Interview with a Kenyan Political Prisoner

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, born on January 5th, 1938 is a Comparative Literature and English professor at UCI. He has written 11 novels, 5 plays, numerous other publications, and a memoir titled Detained: A Writer's Prison Diary. This memoir, also known as Wrestling with the Devil, is the topic of interest for the interview below. In this piece, Thiong’o describes in great detail his experience in a maximum security prison in Kenya. Upon writing a play called Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Marry When I Want), Thiong’o was swiftly arrested for having performed (and written) it in his mother tongue, Gĩkũyũ. Due to British colonization, it had become illegal to learn Gĩkũyũ in schools and to write it as literature. The Kenyan government wrongfully imprisoned “artists and writers in the prophetic tradition”, or people like Thiong’o, who had not been charged with any crime, not gone to trial, and had not been convicted. This kind of action was used both as a form of punishment for those resisting authority, and a scare tactic to warn others alike. Despite the government’s attempts to “kill the spirit”, Thiong’o continued to resist in the only way he knew how: writing his book in his native tongue on the prison’s toilet paper. The novel he wrote in prison is called Devil on the Cross. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s experience alone is moving, but most powerful are his words which illuminate the truths he wishes to share with the world beyond Kenya: to abandon your language in order to learn another is enslavement, but when you know your language and add others, it becomes empowerment.

Introductions

Could you provide me with a brief background on what exactly you were being charged for?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I was involved in a play called Ngaahika Ndeenda, in English it’s called, I Marry When I Want. It was performed by my community, working people, meaning plantation workers in the village Kamĩrĩthũ at the Cultural and Education Center.

When did this take place?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: So the play began in July, 1977. It was stopped by the Kenyan government on November 11th, 1977. And on December 31st, at midnight, I was taken from my home into a maximum security prison.

Was the play itself controversial, or was it only because it was performed in your mother tongue? Did you ever anticipate potentially going to prison?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: Put it this way: write a play in your mother tongue, it's the most natural thing isn't it? I mean to use your mother tongue, it's what you do, it's your right. But colonialism destroyed all that and normalized English as the language of education and as the language of power. Gĩkũyũ is the language spoken by the people. English is the language of the elite, or the educated in Kenya. But Kenyans are a many language community; everybody has a right to their mother tongue even if only spoken by five people. I’ve written about my issue with language in my book called Decolonizing the Mind.

How long were you in prison for?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I was in prison for one year. I was there from December 31st, 1977 until December 12, 1978, yeah.

When did English become the language of the elite?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: Up until 1962, people could more or less go to schools where they learn using their own language. African language run schools were then banned in Kenya by the British colonial government. Kenya was a big centralized state. There are two types of colonies in Africa: a settler colony where people came and claimed it belonged to them, and other colonies which I like to call protectorate colonies like Uganda and Nigeria where there’s no white settlement. Others like Kenya and South Africa were separate colonies meaning they were settled by white people who claimed the land to be theirs. It's like America and Canada and New Zealand– the same pattern. The colonists became independent but the colonized, never. (laughs) It’s what I call normalized abnormality.

[Tangent about how America was colonized and how they got their independence.]

When they came to take you at midnight from your home, how did that go?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: You can read all about it in Wrestling with the Devil. That’s my memoir of prison, and when you read it you see how they came for me at midnight, and how I was never taken to a court of law. I was taken to a maximum security prison. It was December 1st, 1977– no trial, nothing.

Tell me what happened when they entered your house.

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I was forcibly taken from my home and led in chains to the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, one of the largest prisons in post-colonial Africa. I had entered political detention for my writing.

What were you feeling at this time?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: When I was there in prison I asked myself why should I be in a maximum prison, just because of writing in Gĩkũyũ my mother tongue, right? It was a natural thing to do. And why should an African government do that to me? And at that time the President of the country was a good speaker (of Gĩkũyũ), so why should a Kenyan president put me in prison for writing? Two things happened: one, I saw how the colonial system everywhere used language as a way of capturing the mind of the elite, of the colonized, everywhere. That's why I saw that I’d be writing in Gĩkũyũ from then on, and that’s when I wrote my first novel in prison.

