cultural activities by either the
Kenyatta or Moi government^.^^

Detained also generalizes the attack on c~lonialismfrom

its roots in settler colonialism to what Ngugi refers to as the
role of a comprador bourgeoisie:

... a dependent class, a parasitic class in

the Kupe (tick) sense. It is in essence a
mnyapala (overseer) class, a handsomely
paid supervisor for the smooth operation of
foreign economic interests.aO

Devil on the Crossa1 is Ngugi's most radical contribution

to Kenyan literature. It sold out in two Gikuyu editions as
well as in one Swahili edition in less than two years. The
novel has also been read orally in rural restaurants and bars.
The history of the writing of this novel is heroic to say the
least. Written on toilet paper, Devil on the Cross, the first
novel written in Gikuyu, took almost a year to write and it was
temporarily confiscated while Ngugi was still in detention in
September 1978. Ngugi explains the anguish that this three
week confiscation caused him as well as the determination to
keep writing.

It was as if I had been drained of blood.

Nevertheless I made a new resolution: no
matter what happened I would start all over
again. I would reconstruct the novel in
between the printed lines of a Chekhov, or
a Gorky, or a Mann, or of the Bible. .. or
of any book in my possession. It would not
be the same novel, but I would not accept
defeat . 3 2
 14
Unlike in Petals of Blood the proletarianization process
in Devil of the Cross is nearly complete. The divisions
between country and city are more pronounced. Even capitalists
hope to make good air a commodity. Escape from exploitation by
the national bourgeoisie is limited. As a woman victimized by
an "evil" economic system, Wariinga must struggle against a
number of personal betrayals from lovers, employers, and
seducers to sustain her self-respect and independence. In a
journey to Ilmorog, Wariinga and four other passengers travel
in Mwaura's matutu taxi; each has received a written invitation
to the "Devil's Feast." Once they arrive they witness a
gallery of capitalist rogues who try to out do one another by
bragging of their ability to steal and betray the people of
Kenya.

After his detention in 1978 Ngugi was not re-instated by

the University of Nairobi despite the fact that he had never
been charged with any crime. Writing in Gikuyu became a
political commitment for him. The popular response of the
publication of Caithaani Mutharabaini (Devil on the Cross) and
Nqaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) encouraged him to
continue to write in Gikuyu.

Ngugi decided to work independently. Work in Gikuyu

continued with the Kamiriithu Peoples Theatre production of
Maitu Njuaira (Mother Sins For Me) . s 3 Internationally, Ngugi
began a debate to reassert the value of writing in traditional
 3.5
languages. In December 1980 Ngugi, in a talk at the Africa
Centre in London, attacked the African writer as "a petty-
bourgeoisie product of colonial and neo-colonial imperialism
whose production was an "Afro-Saxon" literature, a perpetuation
of cultural and linguistic oppression."34

Other African writers are beginning to support Ngugi,

although they are still a minority.3s Ngugi's own response to
the liberation of language in Kenya is to write Decolonizinq
the Mind, which Chinweizu has called an "African intellectual's
account of his withdrawal from the Eurocentric culture of the
neo-colonial state in which he was nurtured."36 In
Decolonizinq the Mind, Ngugi states that this book will be the
last he will write in English. Nevertheless he promises to
continue to do his own translating as in the cases of Devil on
the Cross and I Will Marry When I Want.

Mother Sing For Me was a collective village effort. As

was the case in I Will Marry When I Want, Ngugi wa Thiong'o
and Ngugi wa Mirii only provided the initial draft of the play.
This time it was a musical. Songs were considered "functional"
and they represented the way the people of the 1920's and
1930's responded to adversity. In addition it provided a means
to communicate to different nationalities in one performance.
The play, although set in the inter-war years, was designed to
educate people of the fact that the nation had been betrayed by
a national elite who accepted the cultural habits and economic
pay offs offered by the world capitalist system.37

Ngugi sees an important comparison between the 1920's and

1980's:

Fifty years ago, the singers of the people

were imprisoned by the British. Today they
are imprisoned by their fellow-countrymen.
Maitu Njugira is made up of songs from the
30's which were forbidden then. It
pictures the social reality of the 30's.
And it is forbidden today. One can have no
clearer illustration of how those in power
today have disassociated themselves from
their own people and have identified with
the former colonial power.38

The Kenyan government never allowed the play to be staged

at The National Theatre. A licence was never given. Again as
in the case of Ngugi's detention, no official reason was given
for not allowing the play to go ahead. Instead, Mother Sinq
For Me was performed in rehearsal for 10 days at the
University of Nairobi. An estimated 10,000 people saw it in
February 1982. Yet by March 11 the government had banned
Kamiriithu performances and closed the centre. A day later the
centre and theatre were torn down by police. Even a request to
take Mother Sing For Me to Zimbabwe was denied.39 Ngugi
returned to London shortly after this set-back.

After each difficult struggle in Ngugi's life, he spent a

short period in exile. However, after the destruction of the
Kamiriithu Cultural centre and rumors of his arrest in August
 17

1982 if he returned to Kenya, he is unlikely to go back to

Kenya until a major change in government has taken place.
Exile in London has had some rewards. A new pan-African
production of The Trial of Dedan Kimathi was performed by the
Wazlendo Players in November 1984. Rehearsals were performed
in different parts of London in the same way the Kamiriithu
Cultural Centre used to do them in Limuru and Nairobi.
Critical acclaim for the play has brought protests from the
Kenyan High Commission in London who attempted to stop the
performance of the play.40

Ngugi continues to be active in the literary and political

scene in London. Besides involvement in the African language
debate, he has written a new novel in Gikuyu, Matisari ma
Njuuqi (Those Who Survived the Bullets). He is also actively
involved in the Committee for the Release of Political
Prisoners in Kenya and according to some sources he is a leader
behind the underground opposition in Kenya, called "Mwa-
Kenya. " 4 I

Even in exile Ngugi is a political force of influence. He

continues to fight against the injustice of neo-colonialism and
the betrayal of Kenyan heritage by the Moi government. The
tradition of resistance against foreign invasion and social
injustice has a history which has inspired and influenced Ngugi
in the writing of his novels and plays. A brief overview of
political and historical influences will now be outlined.
ii) NGUGI AND HISTORICAL TRADITION OF RESISTANCE

Ngugi wa Thiong'o's historical inspirations came from a

number of primary sources. The most obvious is the
independence movement of the Land and Freedom Army ("Mau Mau").
Yet recently in his essays in Barrel of a Pen and Decolonizing
the Mind as well as in the novels Petals of Blood and Devil on
the Cross, Ngugi has begun to look at a wider range of
nationalist resistance in the roles of : Me Katilili, woman
leader of Giriama resistance in 1913 - 1914, Koitalel's
leadership in the Nandi resistance movement 1895 - 1905, the
Gikuyu movement against the Imperial British East African
Company led by Waiyaki, the namesake of Ngugi's tragic hero in
The River Between, Markan Singh, the General Secretary of the
Labour Trade Union of East Africa in the 19301s,and during the
1950's the role of the Kenyan African Union leader, Pio Gama
Pinto. 2

According to Ngugi, his most recent play Mother Sinq

For Me is set in the 1920's and 1930's:

... because that was when British

colonialism introduced capitalism into
Kenya ..
. . In order to obtain efficient
control of the Kenyan labour force the
colonial government passed several labour
laws, for example the native registration
ordinances, which made it compulsory for
adult African workers in Kenya to wear a
chain and metal container around their
necks. Inside the container was an
identification paper with information
 useful to the employer. Together with the
paper the container was called the Kipande.
Not carrying a Kipande was considered a
criminal act and carried severe
punishment .4 3

Another important historical and literary actor in Ngugi's

earlier anti-colonial novels was Jomo Kenyatta, former
nationalist leader and Prime Minister of Kenya from 1963 to

1978.44 Ngugi's assessment of Kenyatta began to change with

the publication of A Grain of Wheat in 1967. Later in
detention, under Kenyatta's order, Ngugi's view was obviously
even more critical:

In the novel A Grain of Wheat, I tried,

through Mugo who carried the burden of
mistaken revolutionary heroism, to hint at
the possibilities of the new Kenyatta. But
that was in 1965-6 and nothing was clear
then about the extent to which Kenyatta had
negated his past, nor the sheer magnitude
of the suffering it would cause to our
society today.4

Ngugi sees Kenyatta's role in pre- and post-independence

development as a political evolution of four stages:

There were then several Kenyattas, but they

can be reduced to four. There was the
Kenyatta of the KCA era who made anti-
imperialist statements.... He was then
truly a spokesman of the peasants and
workers and he took up the cudgels against
the British imperialist bourgeoisie for its
brutal, oppressive exploitation of the
peasants of the various nationalities in
Kenya. . ..
 Then there was the Kenyatta of the KAU era:
this Kenyatta was a graduate of
Malinowski's school of anthropology at
London University, a cultural nationalist
(he had written Facina Mount Kenya in which
politics was deliberately cut out), who for
fifteen years had quite literally been out
of physical touch with the living struggles
of the Kenyan people ....
Then there was the Kenyatta of the KANU
era: he was a prison graduate, an ex-
detainee who had once again been out of
physical touch with the living struggle for
nine years. Mau Mau, through forcing the
political pace of events, had been weakened
and the anti-imperialist movement was led
by the petty bourgeoisie ....
Then there was the Kenyatta of KANU in
power, who made sure that the petty
bourgeoisie in its new role of a comprador
was fully entrenched in the party
organization, in administration, anywhere,
and who made sure that anybody associated
with militant nationalism or with true
worker/peasant organizations like Mau Mau
were never anywhere near the seats of
power.

Although often associated with the Land and Freedom Army

by colonial references such as the Cornfield Report, Kenyatta
had played no role in "Mau Mau" and had officially sought to
silence or ignore the role of former freedom fighters, claiming
the need for national re~onciliation.~7 Jomo Kenyatta and his
family wealth has received little or no critical attention in
Kenya, but some information has been accumulated by John
Barry.

The issue of "Mau Mau" in Ngugi's fiction needs a larger

focus. "Mau Mau" has always had a revolutionary perspective in
 21
Ngugi's writings from the revengeful Boro in Weep Not Child to
the messianic Kihika in A Grain of Wheat to the maimed
storekeeper Abdullah in Petals of Blood. However, the clearest
and most revolutionary focus of "Mau Mau" is in The Trial of
Dedan Kimathi, written by Ngugi and Micere Mugo in 1974 - 1975.

Here Ngugi was not only linking the anti-colonial struggles of

the past by linking Kimathi to the resistance of Me Katilili,
Koitalel and W a i ~ a k i ~ but
~, he was also pointing out the
problems of neo-colonialism. Kimathi is presented as a Christ-
like figure whose spirit must endure four separate trials.
Although there is some justified criticism by Crow for a racist
caricature of the Indian banker in the play, the play's
criticism of both a white colonial administration and a neo-
colonial national bcurge~isieis s u c c e ~ s f u l . ~ ~

The origin of the word "Mau Mau" is unclear. Karari Njama

relates it to several misconceptions: Firstly, a
mispronunciation of "uma uma" (out out), a Gikuyu reference to
oust European rule. Secondly, misperception by European
journalists at the Naivasha Trial in 1950 of the expression,
"mumumumu" which means "whispered voices within an oathing
hut." Thirdly, a "secondary usage" invented after the term
became popularized in Swahili, "Mzangu Arudi Uingereza, Mura
Africa Apote Uhuru' (Let the European return to England and the
African obtain his freedom.')51

In fact the name "Mau Mau" did not exist, but the word had
 22

come into use to explain the existence of the Land and Freedom
Army during the Emergency Period in Kenyan colonial history
from 1952 - 1962. "Mau Mau" was a revolutionary movement,
although not a successful one. I disagree with David Maughan-
Brown's view that it was an "unsuccessful revolt."52 It is
more than that as Ngugi, Maina wa Kinyatti and others have kept
it alive through drama, fiction and song.53

The roots of the "Mau Mau" movement come from the

alienation of land from a largely Gikuyu peasantry as well as
from the exploitation of surplus labour through the Kipande
sy~tern.~4 Another factor come from the tradition of political
resistance to colonial rule presented by the Gikuyu Central
Association (KCA) and the Kenyan African Union (KAU) after
1946.55

The arrest and internment of the leaders of the KAU in

1952, including Kenyatta, Kaggia, Koinange, left the Kenyan
nationalist movement disoriented. Reorganization in the
countryside took place under the new leadership of Dedan
Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge. The use of oathing was the key
to organizing support for a new guerrilla organization that
depended on peasant support. Oathing was not a new method of
organization but had been used earlier by both the KCA and the
KJLU.~~
The betrayal of the oath was seen as a betrayal of the
nation and tantamount to collaboration with the colonial
administration. The consequences of the betrayal of the unity
 23

oath by Mugo in A Grain of Wheat will be discussed in Chapter

3. Besides oathing other political activities were organized
by "Mau Mau" including the boycotting of European goods,
combating of prostitution and the elimination of traitors and
informers .5 7

One of the most important myths, that "Mau Mau" was

primarily a Gikuyu tribalist movement, has been exploded by
research by Barnett, Kinyatti and Maughan-Brown. The land
alienation affected the Gikuyu the most because of their
location in the Central Highlands. While they were the largest
group active in "Mau Mau", the Cornfield Report also indicates
that thousands of Kamba were detained as well. The largest
member of detainees at t h e mcst infamous detention camp at Hola
were L U O S . ~ ~

Repression of the Kenyan people by the British colonial

administration far out stripped reported "Mau Mau" atrocities.
According to Kinyatti:

By the end of 1954 about 150,000 workers,

peasants and patriotic elements of the
petty-bourgeoisie had been herded without
trial into prisons and detention camps
where they were to undergo unspeakable
tortures. Many died, others lost their
limbs, others went insane while, some were
even c a ~ t r a t e d . ~ ~

After Kimathi's capture in October 1956, colonial

repression continued with accelerated confinement of Gikuyu and
 24
other people, the creation of strategic hamlets or "emergency
villages," and the recruitment of forced labour to dig trenches
around guerrilla sanctuaries such as Mount Kenya and the
Aberdares. The confiscation of livestock occurred as well.GO
Casualty figures vary. According to the official Cornfield
Report figure 11,503 "Mau Mau" guerrillas were killed in the
Emergency period. Kinyatti contests these figures and says a
conservative estimate is 150,000 Kenyans lost their lives;
250,000 were maimed for life.61

"Mau Mau" "atrocities" were sensationalized for colonial

propaganda purposes in order to discredit the independence
movement and to justify the role of the British army in
repressing it.62

The political consciousness of the movement is rarely

discussed. One small, but significant example comes from
Njama. After the loss at Ruthaithi in September 1954, the
guerrilla forces visited the farm sf a Major Owen Jeffreys and
stole various articles from him when they failed to retrieve
guns that he had taken from them. Njama also left a letter
whose sentiments confirm a "Mau Mau" nationalism:

You cannot kill ideas by killing people.

Since the declaration of emergency almost
two years ago you have neither killed the
idea nor won the battle. Our battle is
really between right and might. The six
million Africans standing for right will
 definitely beat sixty thousand Europeans
standing for the might, irrespective of
your army ~trength.~3

However, "Mau Mau" nationalism is of little value to the

neo-colonialist governments of Jomo Kenyatta or Daniel Arap
Moi. A whole school of reactionary thinking has formed the
basis of study at the University of Nairobi which has reduced
the movement to one that is either primitive "tribalist" or
"Gikuyu expan~ionist."~~

Through the work of Ngugi and Maina wa Kinyatti, "Mau Mau"

lives on in a cultural resistance movement despite repeated
attempts by the Moi government to silence a Kenyan cultural and
pclitical r e n a i s s a n ~ e . ~ ~

Poets, historians, and artists, and most revolutionary

agitators, who are perceived as threats to the security of the
state, are regularly interned without charge especially since
the attempted coup d'etat in August 1982. Moi's "Nyayoism"
(Follow In My Footsteps) must be taken literally in Kenya as
anyone who advocated an alternative political or cultural
perspective than that advocated by Moi or the ruling party KANU
is arrested, detained or driven into exile.66

As an exile and activist Ngugi recently made it clear that

he had :
 ... no choice but that of aligning himself
with the people - their economic,
political, cultural struggle for
survival ... to rediscover the real language
of struggle in the actions and speeches of
the people; learn from their great heritage
in orature; and above all, learn from their
great optimism and faith in the capacity of
human beings to remake their world and
renew them~elves.~'

The history of traditional resistance movements against

colonialism from Waiyaki to "Mau Mau" will certainly furnish
Ngugi with enough inspiration and commitment to continue to
communicate with those who oppose the exploitation of neo-
colonialism in Kenya.

iii) NGUGI AND THE CRITICAL RESPONSE

Literacy criticism of African literature is a relatively

new field. Since the publication to Chinua Achebe's Thinqs
Fall Apart in 1958, hundreds of African novels, plays, and
short stories have been published by the Heinemann African
Writers series or by Longman's Drumbeat Series. Critical
studies of African writers has been limited for the most part
to the last fifteen years. Few book-length studies of
individual writers exist. In the case of Ngugi wa Thiong'o,
four such studies exist.68 Only seven journals regularly
contain articles about Ngugi and his literary and critical
work: Research in African Literature, Ufahamu, and African
Literature Today are explicitly concerned with African
 27

literature while Journal of Commonwealth Literature, World

Literature Written in Enqlish, Commonwealth Novel in Enqlish
and Kunapipi are concerned with Ngugi's role in Commonwealth
Literature.

In terms of the research for this thesis, the most

significant book was Cook and Okenimpke's Nguqi wa Thiona'o:
An Exploration of His Writings, published in 1983. It is the
most comprehensive text written to-date, including informative
chapters on all the novels as well as useful biographical and
critical information on the political issues surrounding
Ngugi's work. The index is helpful, and most importantly all
major quotations from Ngugi's novels have page references to
two editions of Ngugi's novels. However, a bibliography of
Ngugi criticism has not unfortunately been added to the text.

G.D. Killam's books, Introduction to the Writinqs of

Nquqi, in 1980 and his collection of critical essays, Critical

Perspectives of Naugi wa Thionq'o, in 1984 have some value, but

lack the comprehensiveness of Cook and Okenimpke. In
Introduction to the Writinqs of Ngugi the chapter on Petals of
Blood was the most useful. In fact Killam is at his best when
he is discussing this novel. The biographical outline at the
beginning of the text is incorrect. Killam has Ngugi join the
Sunday Nation in 1964, when in fact he was writing for that
paper as early as June 1962.69 However, the introduction to
this text is far more effective than the one Killam uses in
 28
Critical Perspectives on Ngugi, which is uncoordinated,
essentially descriptive and without reference material to Devil
on the Cross or Mother Sins For Me. In the introduction Killam
mistakenly documents Ngugi's acceptance of a teaching position
at Northwestern in 1968 instead of 1970, omitting the year
Ngugi taught at Makerere University in Uganda. The selection
of essays in Killam's Critical Perspectives on Nguqi wa
Thions'o, particularly those on Weep Not Child, The River
Between and A Grain of Wheat is essentially balanced and
readily available from other sources, but references to Ngugi's
journalism and political views are lacking with the exception
of the Bettye Parker interview. References to any of the plays
or Devil on the Cross, whose English edition had been published
two years before Killam's hook was published, are missing from
the text as well. In addition, considering the significance of
Petals of Blood to Ngugi's critical reputation and Killam's own
work, it is difficult to understand why only the articles by
Triester and Sharma were included.'O Despite these faults
Critical Perspectives on Nquqi has one of the best
bibliographies available in Ngugi criticism to date.

The fourth text, Nqugi wa Thiong'o, by C.B. Robson is part

of the MacMillan Commonwealth Writers Series. Published in
1979, it was the first full length text on Ngugi. However, it
is also the weakest. While the first few chapters are thorough
studies of Ngugi's first three novels, Petals of Blood is
treated with hostility because the novel is seen as a
 29
ideological attack on the rotteness of neo-colonial government:

Ngugi goes beyond what is acceptable in

fiction; he is giving us polemic.
Basically it is a question of balance, and
Ngugi's concern that we should not miss a
detail sometimes results in a dominating
and intrusive authourial presence.'l

I would have to concur with Sharma's assessment that "...

Robson doesn't like Petals of Blood and therefore is unable to
understand and appreciate it."72 The text has an adequate
bibliography, but it lacks an introduction.

Its assessment of Ngugi as a writer and activist is a

scant thirteen pages, while literary texts receive one hundred
and twenty-two pages of discussion.

Two articles which are particularly useful in the wider

issues of feminist writing and the exploitation of women in
Africa are "Women as scapegoats of Culture and Cult: An
Activist's view of Female Circumcision Ngugi's The River
Between, by Tobe Levin and "Mother Africa and the Heroic Whore:
Female Images in Petals of Blood" by Jennifer Evans.73 The
single most important literary text that is effective in
analyzing A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood as well as the
origins of "Mau Mau" and literary reactions to that movement is
David Maughan-Brown's Land, Freedom, and Fiction: History and
Ideology in Kenya.q4
 The work of Bu-Buakei Jabbi was most helpful in assessing
both the value of symbolism in A Grain of Wheat as well as
Conrad's influence on N g ~ g i . 7 ~A special issue of Research in
African Literature, 16.2(1985), is devoted to Ngugi criticism.
It contains thoroughly organized, diverse criticism on Ngugi's
early novels by Maughan-Brown and Sekyi-Otu, symbolism in 4
Grain of Wheat by Harrow and Jabbi as well as an original case
study on "The Journey" in Petals of Blood by Pagnoulle and a
reprint of Ngugi's defense of writing in Gikuyu. A special
issue of English in Africa 8.2(1981) contains articles by
Maughan-Brown, Glenn and Vaughan concerning the political
contradictions in "Mau Mau" with special emphasis on A Grain of
Wheat. In a special Symposium on Ngugi wa Thiong'o Petals of
Blood, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 15.1(1930)

published three short noteworthy articles by Stratton, Killam,

and Chileshe, any of which would have been welcome addition's
to Killam's Critical Perspectives. In fact, Killam's article,
"A Note on the Title of Petals of Blood" is one of the best
articles he has written on Ngugi.

Articles published in the U.C.L.A. journal, Ufahamu are

generally more critical of Ngugi, pointing out contradictions
between his historicism and ideology. The article "The
Divergence of Art and Ideology in the Later Novels of Ngugi wa
Thiong'o," by Lisa Curtis, is probably the most critical
article 5rom a Marxist perspective published to date. The
following comment is on Devil on the Cross:
 Ngugi's repeated failure to find a solution
to the problems he systematically exposes
undermines the potential for real
change which he ascribes to the political
sentiments expressed in his works. It
would seem that this failure cannot simply
be overcome by the creation of new novel
forms. If the new breed of novel is to
adequately articulate the spirit of the
people, it must express their fears and
aspirations, their strength and power to
effect change in a manner which is closely
allied to that elusive quality: the
people's culture.76

A special edition of the French publication, Echos du

Commonwealth, 6(1981), published a number of articles on Petals
of Blood. The most useful were those on symbolism by Albrecht
and Bardolph. One brief yet informative article that would be
recommended for those who are reading Ngugi for the first time
is Ime Ikiddeh's "Ngugi wa Thiong'o: The Novelist as
Historian. "77

World Literature Written in Enqlish regularly publishes

articles on Ngugi. Two of the best in the last ten years are
Bernth Lindfors' "Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Early Journalism." and
Govind Narain Sharma's "Ngugi's Apocalypse: Marxism,
Christianity and African Utopianism."78

Ngugi wa Thiong'o's writing has spanned the last twenty-

two years of Kenya's tumultous history. During that time as a
novelist, playwright, and essayist, he has been able to record
w
the socio-economic crisis that have played the development of
the new state of Kenya, whether it be the legacy of colonial
 32

oppression implemented through missionary schools or the

terrible effects of prison camp detention during the "Mau Mau"
Revolution. Whether it be the alienation of communal land
through settler colonialism or the rise of a parasitical
national bourgeoisie, capable of betraying and willing to
betray the nation in order to build a neo-colonial state that
favoured international business interests. Ngugi's novels have
chronicled both the destructive capacity of colonialism and
neo-colonialism as well as the collective and individual
resistance to these forces.

It is the intention of this thesis to focus on the theme

of betrayal in Ngugi's first four novels. The consequences of
betrayal vary frem each historical community that Ngugi
presents in the four novels. Some circumstances demand that a
Kenyan community extract revenge for a betrayal as is in the
case of Mugo in A Grain of Wheat or Boro in Weep Not Child.
Other situations portray private betrayals of the community
that are not culpable, especially where the betrayer is
victimized by the social or political oppression of colonialism
and neo-colonialism. Mumbi in A Grain of Wheat, Wanja in
Petals of Blood are discussed in this perspective. Despite
their limited betrayals, they are capable of regeneration.
Their struggle provides hope for the future. ina ally, other

characters exist in the community whose betrayal is potentially

permanent either because of a distorted social perspective in
the cases of Karanja in A Grain of Wheat, Kabonyi and Joshua
 33

from The River Between, Munira from Petals of Blood, or because

of parasitical class interests in the case of Jacobo and

Howlands in Weep Not Child, the M.P. in A rain of Wheat and
Nderi, Mzigo, Chui, and Kimeria in Petals of Blood.
 FOOTNOTES

l - David Cook and Michael Okenimpke, Nqugi wa Thions'o: An

Exploration of His Writings (London: Heinemann, 1983)
11.

2 . Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Preface to Secret Lives and other

stories (New York: Lawrence Hill, 1975).
3. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary
(London: Heinemann, 1981) 73-74.
4 . Cook and Okenimpke 2.
5. Micere Githae Mugo, "Vision of Africa in the Fiction of
Chinua Achebe, Margaret Laurence, Elizabeth Huxley,
and Ngugi wa Thiong'o." diss., (University of New
Brunswick, 1973) 43.
6. Amooti wa Irumba, "The making of a rebel," Index on
Censorship 3(1980) :20.
'. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of
Languaae in African Literature (London: James Currey,
1986) 11.

0 . Kenneth Parker, "Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong'o" Marxism

Today September 1982 :35.
9. Bernth Lindfors, "Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Early Journalism,"
World Literature Written in Enqlish 20.1(1981) :23-36.
1 0 . Cook and Okenimpke 4.
ll. Cook and Okenimpke, 13; see Lindfors, "Early Journalism"
38-41 for a complete list.

l3. Ngugi, Decolonizing the Mind 75-77.

14. Ngugi, Decolonizing 77.
15. Ngugi, 89-95. See Ngugi's Homecomina. (London: Heinemann,
1978) 145-150 for the proposed changes to the English
Department at Nairobi University.
16. Cook and Okenimpke 6.
17. Cook and Okenimpke 7,ll.
10. Ngugi, Homecominq 13.
19. Ngugi, Decolonizing the Mind 77.

20. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Writers in Politics (London: Heinemann,

1981) 96-97.
21. Ngugi, Writers 96-97.
22. Jane Chesaina, "Who is on Trial in The Trial of Dedan
Kimathi? A Critical Essay on Ngugi wa Thiong'o and
Micere Mujo's The Trial of Dedan Kimathi," Busara 8.2
(1976) :23.
23. Brian Crow, "Melodrama and the 'Political Unconscious' in
Two African Plays," Ariel 14.3 (1983) :25.
24. Anita Shreve, "Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong'o," Viva July
1977 :35.
2 s . G.D. Killam, Introduction, Critical Perspectives on Nqucri
wa Thionq'o (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents
Press, 1984) 8.
26. Magina Magina, "People have a right to know," Interview
with Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Africa February 1979 :30.
2'. See the special issue on Kenya: The Agrarian Question ed.,
P. Anyang N'yong'o, Review of African Political
Economy 20 (January-April 1981).
28. Ngugi, Detained xi,xiv.
29. See Anyang Nyong'o, "The Decline of Democracy and the Rise
of Authoritarian and Factional Politics in Kenya," Horn
of Africa 6.3 (1983-84) :25-34.
Michael Maren, "Hear No Evil", Africa Report November-
December, 1986 :67-71.
"Arrest and Detention in Kenya," Index on Censorship
l(1987) :23-28.
30. Ngugi, Detained 56.
31. It was originally intended that Devil on the Cross was to
be included in Chapter 5 or as a separate discussion in
Chapter 6. Lack of critical material beyond book reviews,
and space have unfortunately prevented a detailed
discussion of this unique novel.
32. Ngugi, Detained 164.
33. Anne Walmsley, "No Licence for Musical," ~nterviewwith
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Index on Censorship l(1983) :22-24.
Ross Kidd, "Popular Theatre in Kenya Part I and 11, Fuse,
(Toronto) 8.1-2 (1984) :259-264 and 11-16.
Ross Kidd, "Popular Theatre and Popular Struggle in Kenya:
The Story of Kamiriithu," Race and Class 24.3 (1983)
:287-304.

For the first time Ngugi used songs from other Kenyan
languages: Luo, Kamba, Lahya, Kisii and Kalenjin.
3 4 . Niik Kojo and Bentil Enchill, "Interview with Ngugi wa
Thiong'o," West Africa December 22-29 :2604-05.
3O. Irene Assiba dgAlmeida, "The Language of African Fiction:
Reflections on Jgugi's Advocacy for an Afro-African
Literature," Presence Africaine 120 (1981-1982) :82-92.
b
Cuthbert K. Oman, "Writing in African Languages: Towards
the Development of a Sociology of Literature," ~recence
Africaine 133-134 (1986) :19-27.
3
36. Chenweizu, Review of Ngugi wa Thior?g1e'sDecclonizinq the
Mind, Times Literary Supplement, 8 May 1987 :499.
37. Ingrid Bjorkman, "Ngugi wa Thiong'o - Interview," Kunapipi
4.2 (1982) :126-133.
3 8 . Bjorkman 133.
39. Ngugi, "Women in Cultural Work: The Fate of Kamiriithu
People's Theatre in Kenya," Development Dialoque 1-2
(1982) :115-133.
4 0 . ~ichard Hall, "Kenya protest at play," The Observer Oct.
21, 1984 :14.
Julie Kitchener, "Keeping Kimathi Alive," New Africa
October 1984 :14.
4 1 . Cameron Duodu, "Secret party leads to arrests," Index on
Censorship 6(1986) :18,35-36.
"Ngugi plans to form a communist party," The Express
(Nairobi) November 1984 :5-8.
Africa Concord 12 March, 1987 :8-15.
4 2 . Robert L. Tignor, The Colonial Transformation of Kenya
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1976) 18-22.

Cynthia Brantley, The Giriama and Colonial Resistance

in Kenya 1800-1920 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981) 84-90.
Myrtle S. Langley, The Nandi of Kenya (London: C.
Hurst, 1979) 7.
Carl G. Rosberg and John Nottingham. The Myth of MG
Mau: Nationalism in Kenya (New York: Praeger Press,
1966) 1-34.

4 3 . Bjorkman 126. For a brief discussion of the Kipande see

Rosberg and Nottingham 45-46.
44. In Weep Not Child, Kenyatta is seen in a positive image.
Boro calls him "Black Moses". Njoroge naively hopes that
Jomo can lead them out of the "wildness" and he like may
Kenyans at the beginning of the Emergency felt despair when
he was arrested. In A Grain of Wheat a mere rumor of
Kenyatta's arrival at a village would command a standing
room only crowd.
4 5 . Ngugi, Detained 90.
4 6 . Detained 161-162.

KCA (Kikuyu Central Association) was an early pre-world

war I1 nationalist movement that organized squatters. It's
tribal basis was changed after it was banned in 1940. A
new multi-national focus was given the anti-colonial
movement through KAU (Kenyan African Union) which became a
mass political organization in 1946. Jomo Kenyatta
acquired its leadership in 1947 in a move to unite workers,
peasants and the national bourgeoisie. KANU (Kenyan
African National Union) was formed in 1959, although the
colonial government would not allow Kenyatta to be
registered as leader until independence. Kanu has been the
dominant party in Kenya since 1959, absorbing or banning
political competition from any other political party.
For information on the:
1) KCA See Rosberg and Nottingham 96-104,
177-78.
 2) KAU See Rosberg and Nottingham 212-233
Leys 48-49.
Oginga Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru (London:
Heinemann, 1969) 95-122.
Nicola Swainson, The Development of
Corporate Capitalism in Kenya 1918-
1977 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980) 175,184.
3) KANU See Henry Bienen, Kenya: The Politics
of Participation and Control
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1974) 66-130.
Leys 56-62, 212-227.
Odinga 193-218, 253-315.
4 7 . Jomo Kenyatta, Sufferinq Without Bitterness (Nairobi: East
African Publishing House, 1968) 241.
4 e . John Barry, "How Jomo's royal family grabbed the
nation's wealth," Sunday Times (London) 17 Aug. 1975
:5-6

4 9 . Ngugi, Writers in Politics 51.

O . See Crow 30.

Chesaina 21-37.
Michael Etherton, Development of African Drama
(London: Hutchinson, 1982) 165-178.
5 1 . Donald L. Barnett and Karari Njama, Mau Mau from Within
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966) 51-54.
5 2 . David Maughan-Brown, Land, Freedom, and Fiction: History
and Ideoloqy in Kenya (London: Zed Press, 1985) 20.
g 3 . Maina wa Kinyatti ed., Thunder from the Mountains: Mau Mau
Patriotic Songs (London: Zed Press, 1980).
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, "Mau Mau is Coming Back: The
Revolutionary Significance of 20th October 1952 in Kenya
Today" from Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression and
Neocolonialism (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press,
1983) 7-31.
5 4 . Maughan-Brown 23-30.
Roger Van Zwanenberg, The Asricultural History of
Kenya, Historical Association of Kenya Paper No.1
(Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1972) :31-52.
5 5 . Maina wa Kinyatti, "'Mau Mau': The Peak of African
Political Organization in Colonial Kenya," Kenya
Historical ~ e v i e w5.2(1977) 290-292.
Barnett and Njama 55.
The connection between "Mau Mau" and KAU has been
discussed by Bildad Kaggia, Roots of Freedom 1921-1963
(Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1975) 113-114.

5 6 . Barnett and Njama 55-59.

Maughan-Brown 31-33.
Kinyatti 244-295.
"7. Kinyatti 295.
5 8 . Maughan-Brown 35.
Statistically the divisions in 1969 between the major
tribes in 100,000's were:
Kikuyu Embu Meru & Luhya Kamba Kisii
220 10 60 150 150 120 70

Mijikanda Somali Masai Taita Other

50 30 20 10 50

Kenyan Statistical Abstract 1971 as quoted by Leys

276.
5 9 . Kinyatti 298.
6 0 . Maughan-Brown 3 8 .
6 1 . Kinyatti 297.
6 2 . See Maughan-Brown 38-41 for a discussion of "popular"
settler literature including the work of Davies,
Kitson, Henderson, and Ruark.
63 . Barnett and Njama 387.
6 4 . Maughan-Brown 56-58.
 Kinyatti 303-305.
6 s . See Ngugi, Barrel of a Pen 7-31, 55-69.

Al-Amin Mazrui, "Cry for Justice," Index on censorship

4 (1983) 23-27.
Abdilatif Abdulla, "Mnazi: The Struggle for the
Coconut Tree," Index on Censorship 4(1983) 32.

G 6 . See the following articles for a brief chronology of

repression in Kenya:
Livingstone Njomo Waidura, "Clamp down on Drama," Is
Shakespeare a suitable hero for Kenya?," Index on
Censorship l(l985) 23-24.
Michael Maren "Hear No Evil," Africa Report
November-December 1986 67-71.
Duodu 18,23-29.
"Kenya: Stormy Weather," New African June 1986, 6-13.
"Arrest and Detention in Kenya," Index on
Censorship 1119871 23-29.
Moussa A Wounda, "Moi Fights off MwaKenya,"
African Concord 12 March 1987 :8.

Elizabeth Kanyogonya, "23 year struggle - but not yet

Uhuru," African Concord 12 March 1987 :lo.
6 7 . Ngugi wa Thiong'o, "The Writer in a Neo-colonialism
State," The Black Scholar 17.4 (1986) :lo.
6 e . Cook and Okenimpke.

G.D. Killam, ed, Critical Perspectives on Nquqi wa

Thionq'o (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents
Press, 1984) .
G.D. Killam, An Introduction to Nguai wa Thiong'o
(London: Heinemann, 1980).
C.B. Robson, Ngugi wa Thionq'o (London, MacMillan,
1979).
70. Govind Narain Sharma, "Ngugi's Apocalypse: Marxism,
Christianity and African Utopianism in Petals of
Blood," World Literature Written in Enqlish
8.2(1979) :302-314.
Cyril Treister, "An Addition to the Genre of the
Proletarian Novel" ed . G. D . Killam, Critical
Perspectives on Nqugi wa Thiong'o (Washington, D.C.:
Three Continents Press, 1984) :267-270.

72. Govind Narain Sharma, Review of Clifford B. Robson's, Nquqi

wa Thionq'o, Research in African Literature
14.2(1983) :242.
73. Tobe Levin, "Women as Scapegoats of Culture and Cult: An
Activist's View of Female Circumision in Ngugi's The
River Between," ed. Carole Boyce Davies and Anne Adams
Graves, Ngambika: Studies of Women in African
Literature (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press,
1986) 205-221.
Jennifer Evans, "Mother Africa and the Heroic Whore:
Females Images in Petals of Blood," ed., Hal Wylie,
Eileen Julien and Russell J. Linnerman, Contemporary
African Literature (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents
Press, 1984) 57-65.
74. David Maughan-Brown, Land Freedom and Fiction ....
7 9 . Jabbi Bu-Buakei, "Conrad's Influence on Betrayal in A Grain
of Wheat," Research in African Literature 11.1(1980)
:50-83.

7 6 . Lisa Curtis, "The Divergence of Art and Ideology in the

Later Novels of Ngugi wa Thiong'o," Ufahamu 12.2(1984)
:212.

77. Ime Ikiddeh, "Ngugi wa Thiong'o: The Novelist as

Historian," ed. Bruce King and Kolawole Ogungbesan,
Celebration of Black and African Writina, (Zaria:
University of Ahmadu Bello and Oxford University
Press, 1975) :204-216.
7 8 . Bernth Lindfors, "Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Early Journalism,"
World Literature Written in Enqlish 20.1(1981) :23-41.
Sharma, Nguqi's Apocalypse 302-314.
 THE LAND AND COLONIALISM:
THE FOUNDATION OF BETRAYAL AND RESISTANCE
IN THE NOVELS OF NGUGI WA THIONG'O

Chapter Two

The River Between,' originally titled, The Black Messiah,

was Ngugi's first novel despite its late publication in 1965.
It recorded the clash of missionary and traditional Kenyan
interests, represented both symbolically through two isolated
Gikuyu ridges (Kameno and Makuyu) and literally by two
absolutists, Kabonyi the traditionalist and Joshua, the
evangelical priest. Waiyaki, Nyambura, and Muthoni are the
causalities of these polarized views. The cultural clash
brought on by the interaction of traditional and colonial
interests is well illustrated here as is the fallacy of
education for it's own sake.

Colonial education and its inherent contradictions for the

colonized Gikuyu is the link between Weep Not Chil.d2 and its
predecessor, The River Between. Njoroge, the alienated
protagonist, is socially isolated from his family and is
unaware of it. As a passive observer, he is nauseated by the
"Mau Mau" struggle of the 1950's. Numbed by his own self-
importance, he is oblivious to both the sacrifices of his
father, Ngotho and that of his brothers, Boro and Kamau. Only
 43
after he is tortured by Howlands and confesses his own
cowardice, does he begin to realize the destructiveness of the
colonial experience.

Njoroge's betrayal of family is symptomatic of that we

later meet on the eve of Kenyan independence, by four survivors
of the colonial "Emergency," who in various ways have betrayed
their community, Thaibai in Ngugi's third novel, A Grain of
Wheat.3 While Njoroge's passive betrayal is left unresolved,
that of the "survivors" (Mugo, Karanja, Gikonyo and Mumbi) is
explored on a broader landscape. The residue of colonialism
that remains is sufficient, however, to stimulate the growth of
a parasitical national bourgeoisie personified by the "M.P."
and later by the attitudes of Gikonyo to a certain extent. The
growth of this class will lead to further betrayals and further
resistance documented in more recent works such as Devil on the
Cross, I Will Marry When I Want, and Barrel of a Pen.

In Petals of Blood4 the conflict between betrayal and

resistance continues unabated in an isolated rural sanctuary of
Ilmorog. Here four protagonists; Mumira, Karega, Abullah, and
Wanja find temporary refuge from personal and political crisis
brought about by the rise of the Post-Colonial State. Their
initial solidarity, brought about by a "long march" to Nairobi,
has two contradictory results. First, it politicized them and
reminded them of the urban corruption they had previously
 44

escaped. Second, the trek and a subsequent air crash generate

so much publicity that it encourages Nderi to plan new
exploitive development in Ilmorog. Ironically, it is Wanja's
and Abdullah's marketing of a local beer, Theng'eta, that
attracts Nderi and other members of the national bourgeoisie to
Ilmorog. The novel ends with a guarded optimism. Wanja,
Abdullah and Karega, even though he is in jail, are resolved to
continue to fight for a free Kenya "tomorrow."

Devil on the Cross, through a satirical attack on the

national bourgeoisie, combined with a series of folk tales and
peasant fables and sayings, is a new popular novel form, one
popularized for the Gikuyu masses first and then published
later in Kiswahili and English for a larger audience. The
fight against the capitalist establishment in Kenya reaches a
higher level of intensity in this novel both because this is
Ngugi's "prison novel" and because of the new approach used by
Ngugi to satirize the inflated power of the national
bourgeoisie, whose materialist fetishes for Western consumer
goods, evident from thieves' speeches in the cave, are
reminiscent of Swift's A Modest Proposal. Contrasting the
thieves' absurd showmanship, is the struggle of the super-
exploited proletariat and the progressive petit-bourgeoisie
personified by Wariinga, Gatuira and Muturi. Wariinga, after
killing the "Rich Old Man", who has exploited her, must like
Karega in Petals of Blood find a sanctuary to continue an even
harder struggle against exploitation and injustice.

Like Wariinga, Ngugi, forced into political exile, must

continue to contribute to the struggle against the parasitical
national bourgeoisie, which has appropriated wealth and labour
from the working people of K e n ~ a . ~

In order to understand the historical process that has

produced such a socio-economic polarization of wealth and
power, we return to his first work, The River Between. By
exploring the physical landscape of colonial Kenya and its
extended metaphors, we can better understand the themes of
betrayal and resistance in Ngugi's novels.

The ridges of Limuru are a central part of the landscape

of Ngugi's first four novels. They are not merely a backdrop
to the plot, but represent symbolically the barrier that will
have to be broken to unite peasant resistance against colonial,
and later neo-colonial rule. With The River Between Ngugi
begins a series of anti-colonial novels that would include Weep
Not child, and A Grain of Wheat. The River Between represents
the beginning of resistance to colonial takeover. Even the
main protagonist, Waiyaki is named after the 19th century
warrior who fought against the efforts of ~mperial~ritishEast
African Company to take over the Kikuyu Highlands of Central
Kenya.
 46
Waiyaki's isolated fight would create the beginning of a
strong proto-nationalist movement, which was continued by Harry
Thuku, the Free School Associations, the Kenya African Union,
and the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Maul. The narrator of A
rain of Wheat establishes the importance of the sacrifice made
by Waiyaki:

looking back we can see that Waiyaki's

blood contained within it a seed, a grain,
which gave birth to a political party whose
main strength thereafter sprang from a bond
with the soil(l3).

The ridges or Central Highlands are an isolated landscape

where the struggle between tradition and colonialism would be
fought. Ngugi's use of this isolated landscape seems designed
to show the gradual erosion of the traditional Gikuyu control
of land from both inherent contradictions within the ridges
themselves as well as from their interaction with colonialism.
The River Between successfully integrates two historical
periods in colonial Kenya: Firstly, the evangelical movement
supported by Joshua and his followers which is historically
representative of the period around 1900. Secondly, the
independent school movement of the 1930's which is epoused by
Waiyaki in the novel as a solution to the division of the
ridges . e

In The River Between the Makuyu and Kaneno ridges are both
 47
divided united by the powerful flow of the Honia river.
Literally defined as the "cure:"

...[it) never dried: it seemed to possess a

strong will to live, scorning droughts and
weather changes .... Honia was the soul of
Kameno and Makuyu. It joined them. And
men, cattle, wild beasts and trees, were
all united by this life-stream(1).

"United" and "Joined" the two ridges see the source of life and
tradition from the Honia River, but differ on its value.

As Rice points out:

... this is a land that brooks no

compromises. The people are identified by
the ridge on which they live. The warning
is implicit that anyone who attempts
compromises between the two ridges will be
destroyed by both.g

The contradictory river is both the flow of life and a barrier

to communal unity. Rain too is seen both as "curse" and
"blessing":

[Waiyakil was angry with the rain. The

rain carried away the soil, not only here
but everywhere. That was why land, in some
parts, was becoming poor. For a time, he
felt like fighting with the rain .... He now
felt like laughing heartily. Even here in
this natural happening, he could see a
contradiction. The rain had to touch the
 soil. That touch could be a blessing or a
curse (65-66).

The Honia River is neutral ground. It accepts all

offerings of rain over time. Even though Waiyaki is conscious
of association of the rain's erosion of the soil with "the
encroachment of the white man," he is unable to stop the
process of colonial occupation:

Carrying away the soil.

Corroding, eating away the earth.
Stealing the land (65).

Nnolim's view of The River Between, is one where the

ridges and Honia river are three parallel lines that "never
meet or merge." The position of the ridges as implacable
antagonists worked by the Honia River is reinforced not only by
ancient tribal differences, but also by the coming of
Christianity to one of the ridges.I0 Makuyu, controlled by the
Christian zealot, Joshua, has initiated the colonial erosion of
the area, while Kameno's stronger sense of traditional
resistance is polarized around the Kiama."

Ngugi refers to the ridges as "sleeping lions which never

woke" as though history would gain control over them wi'thout
their knowledge. Yet later in the same passage the illusion of
passivity is broken by another perspective, where from the
point of the view of the Valley the ridges stood as:
 antagonists ...
two rivals ready to come to
blows in a life and death struggle for the
leadership of this isolated region(1).

The landscape of Kameno is clearly identified with strong

creation myths. Creators of the tribe, Mumbi and Gikuyu had
reportedly lived on Kameno ridge. Centered around a huge
Mugumo tree,I2 a sacred grove celebrating their arrival, was
well maintained by the Gikuyu. Leaders of the past, Mugo wa

Kibiro, a seer, Kamiri, the witch and Wachiori, the warrior had
all been born on Kameno ridge. Makuyu too:

...
claimed that Gikuyu and Mumbi sojourned
there with Murungu on their way the
Mukuruwe wa Gathanga. As a result of that
stay ... leadership had been left to
Makuyu !1) .

As Ngugi indicates, the ridges were truly "isolated."

Even other Gikuyu from Nyeri or Kiamba could not travel there
without getting lost. Only those from the ridges knew the
secrets of the land. Waiyaki attempts to prove this to his
father by bringing home the cattle after dark. The first signs
of division among the community ridges comes from the wrestling
match between the converted son of Kabonyi, Kamau, and
Kinuthia, a traditionalist boy from another ridge. Waiyaki
acts as a mediator in much the same way as he later will
naively attempt to arbitrate the polarized differences of the
two ridges, Kameno and Makuyu.
 50

Isolation of the ridges from Kenyan colonial conflict

ended with the crises over circumcision and education brought
about by the infiltration of Scottish Missionary Society
churches and by zealous converts such as Joshua as well as by
the rigid confines of Kiama council, manipulated by the
opportunist, Kabonyi. An additional cause of the breakdown of
the harmony of the ridges must also be attributed to Waiyaki
himself, who is naively enchanted with his own messianic role
as a predestined leader. He refuses to heed the warnings of
Kinuthia and he fails to understand the source of jealousy in

Kanau.

Waiyaki's betrayal of Kamemo begins and ends in passivity.

When Kinuthia enquires about his attendance at Joshua's church
and his return to the Siriana mission, he refuses to act.
Instead he dismisses the talk of his betrayal as silly
"rumors." Yet Waiyaki is very slow to react to his
responsibility for furthering the divisions of the ridges,
mainly his love and "rumoured" marriage to Nyambura. Again he
ignores Kinuthia's warning:

Kabonyi hates, hates you. He would kill

you if he could. And he is the one who is
doing all this. Why? The Kiama has power.
Power. And your name is in it, giving it
even greater power. Your name will be your
ruin. ... There are young men there. I know
them. They are loyal to Kabonyi. And they
are sworn to keep the tribe pure and punish
betrayal ....(Emphasis is mine). (112).
 51
Waiyaki ignores the will of the community and is the last
to realize that Kamemo wanted "Action Now" against the colonial
intrusion of the white man. His relationship with Nyambura was
perceived as a threat to the community. He momentarily sees
the danger, but quickly dismisses it:

Would an association with Nyambura not be a

betrayal? He would not stand by her. He
would not take her part (122).

He ignores the warning of his mother not to marry Nyambura as

well:

You must not do it. Fear the voice of the

Kiama. It is the voice of the people.
When the breath cf the people turn against
you, it is the greatest curse you can ever
get (123).

The female circumcision crisis of the 1920's and 1930's

was also a divisive issue on the ridges. As Nottingham and
Rosberg indicate:

...it was a bitter and enduring division

between the forces of Kikuyu nationalism
and the Protestant missions. The roots of
the conflict are located in the Kikuyu
challenge to the total cultural
transformation demanded of them by the
missionary church. The missions excluded
any possibility of selective change, by
which the Kikuyu might absorb some elements
of Western culture while rejecting others
as unacceptable to their values or social
 In The River Between, Joshua personifies that demand for
"total cultural transformation." His daughters, Muthoni and
Nyambura, despite their longing to be circumcised, are the
victims of Joshua's totalitarianism and stubborn pride. Both
women will die as a result of his failure to compromise.

The question of female circumcision is first raised in the

novel as an integral part of the landscape as the feelings of
Nyambura toward circumcision ceremonies are explored:

Nyambura was fascinated and felt attracted

to the river. Her breast, glowing with
pleasure, rose and fell with a sigh: she
felt something strange stirring in her
bowels. It was an exhilaration, a feeling
of acute ecstasy, almost of pain, which
always came to her as she watched the snaky
movement and listened to the throb of the
river (23).

Ironically, it is the importance of ceremonies that

attracts both ridges. Joshua focuses on baptism, while his
daughters secretly long to belong to the tribe as well as to
Jesus. While Nyambura represses her feelings of support for
the ceremony by dismissing them as a "wicked reverie," Muthoni
openly demands to be circumcised:

...'I want to be a woman. I want to be a

 real girl, a real woman, knowing all the
ways of the hills and ridges (26).

Muthoni finds the contradiction in her father's rejection

of circumcision:

'Why! Are we fools?' She shook Nyambura.

'Father and mother are circumcised. Are
they not Christians? Circumcision did not
prevent them from being Christians. I too
have embraced the white man's faith.
However, I know it is beautiful, oh so
beautiful to be initiated into womanhood.
You learn the ways of the tribe. Yes, the
white man's God does not quite satisfy me.
I want, I need something more. My life and
your life are here, in the hills, that you
and I know' (26).

Yet when Muthoni gees to her aunt's en Kameno ridge, the

fanatic, Joshua disowns her. He is beyond caring for his own
daughter as his thoughts project his betrayal of Makuyu ridge.
His journey to "Jerusalem" and salvation is an ego-centric one
divorced from the needs of the tribe:

From that day Muthoni ceased to exist for

him, in his heart. She had brought an
everlasting disgrace to him and his house,
which he had meant to be an example of what
a Christian home should grow into.
All right. Let her go back to Egypt. Yes.
Let her go back. He, Joshua, would travel,
on, on to the new Jerusalem ( 3 6 ) .

He considers Kameno a land of "heathens" even though they

are part of his family.

Historically, the issue of circumcision was a

controversial issue which can be further illustrated from the
book by Charity Waciuma. In The Dauqhter Mumbi she records her
intense isolation brought about by her parents' decision to
prohibit her and her sister's circumcision:

About this time, we lost many of our good

friends when they went through the
circumcision ceremony. Because we
Christian girls had not 'been to the river'
we were unclean.... It was believed that a
girl who was uncircumcised would cause the
death of circumcised husband. Moreover, an
un-circumcised woman would be barren.19

According to Jomo Kenyatta the Gikuyu custom of

circumcision is merely the "rite of passage... the trimming the
genital organs of both sexes."i6 Yet evidence to contrary
clearly states that parts of the female anatomy were surgically
removed and crudely at that. Whatever its cultural role, the
physical effects have removed female sexuality and have
endangered her reproductive system and general health.

When clitoridectomy was practiced it led to a

subordination of the female to male.17 Perhaps it might be
suggested that intervention of missionary schools and colonial
legal authorities entrenched a custom whose traditional
authority was not absolute. The control and protection of
 55
women among the Gikuyu was sacrosanct as the tribe was once
controlled by women under Mumbi's family group (Mbani ya
Mumbi), and proved to be overbearing at one stage. A plot was
hatched by the men to impregnate the female leaders and their
followers to render them useless against a takeover six months
later. Polygamy was institutionalized; the lineage was now
traced through the father's family line. Only ten groups were
allowed to retain the names of the daughters of Gikuyu and
Mumbi . I 8

By becoming circumcised, Muthoni betrayed her father,

setting into motion a new division between the ridges.
Yet her attempt to be both Christian and a woman of tribe
fails. She is a victim of col~nialstruggle. As Tobe Levin
indicates: "Doubly alienated, her attempt to achieve wholeness
through mutilation, to reconcile the tribe and Christianity,
cannot bear fruits."lg To Makuyu and Joshua, she died because
she betrayed the Holy Church. To Kameno and the Kiama she died
because she was cursed by the betrayer, Joshua. Waiyaki's
harmony with the land would not be sufficient to protect him
either from the contradictions of colonialism. Just as Joshua
was responsible for division on Makuyu, so Kabonyi, who saw
himself as a messiah, would be the first to betray Kameno. He
would align himself with the traditionalists Kiama merely to
undermine Waiyaki's popular leadership. Kabonyi is in fact
Waiyaki's nemesis. He is motivated solely by jealousy and
hatred. His betrayal is a double one. Not only has he
forsaken Kameno by seeking training from Livingstone, but he
has used the Kiama to punish Waiyaki for personal hatred, not
for the traditional conservative ideology he espouses. His
lack of power motivates him to betray Waiyaki and destroy the
possibility of unity between the ridges:

Kabonyi saw Waiyaki as an upstart, a good-

for-nothing fellow, a boy with rather silly
ideas. He was a mere boy in the face of
someone like Kabonyi, whose age and
experience entitled him to greater
attention. As it was, the state of things
was unnatural. Perhaps Kabonyi would not
'have been so hostile had the young man's
place been taken by Kamau, his own son.
Kamau was as good a teacher as anyone else
and he was certainly older than Waiyaki.
He would therefore have been in a better
position to lead. Nobody could guess the
extent to which Kabonyi resented the rise
of Waiyaki. Alone among the people Kabonyi
knew of the prophecy. He feared Waiyaki
might be the sent one. And he hated this
(92-93) .