Can you describe to me what happened to you upon entering prison?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: They kept me in chains all the way. I did not know where we were going, and they would not answer my questions. When I asked, ‘Why are you taking me?’ and ‘Where are we going?’, they did not reply. This was all done on purpose to intimidate me. They put me in a block. The cell is the room where you are in prison. By yourself. Like cattle … it’s a block but there are cells. It was very small. There was only room for a bed and a table.

When did you start writing your novel?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: About three months after. About three months after I started writing the novel. I call it a novel of resistance, Devil on the Cross.

How were you able to write the novel?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: As a way of asserting my mother tongue and form of resistance. I didn't have paper so I used toilet paper. I didn't have a pen but they said they could give me a pen if I was writing a confession of guilt or something like that. So I said ‘okay, give me a pen’. (laughing) And I had a place to sleep, food to eat, and clothes to wear.

How did you store the book?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I put it together in a package, almost like trash. A stack on the ground, all toilet paper. Then I would cover: the top layer would be no writing, and the lower layer with no writing. So the writing was in between, and from the outside it looked like a pile of toilet paper on the floor.

Were you scared it was going to be found? Were there any risks of having it discovered or close calls?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: Eventually they found out and it was taken to the prison officer and I thought I would never see it again. But lo and behold they said they didn't see anything wrong with it. I was released in December ‘78. So I went to prison without a novel, and I came out with my first novel in my mother tongue, Devil on the Cross. And furthermore, while I was there, I thought a great deal about the language question, and those thoughts were the ones that eventually became the book Decolonizing the Mind. The politics of language in African literature.

[tangent about how English was used as a way to suppress the colonized]

Could you tell me more about how they found it? When did the prison officer first suspect you?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: In the cell we had an iron-barred slit in the upper half of the door. It is built so as to only contain the face. The warder would look in very often; sometimes I would wake up from my sleep and see his face through the bars. I had completed more than half of the book when the prison guards found me writing on the toilet paper.

While in prison, you spoke to the guards who also spoke your mother tongue. How did those conversations go?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I’m writing the novel on toilet paper while the prison guards were not allowed to tell us anything happening outside the walls of the prison. But they did not know or did not believe that I was in prison because of language. So if there was a word I did not remember I would discuss it with them playfully. And they’ll be happy to ‘oh’ (exclaims) that means blah blah blah. So I was using them for vocabulary. They were my teachers but did not know I was learning from them otherwise they would have stopped.

Did you feel any sense of dread or discouragement while you were in prison?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: It is a very frightening thing. In a normal case you are in prison for a number of years. This is endless, there’s no limit. It's up to the will of the president to retain you. In the prison I found some who had been in there for ten years. So I was counting on that as ‘Oh my god’, I don't want to be here for ten years or more. So writing the novel was very important to me because it was a form of resistance of the spirit. From the day you enter prison, its death of the spirit, it kills it. And I refuse to let them kill my spirit. In there I really connected with my language by writing that novel in the Gĩkũyũ language. It was a kind of freedom for me. Yeah. It was liberation for me. You could argue that I found my liberation in prison.

Could you elaborate more on how prison kills the spirit?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: Prison is meant to kill the spirit, especially imprisonment of political dissidents or leaders of thought, and rebels. It is a punitive measure. It was meant to silence others, become an example, and frighten everyone. It doesn't always work. It’s a means of silencing the population, really.