Waiyaki is also to blame for the divisions among both

ridges as he puts his personal love for Nyambura beyond
community interest, and more importantly, he unknowingly
betrays his people by failing to fill their need for political
leadership by mistakenly seeing colonial education as a panacea
for disunity on the ridges. At the end of the novel darkness
hides the guilt of betrayers as Waiyaki is led away to be
killed. The traditionalists of the Kiama have won the first
battle against colonialism. For the moment they perceive
themselves as being protected from the effects of colonialism:

The two ridges lay side by side, hidden in

the darkness. And the Honia River went on
flowing between them, down through the
valley of life, its beat rising above the
.
dark stillness.. . (152).

Yet this allusion to protection, personified by the ridges

and the Honia River is ironic. The ridges remain divided and
therefore less protected against the full scale takeover by a
British colonial administration. As Waiyaki warns the people
of Kameno:

We are all the children of Mumbi and we

must fight together in one political
movement, or else we perish and the white
man will always be on our back. Can a
house divided against itself stand?' (149).

The physical land and the people of the ridges are seemingly
protected but the images "hidden in darkness" and "dark
stillness" might also suggest vulnerability.

In Ngugi's next novel, Weep Not Child published before The

River Between, but written after it, the images of "darkness"
no longer protect the land. A full scale colonial penetration
has reduced the Gikuyu of the ridges to squatters on their own
land and has brought about the destruction of the traditional
family unit. Ngugi's opening quotation from Walt Whitman bears
repeating:

Weep, not child

Weep not, my darling
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not be long victorious,
They shall not long posses the sky ....

The images of "ravening clouds" reflect the darkness of

colonialism, whose controlling forces are limited like weather.
Despite this optimistic introduction, the land of ridges is to
be dominated by a white colonial bourgeoisie and a black

collaborating home guard. Ngugi's sub-sections in the novel,

"Waning light" and "darkness falls" chronicle the
destructiveness of colonial penetration in the Central
Highlands . 2

While Weep Not Child does not present the dominant ridges
of Kameno, Makuyu, or the Honia river that are prevalent in The
River Between, there are key landscape images that characterize
and develop our sense of colonial Kenya. Ngugi acknowledges
the ridges both as a former home and as a source for Kipanga in
Weep Not Child.

I have tried to describe the landscape in

Weep Not Child where Kipanga town obivously
stands for Limura, or Ruungai as the town
popularly known, one of the valleys
described in Weep Not Child originates from
Kamiriithu. [later to become an important
political and cultural centre for community
 theatre] .

Dominating this novel's landscape is the division of land

between the settler class, personified by Howlands and the
collaborating indigenous or national bourgeoisie, represented
by Jacobo.22 A second major image is that of "the road" which

divided the people into economic zones. The African peasants

were forced to live in the least productive areas. The Road

image receives more elaborate treatment in Petals of Blood (See
Chapter 5). The "road" introduces the conflict between Howlands
and the peasant, Ngotho in a generalized way through the
historical record. The road and its construction acts as a
record of colonial exploitation. African labour was not

available at first so Italian prisoners constructed the road.

Their children from black women were abused and underfed in
Kipanga. The road symbolizes the divisiveness of colonialism
that segregate Kenyans into classes and races:

In a county of ridges, such as Kikuyu land,

there are many valleys and small plains.
Even the big road went through a valley on
the opposite side. Where the two met they
had as it were embraced and widened
themselves into a plain. The plain, more
of less rectangular in shape, had four
valleys leading into or out of it
at the corners. The first two valleys went
into the country of the Black People: the
other two valleys divided the land of the
Black People from the land of the White
People. This meant that there were four
ridges that stood and watched one another.
Two of the ridges on the opposite sides of
 the long sides of the plain were broad and
near one another. The other two were
narrow and had pointed ends. You could
tell the land of Black People because it
was red, rough and sickly, while the land
of the white settlers was green and was not
lacerated into small strips (7).

The division of land was a perpetual source of conflict

between the white settler class and the Gikuyu peasant
as Ikiddeh suggests:

Historically, land as the source of man's

life, the basis of any social community and
the foundation of all human culture,
remained the sensitive factor in the
contention between Africans and Europeans
in Kenya. From the attempt by Joseph
Chamberlain in 1902 to found 'a national
home for the Jewish race' on thousands of
square miles of land in Kenya and the
official appropriation for British ex-
soldiers after the World War, to the open
seizure and illegal speculation by white
settler-farmers that went on all the time,
the record of British usurpation of land in
Kenya must be one of the most sordid
scandals in colonial

The political struggle between Howlands and Ngotho is over

the control of land. Ngotho is the legitimate owner. His
aboriginal title is based on generations of use by his family.

[Ngotho'sl mind was always directed towards

the shamba. His life and soul were in the
shamba. Everything else with him counted
only in so far as it was related to shamba.
 Even his wife mattered only in so
far as she made it possible for him to work
in it more efficiently without worry from
home (29).

Ngotho's alienation from the land is recorded in a story

to his son, Njoroge. It started with his conscription to the
war effort during World War I. Upon his return, his family is
forcibly removed from their ancestral land. Ironiczlly, Ngotho
is forced to work on ~acobo's'landand work on his "own land"
for Howlands.

By acting as an informer, Jacobo received permission to

plant a cash crop of pyrethrum. Jacobo's wealth is not a
conscious problem for Ngotho until the strike meeting when he
finally realizes that Jacobo was in the pay of the white
establishment. Ngotho discovers Jacobo has "... crystallized
into a concrete betrayal of the people. He became the physical
personification of the long years of waiting and suffering-
Jacobo was a Traitor" (58). Like Kabonyi in The River Between
and later Karanja in A Grain of Wheat, Jacobo personifies those
who betrayed their communities for the power of colonial
affluence and favour. They are victims too of a divisive
foreign ideology, just as Judas was victimized for his
predestined betrayal of Christ. Jacobo like Karanja is a
lackey of his white overseer.24

Howlands, a colonial usurper, is obsessed with owninq the

land. He takes pride in seeing go tho work his land because
Ngotho "tended the young tea plants as if they were his own"
(30). For Ngotho alienation from ancestorial land also means
the death of his family:

...it was a spiritual loss. When a man was

severed from the land of his ancestors
where would he sacrifice to the Creator?
How could he come in contact with the
founders of the tribe, Gikuyu and Mumbi?
(74).

Ngotho's decision to attack Jacobo in order to prove his worth

to Boro, results in a near-collapse of his family. By refusing
to take up Boro's demand for armed resistance against the
settler class, Ngotho erodes his own status as family head.
Ironically, it is the weight of Ngotho's guilt that creates his
betrayal of his family. It is not an active betrayal or
collaboration in the sense of Jacobo, but a passive one built
from a series of inactions. In that way he is similar to
Waiyaki; he was unable to respond against colonial oppression
until it was too late. Above all it was Ngotho's guilt that
undermined his protective status as father, particularly in the
case of Boro:

He had not wanted to be accused by a son

anymore because when a man was accused by
the eyes of his son who had been to war and
had witnessed the death of a brother he
felt guilty ( 7 4 ) .
 63
For his part, Boro had no future on the land. He was
unable to work in the city either. While his generation's
fight against colonialism through "Mau Mau" was an active
progressive cause, Boro as an individual, affected by the loss
of a brother and a father, is almost nililistic in his response
to colonial oppression. His passion for revenge because of the
death of his father and brother consumed him. Two distinct
passages illustrate his alienation from his roots in the soil
and his betrayal of his family. Firstly, a verbal exchange
with a lieutenant in the "Mau Mau":

'Don't you believe in anything?'

'No. Nothing. Except revenge.'
'Return of the lands?'
'The lost land will come back to us maybe. But
I've lost too many of thcse whom I loved for land
to mean much to me. It would be a cheap
victory' (102).

Secondly, his confrontation with Howlands adds a climatic

force to the drama between the white settler and peasant farmer
on the ridges:

'I killed Jacobo.'

' I know '
'He betrayed black people. Together, you killed
many sons of the land. You raped our women. And
finally you killed my father. Have you anything
to say in your defence?'
Boro's voice was flat. No colour of hatred, anger
or triumph. No sympathy.
'Nothing.'
'Nothing. Now you say nothing. But when you took
our ancestral lands - '
 'This is my land! Mr. Howlands said this as a man
would say, This is my woman.
'Your land!, Then, you white dog, you'll die on
your land! (128-29).

With the death of Howlands and probable execution of Boro,

a generational colonial struggle has reached its climax. The
weight of the family's survival now weighs heavily on Ngotho's
two wives, Njeriz5 and Nyokabi as well as on the naive and
suicidal Njoroge, the youngest son of Nyokabi, whom they must
prepare for the future. Colonialism in the Emergency period of
Kenyan history has produced the conditions of betrayal in Weep
Not Child. Jacobo as a "loyalist collaborator" actively betrays
his community even if it means that he is despised by the
colonial settler class, namely Howlands. Ngotho's betrayal is
a passive one; unable to protect any of his four sons from the
destructive colonial machine, he jeopardizes the survival of
his remaining family members by spontaneously attacking Jacobo.
Boro's betrayal is a complex one and originates from his own
sense of having been betrayed by the British colonial
administration who refused to acknowledge the support of the
Kenyan peasantry and working classes' defense of imperialist
interests during World War 11. But more importantly, he
betrays the communal interests of "Mau Mau" by fighting for
personal retribution. Instead of fighting for the freedom of
the land and the protection of his family, Boro contemptuously
murders Howlands and Jacobo. His motive for personal revenge
undermines his revolutionary consciousness, making him
 65

vulnerable to capture, torture, and inevitably death. By

continually reprimanding his father's passivity in the face of
colonial exploitation, Boro goads his father into a rash act of
spontaneity which threatens the survival of the family.

A Grain of Wheat, the third of Ngugi's colonial novels,

does not rely on the physical landscape to set up the conflicts
and passions of his protagonists. The ridges, especially
Thabai, form the central focus of the five days before
independence and the nine days after. However, it is the
characters who show change. Mumbi is related to her namesake,
the founding mother of the Gikuyu. She acts as a mother
confessor to the guilt-ridden Mugo. Like Njeri and Nyokabi in
Weep Not Child, she is the strength of both the present and the
future. Gikonyo, whose name closely resembles the father
figure Gikuyu, is a carpenter and creative builder. Countering
their growth are two isolated individuals: Karanja, who follows
the collaborationist route developed through Jacobo in Weep Not
Child, and Mugo, a flawed seer who follows his own misguided
direction to avoid becoming part of the Thabain community's
struggle to preserve its independence. Unlike his traditional
name sake, Mugo wa Kibiro, Mugo's vision is paranoid; his
isolation is destructive for the community and for himself.
His role on the Kenyan landscape is a contradictory one as he
is both a Judas because of his betrayal of Kihika, and a heroic
figure at Riva detention camp.
 66

Like Kihika, the forest freedom fighter, who is his

nemesis, he is a man who relates strongly to the land, but in
an isolated way. Both men play a symbolic role in terms of the
political landscape of the novel as "grains of wheat."26
Mugo's character takes on a degree of complexity through his
added role in the novel's rain symbolism.

From Mugo's obsession with rain in Chapter one, it is

possible to sense some of his mental instability. Mugo, the
false champion of the detention camp, is clearly suffering
psychologically for his betrayal of Kihika. Even the materials
that make up his hut seem to be against him:

Sooty locks hung from the fern and grass

thatch and all pointed at his heart. A
clear drop of water was delicately
suspended above him. The drop fattened and
grew dirtier as it absorbed grains of soot
(3).

"Sooty rain" and the "thought of cold drop" falling on his head
are evidence that the elements are against him. Rain, usually
a boon to the farmer, is seen by Mugo as one more element which
accentuates a night of guilt. Jabbi clarifies the suffering
that Mugo is undergoing as the result of the betrayal:

The opening paragraph of the novel is a

subtle enactment of this guilt, or rather,
of his inner conflict in grappling with its
sustained concealment. It is the record of
 a dream by Mugo on the Sunday morning
proceding Uhuru now only four days away.*'

His guilt is reawakened further when he observes the

"silent pool" in Mumbi's eyes while she narrates her own
problems and those of the village of Thabai. Later, on Uhuru
day, Mugo is able to walk in the rain before his visit to
Gitogo's mother. Here and on the way back to his hut, Mugo
suffers no more guilt-ridden nightmares. His confession to the
village has finally lifted the burden of guilt from him.
Killam sees this as "a cleansing rain, symbolizing his
regeneration, a baptism for a new life."28

This is an exaggeration as Mugo is about to be tried and

later executed. Perhaps Mugo can be seen as finally joining
the community by both confessing his guilt publicly and by
saving Karanja's life.

Judging by General R's ironic comment: " 'Your deeds alone

will condemn you... no-one will ever escape from his own
actions, "' Mugo will not be totally judged on his betrayal of
Kihika. After all he did incite a political defiance of
Thompson's detention camp and he attempted to save a woman from
a brutal beating in a counter-insurgency trench. Mugo's role
as a Judas betrayer thus has its positive side effects. He has
betrayed the messianic leader, Kihika, to the colonial
authorities, but he ironically provides the spark for
opposition within the detention camps. BY confessing h i s i
I
crime against the people, Mugo has cleared the air temporarily,
giving the community the sense of a new start with the !
independence celebration. As the epigraph of the novel
suggests : "grains of wheat" have the "potential for
transformation," just as the leaders of the revolution or
perceived leaders such as Mugo and Kihika had the potential to
lead the revolution in Kenya. Their deaths as individual
"grains of wheat" have not destroyed the whole crop, but have

started the growth of other "grains" such as Gikonyo, General

R. and Mumbi, who in their own ways have betrayed their
community as well. Chapter Three will discuss in depth the
theme of betrayal in A Grain of Wheat.
 FOOTNOTES
All quotes from The River Between are from the 1975 re-set
edition by Heinemann Educational Books.
All quotes from Weep Not Child are from the 1976 re-set
edition by Heinemann Educational Books.
All quotes from A Grain of Wheat are from the 1975 re-set
edition by Heinemann Educational Books.
All quotes from Petals of Blood are from the 1978 E.P.
Dutton edition.
All quotes from Devil on the Cross are from the 1982 edition
by Heinemann Educational Books.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, "The Culture of Silence and Fear," South,
May 1984 :38.
It is Waiyaki's martyrdom that is a major source of
resistance to British colonial authority. See Carl G.
Rosberg and John Nottingham, The Myth of Mau Mau:
Nationalism in Kenya, (London: Pall Mall, 1966) 13-14.
David Cook and Michael Okenimpke, Nauqi wa Thiong'o: An
Exploration of His Writinss (London: Heinemann, 1983! 7 0 .
Werner Glinda, "The River Between and its Forerunners: A
Contribution to the Theory of the Kenyan Novel," World
Literature Written in Enqlish 26.2(1986) :226.
Michael Rice, "The River Between - A Discussion," from G.D.
Killam, (ed) Critical Perspectives on Nquqi wa Thionq'o,
(Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984) 26.

l o . Charles E. Nnolim, "Background Setting: Key to the

Structure of Ngugi's The River Between," Obsidian 2.2(1976)
:22-23.

l l . The Kiama is a traditional ruling group of elders who

arbitrate disputes and oversee customs. See Elizabeth
Gunner, A Handbook for Teachinq African Literature,
(London: Heinemann, 1984) 38.

Kenyatta refers to several levels or grades of Kiama which

are part of the steps to eldership. It is unlikely if
Ngugi's "Waiyaki" would qualify for the privilege of a
sitting on a Kiama council because of his youth and lack of
. experience. Ironically, an insincere Kabonyi uses this
 argument against Waiyaki during his public trial. See Jomo
Kenyatta, Facinq Mount Kenya (New York: Vintage Books,
1962, reprinted from London: Secker and Warburg, 1938)
193-197, 209-214.
12. The role of the Mugumo tree as a fertility symbol is
explored in an early Ngugi short story, simply called
"Mugumo."
See Secret Lives and other Stories, (New York: Lawrence
Hill, 1975) 2-8.
13. Mugo wa Kibiro was a great seer who "prophesied the
invasion of the Gikuyu country by the whiteman." Chege and
his son, Waiyaki were supposedly related to him. Their job
was to unite the ridges against the onslaught of
colonialism, in particular to prepare for the danger of the
Siriana Mission which had already converted Joshua and
Kabonyi from Makuyu. It is difficult for Waiyaki to accept
his blood tie to Mugo as well as Kameno's betrayal of him,
particularly after Chege's death. Later he too must suffer
the scorn of the ridges.
See Kenyatta 41-48 for a complete account of the prophecy.
14. Rosberg and Nottingham 105.
15. Charity Waciuma, Dauqhters of Mumbi, quoted from ed.
Charlotte H. Bruner, Unwinding Threads: Writinq by Women in
Africa (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1983) 84.
16. Kenyatta 129.
Kenyatta goes further in defending Clitoridectomy "No
proper Gikuyu would dream of marrying a girl who had not
been circumcised, and vice versa. It is taboo for a Gikuyu
man or woman to have sexual relations with someone who has
not undergone this operation" (127).
17. Alex Zanotelli has found the repression of female
sexuality is absolute. Brutally maimed, she is forced to
keep her sexual behaviour within a marital institution.
See Maria Rosa Cutrofelli, Women in Africa: Roots of
Oppression (London: Zed Press, 1983) 137.
In the Sudan one of three types of circumcision, pharaonic
is pre-dominant, making up 83% of residential ciycumcision.
It consists of "the removal of the clitoris, labia minora
and labia majora with two sides being sewn together. Over
90% of the women are circumcised in Northern Sudan between
.age four to eight. Women are debilitated between 15 to 40
 days while the wounds heal.

Asma El Dareen, Woman, Why do you Weep?: Circumcision and

its Consequences (London: Zed Press, 1982) iii-v, 1-8, 92-
106, 121.
In Kenya colonial authorities took action to limit the
excision of the clitoris after 1926. Excisions and
pharaonic circumcision are still practiced today in Kenya.
It is estimated in 1982 that 4.7 million women in Kenya
have had this operation, although the Luo, the second
largest tribe in Kenya doesn't practice circumcision, which
therefore leads to the problem of over exaggeration. Moves
by President Moi to ban female circumcision have come to
naught because any serious action would undermine a
precarious political situation especially if the Gikuyu
rural population believes that banning of female
circumcision is immoral or creates infertility in women.
See Leonard J. Kouba and Judith Muasher, "Female
Circumcision in Africa: An Overview," African Studies
Review 28.1(1985) :95-110.
In a recent article in an African magazine, thieves in
Wakulkima market, Nairobi were found to be uncircumcised
and were promptly taken to a clinic where the deed was
performed. "Market workers [said] that they had to carry
out circumcision to prevent theft. Most thefts were
carried out by the uncircumcised. The knife was the only
cure. "
See New African Maqazine July 1985 :35.
18. James Olney, Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African
Literature (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1973) 90-91.
19. Tobe Levin, "Women as Scapegoats of Culture and Cult: An
Activist's View of Female Circumcision in Ngugi's The River
Between, ed., Carole Boyce Davis and Anne Adams Graves,
Nqambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (Trenton
New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1986) 205-221.
- 2 0 . For a discussion of this concept, particularly the
alienation of Gikuyu land by the rise of settler
colonialism. See Lionel Cliffe, "Penetration and Rural
Development in the East African Context" ed., Lionel
Cliffe, J.S. Coleman, and M.R. Doornbos, Government and
Rural Development in East Africa: Essays on Political
Penetration (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977) 19-50.
Christopher Leo, Land and Class in Kenya (Toronto:
University of Toronto, 1984) 27-43.
See Ngugi's Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (London and
Nairobi: Heinemann Educational Books, 1981) 73.
Jacobo is not a Gikuyu name. It may be derived from Joseph
Conrad's story, "A Smile of Fortune," from 'Twixt Land and
Sea: Three Tales (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1978)
13-84.
An Alfred Jacobus is portrayed as an economic
opportunist who preys on foreign ships who arrive at
Maurituis Island in the Indian Ocean. Ngugi was studying
Conrad at Makerere University at the time Weep Not Child
was being written.
Conrad's rogue Jacobus, through subtle means is able
to dominate the chandler trade in Mauritius, while enticing
a "sea-captain" into economic dependence. Jacobus
victimizes his illegitimate daughter, Alice to secure
profit from cargo of rotting potatoes. The "sea captain"
is initially conscious of Jacobus' purpose: "Was it the
sign of some dark design against my commercial innocence?"
Yet his resolve to resist Jacobus is broken through a
perverse fascination, although no real affection for Alice.
Both Jacobo and Jacobus betray family and community
interests for the sake of money. There lies a small
parallel between Conrad and Ngugi.
Ime Ikiddeh, "Ngugi wa Thiong'o: The Novelist as
Historian" ed., Bruce King and Kolawole Ogungbesan,
Celebration of Black and African Writing (London: Oxford
University Press, 1975) 210.
Cook and Okenimpke 57.
Njeri has the clearest perception of the deceit of
colonialism than any of the characters in Weep Not Child.
... it seems all clear as daylight. The white man makes a
law or a rule. Through the rule or law. .. he takes away
the land and then imposes many laws on the people
concerning that land and many other things, all without
people agreeing first as is the old days of the tribe. Now
a man rises and opposes that law which made right the
taking away of land. Now that man is taken by the same
people who made the laws against which that man was
fighting. He is tried under those alien rules. Now tell
me who is that man who can win even if the angels of God
.
were his lawyers.. (75).
2 6 . David Cook, "A New Earth: A Study of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A_
Grain of Wheat" ed., David Cook, African
----- Literature:
-- A
Critical View (London: Longman, 1977) 104.

*'. Bu-Buakei, Jabbi, "The Structure sf Symbolism in A Grain of

Wheat," Research in African LLterature 16.2(1985) : 2 2 5 .
G.D. Killam, An Introduction to the-Writinqs of Nguqi
(London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1980) 63.
 THE SEEDS OF A NATIONAL BETRAYAL
IN A GRAIN OF WHEAT

Chapter Three

Ngugi was interested in both the historical and

psychological struggle in his analysis of betrayal. The role
of Frantz Fanon, who Ngugi was reading immediately prior to
writing A Grain of Wheat, was another important inspiration for
the writing of the novel. Ngugi frequently quoted Fanon in
Homecominq, which he called "an integral part of the fictional
world of The River Between, Weep Not Child, and A Grain of
Wheat. " I

In a 1963 review of Fred Majdalany's A State of Emergency:

The Full Story of Mau Mau, Ngugi discusses the necessity of a
revolutionary violence as a means to change a corrupt and
oppressive colonial government:

Violence in order to change an intolerable

unjust social order is not savagery: it
purifies man. Violence to protect and
preserve an unjust, oppressive social order
is criminal and diminishes mene2

This parallels the thinking of Fanon in Wretched of the

Earth,3 yet Ngugi's review was published a year before Ngugi
read Fanon at Leeds Uni~ersity.~
 75
The theme of betrayal in modern literature often reveals
the dishonest and corrosive foundations of personal and
historical r e l a t i o n s h i p s . V n Harold Pinter's Betrayal, Jerry
and Robert, two close friends, betray their friendship as well
as their marriages. Emma, Robert's wife, also betrays him by
having an affair with Jerry. All three characters avoid
discussing their betrayals and in doing so perpetuate the
initial betrayal between Jerry and Emma. Social alienation
observed in this play is a direct cause of betrayal.6

A direct comparison between the triangle of betrayal

between Gikonyo, Mumbi, and Karanja in Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat
and the three characters in Pinter's Betrayal is not possible.
However, if we s t a r t with the conclusion of A Grain of Wheat we
realize that the damage of betrayal is alienating, but not
debilitating. After the renewal of seven days of rest in the
hospital as a result of the footrace accident, Gikonyo is ready
for change. His transformation is at first hesitant as he
tries to forget that Mumbi cares for Karanja's child. Mumbi

reminds him of the need to communicate and to avoid past

errors:

People try to rub out things, but they

I . . .

cannot. Things are not so easy. What has

passed between us is too much to be passed
over in a sentence. We need to talk, to
open our hearts to one another, examine
them, and then together plan the future we
want. But now, I must go, for the child is
 ill' (213).

Metaphorically, the sick child represents the difficulty

which lies ahead in the potential of the marriage between
Gikonyo and Mumbi as well as the problems inherited from an
incomplete revolutionary war, where Kenya was divided into
,
"freedom fighters" and "loyalists." Every character in the
novel is somehow tainted from the revolutionary struggle in
Kenya. Each major character endures or participates in a
betrayal. Mugo, Karanja, Gikonyo, Kihika, and Mumbi make
choices. Each character in his own way betrays his community,
his nation and his friends during the "Mau Mau" struggle.
Ngugi's comments, written before the writing of A Grain of
Wheat, illuminate the results cf damage d o x r to the social
fabric of Kenya during the State of Emergency in Kenya between
1952 and 1963:

The terrible thing about the "Mau Mau" war

was the destruction of family life,
distrust of personal relationships; you
found a friend betraying a friend, a father
suspicious of his son, a brother doubling
the sincerity of a brother.'

Clearly, the social alienation present in both the novel

and in colonial Kenya as well, are the result of a divided
society. Most of the main characters in A Grain of Wheat are
marked by either a private or political betrayal. Aberrahmane
Arab lists the main betrayals without analyzing them:
 Private betrayal he [Ngugi] seems to argue
is no less important than political
betrayal. Linkage exists through a web of
treachery and intrigue. Mugo betrays a
friend and the movement. Karanja is also a
traitor. He joins the troops of repression
and seduces Mumbi. Gikonyo feels guilty as
he confessed the oath, and thus betrayed
the movement

Furthermore, Arab feels that the pursuit of other

betrayals in the novel would be t r i ~ i a l . ~Are the betrayals of
the "Mau Mau" leadership any less significant than these of
villagers? The contradictions of General R., Lieutenant
Koinandu, and Kihika, especially the latter, are just as
significant as Mugo, Gikonyo, and Mumbi if one is to fully
understand the destructive roots of colonialism in the novel.

The betrayal and execution of Kihika, the heroic guerilla

fighter, is a result of colonial violence against the Gikuyu
people. He is an heroic martyr whose flaws are brought through
his relationship with Mugo.

Ngugi has developed the character Kihika beyond an

original "Mau Mau" revolutionary. Through the use of disguise
and daring, Kihika is built into an epic "Mau Mau" character
reminiscent of Stanley Mathenge or Dedan Kimathi, two of the
more important leaders of the Land and Freedom Army of the
1950's. A play by Ngugi and Micere Githae Mugo on the latter
would be written eight years after the publication of
Grain of Wheat. Several ironies humanize and expand Kihika's
character. First, he is careless, perhaps even foolhardy,
in \,
first approaching Mugo immediately after the murder of District
Commissioner Robson. Second, Kihika uses the bible, a primary
means of establishing a colonial infrastructure, as a source of
revolutionary inspiration.

Politically Mugo wishes to avoid organizational

commitment, preferring instead to fantasize about his role as

the liberator, Moses. Ironically, it is Kihika who chooses him

to organize underground political support in the new
reorganized hamlet of Thabai.

Mugo tills his land as an isolated orphan, without

commitment to family or village:

Why should Kihika drag me into a struggle

and problems I have not created? Why? He
is not satisfied with butchering men and
women and children. He must call on me to
bathe in the blood. I am not his brother.
I am not his sister. I have not done harm
to anybody. I only looked after my little
shamba and crops. And now I must spend my
life in prison because of the folly of one
man (168-69) .

He is able to define his hatred of Kihika as one of

 79
jealousy. Unlike Mugo, Kihika was part of the land. His
family would continue:

Kihika who had a mother and a father, and a

brother, and a sister, could play with
death. He had people who would mourn his
end, who would name their children after
him, so that Kihika's name would never die
from man's lips. Kihika had everything,
Mugo had nothing (169).

Paradoxically, Mugo is a victim as well as a traitor. His

poverty and ignorance lead him to his decision to betray
Kihika. He lacks a national consciousness and he has no stake
in the community. As Palmer suggests, Mugo's hatred:

...
stems not from jealousy but from fear
that Kihika and the kind of action he
proposes threaten Mugo's hopes of success
and liberation from a life of squalor.1

This view is limiting as we cannot ignore Mugo's own

definition for the motivation for betrayal. To re-emphasize
part of an earlier quote:

Kihika had everything; Mugo had nothing.

This thought obsessed him; it filled him
with a foamless fury, a tearless anger,
that obliterated other things and made him
unable to sleep (169-170).

Mugo's jealous fixation will weaken his will to act

rationally and force him to act against the community. He is
unable to make a decision after waiting a week for Kihika's
return. Ngugi's description of ~ u g o being "caught ....
undecided" suggests to a certain extent that Mugo is rootless
and therefore unable to control himself. Physically, he has
just spent a week of sleepless nights and is totally exhausted.
Symbolically, he chooses a path to his shamba that is "unused"
in order to avoid meeting anyone. Ironically, he ignores the
wastes of the former village of Old Thabai brought about by the
relocation of the village by colonial authorities. Dew soaks
his feet, causing him to tremble uncontrollably. Even while
resting, wind blows "dust" and "rubbish" in his face. All of 1
these events seem to foreshadow the results of his betrayal-
the creation of a colonial wasteland and the destruction of a
warrior of the land. The discovery of a wanted poster of
Kihika gives him a twisted pleasure as he fantasizes about his
role as Moses:

And in his dazed head was a tumult of

thoughts that acquired the concrete logic
of a dream. The argument was so clear, so
exhilarating, it explained things he had
been unable to solve in his life. I am
important. I must not die. To keep myself
alive, healthy, strong - to wait for my
mission in life - is a duty to myself, to
men and women of tomorrow. If Moses had
died in the reeds, who would ever have
known that he was destined to be a great
man? (171).

The thoughts of reward and renewed life with children, a

wife, and a big house replaced the anguish of his previous
 81

jealousies, but first he must withstand the taunts of the

"loyalist" guards, who question his manhood as well as endure
the slap and spit of the District Officer, John Thompson. His
physical collapse at this point is a moral and political one as
well. After being abused by Thompson and his loyalist guards,
Mugo loses his purpose; he now becomes the lackey of Thompson,
his "Effendi" (boss) recognizing his subordination to Thompson

as well as the bitterness of betrayal:

He did not want the money. He did not want

to know what he had done (174).

From the depth of this despair, Mugo will be able to

prevent further betrayal and even atone for his treachery by
attempting to save a pregnant Wambuka at the security trench
and by initiating a hunger strike at Riva concentration camp.

Ironically, it is Mugo who hears the confession of Mumbi

who was advised to seek his help by Kihika. Mugo's first
reaction is to negate her discussion of Wambuka, Njeri, and
Kihika. "He did not want to look at those things .... Leave me
alone, he wanted to tell her" (121). Yet Mumbi's own
confession seems to relieve Mugo momentarily of the weight of
his guilt:

... before Mumbi told her story, the huts

had run by him, and never rang a thing of
 the past. Now they were different: the
huts, the dust, the trench, Wambuka,
Kihika, Karanja, detention camps, the white
face, barbed-wire, death. He was conscious
of the graves beside the trench. He
shuddered cold, and the fear of galloping
hooves changed into the terror of an
undesired discovery. Two years before, in
the camps, he would not have cared how
Wambuka lay and felt in the grave. How was
it that Mumbi's story had cracked open his
dulled inside and released imprisoned
thoughts and feelings? (149).

A confrontation the following day with Mugo, nearly

results in Mumbi's death as Mugo madly attempts to strangle

her. When he confesses to her she is not able to seek

revenge: "... she did not want anybody to die or come to harm
because of her brother" (181). Mumbi even attempts to persuade
%

Mugo to run away. Reconstruction is ncw her main motive; she

does not seek the blood revenge of Lt. Koinandu and General R.
The need for renewal is reflected in a conversation during
Independence day with Warui and Wambui:

'I must go now. I'm sure the fire is ready

at home. Perhaps we should not worry too
much about the meeting ...
or... about
Mugo. We have got to live.'
'Yes, we have the village to build,' Warui
agreed.
'And the market tomorrow, and the fields to
dig and cultivate ready for the next
season,' observed Wambui. ..
'And children to look after,' finished
Mumbi ....
(210).

Mugo intervenes to avoid the persecution or blame of another

accused. Ironically, in Mugo's case, it is to save the life of
another traitor, Karanja. His confession is brutally frank:

'You asked for Judas,'... 'You asked for

the man who led Kihika to this tree, here.
That man stands before you, now. Kihika
came to me by night. He put his life into
my hands, and I sold it to the whiteman.
And this thing has eaten into my life all
these years' (193).

Ngugi explains in Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary the

importance of Mugo's suffering and fate:

In the novel A Grain of Wheat, I tried,

through Mugo who carried the burden of
mistaken revolutionary heroism, to hint at
the possibilities of the new Kenyatta. But
that was in 1955-55 and nothing was clear
then about the extent to which Kenyatta had
negated his past, nor the sheer magnitude
of the suffering it would cause to our
society today.ll (Emphasis is mine).

Kihika is a true patriot of the Kenyan people. He, unlike

Mugo, represents the interests of the peasant who seeks to
reclaim land lost from the Highlands of Central Kenya. Kihika
attempts to stand above the other participants in the Land and
Freedom Army. He continually finds support for the
independence of his people within the contradictions inherent
 84

within the Bible. Ironically, his inspiration to direct the

revolution comes not from animist or class traditions, but from
the hard lessons of the Old Testament. As one critic notes:

... he is the young hero who sees the

vision of an independent Kenya, [he] is
moved by the story of Moses and the
children of Israel, and like the great
prophet he hopes to lead his people to the
promised land. His eloquence makes people
aware of their servitude, and inspires them
to plunge into the struggle for freedom; it
is his martyrdom which 'waters the tree of
freedom' and keeps the struggle alive by
infusing new life into the party, which
finally leads to freedom.12

The image of Kihika's Christ-like martrydom seemed to stay

with Ngugi three years after the publication of A Grain of
Wheat:

... Christ himself had always championed

the cause of the Jewish masses against both
the Pharisees (equivalent to our privileged
bourgeoisie) and the Roman colonialists: he
was in any case crucified on the orders of
the Roman conquerors. One could say that
if Christ had lived in Kenya in 1952, or in
South Africa or Rhodesia today, he would
have been crucified as a Mau Mau terrorist,
or a Communist.13

By tracing the early life of Kihika, Ngugi gives him

historical depth as a nationalist figure. Kihika epitomizes
the history of many Kenyan nationalists who suffered and
learned under the tutelage of missionary school.14 To him the
 85

revolutionary experience of fighting in the Second World War

shattered the invincibility of the British Empire. Once he
combined this experience, with an understanding of the
historical roots of the struggle against colonialism, Kihika
was prepared to take on the responsibility of leadership.15
Ironically, he is able to extract Biblical references to
support the necessity of violence in the revolutionary
struggle.

Kihika is not, however, a saint. He is a man with

definite problems which will endanger his ability to lead the
struggle. One source of instability comes with his reaction to
his assasination of Tom Robson. Nazareth has compared Kihika's
mental anguish after killing of Robson with the mental disorder
recorded by Fanon during the Algerian Revolution.16 The most
important flaw in his character is his naive trust in the
traitor, Mugo. It is his over-confidence and carelessness in
trying to recruit Mugo that costs him his life. Fortunately,
for the movement his death is seen as martyrdom. His hanging
symbolically parallels the crucifixion of Christ and provides
the impetus for General R. and Lt. Koinmandu to continue the
fight for independence.

By trusting Mugo, Kihika indirectly betrays the

revolution. By making himself vulnerable he causes a breakdown
in the leadership of the "Mau Mau movement." Mugo is not a
traitor by nature, but he is confused and irritated by the
responsibility Kihika burdens him with. A politically
disciplined recruiter would not announce himself as a murderer
of a district officer, yet Kihika does. Kihika does not take
sufficient care in screening Mugo. While he is forced to seek
shelter from the police, it is not made explicit enough why
Kihika thinks Mugo would become an ideal recruit. Mugo's
reaction is one of fear and irritation. Yet Kihika is unaware
of Mugo's resistance, and he seeks to use him as a sounding
board for a rationale for the necessity of violent resistance
to colonial rule. Kihika's failure to use the "Mau Mau"
loyalty oath brings about his downfall.

The rejection of t h e oath by Kihika might be seen as a

betrayal of the movement, Firstly, he is cynical of-- its value -

because of the large number of recruits who give up its

secrets., Secondly, his colonial Christian upbringing leads him
Po accept the value of an "individual's" honesty more than the
/collective power of the oath and tribe. Despite Kihika's
<.-_- . --
rejection of the ideological support for mobilizing Kenyan
peasants, the oath was an important vehicle for recruitment.
While there would always be those who would betray a revolution
for the right price, the absence of educated political leaders
necessitated the use of ceremonies and loyalties that the
ordinary peasant understood.17
 87
Nevertheless, Kihika was prepared to die for the cause of
liberation. Unlike Karanja and Gikonyo, he refused to divulge
the oath. Kihika is the regenerative symbol of the "grain of
wheat," that reference cited by Ngugi as the necessary
foundation for the growth of the liberation struggle.18

Yet this symbol is not without its contradictions as

Kihika's leadership lacks a firm ideology. he goal of
reacquiring the land is missing from his speech to Mugo.
Freedom is couched in terms of revenge:

We must kill. Put to sleep the enemies of

black man's freedom. They say we are weak.
They say we cannot win against the bomb.
If we are weak, we cannot win. I despise
the weak. Let them be trampled to death.
I spit on the weakness of our fathers.
Their memory gives me no pride. And even
today, tomorrow, the weak and those with
feeble hearts shall be wiped from the earth
(166).

Kihika's selection of Mugo as village organizer is not

based on any knowledge of his commitment to the liberation of
the land, but merely on the basis that Mugo is a "self-made
man." Yet by the end of the novel Ngugi is suggesting that
"self-made" men such as the one depicted by the opportunistic
MP are inhibiting the socio-economic development of the popular
will of the masses.lg

In a recent study, Maughan-Brown has observed another

contradiction in Kihika's character:

[Kihika] is depicted as an abstract

dogmatist, a man insensitive to, and
uncomprehending of his I girlfriend
Wambuku ."*

He returns to Kihika's earlier years where as a child he

"loved drawing attention on himself by saying and doing things
that he knew other boys and girls dared not say or do" (100).

If Kihika is guilty of betraying "the .movementw through

his arrogance and by his undisciplined recruitment of Mugo,
these weakness are understandable in the historical context.
Leadership was not a strong point of the "Mau Mau" movement.
As Fanon points out:

The political leaders go underground in the

towns, give the impression to the
colonialists that they have no connection
with the rebels, or seek refuge abroad. It
very seldom happens that they join the
people in the hills. In Kenya, for
example, during the Mau Mau rebellion, not
a single well-known nationalist declared
his affiliation with the movement, or even
tried to defend the men involved in it.21

Even those in the novel who are in a position to

help, such as Karanja and Gikonyo, are unable or
unwilling to fight for the community.
 Those who sought to collaborate openly with the colonial
administration, such as Karanja, were ostracized and eventually
exiled from their communities.22 As a colonially appointed
chief, he selfishly searches for an "individual" freedom at the
- - -
L-

expense of the collective freedom of his community., The public

1

betrayal of that community leads him to openly collaborate with

Thompson and the colonial administration. To'Karanja, Mumbi's
refusal to marry him was a bitter pill to swallow. Her
rejection leads to both obsessive behaviour and punitive
actions against the community:

He sold t h e Party and Oath secrets, the

Price of remaining near Mumbi. Thereafter
the wheel of things drove him into greater
and greater reliance on the whiteman. That
reliance gave him power - power to save, to
imprison, to kill. Men cowered before him;
;he despised and also feared them. Women
loffered their naked bodies to him; even
some of the most respectable come to him by
night (182).

One critic suggests that Karanja's motive for betrayal is based

on more than just his attempt to win Mumbi:

It is not only Karanja's disillusionment

with love, but also this vision of
universal selfishness, callousness, and
preoccupation with self-preservation that
shapes his determination to brace himself
for the struggle for life, and compels him
 to look after his own interests.23

In the world of his own village Karanja is both hated and

held in contempt for his role as an intermediary for District
Officer, Thompson. Despite Karanja's betrayal of community,
Ngugi still makes him to some extent a sympathetic character.
He is portrayed as both victim and victimizer. His treatment
by and response to Thompson and his wife clearly make him a
victim of their colonial patronage and racism. In his struggle
to secure what he views as freedom, Karanja is forced to feel
inferior while drinking tea with Mrs. Thompson. Witness the
contrast that Ngugi develops in Margery Thompson versus
Karanja : A

Margery sat opposite Karanja and crossed

her legs. She put her cup on the arm of
the chair. Karanja held his in both hands
afraid of spilling a drop on the carpet.
He winced everytime he brought the cup near
his lips and nostrils (35).

He is afraid to ask the Thompson's about their plans to

leave after the Uhuru celebrations.

Karanja resents being used as an errand boy by both

Thompsons, but he is willing to endure the humiliation of it if
it will enhance his position among the white settlers,
administration, or villagers. He has a tendency to fantasize
about a potential power in uncomfortable situations such as
 91

when he revealed Mumbi's rejection of him to Margery Thompson:

Then gradually he becomes exhilarated, he

wished Mwaura had seen him at the house.
He also wished that the houseboy had been
present, for then news of his visit would
have spread. As it was, he himself would
have to do the telling: this would carry
less weight and power (36).

Karanja's alienation and later his betrayal of the

community is a result of his fixation on colonial values and
customs. His rejection of his community means that he had
accepted the racial sterotypes of the c0lonizers.~4 Karanja
feels so dependent on the established power of the Thompsons he
cannot conceive of a life separate from them. In this way,
Karanja is a victim of colonialism which both occupied h i s
community and his individual psyche.25 Karanja's oppression is
complete once he has divorced himself from his community. His
self-betrayal is that of a victim. As Fanon pointed out,
peasants cannot relinquish control of land without giving up

individual freedom.

There is no occupation of territory, on the

one hand, and independence of persons on
the other. It is the country as a whole,
its daily pulsation that are contested,
disfigured, in the hope of a final
destruction. Under this condition, the
individual's breathing is an observed, an
occupied breathing. It is a combat
breathing.Z6
 /
1'--Karanja chooses the route of betrayal consciously as he
naively believes his loyalty to the colonial administration
1

/
will be rewarded. He is crestfallen when Thompson announces
his departure to England. He is totally unprepared for the
emergence of the domination of "the Party". It is not as
though he has not been warned. Both his mother, Wairimu and
Mumbi have prepared him for the truth yet he chooses to ignore
them:

During the Emergency, Wairimu disapproved

of her son becoming a homeguard and a Chief
and said so. 'Don't go against the people.
A man who ignores the voice of his own
people comes to no good end' (195-196).

Ironically, his survival is ensured by the confession of!

another traitor, Mugo. During Independence Day, the arrival of
two captioned buses, "Narrow Escape" and "Lucky One" chart his
course to exile. During his brief stop at Githima, he mentally
recounts his life as a traitor. The process of understanding
his betrayal is at first limited and incoherent as he is unable
to eat his supper at the bus station. He only "vaguely
remembered the nightmare he had undergone at the meeting when
General R. called for the traitor to go to the platform" (198).

His first definite feeling is one of fear, fear of being

killed and fear of being ruled by "black power." He visualizes
his death as though he was as a helpless rabbit torn to pieces
by a pack of dogs. Saved by Mugo's confession, he is finally
able to ask himself why he is afraid to die. His answer was
only "somehow he had not felt guilty." After all he was
responsible for the death of many freedom fighters. He had
killed for pleasure. This "consciousness of power, this
ability to dispose of human life by merely pulling a trigger,
so obsessed him that it became a need." Unable to comprehend
the meaning of Mugo's confession, he merely thinks it was
wasted on him. In a fit of self-hatred, after suddenly
remembering Mumbi's rejection, Karanja wanders outside and
nearly gets hit by a car.

Remembering his attempt to feel pity and sorrow for Kihika

after he was hanged, only brings on more doubts and more ironic
rationalizations:

What is freedom? ... Was death like that

freedom? Was going to detention freedom?
Was any separation from Mumbi freedom?
(199).

These questions led to the choice of betrayal: "soon after

this, he confessed the oath and joined the home guards to save
his own life" (Emphasis is mine). The clarity of his betrayal
now became evident as his role as the "hooded man" came back to
him. As Robson pointed out:
 The "hooded self" makes us aware of one of
the key issues in the book: self-
identification. As well as finding their
roles in the changing order of society,
characters have also to discover and come
to terms with the tragedy of betrayal and
self-betrayal that events have forced upon
them.2

Unlike Mugo, who betrayed one man, Karanja had betrayed

the whole community. As the "hooded self" he had anonymously
betrayed "those involved in 'Mau Mau' " as they were forced to
queue in front of him. Even while recalling this, he could
still feel the presence of the hood and he could sense the way
he "saw the world."

The illusion of anonymous power presented by the colonial

administration dissipates once he is confronted with a poster
of Mugo at the train crossing: "The picture of Mugo at the
platform, like a ghost rose before him, merging with that of
the hooded man." The "merging" is the moment of truth for
Karanja. Finally, an acknowledgement of betrayal has occurred.
Mugo and Karanja are now one. The eyes of the crowd that
watched Mugo as he confessed the betrayal of Kihika now seem to
angrily judging Karanja at the train station.

This experience parallels the screeching arrival of a

train2@ which painfully reminds Karanja of another failure,
his race with Gikonyo to Rung'ei station. The "independence"
train appears to reject him: "swish(ing) past him, the lights,
 95
the engine and the coaches so close that the wind threw him
back." Karanja is left in "silence" and in "a night-grown
darker", a victim of self betrayal and a traitor to the
community. He is now merely a "worthless ... and harmful weed"
that has been discarded by the people of Thaibai and
Rung ei . ' ' 2

More victimized, yet less involved in the national

betrayal are Mumbi and Gikonyo. It is the problems of their
relationship that show the breakdown in the communal spirit of
/
the Gikuyu peasantry.

As extensions of the creation of the Gikuyu people, the

plight of Mumbi and Gikonyo is the fate of the tribe. Gikonyo
represents the plight of an ordinary peasant. At first he is
supportive and loyal to the liberation struggle, but his
betrayal of the oath weakens his role in both family and
community. His choices or options will be guided by the fate
of others. Firstly, Mumbi chooses him as a lover over the
faster runner, Karanja. Secondly, his regeneration at the end
of the novel, is made possible by the confession of Mugo.
Thirdly, his second race against Karanja results in a broken
leg, but it gives him time to reassess his earlier mistreatment
of Mumbi.

While in the hospital, Gikonyo decides to carve a stool

for Mumbi. This is a symbolic return to the basic skills that
originally won her to him earlier in the novel.30 Gikonyo has
finally learned to love again.

For Mumbi, however, the wounds of Gikonyo's personal

betrayal are slower to heal. As she indicates:

People try to rub out things, but they

,cannot. Things are not so easy. What has
passed between us is too much to be passed
over in a sentence. We need to talk, to
open our hearts to one another, examine
them, and then together plan the future we
want (213).

Perhaps Gikonyo has finally learned the value of a united

struggle, both at home and in the nation, but change in Gikonyo
is tentative - the stool isn't carved and Mumbi isn't as yet,
pregnant.

Previously, Gikonyo suffered when he lived in the

isolation of detention. He is one of the first to confess the
oath, fatalistically condemning his spirit to die alone.
Without learning the circumstances, he condemns Mumbi for being
unfaithful to him. He persecutes her without trying to
discover the nature of her hardships during the "Emergency".
Only after the catharsis of the independence celebration and
the 'confession of the Judas, Mugo will be awaken from his naive
reticence. Earlier, he attempts to find happiness by emulating/
the petit-bourgeoisie practices of the Indian traders, by
hoarding corn and beans, and by overcharging to increase his
profit margins. In some respects then, he too is a traitor to
the people. Ngugi points this out through Gikonyo's rejection
of the traditional collectivist spirits:

God helps those who help themselves, it is

said with figures pointing at a self-made
man who has attained wealth and position,
forgetting the thousands of others who
labour and starve, day in, day out, without
even improving their material lot. This
moral so readily administered seemed true
of Gikonyo. People in Thabai said:
detention camps have taught him to rule
himself (51).

Like Mugo and Karanja, Gikonyo became a victim of colonial

alienation and for the most part he can only rely on his
rituals of the past. While held in detention he clung to the
memory of sexual lrnion with Mumbi as he recalls in a confession
to Mugo:

'It was being born again' .... 'I felt

whole, renewed...
I had made love to many
woman, but I never had felt like that
before' (86).

While this discussion provides an important insight into

the unity of the Mumbi-Gikonyo relationship, there is a certain
weakness portrayed in this discussion. Micere Githae Mugo
feels that:

Gikonyo idealizes Mumbi to cover up his own

weakness and explain his surrender in
detention... that he creates a goddess of
Mumbi to cover that weakness.32

The morning of his release from Yala detention camp

reveals how dependant Gikonyo is on an idealized Mumbi who
could hide his fears of betrayal, especially after the hanging
of Gutu, his oath administrator:

His desire to see Mumbi was there. His

mind was clear and he knew without guilt,
what he was going to do. Word went round.
All the detainees of Yala crowded to the
walls of their compounds and watched him
with chilled hostility. 1 Gikonyo fixed his
mind on Mumbi fearing that strength would
leave his knees under the silent stare of
all the other detainees. He walked on and
the sound of his feet on the pavement
leading to the office where screening,
interrogations and confessions were made,,
seemed, in the absence of other noise,/
unnecessarily loud. The door closed behind,'
him. The other detainees walked back t
their rooms to wait for another journey t
the quarry. . ..
(98) . /

Both his idealization of Mumbi and his betrayal of the

oath follow him like footsteps. Neither one of these
weaknesses allows him an early release from detention. Because
he refused to name the administrators of the oath, he remained
 99
in detention for four more years. His love of the land,
particularly "the green leaves" is lost. His release from
detention is an ironic betrayal as a new prison, a wasteland of
"dust" awaits him in the streets of Thaibai. "Some of the dust
enters Gikonyo's eyes and throat." Thus even the lands seems
to have betrayed him. The nightmare of Mumbi's "betrayal" is
about to begin. The idyllic fantasies that he was so dependent
upon in detention pained him like the dust that made his eyes
water. "The years of waiting, the pious hopes, the steps on the
pavement all come rushing into his heart to mock him" (99).

Like Karanja, Gikonyo feels alienated and isolated from

the community. He has not only betrayed the movement, but he
has betrayed himself as w e l l . . Rejecting communion with Mumbi,
he wallows in self-pity instead. While Mumbi was salvation
during internment so now she is his "betrayer":

She had betrayed the bond, the secret,

between them: or perhaps there had never
been any communion between them, nothing
could grow between any two people. One
lived alone, and like Gatu, went into the
grave alone. Gikonyo greedily sucked sour
pleasure from this reflection which he saw
as a terrible revelation. To live and die
alone was the ultimate truth (102).

He had chosen the same isolated path as Mugo and Karanja.1

Unlike them he had an opportunity for reconciliation with
family and community . However, he must rediscover the
 100
community and meet his nemesis, Karanja, before this was
possible. His second encounter with the changed environment of
his community was a frightening one. Sewage stank and the
closed African shops were collapsing. One particular passage
stands out as a grim reminder of Gikonyo's lost skills:

At the door of one building, Gikonyo picked

up a broken plank; the fading letters on
it, capitals, had lost their legs and
hands; but after careful scrutiny he made
out the word HOTEL. Inside was a
mound of soil; bits of broken china,
saucers and glasses were scattered on top.
He tapped, pecked and poked the wall with
the sharp end of the broken plank; suddenly
cement and soil tumbled down, hollow, in
increasing quantity, it seemed the wall
would break and fall. Gikonyo rushed out,
afraid of the building ....
(102).

The possible reunion of Mumbi and Gikonyo can only take

place after their elaborate confessions to Mugo and Gikonyo's
subsequent confession to Mumbi and then to the community. If
the nation or community is to survive, betrayal must be
forgiven, first by opening communication as Mumbi suggests:
"We need to talk, to open our hearts to one another, examine
them, and then together plan for the future we want" (213).
Gikonyo's plan to build a stool for Mumbi is a first step, but
unfortunately the rhetoric of Harambee (pulling together) is
not the "communal regeneration" that JanMohamed suggests.33

Revolution is not romantic. It essentially means

suffering, death, and often betrayal. Yet despite the
prominence of those themes, Ngugi's final chapter, "Harambee,"
is an attempt to bring unity to a new independent Kenya.
Symbolically, the renewal for the Kenyan people was represented
by the attempted reproachment between Gikonyo and Mumbi.
"Harambee" was also the main political slogan by Jomo Kenyatta,
Kenya's first Prime Minister. Yet it appears that there are,
more members of Gikuyu national bourgeoisie who are involved in
accumulating "individual" wealth, opting for corrupt business
practices, and engaging in black market activities34 than
rebuilding the communal spirit of the Gikuyu community.
"Harambee" as presented by Ngugi is obviously a problematical
pulling together. The actions of the "M.P." and the hoarding
of Gikonyo are two small signs of the difficulty of this task.
Since then Ngugi has repudiated "Harambee" as a hollow slogan
designed to disguise the rush for spoils:

... the men Kenyatta, like Harry Thuku

before him, could now only cite personal
accumulation as the sole criterion of one's
moral and political worth. The evidence is
there for all the world to see. It is
contained in that now famous attack on
Bildad Kaggia, at Kandara, on 11 April
1965, only a year and five months after
independence:
'We were together with Paul Ngei in jail.
If you go to Ngei's home, he has planted a
lot of coffee and other crops. What have
you done for yourself? If you go to
Kubai's home, he has a big house and has a
nice shamba. Kaggia, what have you done
for yourself? We were together with Kung'u
 Karumba in jail, now he is running his
own buses. What have you done for
yourself? '35

Another problem will be whether or not Gikonyo will

complete the stool he imagines as a gift for Mumbi. There is a
peculiar hesitation in how and when he will have time to
complete the stool:

He could carve the stool now, after the

hospital, before he resumed business, or in
between business hours (212).

Like the transition to independence in Kenya; the wounds

of Gikonyo's betrayal of Mumbi as well as his acceptance of
Karanja's child, are slow to heal. Gikonyo's finai acceptance
of the child, which comes almost too late, is another step
toward reconciliation; that is if Gikonyo is sincere.
Karanja's child is the future as Lisa Curtis indicates:

Lives cannot be fashioned as Gikonyo

fashions his stool, since they are products
of uncontrollable forces. Like the
liberated nation, the child's beginning was
surrounded by guilt and moral failure. The
bastard conceived in fear and hate that
needs to be reared and nurtured at the
expense of great personal sacrifice is the
crowning symbol of the new Kenya.36

Gikonyo's recognition of Mumbi's needs in their last

meeting in the hospital goes beyond the child. For the first
 103
time we see fragments of Gikonyo's concern for Mumbi as a
person, not as a sexual goddess or whore betrayer. The process
of concern begins with a simple mental observation about her
fatigue:

He was surprised to find that tiredness in

her eyes. How long had she been like this?
What had happened to her over the last few
days? (213).

An attempt to reclaim the past fails: "Will you go back to

- -

the house, light the fire, and see that things don't decay?"

He then returns to earlier concern. He realizes "that in

future he would reckon with her feelings, her thoughts, her
desires - a new Mumbi." She had inspired him again and helped
him face his responsibility to the community in the future, but
at tremendous costs to herself.

One of the final images of the novel project a difficult,

but independent future for Kenyan women. The image of walking
"away with determined steps, sad but almost sure" reflects an
uncertainty about the future, but also a confidence about
facing it. As a "guardian of the tribe" Mumbi acts as a
culture bearer for her people not only by sustaining
traditional standards, but also by leading the struggle for
social change.37 Other female characters will continue that
struggle in Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross.3e
 Both Mumbi and Kihika, brother and sister of the
revolution, are victimized by the social contradictions of a
parasitical colonialism. Mumbi's sexual betrayal of her
husband is not culpable, but it is a personal breakdown
originating from the pressures of the cgunter-insurgency
movement. Kihika's betrayal is not based on malice or on the
need for revenge, but it is a result of his carelessness and
/
i
overconfidence.
- - He lacks the ideological perception needed to
..---=--.-
/
sustain a fragile independence movement./ Mugo chooses to
betray partially because of the dream of wealth and status, and
partially out of the frustration of having been orphaned.
Mumbi's sexual betrayal of Gikonyo was one brought about by the
trickery of Karanja. Gikonyo's betrayal of the unity oath as
well as his marital betrayal of Mumbi aiso resulted from
intense colonial repression of the Emer-gency Period in colonial

Kenya. Finally, there is Karanja, whose betrayal is the most

complete as a colonial collaborator corrupted by the illusion
of equality in the colonial system. Karanja's unquestioning
support for the colonial administration is shattered by the
exit of his colonial mentor, Howlands.

Mugo's betrayal is not permanent. Mugo accepts the need

for a revolutionary justice that will placate his guilt. The
real betrayer of the community of Thabai is Karanja. His
abusive personal power is used to extract favours and use the
colonial administration as a shield. Ostracized from the
Thabai during independence, Karanja would likely find a
political home with other "loyalists" in the neo-colonial
Kenyatta government.

The symptoms of the sickness of a larger national betrayal

(neo-colonialism)* are observed by Gikonyo in an ironic verbal

exchange with Mugo:

You have a great heart. It is people like

you who ought to have been the first to
taste the fruits of independence. But now,
whom do we see riding in long cars and
changing them daily as if motor cars were
clothes? It is those who did not take part
in the movement, the same who ran to the
shelter of schools and universities and
administration. At political meetings you
hear them shout: Uhuru, Uhuru, we fought
for. Fought where? They were mere
uncircumcised boys. They knew sufferins as
a word (60-61). [Emphasis is mine].

* This perspective on betrayal will be the focus of Chapter 4.

 FOOTNOTES
l . Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Homecomina: Essays on African Caribbean
Literature, Culture and Politics (London: Heinemann, 1972)
xv .
See pages 3,53,56,59for direct references to Fanon.
2 . See Ngugi, "Mau Mau, Violence and Culture" from Homecoming
28. The emphasis is mine.
The idea of the necessity of violence has remained a
critical force in Ngugi's writing. See "Mau Mau in Coming
Back: The Revolutionary Significance of the 20th October
1952 in Kenya" from Journal of African Marxists 4(1983)
:18-44.

It has been reprinted in Ngugi's Barrel of a Pen:

Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya (Trenton, New
Jersey: Africa World Press, 1983).
3 . Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press,
1968) 94.
4 . David Maughan-Brown, Land, Freedom, and Fiction: History and
Ideology in Kenya (London: Zed Books, Ltd., 1985) 230,262.
9 . In Morley Callaghan's new novel, A Time for Judas
(Toronto: MacMillan of Canada, 1983) 125. Judas' confession
to Philo, a Crete scribe of Pontius Pilate, shows the
necessity of the "betrayal" of Christ:
"For him there was only one law-love. Then maybe only one
source of all evil-betrayal. The whole inner world swinging
between love and betrayal - always first in a man's own
heart. If is was time now for him to be betrayed, he would
cause 'betrayal' to be remembered with horror forever as the
death of love."
6 . Harold Pinter, Betrayal (London: Eyre Methuen, 1978).
'. Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong'o, January 1964, Dennis
Duerden and Cosmo Pieterse, eds, African Writers Speakinq
(London: Heinemann, 1972) 121.
Abberrahmane Arab, Politics and the Novel in Africa (Hydra,
Alger: Office des Publications Universitaires, 1982) 297.
. Arab 297.
 Eustace Palmer, An Introduction to the African Novel
(London: Heinemann, 1972) 31.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Detained: A 1
(London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1981) 90.
Govind Narain Sharma, "Ngugi's Christian Vision: Theme and
Pattern in A Grain of Wheat," ed., Eldred Durosimi Jones,
African Literature Today :10 (New York: Africana Publishing
Company, 1979) 168.
Ngugi, Homecoming 34.
See for example, Bildad Kaggia, Roots of Freedom 1921-1963
(Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1975) 1-15.
Kihika is able to integrate the diverse forces and
traditions of African resistance to colonial rule in order
to lead the independence movement. He is aware of the
initial resistance by Waiyaki in 1900, the labour movement
organized by Harry Thuku, as well as the anguish caused by
the barring of female circumcision. Together with the
accumulation of the experiences from black soldiers, who
fought in the World War and awareness of the successes of
the Indian independence movement, he is well prepared to
lead the revolutionary struggle. See Peter Nazareth, A n
African View of Literature (Evanston: Northwestern
University, 1974) 143-146.
16. Nazareth 131.
17. For the value of oaths in recruitment and preparation for
battle see:
Donald Barnett and Karari Njama, Mau Mau from Within (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1966) 114-121.
Carl G. Rosberg and John Nottingham, The Myth of "Mau Mau":
Nationalism in Kenya (New York: Praeger, 1966) 243-48.
Maughan-Brown 169-70.
18. Sharma 169-70.
19. Cook and Okenimkpe, Nuuqi wa Thionq'o: An Exploration of
His Writinqs 233,238.
2 0 . Maughan-Brown 240.
2 2 . The controversy and division of opinion that surround the
recognition of "Mau Mau" in the Kenyan nationalist struggle
continues unabated even today. A recent meeting of "Mau
Mau" fighters in Njeri in February 1986 branded a
competitive government rally in nearby Naro Moro as
"loyalist" and "anti Mau Mau". See "Kenya: Stormy
Weather," New African June 1986 :6.
23. Palmer An Introduction to the Novel 29.
2 4 . In an important study on Frantz Fanon, Renate Zahar calls
this interiorization of racial stereotyping through
mechanisms of compensation, overadaptation and self-
hatred. See Renate Zahar, Frantz Fanon: Colonialism and
Alienation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974) 35-36.

25. See Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan, "Frantz Fanon: the

revolutionary psychiatrist," Race and Class 21(1980) :263.
z 6 . Frantz Fanon, A Dyinq Colonialism, quoted from Bulhan :263.

2 7 . C.B. Robson, Nqugi wa Thionq'o (London: MacMillan, 1979)

56.
2 e . The train image is important as a linkage to historical
events in the novel. Karanja won the race to Rung'ei
station, but he lost Mumbi, who chooses the fallen Gikonyo
instead. Because of his betrayal, Karanja misses the
historical train to independence. For a short comment of
the significance of the train image see Lisa Curtis, "The
Divergence of Art and Ideology in the later novels of Ngugi
wa Thiong'o: A Critique", Ufahamu 13.2-3(1984) :190-191.
z 9 . P. Ochola-Ojero, "Of Tares and Broken Handles, Ngugi
Preaches Thematic Threatment of Betrayal and Despair in A
Grain of Wheat," Busara 2.3(1970) :42.

30. As a carpenter and village repairman, Gikonyo had an

important role to play in the harmony of the community, one
which would be lost after his betrayal of the oath. For a
brief discussion of the earlier harmony of Gikonyo see:
Joyce Johnson, "Character and Circumstance in Ngugi wa
Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat," Commonwealth Novel in English
3.1(1984) :25.

31. See Malcolm Page, "The Conclusions of Ngugi's A Grain of

Wheat: Gloom or Affirmation," ed., Uma Pamareswaran, &T
Commonwealth in Canada, Calcultta: Writer's Workshop, 1983
:216-225.
 Micere Githae-Mugo, "Vision of Africa in the Fiction of
Chinua Achebe, Margaret Laurence, Elizabeth Huxley, and
Ngugi wa Thiong'o," Diss., (University of New Brunswick,
1973) 320.
33. JanMohamed 219-220. In 1965-1966, when A Grain of
Wheat was written, Ngugi was uncertain about the political
and economic betrayal of the Harambee program. See
Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary (London, Heinemann, 1981)
90.
34. See Christopher Leo, Land and Class in Kenya (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1983) 157,185.
Nicola Swainson, The Development of Corporate Capitalism in
Kenya, 1918-1977 (Berkley: University of California, 1980)
288.
John Barry, The Sunday Times (London) Aug. 10,17,24, 1975
:11-12,5-6,38-39.
35. Ngugi, Detained 89.
36 . Curtis 197.
37. Judith Cochrane, "Women as Guardians of the Tribe in
Ngugi's Novels," Association for Commonwealth Literature
and Language Studies Bulletin 4.5(1977) :lo.
Jennifer Evans, "Mother Africa and the Heroic Whore: Female
Images in Petals of Blood," Contemporary African
Literature, ed., Hal Wylie, Eileen Julien, Russell J.
Linnerman (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1983)
57-65.
3 8 . Evans and Charles A. Nama, "Daughters of Moombi;
Ngugi's Heroines and Traditional Gikuyu Aesthetics," ed.,
Carole Boyce Davies and Anne Adams Graves, Nqambika:
Studies of Women in African Literature (New York: Africa
World Press, 1986) 139-149.
 A COUNTRY DEFILED:
THE NEO-COLONIALISM OF BETRAYAL
IN PETALS OF BLOOD

Chapter Four

At the formal launching of Petals of Blood in July 1977,

Ngugi emphasized the theme of proletarianization of peasants in
Kenya :

The turning of peasants into proletarians

by alienating them from the land, is one of
the most crucial social upheavals of the
twentieth century ....
1

The "social upheaval" brought to Ilmorog, a mythical

village which is an archetypal representative of the exploited
neo-colonial communityI2 produces a number of social and
political betrayals by characters in Petals of Blood. By
juxtaposing the experiences and contradictions of the capital,
Nairobi, with both the nascent growth of a "New Ilmorog" as
well as the political stagnation of "Old Ilmorog," Ngugi is
able to explore some problems of capitalist expansion in
Ken~a.~

Cook and Okenimpke have called Petals of Blood:

 ... an #'
expose of the nature of capitalism,
of the insensitivity, callousness, and
insatiable ambition of those who control
vested interests in order to gain power and
wealth, impoverishing the underprivileged,
imposing misery and suffering on the
maj~rity.~

The exploration of a neo-colonial landscape as well as the

contradictions of the betrayal of the Ilmorog community will
form the basis for discussion in this chapter. Both landscape

setting and change are not part of a passive framework, but are
part of the dynamics of the destructive change fostered by an
emergent capitalism. Interaction with a neo-colonial
environment for the four main protagonists (Munira, Karega,
Wanja, and Abdullah) means that a number of personal betrayals
are exposed. The theme of betrayal will be explored through
the four parts of the novel:

I The social-economic betrayal of "Old Ilmorog" by the Kenyan

government in general and by the MP, Nderi wa Riera, in
particular.
I1 The generalized betrayal of the countryside and the city as
witnessed by Abdullah and the Ilmorog delegation on "The
Journey" to Nairobi.
I11 The distortion of traditional and communal renewal as well
as the corruption of the community by capitalist investment
result in the betrayal of the Ilmorog community from within.
IV The completion of the destruction of "Old Ilmorog" and the
origins of a new resistance movement.
 Social-economic betrayal of Old Ilmorog in Petals of Blood
is evident from Munira's first visit to the community to re-
open the school. He immediately encounters an environment of
decay and neglect. Here we encounter the first evidence of
socio-economic betrayal by Nderi wa Riera. As a member of the
national bourgeoisie he is only concerned with the votes of
Ilmorog at elections and he ignores the social and economic
needs of remote areas such as Ilmorog. Cook and Okenimpke call
him: "Ngugi's prototype of the new politician, conforming to
the egocentric assumptions of the power group without
questioning its ethics or seeking to reform the s y ~ t e m . " ~
Ojung Ayuk has isolated this theme of neglect and called it
"environmental decadence." He defines it

... as the author's preoccupation with

decline in the physical environment from a
state of normality or excellence. This
decadence entails the destruction of the
splendid landscape that characterizes much
of the African physical environment and the
well structured and peaceful way in which
most Africans have traditionally lived
their lives as well as the installation of
the devastation and the degenerative
atmosphere that are manifest features of
most colonial towns and urban centres
inherited by new nations upon
decol~nization.~

As an exile, Munira is at first the brunt of several

Ilmorog village jokes. His efforts to reconstruct the
dilapidated school are seen as absurd:

He would go away with the wind, said the

elderly folk: had there not been others
before him? Who would settle in this
wasteland except those without limbs ....
(5).

This picture of alienation is an obvious reference to the

wounded freedom fighter, Abdullah, but paradoxically in Ilmorog
it referred to Munira as his name means "stump." Munira has
"betrayed" the class and religious interests of his family by
joining the strike at Siriana School and by seeking a pagan
wife, Wanjiru. Although passive, isolated, and alienated by
parasitical family environment, Munira has clear, sometimes
ironic insight intc the environment of neo-colonial betrayal.
Munira's first actions are not out of place. Even the crushing
of a ripened Kei apple makes him nauseous. He is mistakenly
blamed for "shitting a mountain" near the school and he sneezes
in an old women's face. Yet despite his early difficulty in
Ilmorog, Munira is able to discover the source of the betrayal
of the community, that is its impoverishment. Urban migration
seems to be a chief source of the betrayal of the village. The
attraction of a monied economy in Nairobi has forced the young
to abandon their families. As an old woman complains to
Munira:

Our young men and women have left us. The

 glittering metal has called them. They go,
and the young women only return now and
then to deposit newborn with their
grandmothers already aged with scratching
this earth for a morsel of life. They say:
there in the city there is room for only
one... our employers, they don't want
babies about the tiny rooms in tiny yards
(7).

Later Munira is a witness to his students' discovery of

two Theng'eta bean flowers, the so-called "Petals of Blood,"
one of which he calls a "worm eaten flower." Ngara ironically
identifies Munira as:

.
. . the worm-eaten petal of blood:
poisonous and incapable of bearing fruit.
[He is] ...
a man whose later religious ....
convsrsion is a kind of confused
rny~tlcism.~

This fixation on Munira however negates the role of other

protagonists: Wanja, Karega, Abdullah, and Nyakinyua. While
references to "petals of blood", including the title are
associated with Munira, they are not exclusively concerned with
his fate. Peter Nazareth sees a connection between the petals:
"various characters are linked at the core."% Each of the main
protagonists tries to keep the infected flower from growing.
Munira through his stilted teaching and later religious
fanaticism; Abdullah through his leadership during the journey
to Nairobi and his support for Wanja; Nyakinyua and Wanja
through their co-operative; and Karega through his teaching and
 115
union work. Yet each character has been stunted by the neo-
colonial system. Their Gikuyu names reflect indications of
further incapacities to respond to ravages of the neo-colonial
environment:

Munira means 'stump' and this describes his

devitalized state in the novel, his
inability to connect with those around him.
Wanja ...
comes from 'Wanjiku', the mother
of the mother of the nine clans of the
Gikuyu people. Wanja also means 'stranger
or outsider'. Similarly Karega means 'he-
who refuses', and for the way of saying an
outsider and he is cast as 'archetypal non-
conformist, who travels from idealistic
youthful searching for a cause to the
status of anti-establishment revolutionary
leader.

As a metaphorical ''stump" Munira is incapable of growth as a

human and political figure. Evidence of this is seen from his
jealous punishment of Karega for having a relationship with
Wanja, from his false pride after becoming headmaster of
Ilmorog School, and from his demonstration of false

consciousness by burning Wanja's whorehouse to "save" Karega.

Munira also faces the guilt of Mukami's suicide and his
family's historical association with the betrayal on "Mau Mau"
leader, Dedan Kimathi.

At this point it would be useful to return to the source

of the title, Petals of Blood, which comes from an extract from
Derek Walcott's poem, "The Swamp," as well as from Blake's
epigraphs to Parts 2 and 3 of Petals of Blood. Eustace Palmer
sees the "Petals of Blood" as victims of evil:

Its innocence, like that of Blake's sick

rose, has been destroyed by the agents of
corruption. The flower thus becomes a
symbol of the entire society Ngugi is
concerned with potentially healthy,
beautiful, and productive, but its
potential unrealized and itself destroyed
by the agents of corruption and death.1

The symbolic significance of the Swamp according to Ngugi:

is that it ...p revents little flowers from

reaching out into the light." [It]
symbolized the way... in which the social
system of capitalism acts to stifle life."

Ngugi's view of "The Swamp" is supported by Wayne Brown, an

editor of a recent collection of Walcott's poetry. He outlines
three views of "The Swamp," including historical, philosophical
and psychological interpretations. In the case of the former,
which most closely fits Ngugi's own interpretation, he suggests
the consciousness behind the poem is that of a white American
from the Plantation Slavery of the South who feels threatened
by the highway he has built to his slaves. This parallels the
fear and greed that motivates the national bourgeoisie who are
neo-colonial agents such as: Chui, Kimeria, Nderi, and Mzigo.
According to Brown, the poem represents: ' I . . . . the colonizer's
fear and loathing, born of guilt, of those whom he has
colonized. " 1 2 In Petals of Blood therefore, the neo-
colonializer fears the consequences of his betrayal of the
peasants of Kenya. While this interpretation is more
appropriately discussed in terms of other meanings of title
"Petals of Blood," mainly the mythical liquor, Theng'eta and
the fire that consumes Wanja's whore house, it is important to
see "The Swamp" and Ilmorog as representative "wastelands,"
backwaters of betrayal that result from colonialism and neo-
colonialism respectively.

Despite Munira's distorted consciousness, he has a keen

sense of observation of the state of underdevelopment in "Old

Ilmorog. " He senses the absurdity of the surveying for an

International Highway when smaller service roads have not yet
been built for the rural area. He even sees the contradiction
of underdevelopment between country and city:

In my mind I now put this wretched corner

beside our cities: skyscrapers versus mud
walls and grass thatch; tarmac highways,
international airports and gambling casinos
versus cattle-path and gossip before
sunset. Our erst while masters had left us
a very unevenly cultivated land; the centre
was swollen fruit and water sucked from the
rest, while the outer parts were
progressively weaker and scragglier as one
moved away from the centre (49). (Emphasis
is mine) .

While Munira is a keen observer, he is also a selfish

egotist. If something doesn't benefit him, he isn't interested
 118

in it. His selfish attitude is reflected in his teaching as

well:

... What did the children really think of

him? ...
what did it matter one way or the
other? He had taught for so many years now
- teaching ready-made stuff must be in his
blood - and one did all right as one was
careful not to be dragged into ... an area
of darkness ...
Yes. ..
darkness unknown,
unknowable ... like flowers with petals of
blood and questions about God, law ...
things that (23-24).

Munira is easily persuaded by authority figures,

especially if they lavish praise on him. Social acceptance of
Mzigo, the School Inspector, is initially pleasing to him,
especially once he has been accepted as headmaster of Ilmorog
school :

Munira's heart was glowing with pride. And

so he was making something of himself after
all. A headmaster. And now an invitation
to tea. To tea at Gatundu! (87).

Isolated and without social interaction with others,

Munira would remain a victim of his father's betrayal of the
Kenyan people:

" 'My son', ... 'Go back and teach. And

stop drinking. If you are tired of
teaching, come back here. I have work for
you. My estates are many. And I am
ageing. Or join KCO. Get a bank loan.
 Start business' (95).

Munira's father is not beyond using his power in the church to

accumulate profits. Yet Munira chose "not to choose" to remain
in the background even though he was conscious of his father's
expanding role in the neo-colonial environment:

What was this new alliance of the Church

and KCO. No, it was better not to wade
more than knee deep into affairs that did
not concern him. And he felt some kind of
relief. It was as if he had been pulled
back from the brink. He had postponed a
decision (96).

Like Mugo in A Grain of Wheat, he enjoyed the protection

of a dark ignorance where he would not have to make a
commitment. In essence his own private betrayal was to only
observe the contradictions of neo-colonialism, not to "choose"
ways to change them.

Later, he regretted the arrival of Karega, a teacher he

desperately needed to cope with the expanding school at
Ilmorog. Passively instead, he looked with nostalgia at the
power of Chui a former student radical who betrays his heritage
by accelerating English public school traditions at Siriani
School while headmaster.13

Because of his earlier twisted a.ssociation with the

 120
prostitute, Amina, Munira is both repelled and attracted to
Wanja. Unlike most critics Jennifer Evans sees Wanja as a
representative of the "petals of blood." Using Munira's early
association of "petals of blood" with "the stranger girl," she
associates the condition of the damaged flower with Wanja's
wasted life. Her return to Ilmorog is am attempt to regenerate
her lost powers. It is Wanja who revives the.spiritua1 use of
the Theng'eta brew.14 Jacqueline Bardolph takes the image of a
worm-infested flower further by connecting Munira's fear of
"the devouring woman" to Walcott's "speckled vulva of the tiger
orchid" :

The sterility of his union with Wanja is

that of the flower eaten by the worm, which
has n o t come to light ...
It is the
sterility of the earth itself: Munira and
Wanja are gnawed by a worm, they are dried
up, cut off from their pasts, rootless:
independent prostitutes 15 ....

While Munira is an exile who doesn't work the land and he

lacks insight into his own barren isolation, Wanja reflects the

bitter insight of peasants who suffer from drought and economic

neglect. Munira misinterprets her ironic sketch of an old
woman raising dust and then being pursued by a "lusty young man
sun." Munira's pathetic response merely suggests that they are
"one with the soil" and "there is dignity in their labour",
both betrayed platitudes for the Harambee projects of the
Kenyatta government. With regard to the bareness of the land,
 121
Wanja feels and sees a different reality that that of Munira.
"One with the dust you mean? ... Haven't you seen the flies on
mucus-filled noses? A cowhide or grass for a bed? Huts with
falling in thatches?" ( 7 5 ) .

Instead of "choosing" to acknowledge his ignorance and the

betrayal of neo-colonialism, Munira internalizes his
resentment, converting it to a fantasy of rape:

... she had the same alluring power as the

beckoning coquetry of a virgin: he could
touch her only by deflowering her by force
and so himself flowering in blood ( 7 6 ) .

Yet Abdullah, a m a i m e d former "Mau Mau" soldier and proprietor

of the village shop, acknowledges her pain and need for

support :

I know what it is to carry a live wound.

And I am not talking of this leg stump.
Stay in Ilmorog. Let us face what you call
this hole together ( 7 7 ) .

The spiritual and economic drought compel Wanja to leave

Ilmorog .

A discussion between two villagers, Muturi and Njuguna,

about the origin of the drought is instructive. Muturi's keen
sense of ecology traces the origins of deforestation to the
 122
construction of the railway to Uganda. White colonialists are
referred to those who "... only know how to eat, how to take
away everything" Muturi's misconception, that "... African
Governors and African big chiefs will return some of the fat
back to these parts," is corrected by Njuguna whose retort is:
"You mean bring back our sons" (82-83).

Instead of sending aid, the government continues to betray

the isolated village of Ilmorog by sending the tax collector,
followed shortly by two parasitical charlatans, aptly named
"Fat Stomach" and "Insect," both agents of Ilmorog's M.P.,
Nderi wa Riera. The villagers, angry with the demands of a
cultural tax that would line Nderi's pockets, demand food and
piped water, which had been promised earlier by Nderi. In
order to distract the villagers from exposing Nderi's betrayal
of Ilmorog, "Fat Stomach" blames the "lake people" (Luo) and an
Indian communist (likely Pio Gama Pinto)16 for the drought.
Anger and frustration force women of Ilmorog to chase these two
opportunists out of the village.

In stark contrast to the plight of Ilmorog is the village

of Kamiritho which was integrated into the capitalist economy
as an enclave of "development" which included an elaborate
shopping centre and beer halls. Lorries were marked "KANU
PRIVATE." In one of the beer halls, Munira discovers Wanja who
has reverted back to her job as a barmaid." Together with
 123
Karega, they struggle back to Ilmorog: "They returned to
Ilmorog, this time driven neither by idealism nor the search
for a personal cure, but by the overriding necessity to
escape." (106). Like Blue Hills, Kamiritho with its commercial
capitalism is a privileged centre for KANU; its betrayal of
African communal value is even more frightening than the
drought of Ilmorog.

On returning, Karega and Wanja are struck by the

acceleration of the drought, which Munira cynically suggests:
"is the way of the world." All three exiles are part of the
impoverished landscape, unable to escape its effect: "....
coughing and sneezing and watching specks of dry maize stalk
whirled to the sky" Ji.07-108). Instead of accepting the
"gigantic deception" of classroom teaching while the drought
outside got worse, Karega proposes "the journey" to Nairobi to
confront the M.P. with the problems of a drought stricken
Ilmorog. Karega's appeal to save Abdullah's donkey and have it
lead the delegation combines the logic of cost-efficiency with
the importance of informing the M.P. of the severity of the
drought in Ilmorog. Nyakinyua's supporting defense of the
journey summarized the historical sacrifices of the village:

Ours is only to bear in order for the city

to take. In the war against Wazungu we
gave our share of blood. A sacrifice.
Why? Because we wanted to be able to sing
our song, and dance our words in fullness
 of head and stomach. But what happened?
They have continued to entice our youth
away.... Then they send us messengers who
demand twelve shillings and fifty cents for
.
what?. . . (155-166).

The "Journey" aroused Abdullah's leadership. Unhappy with

his passive role in Ilmorog and his self-consciousness because
of Kenyatta government's betrayal of the "Mau Mau" revolution,
Abdullah inspires the village to fight the betrayal of Nderi
and the Kenyan neo-colonial government. The whole community
collectively began its preparation to confront the man and the
system that had betrayed and abandoned them. It was the
children, through Abdullah, who would pass on the oral
traditions of stories such as "the Ant and the Louse" and the
race between "Chamelon and Hare." Divisiveness temporarily
ended as Ilmorog worked to preserve its land and traditions.
As Ngugi notes:

Without the soil, without land, without

nature there is no human community. ...
Unlike the beast that merely adapts
itself to its habitation, man through the
labour process, acts on the natural
environment.l

Even the alienated Munira acknowledged the effect of "The

Journey :"
 ... it was the exodus across the plains to
the Big Big City that started me on that
slow, almost ten-year, inward journey to a
position where I can now see that man's
estate is rotten at heart (117-118).

"Part I1 Towards Bethlehem .... "is in many senses more

than one journey.z0 In particular it represents a reliving and
rediscovery of the process of "the living past." The Ilmorog
delegation undergoes a reassessment of its strengths and
weaknesses. It meets the enemy on its home turf rather than
through intermediaries such as "Fat Stomach" and "Insect."
Structurally, "The Journey" consists of three stages for the
Ilmorog community. Firstly, the hopeful physical contest of
travelling though hostile landscape while honing survival
skills. Secondly, the disiiiusisn and betrayal of their
arrival in Blue Hills to the treachery of the distorted
promises of Nderi. Thirdly, the surprise material support from
Nairobi's working class to aid Ilmorog, which is eventually
undermined by Nderi's tourist "development" project and the
Ilmorog (KC01 Investment and Holding Company. For Munira it's
the "beginning" of a painful ten year process of self-discovery
which is distorted by religious fantasies. For Abdullah it's a
chance to teach survivalist skills learned as a "Mau Mau"
freedom fighter. For Wanja it provides an opportunity to
confront exploitation from the past. For Karega it is a
learning environment in which to assess an enemy he knows
little about. For the community as a whole, it is a last
 126
desperate attempt to save Ilmorog from the devastation of
drought. Through Nyakinyua, Ngugi has Ilmorog reassess its
past - to build its confidence against the neglect and betrayal
of the neo-colonial government:

[In pre-colonial times] , in those days,

there were no vultures in the sky waiting
for the carcasses of dead workers, and no
insect-flies feeding on the fat and blood
of unsuspecting toilers (120).

The evolution of colonial domination was explored. The

metal expertise of the community was praised. The massacre of
the village's women and children by Foreigners was explained.
The wanton craving of foreign articles and the labour
recruitment from the village were also discussed. Nyakinyua
was the village's link to the past victories and defeats. Her
knowledge and stories cemented the community spirit as they
preceded to assess the betrayal of colonial occupation:

Nyakinyua, mother of men: there was sad

gaiety in her voice, she was celebrating
rainbow memories of gain and loss, triumph
and failure, but above all of suffering and
knowledge in struggle (123).

However, Abdullah would provide the spiritual unity for

the actual journey to Nairobi. As a heroic figure of the
recent struggle against colonialism, he was the most capable of
leading the delegation to Nderi: "His stoic endurance infused
 127
strength and purpose into the enterprise. The sun persistently
hit at them and short stems of the elephant grass pricked their
bare souls" (134). As a symbol of the seasoned anti-colonial
resistance, Abdullah is able to lead the delegation from his
experience of adversity. Children eagerly learn from him,
observing the parched landscape, learning the use of catapults,
and listening to new stories of past struggles. As Cook and
Okenimpke indicate:

His game leg is testimony to a betrayed

generation of honorable men who forsook the
comforts of home and braved the hardships
of the forest in order to rescue their
homeland from shameful oppre~sion.~~
(Emphasis is mine) .

A hymn mocking the religious significance of the famine

inspires Abdullah further, allowing him to integrate voices of
the "Mau Mau" struggle from the past such as the leadership of
Ole Masai hymns and oaths of the movement:

'When Jomo of the black people was arrested in the

night
He left us a message and a mission.
I well hold the donkey's head, he told us:
Will you, my children, endure the kicks?
Yes, Yes, I said, and reached for my sword,
And I linked hands with all the children of the
land.
And I vowed, tongue on a burning spear,
I will never turn my back on the cries of black
people,
I will never let this soil go to the red stranger.
I will never betray this piece of earth to
foreigners. ' (136).
 128
Abdullah links the past struggle with the current one in
Ilmorog. He recognizes Karega as "a messenger of God," one who
has split the sacred bean flower. Abdullah is politically and
spiritually reborn as he relives another "journey," fighting
the physical discomforts he faced as a member of the Land and
Freedom Army. He begins to dream of a new life without the
betrayal of neo-colonialism:

How he had trembled as the vision opened

out, embracing new thoughts, new desires,
new possibilities! To redeem the land: to
fight so that the industries like the shoe
factory which had swallowed his sweat could
belong to the people: so that his children
could one day have enough to eat and to
wear under adequate shelter from rain: so
that they would say in pride, my father
died that I ought to live: this had
transformed him from a slave before a boss
into a man (136).

Abdullah relives his ardous "journey" against colonialism

and those loyalist lackies who supported it by telling stories
to the Ilmorog delegation:

And what a journey, my friends! Our

ammunition was scarce. We had tried to
make more bullets by splitting open one and
sharing the powder into smaller shells, but
it did not work. For meat, we often relied
on traps, but it did not work. For meat,
we often relied on traps, but what use was
this on a journey? .... Ole Masai would
enliven us with stories of old Nairobi ....
[At] A great gathering I found there: not a
tree, not a bush for a mile was without a
man or woman leaning against it. They sang
 in defiant tones and their one voice was
like a roll of thunder:

'And you, traitors to your people,

Where will you run to
When the brave of the lands gather?
For Kenya is black people's country'
(142).

Wanja also felt supportive of the journey, particularily

after Abdullah related his stories of Ole Masai's involvement
with "Mau Mau". To her Abdullah was no longer a cripple with a
"stump for a leg," but a man marked by "a badge of courage
indelibly imprinted on his body." Wanja and others listen
intently to the story of the betrayal of Dedan Kimathi as
Abdullah warns of the dangers of betrayal:

Dedan had been caught, delivered to our

enemies by our own brothers, lovers of
their own stomachs, Wakamatimo. May their
names, like that of Judas, ever be cursed,
an example to our children of what never to
be (142).

Because of the hardships of the journey and the historical

insight of Abdullah, the "community" became more aware of their
own relationship to the land and to the past struggle. Even

the landscape came alive for them:

Abdullah's story had made them aware of a

new relationship to the ground on which
they tred: the ground, the murram grass,
the agapanthas, the cactus, everything in
the plains, had been hallowed by the feet
 of those who had fought and died that Kenya
might be free: wasn't there something, a
spirit of those people in them to? (143).

The second part of the journey is an eye opener for the

Ilmorog delegation as they meet one betrayer after another in
the decadent environment of Blue Hills. Here, Munira's
inaction receives a dramatic focus. He fluctuates from a happy
identification with the comfort of Reverend Browns's parlour to
cowardice in face of a lavish party at Raymond Chui's house.
They first seek help from the Reverend Jerrod Brown. His
estate, like many of the national bourgeoisie, is well guarded
by security guards and guard dogs. Instead of helping an
ailing Joseph he leads the delegation in prayer and then sends
them away unattended. The sheltered and protected wealth of
the national bourgeoisie is confusing to the Ilmorog
delegation, who are used to resolving problems collectively.
The fortresses of private capital only confirm suspicions of
neglect of rural Ilmorog.

Raymond Chui, former student leader and headmaster of

Siriana school is the next person from which the Ilmorog
delegation sought help, but Munira feels too self-conscious to
request aid from him. In fact Munira runs away when "a red-
lipsticked lady with a huge Afro-wig" faints in front of him in
Chui's doorway. Before they can enter the third estate, they
are arrested and interrogated by Hawkins Kimeria, who exposes
 131
the exploitative nature of his own class and its capacity for
betrayal and collusion when he discusses his relationship with
the Ilmorog M.P., Nderi wa Riera:

We used to have our little differences ....

Now, we are friends. Why? Because we all
realise that whether we were on that side
of the fence or this side of the fence or
merely sitting astride the fence, we were
all fighting for the same ends. ...
We have
one or two businesses together .... We are
all members of KCO. Some of us have even
been able to borrow a little - shall I say
thousands - from the money collected from
this tea ceremony (153).

Kimeria is the most exploitive of the national

bourgeoisie. He is not above using the vulnerable situation of
the Ilmorog delegation to further exploit Wanja:

Now that fate has brought you to my house,

I shall not let you go until you have lain,
legs spread, on that bed. Remember you are
no longer a virgin. Think about it. The
choice is yours to make, and freedom is
mine to withhold or to give (155).

Wanja is forced to degrade herself in order to save Joseph

and the others from the harm promised by Kimeria. He is the
same man who betrayed Nding'uri, Karega's brother, Ole Masai,
and Abdullah. His confession 'to the Ilmorog delegation' is an
indication of his overconfidence that reflects the bragging
later of the capitalists at the "Devil's Feast" in Devil on the
Cross.

Wanja rescues the community once again by introducing the

group to a progressive lawyer she has dealt with in the past.
It is clear from the large number of people waiting to see the
lawyer that the Ilmorog delegation were not alone in their
victimization by corrupt officials who prey on the poor and
disaffected:

As you can see, I have these people waiting

outside. Most of them came from the
villages: they need advice on everything,
from their lands threatened by banks to how
they can acquire this or that Kiosk ... or
about money taken from them by a big fellow
after promising to buy them a farm in the
.
Highlands.. . (159).

A meeting at the lawyer's house exposes the naivety of

Munira who is willing to accept any "charity" that Harambee
might include. The lawyer then careful defines the dimensions
of the neo-colonial betrayal which stretched from Africa to the
Southern States:

We forget that it has always been deaf and

blind to human woes. So we go on building
the monster and it grows and waits for
more, and know we are slaves to it. At its
shrine we kneel and pray and hope. Now see
the outcome... dwellers in Blue Hills,
those who have taken on themselves the
priesthood of the ministry to the blind
god ... a thousand acres of land a ...
million acres in the two hands of a priest,
 while the congregation moans for an
acre! ...
the god grows big and fat and
shines even brighter and whets the
appetites of his priests, for the monster
has, through the priesthood, decreed only
one ethical code: Greed and accumulation
(163).

Each member of the Ilmorog delegation grappled with the

significance of "the monster", unable yet to grasp the full
dimension of its terror as he or she had not completed their
"journey" of self-discovery or faced yet the power of national
bourgeoisie personally. Abdullah was confused still about
black ownership of the means of production. Wanja questioned
the existence of white prostitutes in the U.S.A. Munira was
merely puzzled that the lawyer had been to school at Siriana,
while Karega was "aroused" by a new radical consciousness
evolving from his experience.

Later their collective experience with their M.P.'s

betrayal of the community would open their eyes to the
corruption of the neo-colonial system. Formerly a "champion of
causes such as putting a ceiling on land ownership,
nationalization of major industries, abolition of illiteracy
and unemployment," Nderi had now sold his principles for
investments in land, connections in the tourist industry and
membership in "special clubs." Disguised as a "man of the
people," he spoke in platitudes; unlike Kimeria he was afraid
to expose his true nature. Nderi attempts to disguise his
 134
betrayal. Even his African name is an attempt to legitimize
his exploitative nature. He openly lies to the delegation
about a planned trip to Ilmorog to investigate "farming
problems". Everyone he talks to is loosely praised. He
prepares answers before questions: "As a politician, Nderi had
learnt that no enemy was too small, and no incident was too
insignificant to be careless about and ignored, unless with

calculated deliberation" (178).

Nderi goes to Jeevanjee Gardens to meet the delegation,

but his speech attracts other hungry and jobless members of the
proletariat. Nderi's proposed solution, "Harambee" that was so
jokingly presented earlier by both Kimeria and "the lawyer," is
presented seriously. Nderi gets so wrapped up in his own
facade of aid that he is only capable of hearing his own voice,
which betrays his own fear of public exposure:

I want you to go back to Ilmorog. Get

yourselves together. Subscribe money. You
can even sell some of the cows and goats
instead of letting them die. Dive deep
into your pockets. Your businessmen, your
shopkeepers, instead of telling stories,
should contribute generously Our ....
culture, our African culture and spiritual
values, should form the true foundation for
this nation ....
We must show that we are
playing our part in self-help schemes in
Harambee spirit to put an end once a for
all a future droughts in the land (182-
183).

At the end of his speech in a vain attempt to divide and

 135
get the Ilmorog delegation to betray its purpose of community
renewal, he blames the "foreigners", exiles Munira, Abdullah
and Karega, for the difficulties in Ilmorog, promising instead
to head a delegation by himself. Munira, Abdullah, Karega are
accused of starting the riot, but they are acquitted due to the
skilled efforts of the lawyer who is able to use the courtroom
as a forum to expose the abuse of Ilmorog:

an island of underdevelopment which after

being sucked thin and dry was itself left
standing, a grotesque image of peasant
life ....
(184).

Ilmorog's difficult journey suddenly seemed to have been

worthwhile. Publicity from newspapers produced more than
enough food to fill the donkey cart. Publicity also attracted
opportunists as well, who through their greed and avarice wish
to continue to betray the impoverished for their own benefit.
Reverend Brown, so pious and neglectful earlier, proposed the
alliance of churches to research the difficulties of Ilmorog.
Nderi, under the guise of his own company, KCO, proposed to
rescue Ilmorog for himself by selling shares in his holding
company, by securing loans from the people of Ilmorog and by
developing tourism. Not willing to merely use Ilmorog as a new
base of economic exploitation for an ever flexible neo-colonial
economy, Nderi, like the vulture he is named after, plans
"elimination" of "the lawyer" to ensure there will be no
further resistance to his e x p a n s i o n i ~ m . ~ ~
 Ironically, the journey had been successful, but its
potential would be ruined by the manipulations of the national
bourgeoisie. The communal innocence so pronounced in the
enthusiasm of the beginning of the journey from Ilmorog to
Nairobi, now lapsed into the betrayal of neo-colonialism.
Changes to Ilmorog are initially seen through flashbacks of
Munira, which he calls: ".... a mixture of an autobiographical
confessional and some kind of prison notes" (190). Munira's
"prison confessional" in the forsaken and foreign environment

of a cell confirms the failure of the journey. His perception

of an "interviewing devil," caused by his own uncertainty and
alienation, suggests initially weakness and confusion. Yet
through Munira's social alienation, a greater understanding of
the destructive capacity of neo-colonialism can be learned.

M.P. Nderi's transformation of Ilmorog is a sham

development, a further betrayal of an already weakened region,
where poverty and misery are abundant. Munira is able to
identify the symptoms of exploitation in the "New Ilmorog," but
he is unable to determine causes and effects:

The New Ilmorog of one or two flickering

neon-lights; of bars, lodgings, groceries,
permanent sales, and bottled Theng'eta; of
robberies, strike, lockouts, murders and
attempted murders; of prowling prostitutes
 in cheap night clubs; of police stations,
police raids, police cells (190).....

By the ninth day of imprisonment Munira demands to see his

interrogator, Inspector Godfrey. Remarks by his jailor reflect
the level of political betrayal that has penetrated even the
lowest level of bureaucracy in jails. The jailor is concerned
about the lose of the three members of the national bourgeoisie
who died in the fire at Wanja's brothel. They were:

... important people. VIP's. It will take

us years before we can get their likes. So
wealthy. Millionaires. Imagine. African
Delameres (192).

Munira's reply, although despairing and cynical,

identifies the dominant mood of these who suddenly realize they
have been victimized:

You are only a jailor. Both you and I are

in prison. Well, everybody is in prison
(192).

The Ilmorog community response to the effects of the

journey were slow to develop. The aura of a successful
"journey" like Kenyan independence, was largely illusionary.
Despite Nyakinyua and other traditional's viewpoints that "the
rain had been God's response to the sacrifice ... signal(1ing)
the end of a year of drought", it was a false omen. Munira's
 138
view despite its tinge of fanaticism had the benefit of
hindsight:

We went on a journe-y to the city to save

Ilmorog from drought. We brought back
spiritual drought from the city (195).

To others in Ilmorog the despair brought by Nderi's

intervention was not initially a threat to the survival of the
community. The initial period after the drought offered a
period of communal euphoria personified by "an earth the
swallowed thirstily," by children playing in the rain and mud,
and by the co-operative spirit of planting set up by Wanja and
Ngakinyua. Keeping in mind Munira's comments on the eventual
arrival of "spiritual drought" to Ilmorog, we can observe an
interlude of co-operation and community integration, perhaps
even a cycle of rebirth.23 For Wanja it was new opportunity to
both forget the pain of a personal betrayal and to re-associate
herself with the land:

This waiting earth: its readiness powered

Wanja's wings of expectation and numerous
desires. Feverishly, she looked out for
tomorrow, waiting, like the other women,
for earth to crack, earth to be thrust open
by the naked shoots of life (196).

Later Wanja and her grandmother formed the Nderi-

Nyakinyua Group to work the land communally. Ilmorog's second
 139
changed drastically in one year as a new spirit seemed to lift
co-operation in Ilmorog:

There was something about harvesting,

whether it was maize or beans or peas,
which always released a youthful spirit in
everyone.... Even old men looked like
little children, in their eyes turned to
the fields: only they tried to hide their
trembling excitement as they carried token
sheaves of beans to the threshing-ground
(203).

Yet this idealized landscape is offset by nagging self-

doubts of Karega and Abdullah. "Karega once again threw his
weight into teaching, to avoid answering anything to himself"
(197). He is also haunted by the death of his lover, Mukani,
by the betrayal of the student hero, Chui, and by the emptiness
of the history books sent to him by the lawyer.

Alienated by past betrayals yet strengthened by momentary

victories, Abdullah is drawn to the renewed spirit of Wanja:

He looked at Wanja's utter transformation,

a kindred spirit, and he felt that maybe
with the rains and the crop and the harvest
to be, something new was happening (201).

He recounts his earlier mistreatment of Joseph, hoping his

education will strengthen him. Abdullah is also conscious of
other changes brought by the new rains such as: the early
arrival of herdsman, the new pattern of cultivation, and the
 140
arrival of a new church and police post, which ironically are
built at the same time. Karega also acknowledges the threat of
new administration to Ilmorog, but his mind is on the immediate
need of a Village Festival.

It is the introduction of the ceremonial Theng'eta brew, a

distillation of "Petals of Blood", brewed by Wanja that
intensifies the commercialization of Ilmorog. Unwittingly,
Wanja's attempt to bridge the gap between the old traditions
and a new community lead in part to a betrayal of the village
to the capitalist's interests of Kimeria, Mzigo,and Nderi. By
selling Theng'eta to surveyors of the Trans Africa Road, both
Wanja and Abdullah initiate the commercialization of the
traditional sacred liquor. Forced to sell their business to
the newly created Theng'eta Breweries, both Wanja and Abdullah
become unemployed.

Nyakinyua defines the effect of "the celestial liquor,"

followed by a suitable warning:

This can only poison your heads and

intestines. Squeeze Theng'eta into it and
you get your spirit. Theng'eta. It is a
dream. It is a wish. It gives you sight,
and for those favoured by God it can make
them cross the river of time and talk with
their ancestors.... Only you must take it
with faith and purity in your hearts (210).
 141
"... that night of Theng'eta drinking" as Munira called it,
provided important insights to Munira, Abdullah, and Karega.
In the case of Munira it was the continual need to attack his
own isolation and lack of community involvement. For Abdullah,
Theng'eta produced forgotten memories of the past, in
particular his oath to punish the betrayer of Nding'uri after
his colonial detention:

'And what did I do when I came out? I ,

Abdullah, forgot my vow to the Lord. I ...
was busy looking for money... and even came
to hide in Ilmorog' (224).

It also produced a need for Abdullah to seek revenge

against those who betrayed the revolution:

I remembered all those who daily thwarted

our struggle. I remembered the traitors:
those who worked with Henderson. Vengeance
is mind, saith the Lord: but I did not
care: I would not have minded helping him a
bit in the vengeance: at least weed out the
parasites ... collaborators (253).

For Karega, Theng'eta meant the discovery that Abdullah

was the best of the community, [a] "symbol of Kenya's truest
courage" (228). It also intensified his sexual union with
Wanja. However, a day later he was fired by a jealous Munira.
Karega suddenly realized the contradictory effects of
Theng'eta:
 Now it has turned out to be a drink of
strife ....But we do not have to heap
insults on others. We are all prostitutes,
for in a world of grab and take, in a world
built on a structure of inequality and
injustice, in a world where some can eat
while others can only toil ...
we are all
prostitutes. For as long as there's a man
in prison, I am also in prison: for as long
as there is a man who goes hungry and
without clothes, I am also hungry and
without clothes. Why then need a victim
hurl insults at another victim? (Emphasis
is mine). (240).

He also learns of the potential destruction of personal

betrayal from Abdullah who identifies the betrayer, Kimeria as

both the seducer of Wanja and the murderer of Karega's brother.
Instead of dealing with these issues he temporarily leaves
Ilmorog. In a sense he becomes temporarily immobilized by the
vastness of betrayal in his life.

Both the airplane crash that killed Abdullah's donkey as

well as the successful commercialization of Theng'eta by Wanja
and Abdullah act as a magnet to the parasitical Nderi who uses
the Trans-Africa road project as a link to these two potential
markets for his exploitation of Ilmorog.

Ilmorog's rebirth has ended. The co-operative spirit

initiated by Wanja and the Nderi-Nyakinyua Group has failed.
The struggle for a New Kenya will enter a more complex and
contradictory stage.
 Part IV completes the cycle of struggle of the village of
Ilmorog. The intervention of the national bourgeoisie through
the figures of Kimeria, Chui, Mzigo and Nderi has accelerated
the level of political struggle by integrating Ilmorog into the
infrastructure of a neo-colonial state. "New Ilmorog" is an
extended metaphor for the regional disparity caused by the
development of capitalist enclaves in the midst of poverty and
undqrdevelopment.

The title of Part IV, "Again ... A Luta Continua,"

represents the important inspiration of the Anti-colonial
Portuguese struggles in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau
in the 1960's and 1 9 7 0 ' ~ . ~ ~Literally translated as "The
Struggle Continues," Part IV represents adverse conditions on
the political landscape of a neo-colonial state. Each of the
main characters must not only find a means of survival, but
they must also try to find a way to oppose the tyrants of the
national bourgeoisie.

The opening image of the Trans-Africa Road is a

contradictory one. One the one hand, it is meant as a means of
integrating balkanized national economies in attempt to escape
the perpetual trap of underdevelopment. Yet on the other hand,
it is a means to witness the social and economic crimes of the
 144
national bourgeoisie with the co-operation and encouragement of
multi-national companies. This contradiction is reflected in
the new political landscape of "New Ilmorog:"

... Roads first, family planning, such

practical needs, achievable goals, trade-
the rest are dream-wishes of a Theng'eta
addict.. .. And so, obstructed from the
vision of oneness, of a collective struggle
of the African peoples, the road brought
only the unity of earth's surface: every
corner of the continent was now within easy
reach of international capitalists robbery
and exploitation ( 2 6 2 ) .

The road has symbolic value as well. It is a historical

monument to those who witnessed the crimes of colonialism and
the heroic resistance of nationalists and proto-nationalist
movements.

The contradictions brought by the road affect the way the

villagers see "New Ilmorog." Munira's confession, "We are all
of the road now," confirms a partial resignation to the
presence of a neo-colonial landscape; yet he also confirms the
"hollowness" of the roads' purpose as well as its status as a
"monument" of "failed promises." The absurdity of the new
landscape is illustrated by the villagers watching the East
African Safari car race, or the ever-present stream of tankers
and automobiles "squelching tar on a long trail across the
plains to feed a thousand arteries of thirsty machines and
motors... ." (263).
 145
Even more frightening is the distorted dream of the
children who "... prance about the banks, trying to spell out
Lonrho, Shell, Esso, Total, Agip, singing the praise of the
road that will carry them to all the cities of Africa, their
Africa, to link hands with children of other lands" (263).

As Cook and Okenimpke point out:

The new trans-Africa road splits old

Ilmorog apart as, by implication, it splits
Africa, letting the alien predators who
transform the land according to their
preconceived image. The road is seen to
evoke fear and c~nsternation.~"

Other economic divisions are apparent in the New Ilmorog:

There were several Ilmorogs. One was the

residential area of the farm managers,
County council officials, public servant
officers, the managers of Barclays,
Standard and African Economic Banks, and
other servants of state and money power.
This was called Cape Town. The other-
called - New Jerusalem - was a shanty tour
of migrant and floating workers, the
unemployed, the prostitutes and small
traders in tin and scrap metal (280-81).

While Wanja and Abdullah provide the initiative to

construct a New Ilmorog, it is Nderi wa Riera and his henchman
"Fat Stomach" and "Insect" who organize the transformation by
using New Ilmorog as a ploy to get re-elected. Land taken from
the people would be "compensated"; "loans" would be given;
"title deeds" acquired. "The road was only a beginning."

Transformation of the landscape was matched by changes in

character. While Abdullah remained the same committed although
reticent individual, both Wanja and Munira were further
corrupted by the betrayal of the new capitalist Ilmorog.
[Wanja] "... was seized by the devil spirit of brewing and
selling, and counting and hatching out more plans for the
progress of her trade/business partnership with Abdullah"
(269).

Wanja's obsession with the profits of Theng'eta is a new

betrayal and contradictory to her communal spirit. It is
caused by three factors: Firstly, the personal loss of Karega.
Secondly, the lapse into self-hatred caused by the quilt of
having destroyed her only child. Thirdly, the influence of
broken family background compounded by her father's own
betrayal of the "Mau Mau" Revolution.

Wanja is not merely a victim. Her role as capitalist

betrayer is later expanded to include the Sunshine Lodge.
Karega critiques her choice to join the national bourgeoisie:

Whatever you are, you have chosen sides. I

don't hate you, I don't judge you.... but I
know that we cannot fight Kimerias by being
them... by joining them... we can't beat
them at that game.... (327).
 147
Although Wanja and Abdullah were secure with the business
of selling Theng'eta, after 5 years nearly everyone else in the
village had been duped into taking loans on their land.
Foreclosures became more frequent; Nyakinyua tried to fight
back when her land was taken, but no Qne supported her, not

even Wanja. Only when the old woman died, did Wanja in a fit
of self-destruction buy the land back, but at tremendous cost
to herself and Abdullah because they didn't have the cash flow
to buy the land and then maintain the business as well. They
were forced to sell to Mzigo. In despair, but also in a
conscious drive to survive, Wanja reverts to her role as a
prostitute. Evans see this as a realistic portrayal of an
African woman; one that differs from the Mumbis, Muthonis or
Nyamburas of other Ngugi novels:

... It would be a mistake to see Wanja

simply as an innocent victim. Her
potential is wasted and she is exploited,
but she also exploits others, most
obviously in running her own whorehouse.
Her "eat or be eaten" philosophy is an
expression of the destructive rivalry of
capitalism, and is no more moral than the
self-serving greed of the K i m e r i a ~ . ~ ~

Lisa Curtis finds Wanja's transformation from prostitute

to mother of Abdullah's child "unconvincing:"

... the pregnancy which is the code to

Wanja's story is unconvincing. There
remains a sense in which this is just one
 more "false start" in the pattern of her
life: a sequence in which she will be
brought full circle again, by fire and
drought, to another new beginning.27

Wanja has been transformed once again. Her survival

skills honed earlier, when she ,was abused by Kimiria, have
taken over. Her treatment of Munira only reflects her
acceptance of the cash nexus in a neo-colonial state:

No Mwalimu. No free things in Kenya. A

hundred shillings on the table if you want
high class treatment.... This is New Kenya.
You want it, you pay for it .... (279).

Seeking revenge for her victimization, Wanja attempts to

become as successful as any of the national bourgeoisie,
equivalent to any Kimeria, Chui, or Mzigo. As Munira's
description of Wanja to Karega indicates:

She is the most powerful woman in all

Ilmorog. She owns houses between here and
Nairobi. She owns a fleet of matatus. She
owns a fleet of big transport lorries. She
is that bird periodically born out of the
ashes and dust (281).

While corrupted by Theng'eta and later by the fanaticism of the

evangelist Lillian, Munira has ironic insight into the
precarious nature of the neo-colonial state:
 In our Kenya you can make a living out of
anything. Even fear. Look at the British
company that owns and runs security guards
in this country. Every house, every
factory has a Security guard. They should
set up a Ministry of Fear (286).

Karega is not as Lisa Curtis suggests: "a militant

mouthpiece whose speeches have the air of having been
transcribed from agitator's pamphlets."20 Karega may be
sanctimonious and self-righteous, but that is because of his
youth and inexperience. He is capable of personal change too
as is demonstrated by his understanding in jail that political
struggle continues with or without him. His character has
evolved progressively from his involvement in "the journey", to
the political lessons he learns from "the lawyer" to his
involvement in the trade union movement. After returning to
Ilmorog after a 10 year absence, he notices evidence of
economic betrayal of Ilmorog: economic displacement,
proletarianization of the peasants, enclosure of game parks.
"And behind it all, as a monument to the changes, was Trans-
African Road and two story building of the African Economic
Bank Ltd" (302). He questions individualism and the end to
"peoples common shamba". Neither could he cynically accept
Wanja's "eat or be eaten" viewpoint. Finding inspiration from
Abdullah, he chooses to help organize the Brewery Worker's
Union at Theng'eta Breweries despite the intervention of Munira
and Lillian's revivalist movement. Karega later gains
political experience from his interrogation by Inspector
 150
Godfrey. Yet Karega's militant political tactics differs from
those of Abdullah.

In a meeting with Wanja, where she warns him of plans to

break the brewery union strike, Karega is able to help her
face the death of her grandparents, who both acted alone to
defend the land.

Karega's meeting with Wanja seems to sow a new seed of

resistance in her, not that she wasn't capable of organizing in
a co-operative sense. Her commitment on "the journey" and her
organizational abilities in forming the Nderi-Nyakinyua Group
were ample proof of her previous commitment to the Community
above individual interests. Some action had to be taken,
particularly because of her union with Abdullah and her need to
protect Joseph's continued success at Siriana. She objectively
analyzes her new consciousness and exercises her betrayal of
the community.

She had carried dreams in a broken vessel.

Looking back now she could not even see a
trail of the vanished dream and
expectations. It was Kimeria who bored a
hole into the vessel. That was true. But
she had let him. She had chosen. This she
could not now hide from herself. Karega
was right. She had chosen.... The choice
put one on this or that side of the line-up
in the battlefield .... She, Wanja, had
chosen to murder her own child. In doing
so she had murdered her own life and now
she took her final burial in property and
 degradation as a glorious achievement. She
tried to look at this coolly, without this
time shifting the blame onto others."
She could not now return to a previous
state of innocence. But she could do
something about her present circumstances
(328).

She would take revenge on the three men who exploited her
most: Chui, Kimeria, and Mzigo. The emotional will to kill
Kimeria comes earlier in the novel when Wanja is raped by him:
"He must die, a voice thudded within, he must die" (157).

The political will comes only when Wanja is politically

commited to vengeance. Albrecht see her killing of Kimeria as:

... an instinctive act of liberation.

[While Munira's torching of the
whorehouse]
...is premeditated, ordained
by what he
called the Law... he feels he has been
entrusted with a mission: to root out the
evil in the world, the evil incarnate in
Wanja, who has become in his eyes both
Jezebel and Babylon.2g

Munira distorted view is the result of a self-hatred

similar to Wanja's, but he also hated Wanja because she made
him pay for his sex with her. Because of his class background,
he sub-consciously avoids attacking his own socio-economic
roots as is the case of his treatment of Chui, Nderi, Kimeria.
His choice to continue to betray Ilmorog is a complex one. As
a religious fanatic of Lillian's sect, he is a victim of a
 152
false consciousness. Even though his torching of sunshine
Lodge is an attempt to "save" Karega's soul and punish the
"Satanic" Wanja, Munira has "chosen" as victim to punish
another victim (Wanja) instead of the true betrayers of the
nation: Chui, Kimeria, Mzigo, and Nderi.

Both "murders" of the betrayers are pre-meditated.

Abdullah would have killed the three men as well if Munira and
Wanja had not intervened. Wanja planned the murder of Kimeria
and the others in advance. Ironically, Munira's intervention
prevented her from killing others.

The trauma of the fire released other memories of guilt

about Wanja's father and his drunken fixation on money:

She rested on her bed in the old hut,

turning over these things in her head.. .
these silhouettes from the past these ...
images that refused to be burned right out
of her life and memory. She wanted a new
life. .. clean ...
she felt this was the
meaning of her recent escape! Already she
felt the stirrinqs of a new person... she
had after all been baptized by fire ( 3 3 7 ) .
(Emphasis is mine) .

Wanja's unborn child is a new inspiration for continuing

the struggle. When asked who the father is Wanja draws a
portrait that combines the best features of "the lawyer" and
the "Mau Mau" leader, Dedan Kimathi without one limb. It is in
fact, Abdullah. Her child will be not just the result of her
 153
union with Abdullah, but also a revolutionary inspiration for a
future Kenya, one that is liberated from the tyranny of a neo-
colonial state.

Wanja's portrait is an important symbolic reference to her

renewal . she felt a tremendous calm, a kind of inner
assurance of the possibilities of a new power" (338).

Abdullah's renewal will come from a recognition of the

revolutionary ideas of Joseph. However, his awakening is
slower and more contradictory. A dialogue between Abdullah and
Joseph at the end of the novel reveals the new revolutionary
consciousness of Joseph and Abdullah's recognition of the
independence of "his brother." Joseph reveals the
inconvenience of Chui's death in the fire, seeing it as a
setback to a planned strike at Siriana. Munira's voluntarist
action in fact thwarted the revolutionary process.

Abdullah's brief introspection during their discussion

allows him time to assess his own isolated personal betrayal,
particularly his refusal to share his past with Joseph. He
feels guilty for having abused Joseph in the past and confesses
this guilt to Joseph. Joseph's reply is really the first and
only incident when we are given an opportunity to understand
his character:
 h here's nothing to forgive.... I am very
grateful for what You have done for me and
also ~ u n i r aand Wanja and Karega. When I
grow up and finish school and university I
want to be like You. I would like to feel
proud that I had done something for our
people. You fought for the political
independence of this country: I would like
to contribute to the liberation of its
people of this country. I have been
reading a lot about Mau Mau: I hope that
one day we shall make Karuna-hi, when
Kimathi was born, and Othaya, where JM was
born, national shrines. And build a
theatre in memory of Kimathi, because as a
teacher he organized the Gichamu Theatre
Movement in Tetu.... ' ( 3 3 9 - 3 4 0 ) .

Perhaps Joseph's wish, small as it is, for shrines for

Kimathi and J.M. Karuiki as well as a theatre like that
organized by the Gichamu Theatre Movement, are small seeds of
Ngugi's own commitment for a new recognition of the "Mau Mau"
movement as well as inspiration for the Kamiriithu Community
Theatre.

In Joseph's speech, Abdullah recognizes the rhetoric and

political views of Karega and, although initially hesitant, he
realizes the importance of a new struggle that will end the
betrayal of Kenyans by Kenyans. ".... history was a dance in a
huge arena of God. You played your part, whatever your chosen
part, and then you left the arena, swept aside by the waves of
a new step, a new movement in the dance" (340).

Karega, who hears of his mother's death while in prison,

 155
is slow too in recognizing his own short sightedness in the
political struggle beyond his own lost commitment until a young
worker, Akinyi tells him of worker's strike in Ilmorog as well
as the role of a new urban guerrilla organization, WAKOMBOZI.
Akinyi convinces Karega that he will be able to rejoin the
political struggle. Inspired by the possibility of a continued
fight against neo-colonialism outside the prison, an

invigorated Karega reviews the situation:

The system and its gods and its angels had

to be fought consciously, consistently and
resolutely by all the working people! From
Koitalel through Kang'ethe to Kimathi it
had been the peasants, aided by the
workers, small traders and small
landowners, who had mapped out the path
(344).

For an imprisoned Karega the repression of today can

always be fought "tomorrow". Confident that "he was no longer
alone", Karega can survive his prison term. Ngugi survived a
year in prison, from 1977 to 1978. He remarks on the irony of
his detention compared to that of Karega:

Many critics have pointed out the parallels

between my own arrest and detention and
similar but fictional events in the opening
and closing chapters of my novel Petals of
Blood. It opens with the arrest of a
progressive worker - he is deceived into
believing that he is wanted at the police
station for a few questions -and it closes
with his eventual detention on suspicion of
being a communist at heart.31
 156
Through the eyes of four diverse protagonists, Ngugi is
able to chronicle the changes in the political and economic
landscape of Ilmorog, a mythical neo-colonial town in Kenya.
From an underdeveloped enclave, neglected by the national
bourgeoisie, Ilmorog is slowly transformed by the circumstances
of both betrayal of its people by their elected officials, by
their business community, and by their leaders. In their own
way Abdullah, Munira, Karega, and Wanja betray their community
not only because of the divisions of neo-colonialism, but also
because of personal weaknesses as well. With the exception of
the journey to Nairobi, Abdullah withdraws to his shop and
later his Theng'eta bar. He does not fight the economic
invasion of his community, but temporarily profits from it.
Yet Abdullah is emersed in the tradition of resistance: he is
capable of overcoming adversity whether it be his impoverished
role as street food vendor, his reassessment of his abuse of
Joseph or his committment to Wanja despite her degradation as a
prostitute. As an exile from his own community, Abdullah is
not alone in his betrayal of his adopted community. As exiles
Munira and Karega seek refuge in Ilmorog to escape their tragic
personal experiences at home. Munira's betrayal, like
Abdullah's, is one of apathy in response to the crises in the
community. Yet his alienation from the community is greater,
leading to his spontaneous acceptance of religious fanaticism,
which in turn results in the attempted murder of ~ a n j a . Karega
too is guilty of betraying the community by seeing the struggle
 157
against capitalist penetration of Ilmorog as an individual
above the action of the community. His abandonment of Wanja
during her most vulnerable crisis is another level of his
personal betrayal. Karega's betrayal is the slightest of the
four protagonists. He is also the least contradictory
character, progressively changing without a major setback.
Individually, he may be more of an ideal in proletarian fiction
than a realistic character. Wanja's betrayal of community is a
contradictory one. It comes from several sources including
resentment having been abandoned by Karega, commercialization
of Theng'eta, and the adoption of the philosophy of "eat or be
eaten" as the rationale for her prostitution business. Yet
weakened by family background and strengthened by her
grandmother's traditional communal resistance, Wanja as a woman
is the most victimized and the most resilient character in the
novel.

However, all of these characters have insight into their

betrayals and they allow their spirits to be renewed by new
levels of political struggle in Ilmorog. Even Munira is
capable of judging his own family's exploitation of the Kenyan
working class during his trial at the end of the novel.

What Ngugi is saying in this novel is that betrayal of the

community can be a temporary state of personal alienation for
some caused by the hostility and divisiveness in a neo-colonial
 158
environment. Abdullah, Karega, and Wanja betray their
community. They divorce themselves from the community's need
for collective action. Karega's retreat is the result of his
alienation from Wanja. He leaves Ilmorog when the community
needs his leadership for a defense against the exploitive
actions Nderi and the national bourgeoisie. Abdullah retreats
to his shop and bar, lapsing into a world of self-preservation
and alienation. Wanja's marketing of sex, like the liquor
Theng'eta, is a means of forgetting the anguish of the
exploitation of Kimeria, the loss of her family, and the guilt
of killing her baby. Despite obstacles forced on these
characters, they are capable of regeneration. Karega learns
that he cannot act alone. He must work as part of a movement
for national liberation. Abdullah and Wanja, two wounded
progressive fighters, work towards a collective future,
hopefully continuing the work of their ancestors Gikuyu and
Mumbi. For others, such as Reverend Jerrod Brown, Mzigo, Chui,
Kimeria, and Nderi, it continues to be in their class interests
to exploit and betray their community.

These five antagonists collectively act as an antithesis

to political renewal in Kenya. With the exception of Nderi,
whose speech making and taste for political revenge approximate
realistically a number of KANU leaders, these betrayals lack
character development. Collectively they stand for a national
betrayal that has resulted from the inception and growth of
 159
neo-colonialism. Mzigo and Chui are part of an educational
betrayal that began with the infusion of colonial education
that was so pronounced during the central conflict in The River
Between. Chui's leadership, so pronounced as a student rebel,
was co-opted by the seduction of material wealth and political
power. Mzigo uses his position as "school-inspector" to
enhance his own fortunes, callously forgetting the educational
needs of Ilmorog. He sees women as willing victims by
suggesting to Munira that their "use" can compensate for the
lack of educational materials. Reverend Brown, like Munira's
father, uses the sham of religious conviction to accumulate
wealth and power under the guise of aid to poverty-stricken
areas like Ilmorog. Kimeria and Nderi are the most dangerous
betrayers because they are willing to go to any lengths to
preserve their riqht to exploit the less fortunate. Kimeria is
so confident of his role within a capitalist system he is
willing to explain or confess his destructive capacity within a
neo-colonial betrayal. As a character he is further developed
as "Boss Kihara" in Devil on the Cross.

After Petals of Blood, Ngugi too would face new levels of

political struggle. He would help start a popular theatre in
his own community at Kamiriithu despite the repression and
resistance of the Kenyan government. As a detainee he would
write a brilliant satiric novel, Devil on the Cross on the
only available source of writing material, toilet paper. After
C
 160

1982 he would also start a new career as a political exile in

London, continuing the fight to help other political prisoners
in Kenya as well as exploring new levels of mass communication
by writing for a peasant and worker audience in Gikuyu and
Kiswahili.
 FOOTNOTES
l. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Writers in Politics (London: Heinemann,
1981) 94.

2 . A succinct definition of neo-colonialism is given as

follows: [When] "... formal political independence of
almost all the former colonies has not significantly
modified the previous domination and exploitation of the
great majority of humanity in Asia, Africa and Latin ~ m e r i c a
by the advanced capitalist countries."
Bill Warren, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (London, New
Left Books, 1980) 184.
Other sources that explain the characteristics of neo-
colonialism are:
Daniel A. Offiong, Imperialism and Dependency: Obstacles to
African Development (Washington, D.C., Howland University
Press, 1982) 61-63.
Colin Leys, Underdevelopment of Kenya: The Political Economy
of Neo-Colonialism (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1974) .
Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-colonialism: The Last Staqe of Capitalism
(New York: International Publishers, 1966).
3. See Christopher Leo, Land and Class in Kenya (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1984) Chapters 3 and 8.
Nicola Swainson, The Development of Corporate Capitalism in
Kenya, 1918-1977 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1980).

Gavin Kitching, Class and Economic Change in Kenya: The

Making of an African - Petite - Bourgeoisie (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1980).
Richard Sandbrook, Proletarians and African Capitalism: T h e
Kenyan Case 1960-1972 (London: Cambridge University Press,
1975).

4 . Cook and Okenimpke, Nuuqi wa Thionq'o: An Exploration of His

Writinqs (London: Heinemann, 1983) 90.
Cook and Okenimpke 93.
6. Ojung Ayuk, "Environmental Decadence: A Theme in Post
Independence African Fiction," Africana Journal 13.1-4(1982)
:142.

'. Emmanuel Ngara, Art and Ideology in the African Novel

(London: Heinemann, 1985) 80.
8 . Peter Nazareth, "The Second Homecoming: Multiple Ngugi's in
Petals of "Blood", ed., George M. Gugelberger Marxism and
African Literature (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press,
1986) 126.
9 . Cyril Treister, Nairobi Times, November 6, 1978 from G.D.
Killam, Introduction to Nguqi wa Thiong'o (London:
Heinemann Books, 1980) 106.
l o . Eustace Palmer, "Ngugi's Petals of Blood," African
Literature Today, 10, (1979) :153-165.
. As quoted by Anita Shreve, Viva July, 1977 :35 in G.D.
Killam, "A Note on the Title of Petals of Blood," Journal
of Commonwealth Literature 15.1(1980) :126.

12. ed. Wayne Brown, Derek Walcott: Selected Poems (London:

Heinemann Books, 1981) 103-104.
13. "Chui represents the older generation of educated elite
jwhoj became corrupt bureaucratis) and bourgeois in
turn.... .
'I

Ian Glenn, "Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the Dilemmas of the

Intellectual Elite in Africa: A Social Perspective,"
English in Africa 8.2(1981) 59.
14. Jennifer Evans, "Mother Africa and Heroic Whore: Female
Images in Petals of Blood," ed., Hal Wylie, Eileen Julien
and Russell J. Linnermann, Contemporary African Literature
(Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1983) 62.
15. Jacqueline Bardolph, "Fertility in Petals of Blood," Echos
du Commonwealth 6(1980-1981) :64-65.
16. This is likely a slander against former Vice-president,
Oginga Odinga, who broke away from Kenyan African National
Union (K.A.N.U.), to form his own short-lived party, Kenyan
Peoples Union (K.P.U.)

See Henry Bienen, Kenya: The Politics of Participation and

Control (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1974) 69-72, 106-107,
 Colin Leys 2 3 4 - 2 3 8 .
The role and later assassination of Pio Gama Pinto in 1 9 6 5
is discussed in Odinga's book, Not Yet Uhuru (London:
Heinemann, 1 9 6 9 ) 2 5 0 - 2 , 2 6 9 - 2 7 0 , 2 7 8 - 8 8 .
Leys 2 3 5 .
1 7 . Ngugi has modelled Wanja on the exploited barmaids of
Kenya. "She is not a prostitute, strictly speaking, nor is
she a straight girl. Her salary is not regulated; it is
paid according to the whim of the employer. She has little
chance of marrying. I believe that barmaids are the most
ruthlessly exploited category of women. Barmaids came into
being after Independence, and were a result of the many
bars that sprang up after 1 9 6 3 . Drinking, alcohol and
sexism are part of our national pastime." Shreve 3 5 .
Part I ends with the Ilmorog delegation leaving their
community to escape the fate of dead animals who feed the
"hawks" and "vultures." Ironically, they become victims of
another vulture, Nderi wa Riera, whose name literally
means, "vulture of air." "Plainly he lives a "vulture"
existence, living high above the people, fattening off
their misery and feeding as his name sake on the dead and
near-dead people and cattle of his constituency.'"
Triester 1 0 6 .
Writers in Politics
20. Ngara presents the idea of the journey as both a physical
and socio-economic concept in which the two contrasting
characters Munira and Karega are revealed. Ngara, 7 5 - 7 9 .
Christine Pagnoulle sees "The Journey'' as a separate entity
both structurally and as an independent focus within the
confines of a second title. Pagnoulle also focuses on the
similarities and differences of the journey motif in
comparison to T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Mayi."
See Christine Pagnoulle, "Ngugi wa Thiong'o "Journey of the
Magi": Part I1 of Petals of Blood, Research in African
Literature 6 . 2 ( 1 9 8 5 ) .
21. Cook and Okenimpke 9 5 .
22. Cook and Okenimpke 9. They suggest that the lawyer is J.M.
Kariuki, a social reformer within KANU and former "Mau Mau"
leader. Coincidentally "J.M." was murdered in 1 9 7 5 during
the writing of Petals of Blood. Kariuki, like Odinga was
one of a few critics within the KANU government of
 Kenyatta. Ngugi wrote two essays on him in Writers in
Politics. The theme of betrayal dominates his discussion
on this Kenyan patriot as well:
"Who betrayed J.M. Mariuki? Who killed him?
I felt the truth pain, the truth hurt. For
it was we, we who have kept silent and
propped up on an unjust oppressive system,
because we were eating a bit of the fruits.
So we kept quiet when Gama Pinto was
killed: when Mboya was murdered; when
Keeng'u Karumba disappeared. We kept quiet
saying it was not really our shauri" (85).

The movement against those who opposed the Kenyatta

government, which included Ngugi, intensified after the
Kariuki assassination in March 1975.
See Swainson 184.

David Maughan-Brown, Land, Freedom, and Fiction: History

and Ideoloay in Kenya (London: Zed Press, 1985) 192.
z 3 . Florence Stratton, "Cyclical Patterns in Petals of Blood,"
Journal of Commonwealth Literature 15.1(1980) :121-122.
2 4 . "A Luta Continua" is the political refrain of the
revolutionary party in Mozambique, FRELIMO. It was
frequently used by former leader, Samora Machel to end his
speeches in both pre and post colonial Mozamibique.
See Samara Machel, Mozambique: Sowinq the Seeds of
Revolution (London, Committee for Freedom in Mozamibique,
Angola and Guine, 1972)
Samara Machel, The Enemy Within (Maputs: Departments of
Information and Propaganda, 1982).
2 s . Cook and Okenimpke 104.

2 . Evans 59.
2 7 . Lisa Curtis, "The Divergence of Art and Ideology in the
Later Novels of Ngugi wa Thiong'o: A Critique," Ufahamu
13.2(1984) :204.
2 8 . Curtis 206.
2 9 . Francoise Albrecht, "Blood and Fire in Petals of Blood,"
Echos du Commonwealth 6(1980-1981) :45.
 See Ngugi wa Thiong'o, "Mau Mau is Coming Back: The
Revolutionary Significance of 20th October 1952 in Kenya
Today," from Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in
Neo-Colonial Kenya (Trenton: New Jersey: Africa World
Press, 1983) 7-31.
Ross Kidd, "Popular Theatre and Popular Struggle in Kenya:
The Story of Kamirithu," Race and Class Vol.XXIV 24.3(1983)
:287-304.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary

(London: Heinemann, 1981) 128.
 CONCLUSION

A recent critic of Ngugi attacks him for being consumed

with "hatred":

[He has] ".. . lost this way in the search

for social justice. With a keen sense of
injustice, he naturally felt the injustices
that remained in the post-colonial world."'

This perspective is inaccurate. Ngugi, historically documents

through character and circumstance the abuse of "justice" as
well as the destructive capacity of the national bourgeoisie.
He has attacked the abuse of privilege and power through his
fiction, drama, and political essays. His increasing satirical
bite, evident through Devil on the Cross and I Will Marry When
I Want, has added a new imaginative level of criticism to the
attack on a materialistic and capricious national bourgeosie.
His criticism of a neo-colonial state and its ruling class is
not based on hatred, but rather on a reasoned critique of a
nation betrayed by a parasitical elite.

Each of the novels explores the theme of betrayal in a

different historical milieu: The River Between within the
confines of the crisis of colonial education and the
circumcision debates, Weep Not Child at the apex of the "Mau
Mau" Revolution, A Grain of Wheat during the turbulent
questioning of the week before and after independence, and
 167
Petals of Blood after more than a decade of political posturing
and regional disparity. All of the novels focus on the
contradictions of either colonialism or neo-colonialism. It is
within these contradictions that the theme of betrayal is
evident. Betrayal is always presented as a choice such as when
Wanja chooses to establish the Sunshine Lodge or sell Theng'eta
as a commodity. Waiyaki decides to leave the Kiama and break
his oath of "purity." Mugo betrays Kihika to pursue his
distorted vision of revolutionary heroism. The theme of
betrayal is an important component of Ngugi's concern about the
breakdown in Kenya's socio-political system. Community
divisions exist structurally in The River Between and in class
terms in the other three novels.

In The River Between, divisions between Kameno and Makuyu

ridges existed before colonial penetration, but the Honia River
always acted as a buffer or a "cure" for their competition.
The decision to betray the ridges was made by both Joshua and
Kabonyi who were the first major converts to a colonial
Christianity. Kabonyi's recanted conversion to traditionalism
is not a sincere one and thus it is an additional betrayal
because of his jealousy of the messianic role played by
Waiyaki. Waiyaki's betrayal is somewhat less tainted, but
perhaps more divisive because his motive, to successfully unite
the two ridges, is carried out individually without consulting
or listening to the needs of the community. Waiyaki ' s
 168
education at Siriana, taken to form the means of unification,
in fact ironically accelerated the divisions that already
existed before colonialism. Muthoni and Nyambura, who as
"guardians of the tribe," are ironically blamed for the
division of the ridges even though they attempt to become part
of the unification process. An entrenched and rigid Kiama
feels that it has won the battle to unite the ridges, but at a
social cost that will make a colonial takeover that much
easier.

Weep Not Child presented a view of accelerated colonial

occupation. The presence of a white settler class, personified
through Howlands, has increased the divisions within the Gikuyu
community even further. Jacobo, the most divisive source of
betrayal in the community, is a dangerous successor to Kabonyi
in The River Between as he is not only an informer for Howlands
but also uses his "loyalist" status to exploit his fellow
villagers, especially Ngotho. Njoroge, like his father,
Ngotho, feels that education will lift his family out of its
role as tenant farmers. However, they find, as does Waiyaki
before them, that until the divisive land issue is settled, the
betrayal of community from within and from outside will
continue unabated. Ngotho's betrayal is a result of inaction
by choosing not to fight. Instead he attempts to provide a
living for his family. His son, Boro chooses to break out of
this passive acceptance of victimization. However, he too
 169
becomes caught up in a betrayal caused by the contradictions of
colonialism. Boro gives Howlands the opportunity to punish
Boro's family and he dishonours his father by attempting to
force him to join the revolution. After Ngotho's death Boro
betrays ideologically the collective action of the Land and
Freedom Army by endangering the Movement through the reckless
assassinations of his class enemies, Jacobo and Howlands. As a
result his family is nearly decimated by arrests and deaths.
Even Njoroge, the hope for the future survival of the family,
is incapable of breaking the deadlock of betrayal. The weight
of recovery and progressive change remains in the hands of two
women, Njeri and Nyokabi, who have neither betrayed the
community nor divided the family.

Mumbi, the founding mother of the Gikuyu and the heroic

figure of A Grain of Wheat, continues the bonding roles
established by women in the two earlier novels. The weight of
personal and political betrayals of Thabai rest on her
shoulders. As Kihika's sister she must bear the loss of family

as well as the revolutionary leadership of her brother. Unlike

Boro she does not exact revenge even when she learns the source

of the betrayal of her brother.

Mugo's public confession is voluntary and as such it is

meant to heal the wounds of betrayal. It does that in part,
 170
political betrayal. Gikonyo, Mumbi's husband, comes to terms
with his political betrayal of the "Mau Mau" unity oath as well
as the victimization of his wife by Karanja. After hearing
Mugo's public confession and reassessing his own shortcomings,
he is capable of both reconciliation and understanding the
source of a new betrayal, the economic exploits of the M.P. for
Thabai. Karanja, the "loyalist" informer who is an extension
of Jacobo's collaborationist viewpoint is seen as more of a
victim of his own betrayal which is fueled by an obsessive love
for Mumbi. Yet his roles as "the hooded self" and as a rapist
are destructive ones. If Mugo had not been sacrificed, Karanja
would have had to pay a much higher price for the betrayal of
Thabai than exile. A Grain of Wheat offers a more optimistic
ending than Weep Not Child despite the divisiveness of a
community betrayed. The possibility of reconciliation between
Mumbi and Gikonyo offers hope for a future Kenya in the 1960's.

Reconciliation is also a possibility for some of the

characters at the end of Petals of Blood, but only after
numerous personal and political betrayals have been exorcised.
The complexity of the theme of betrayal in this novel is
compounded by a rewriting of the nationalist struggle in Kenya,
the number of betrayals involved beyond the four main
protagonists, and the social divisions created by a parasitical
neo-colonialism.
 171
The record of Ilmorog's past is used by Ngugi to record
the struggle against colonialism and to provide incentive and
inspiration to reacquire a former state of self-reliant
independence. Betrayal is always an historical possibility,
even an eventuality for those who wish to benefit from the
misfortune of others. Three Limuru exiles find escape in
Ilmorog, but as that community faces the devastation of drought
and later full integration into a capitalist system, they are
unable to escape their pasts. Munira's passive isolated
betrayal is the result of his guilt for not having not stood up
to his father and his exploitive investments. Abdullah's
betrayal is passive as well, but not as severe as Munira's.
Neglect of Joseph and an enforced isolation in his store and
bar are sources of the betrayal even though he is willing to
defend Wanja and lead the Ilmorog delegation on the "journey"
to Nairobi. Karega's betrayal is rather slight as well, but
significant none the less. It is the result of naivety and a
fixation of his own personal role in the liberation of his
adopted community. His ability to support the victims of neo-
colonialism is sometimes called into question, particularily
his insensitive treatment of Wanja.

Wanja, like her predecessor, Mumbi is the most resilient

and the most victimized character in Petals of Blood. Her
betrayal is the most complex of all the characters. Like
Munira she faces the memory of past recriminations concerning
 172
her father and Kimeria. Like Karega she leaves Ilmorog during
crisis situations. She abandons co-operative endeavors for the
personal profit of Theng'eta and the Sunshine Lodge. Like
Abdullah she is capable of neglect as in the case of Nyakinyua.
Yet in spite of these betrayals she is capable of regeneration.
This is evident throughout the novel from personal sacrifices
on the "Journey" to the co-operative farmers' organization in
Ilmorog to the elimination of Kimeria before the fire in
Sunshine Lodge. Wanja's character is later proletarianized
further through Wariinga in Devil on the Cross, although in her
case the possibility of a regenerated political environment is
less likely.

Finally, the socio-political division of neo-colonial

betrayal has been the focus of Chapter Four. The national
bourgeoisie have betrayed their opportunities to lead Kenya out
of the wasteland of colonial exploitation. Mzigo, Chui, and
Kineria, Nderi and Brown have not only failed to develop the
country fairly and equitably, but they have systematically used
their privileged positions in education, commerce, religion and
politics to take advantage of those they have sworn to protect.
The death of three of them in the fire at Sunshine Lodge is
justice, but ironically exacted by a fanatical Munira. Karega
and others will have to pay politically for this voluntarist
act until the opposition movement is better organized.
 173
Through The River Between, Weep Not Child, A Grain of
Wheat, and Petals of Blood as well as Devil on the Cross and
the various plays and short stories, Ngugi has tried to
recreate a "living past." The struggle against colonialism and
neo-colonialism has been his major focus. Betrayal can be
temporary and reconciliation possible if the interests of the
community are accepted before the power and privilege of the
individual. Ngugi's fictional world is a living lesson for the
people of Kenya "... nobody 'can escape fate or the past,'
everyone must face the past since it is merged into the
present, take his responsibility and try to change the present
situation for a better f u t ~ r e . " ~
 FOOTNOTES

I . M.E.K. Neuhaus, "How Ngugi wa Thiong'o Lost His Way,"

Quadrant January-February 1987 :96.
0
2 . Rene Richard, "History and Literature: Narration and Time in
Petals of Blood," Echos du Commonwealth 6(1980-81) :26.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

I PRIMARY RESOURCES OF NGUGI WA THIONG'O

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Ngugi wa Thiong'o. A Grain of Wheat. London: Heinemann, 1978.
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Decolonizinq the Mind: The Politics of Language in
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Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary. London: Heinemann,
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Devil on the Cross. London: Heinemann, 1982.
Homecoming. London: Heinemann, 1978.
Petals of Blood. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978.
Secret Lives and Other Stories. New York: Lawrence Hill
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The River Between. London: Heinemann, 1975.
The Black Hermit. London: Heinemann, 1979.
Weep Not Child. London: Heinemann. 1981.
Writers in Politics. London: Heinemann, 1981.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Micere Githae Mugo. The Trial of Dedan
Kimathi. London: Heinemann, 1981.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii. I Will Marry When I
Want. London: Heinemann, 1982.

ARTICLES
Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
---- "A Statement." Kunapipi 4.2(1982) :135-139.
---- "On Writing in Gikuyu." Research in African Literature
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 "The Culture of Silence and Fear." South Maqazine May
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priorities in African Literatures Munich: Hans Zell,
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"Women in Cultural Work: The Fate of Kamiriithu
People's Theatre in Kenya." Development Dialoque 1-2
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I1 CRITICAL TEXTS ON NGUGI WA THIONG'O

Cook, David and Okenimpke, Michael. Ngugi wa Thiong'o: An
Exploration of His Writings. London: Heinemann, 1983.
Killam, G.D. An Introduction to the Writing's of Ngugi. London:
Heinemann, 1980.

Killam, G.D. ed. Critical Perspectives on Nquqi wa Thiong'o.

Washington, D.C. Three Continents Press, 1984.
Robson, C.B. Ngugi wa Thionq'o. London: MacMillan, 1979.
Mugo, Githae Micere. "Vision of Africa in the Fiction of Chinua
Achebe, Margaret Laurence, Elizabeth Huxley and Ngugi wa
Thiong'o." Diss. University of New Brunswick, 1973.

I11 INTERVIEWS WITH NGUGI

Bjorkman, Ingrid. "Ngugi wa Thiong'o - Interview." Kunapipi
4.2 (1982) :126-133.
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Political Economy 32(April 1985) :18-24.
Eyoh, Hansel Nolumbe. "Interview: Ngugi wa Thiong'o." Journal
of Commonwealth Literature., 21.1(1986) :162-166.
Granqvist, Raoul. "Ngugi wa Thiong'o - Interview." Kunapipi
5.1(1983) :44-48.
Magina, Magina. "People have a right to know - Interview with
Ngugi wa Thiong'o." Africa 90(February 1979) :30-31.
Parker, Bettye J. "Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong'o" G.D.
Killam. Critical Perspectives on Ngugi wa Thiona'o. Washington,
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Parker, Kenneth. "Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong'o." Marxism
Today September 1982 :34-35.
Shreve, Anita. "Petals of Blood." Viva (July 1977) :35-36.
Walmsley, Anne. "No licence for Musical." Interview with
Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Index on Censorship l(1983-) :22-24.

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Albrecht, Francoise. "Blood and Fire in Petals of Blood. Echos

du Commonwealth 6(1980-1981) :85-97.
Amooti wa Irumba. "The Making of a rebel." Index on Censorship
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Marxists 6(0ctober 1984) :106-114.
Ayuk, Ojung. "Environmental Decadence: A Theme in Post-
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Bardolph, Jacqueline. "Fertility in Petals of Blood." Echos du

Commonwealth 6(1980-1981) :53-83.
Bardolph, Jacqueline. "The Literature of Kenya." G.D. Killam,
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Bentsi-Enchill, Kojo and Nii K. "For an Afro-African
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Bini, Obi. Rev. of Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary by Ngugi

wa Thiong'o. London: Heinemann, 1981 from Guardian (New York)
October 31, 1981 :21.
Brittain, Victoria. "Kenya's Dissident." London Review of Books
3-16 (June 1982) :19-20.
Brittain, Victoria. "How the Kikuyu play brought the house
down." Guardian (London) April 14, 1982 :13.
Bryce, Jane. "Profile - Ngugi wa Thiong'o: My novel of blood,
sweat and tears." New African August 1982 :36.
Cancel, Robert. "Literary Criticism as Social Philippic and
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Caute, David. "Conferring in Absentia." Times Literary
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Chinweizu. Rev. of Decolonizing the Mind by Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

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Chileshe, John. "Petals of Blood: Ideology and Imaginative
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Cochrane, Judith. "Some Images of Women in East African

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Cock, Sybil. "Kenyan Voice of Struggle." Socialist Review
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Crehan, Stewart. "The Politics of the Signifier: Ngugi wa
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Crow, Brian. "Melodrama and the "Political Unconscious" in Two
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Currey, James and Murray Nancy. "The last rehearsal." Index on

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Curtis, Lisa. "The Divergence of Art and Ideology in the Later
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.
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DIAlmeida, Irene Assiba. "The Language of African Fiction:

Reflections on, Ngugi's Advocacy For An Afro-African
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Durix, Jean Pierre. "Politics in Petals of Blood." Echos du
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Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. "Africa and Devil on the Cross:
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Ellah, E. "Zaria Mud Theatre Thrives." Africa Now October 1985
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Evans, Jennifer. "Mother Africa and Heroic Whore: Female Images
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J. Linnermann, Contemporary African Literature Washington,
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Gitau, B.K. "Ngugi wa Thiong'o - The African Paulo Freire."

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Hall, Richard. "Kenya protest at play." The Observer Oct. 21,

1984 :14.
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4

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Literature - A Survey." ed. Oniga Otite. Themes in African
Social and Political Thouqht. Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension
Publishing, 1978 :106-231.
Page, Malcolm. "The Conclusions of Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat:
Gloom or Affirmation?" ed. Uma Pamareswaran. The Commonwealth
in Canada. Calcutta: Writer's Workshop, 1983 :216-225.
Pagnoulle, Christine. "Ngugi wa Thiong'o's "Journey of the
Magi: Part I1 of Petals of Blood." Research in African
Literature 16.2(1985) :264-275.
Palmer, Eustace. "Ngugi's Petals of Blood." African Literature
Today 10 (1979) :153-165.
Palsmaekers, K. "A Hybrid Poetics in Ngugi's Petals of Blood."
Commonwealth Novel in English 2.1 (1983) :7-26.
Rajab, Ahmed. "Detained in Kenya." Index on censorship 7(1978)
:7-10.
Rauch, Erika. "The Central Male - Female Relationships in 'The
River Between, and Mission to Kala." Busara 7.1(1975) :42-54.
Ravenscroft, Arthur. "African Novels of Affirmation." ed.
Douglas Jefferson and Graham Martin. Use of Fiction: Essays on
the Modern Novel. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1982
:171-180.

Rice, Michael. "The River Between - A Discussion." ed. G.D.

Killam. Critical Perspectives on Nauui wa Thiong'o. Washington,
D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984 :125-135.
4 4

Richard, Rene. "History and Literature: Narration and Time in

Petals of Blood." Echos du Commonwealth 6(1980-81) :1-36.
Riemenschneider, Dieter. "Ngugi wa Thiong'o and the Question of
Language and Literature in Kenya." World Literature Written in
English 24.1(1984) :78-87.
Sarvan, Ponnuthurai. "Under African Eyes." Conradiana 8.3(1976)
:133-139.

Schieder, Rupert. "Black Man's Burden - review of Ngugi's Devil

on the Cross." Books in Canada October 1982 :15-16.

Sekyi-Otu, Ato. "The Refusal of Agency: The Founding Narrative

and Waiyaki's Tragedy in The River Between." Research in
African Literature 16.2(1985) :157-178.
Sharma, Govind Narain. Review of Nguai wa Thiona'o by Clifford
B Robson. An Introduction to the Writinqs of Nquui by G.D.
Killam. Research in African Literature 14.2(1983) :238-242.
Sharma, Govind Narain. "Ngugi ' s Apocalypse: Marxism,
Christianity and African Utopianism in Petals of Blood." World
Literature Written in English 8.2(1979) :302-314.
Sharma, Govind Narain. "Ngugi's Christian Vision: Theme and
Pattern in A Grain of Wheat." African Literature Today lO(1979)
:167-176.

Soile, Sola. "Myth and History in Ngugi's Weep Not Child." ed.
G.D. Killam. Critical Perspectives on Nguqi wa Thiona'o.
washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984 :170-181.
Stratton, Florence. "Narrative Method in the Novels of Ngugi."
ed. Eldred Jones. African Literature Today :13. New York:
Africana Publishing Company, 1983 :124-133.
Stratton, Florence. "Cyclical Patterns in Petals of Blood."
Journal of Commonwealth Literature 15.1(1980) :115-124.
Sweetman, David. "Adding to the howl on anguish." Review of
Devil on the Cross. Times Literacy Supplement June 18, 1982
:676.
Treister, Cyril. "An Addition to the Genre of the Proletarit
Novel." ed. G.D. Killam. Critical Perspectives on Nquqi wa
Thionq'o. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1984 :267-
270.
Vaughan, Michael. "African Fiction and Popular Struggle: The
Case of A Grain of Wheat." Enqlish in Africa 8.2(1981) :23-51.
Waidhura, Livington Njomo. "Clampdown on drama: Is Shakespeare
a suitable hero for Kenya?" Index on Censorship l(1985) :23-24.

Walmsley, Anne. "Ngugi wa Thiong'o Free thought on toilet

paper." Index on Censorship 3(1981) :41-42.
Wamalwa, D. Salituma. "The Engaged Artist: The Social Vision of
Ngugi wa Thiong'o." Africa Today 33.1(1986) :9-18.
Williams, Lloyd. "Religion and Life in James Ngugi's The River
Between." African Literature Today 5(1971) :54-65.
Wilson, Amrit. "Playwright in Exile." New Statesman Nov. 23,
1984 :22.

V GENERAL TEXTS ON AFRICAN LITERATURE

Arab, Aberrahmane. Politics and the Novel in Africa. Hydra,
Algeria: Office des Publications Universitaires, i982.

Awoonor, Kofi. The Breast of the Earth. Garden City, New

Jersey: Doubleday/Anchor, 1976.
Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa, Jamie, Madubuike, Ihechukwu. Toward the
Decolonization of African Literature Volume I. Washington,
D.C.: Howard University Press, 1983.
Cook, David. African Literature: A Critical View. London:
Longman, 1977.
Dathorne, O.R. African Literature in the Twentieth Century.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975.
Davies, Carole Boyce. and Graves, Anne Adams. ed. Nqambika:
- of Women in African Literature. Trenton, New Jersey:
Studies
-
Africa World Press, 1986.
Duerden, Dennis and Pieterse, Cosmo. eds., African Writers
Talkinq. London: Heinemann, 1972 :121-130.
Egejuru, Dhaneul Akubueze. Towards African Literary
Independence. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1980.
Egejuru, Dhaneul Akubueze. Black Writers: White Audience: A
Critical Approach to African Literature. New York: Exposition
Press, 1978.
Etherton, Michael. Development of African Drama. London:
Hutchinson, 1982.
Gakwandi, Shatto Arthur. The Novel and Contemporary Experience
in Africa. London: Heinemann, 1977.
Griffiths, Gereth. A Double Exile: African and West Indian
Writinq Between Two Cultures. London: Marion Boyars, 1978.
Gugelberger, George M. ed. Marxism and African Literature.
Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1986.
Gunner, Elizabeth. A Handbook for Teachinq African Literature.
London: Heinemann, 1984.
Gurr, Andrew. Writers in Exile: Identity of Home in Modern
Literature. Sussex: Harvester Press, 1981.

Janmohamed, Abdul R. Manichean Aesthetics: Politics of

Literature in Colonial Africa. Amherst: University of
Massachusetts, 1983.
Killam, G.D. The Writinq of East and Central Africa. London:
Heinemann, 1984.
Killam, G.D. ed. African Writers on African Writinq. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1973.
King, Bruce and Ogungbesan, Kolawole. Celebration of Black and
African Writing. Zaria: University of Ahmadu Bello Press and
Oxford University Press, 1975.
King, Bruce. Literatures of the World in Enqlish. London:
Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1974.
Liyong, Lo Taban. The Last Word: Cultural Synthesism. Nairobi:
East African Publishing House, 1969 :180-182.
McEwan, Neil. Africa and the Novel. London: MacMillan, 1983.
Maughan-Brown, David. Land, Freedom, and Fiction: History and
Ideoloqy in Kenya. London: Zed Press, 1985.

Moore, Gerald. Twelve African Writers. London: Hutchinson,

1980.
Mutiso, G-C.M. Socio-Political Thouqht in African Literature.
New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974.
Nazareth, Peter. An African View of Literature. Evanston:
Northwestern university Press, 1974.
Ngara, Emmanuel. Art and Ideoloav in the African Novel. London:
Heinemann, 1985.
Ngara, Emmanuel. Stylistic Criticism and the African Novel.
London: Heinemann, 1982.
Nkosi, Lewis. Tasks and Masks. London: Longman, 1983.
Olney, James. Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African
Literature. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1973.

Otite, Onigu. Themes in African Social and Political Thouqht.

Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Publishing, 1978.
Owomoyela, Oyekan. African Literature Today: An Introduction.
Waltham, Massachusetts: Crossroads Press, 1979.
Palmer, Eustace. The Growth of the African Novel. London:
Heinemann, 1979.
Palmer, Eustace. An Introduction to the African Novel. London:
Heinemann, 1972.
Pieterse, Cosmo and Munro, Donald. Protest and Conflict in
African Literature. New York: Africana Publishing Company,
1969.

Roscoe, Adrian. Uhuru's Fire. London: Cambridge University

Press, 1977.
Tucker, Martin. Africa in Modern Literature. New York: Unger
Publishing Company, 1967.
Wanjala, Chris. Standpoints on African Literature: A Critical
Anthology. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, 1973.
Wastberg, Per. The Writer in Modern Africa. Uppsala:
Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1968.
Wren, Robert. Achebe's World. Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1980.
Wright, Edgar. Critical Evaluation of African Literature.
Washington, D.C.: Inscape Publishers, 1973.
Zell, Hans M. and Silver, Helm. A Reader's Guide to African
Literature. New York: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1971.

VI HISTORY AND GENERAL LITERARY TEXTS

Barnett, Donald L. and Njama Karari. Mau Mau from Within. New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1966.
Brantley, Cynthia. The Giriama and Colonial Resistance in Kenya
1800-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

Brett, E.A. Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa.

London: Heinemann, 1973.
Brown, Wayne. Derek Walcott: Selected Poetry. London:
Heinemann, 1981.
Bruner, Charlotte, H. Unwindinq Threads: Writing by Women in
Africa. London: Heinemann, 1983.
Buijtenuijs, Robert. Mau Mau: Twenty Years After - The Myth and
the Survivors. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.
0 /
Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan
Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972.
Cliffe, Lionel. Coleman, J.S. and Doornbos, M.R. Government and
Rural Development in East Africa: Essays on ~olitical
Penetration. The Hague: Martin Nijhoff, 1977.
Conrad, Joseph. Twixt Land and Sea: Three Tales. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1978.
Conrad, Joseph. Under Western Eyes. Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
Penguin Books, 1973.
Cutrufelli, Maria Rosa. Women of Africa: Roots of Oppression.
London: Zed Press, 1983.
El Darur, Asma. Women, Why Do You Weep?: Circumcision and Its
Consequences. London: Zed Press, 1982.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press,
1967.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove

Press, 1968.
Gurko, Leo. Joseph Conrad: Giant in Exile. New York: Collier,
1979.
Karl, Frederic R. Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives. New York:
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979.
Kaggia, Bildad. Roots of Freedom 1921-1963. Nairobi: East
African Publishing House, 1975.
Kariuki, J.M. 'Mau Mau' Detainee. Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
Penguin Books, 1964.
Kenya: The Aqarian Question, special issue of Review of African
Political Economy 20(1981).
Kenyatta, Jomo. Facinq Mount Kenya. New York: Vintage, 1962.
Reprinted from London: Secker and Warburg, 1938.
Kinyatti, Mainia wa. ed. Thunder from the Mountains: Mau Mau
Patriotic Songs. London: Zed Press, 1980.
Kitching, Gavin. Class and Economic Chanqe in Kenya: The Makinq
of an African Petite-Bouraeoisie. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1980.
Langley, Myrtle S. The Nandi of Kenya. London: C. Hurst, 1979.
Leo, Christopher. Land and Class in Kenya. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1984.
Leys, Colin. Underdevelopment in Kenya: The Political Economy
of Neo-Colonialism. Berkeley: University of California, 1974.

Machel, Samora. Mozambique: Sowing the Seeds of Revolution.

London: Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola, and Guine,
1972.
Machel, Samora. The Enemy Within. Maputo: Department of
Information and Propaganda, 1982.
Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1967.
Minority Rights Group. Female Circumcision, Excision and
Infibulation Report No.27, London: 2nd revised edition July
1985.
Nkrumah, Kwame. Neocolonialism: The Last Staqe of Capitalism.
New York: International Publishers, 1966.
Odinga, Oginga. Not Yet Uhuru: an autobioqraphy. London:
Heinemann, 1969.
Offiong, Daniel A. Imperialism and Dependency: Obstacles to
African Development. Washington, D.C., Howard University Press,
1982.

Rieselbach, Helen Fink. Conrad's Rebels: The Psycholoqy of

Revolution in the Novels from Nostromo to Victory. Anne Arbor,
Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1985.
Rosberg, Carl G. and Nottingham, John. The Myth of Mau Mau:
Nationalism in Kenya. New York: Praeger, 1966.
Sandbrook, Richard and Cohen, Robin. ed. The Development of An
African Working Class: Studies in Class Formation and Action.
Toronto: University of Toronto, 1975.
Sandbrook, Richard. Proletarians and African Capitalism: The
Kenyan Case, 1960-1972. London: Cambridge University Press,
1975.

Swainson, Nicola. The Development of Corporate Capitalism 1918-

1977. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

Tignor, Robert L. The Colonial Transformation of Kenya.

Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976.
van Zwanenberg, Roger. The Agricultural History of Kenya:
Historical Association of Kenya Paper No.1. Nairobi: East
African Publishing House, 1972.
Warren, Bill. Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism. London: New
Left Books, 1980.
Wolff, Richard D. The Economics of Colonialism: Britain and
Kenya, 1870-1930. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.
Zahar, Renate. Frantz Fanon: Colonialism and Alienation. New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1974.

VII GENERAL BACKGROUND ARTICLES

Abdulla, Abdilatif. "Mnazi: The Struggle for the Coconut Tree."
Index on Censorship 4(1983) :32-33.
Achebe, Chinua. "Novelist as Teacher." Mornina Yet on
Creation Day. Garden City, New York: Doubleday/Anchor, 1975
:71-73,

"Arrest and detention in Kenya." Index on Censorship l(1987)

:23-29.
"Culture of fear and silence." Index on Censorship 4(1983) :20-
23.
"Kenya's seditious Pambama." Index on censorship 6(1982) :34.

Awounda, Moussa. "Moi Fights off MwaKenya." African Concord

March 12, 1987 :8-9.
Barry, John. "How Jomo's royal family grabbed the nation's
wealth." Sunday Times (London) 17 August, 1975 :5-6.

Bulhan, Hussein Abdilahi. "Frantz Fanon: The Revolutionary

Psychiatrist." Race and Class 21(1980) :251-271.
Campbell, Horace. "Class Struggle Heightens in Kenya."
Ufahamu 12.2(1983) :151-157.
Chadaka, Kikaya. "Confusion over Kenya Ban on De Graft Play."
New African April 1982 :46.
Chandler, Michele. "A High-Risk Tradition." Africa-Asia March
1986 :44-45.
Duodu, Cameron. "Secret Party leads to Arrests." Index on
Censorship 6(1986) :18, 35-36.
Harris, Joan. "Women in Kenya: Revolution or Evolution?" Africa
Report March-April 1986 :30-32.
Kanyogonya, Elizabeth. "23 Year Struggle - but not yet Uhuru."
Africa Concord 12 March 1987 :9-10.

Kinyatti, Maina wa. "Mau Mau: The Peak of African Political

Organization in Colonial Kenya." Kenya Historical Review
5.2(1977) :287-311.
Kouba, Leonard J. and Muasher, Judith. "Female Circumcision in
Africa: An Overview." African Studies Review 28.1(1985) :95-
110.
Lonsdale, John. "Mau Mau through the looking glass." Index on
Censorship 2(1986) :19-22.
Maren, Michael. "Hear No Evil." Africa Report November-
December 1986 :67-71.
Martin, Guy. "Fanon's Relevance to Contemporary African
Political Thought." Ufahamu 14.3(1974) :11-34.
Mazrui, Al-Amin. Cry for Justice. (Kilio cha Haki). Translated
by Abdilatif Abdalla. Index on Censorship 4(1983) :23-26.
Ngaywa, Alan. "Fall from Grace." South January 1984 : 2 6 .

Nyonjo, Anyang. "The Decline of Democracy and the Rise of

Authoritarian and Factional Politics in Kenya." Horn of Africa
6.3 (l983/84) :25-34.