You mentioned not having knowledge of the outside world, but did you see your family at all? Send any letters? Were you allowed visitation?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I did get a letter, but once it goes through it is pruned of every meaning. The letters that pass through the prison will be read. And you might get it the same week, or two weeks later or a month later. There’s no method to it. In prison you could see your family, but in prison we are in prison clothes– uniform. But when you see your family, they put you in your civilian clothes, whatever you had. And then you see your family not in the prison place at all, but they would take you near the airport to give your family the impression that you come from afar, or that you're in prison in a very serious and very far place. They would put handcuffs on, but when you see your family they remove the handcuffs. I said ‘no’, I cannot give you my hands, I refuse to have handcuffs. So I couldn't go see my family. I’m not cooperating with you handcuffing me, but if you take them by force, I have no power to prevent you from doing so. But I myself will not be a part of the process. It becomes a contest of will. They want me to give them my hands and I say ‘no but if you like you can take them, you have the power’. You can grab them. But I,Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, will not give you my hands. So they never allowed me to see my family.

When did this occur? When did you receive the letter and at what point were you refusing to comply, even if it meant not seeing your family?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I cannot be sure. We did not always get our letters right away. I received my letter from my family before they allowed me to visit them. Even though I did not go, I had the letter from them.

Are there any other ways you refused to comply while in prison?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I never verbally attacked the prison guards. But, I learned from them, the Gĩkũyũ language. It was very interesting for me. They did not believe I was imprisoned because of language.

Did your passion for writing and language develop because of this experience or did it already exist before?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: Yes, oh yes. That was a very important motivating factor. I’ve talked about the language question before but never as a form of resistance and a form of liberation of my soul. In liberating myself, I was able to see more. It opened my eyes, it delivered my soul. There’s nothing wrong with knowing English and Portuguese. But equally there's nothing wrong with knowing Gĩkũyũ or any other language. Never abandon your mother tongue, but you can ADD to it. You can add English or French or whatever to it. But don’t substitute English for your language, don’t abandon your language in order to be fluent in another. If you add other languages, that's power, but if you suppress your mother tongue to learn English, that's a different thing altogether.

[tangent about my mother tongue]

Do you have any regrets?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: What we were doing in the village was very important to me. I know that some people think what we were doing was bad. But, what we were doing was the correct thing, it was the normal thing. When you walk into a village, you have to use the language that people use there. As I said it opened my eyes. Of course I regret that I couldn't continue to be there to develop the vision of the play, but by resisting I was now able to not only open my eyes but I’m hoping that through my books like Decolonizing the Mind I've been able to open the eyes of many people beyond Kenya.

Did anyone from your village disagree with what you were doing?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: Not really, it was the elite. The English speaking elite. The play was very very popular. Even now, 40 years later it reopened, and it plays to packed houses. It is very powerful. But I cannot see it. I can only see it in pictures or clips.

Why can you not go back to Kenya?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I cannot go back because I will be arrested. The first play I wrote (I Will Marry When I Want) is very popular in Kenya. But it was banned by the authorities, and I cannot go back. Between 1982-2004 I was attacked, robbed, you know, and essentially forced into exile.

Did you ever feel isolated while in prison?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: I discovered one thing, very important to me. It was a miracle when I discovered it. I could break through the prison walls every night.

How?

Professor Ngugi Wa Thiong’o: Oh my God (enthusiastic) I will tell you how. Every night I could visit my family, I could look in the very places I was missing, through imagination. With imagination… you can break… I mean there’s no prison walls that can hold you back. There’s no way of imprisoning the mind, or killing the body that imagines. When I discovered this, ‘oh last night I could talk to so and so’. Without imagination, we are not even human. Imagination is what makes us do things. Like building new structures or new inventions. And that's why repressive governments all over the world try to suppress or limit the spirit of imagination. But art always embodies imagination, because art is a part of imagination. And so in history you find oppressive governments or regimes that kill or imprison writers, or playwrights. Imagination is very very important. Yeah, hmm.

[ to me personally:]

So remember: imagination is what makes us free as individuals. It makes you remember and recall your childhood. When your mother was teaching you French or Spanish. When you recall your home, you can see it, right? Isn’t that a miracle? A wonderful thing? That you can see.. just like that (snaps) you can see your mother… just like that (snaps again) you can see your father. And you can project. (to the future) Anything is possible. Imagination is what we have as human beings. And oppressive regimes try to limit the space of imagination. And that's why the writers and artists throughout history are imprisoned, exiled, or killed. And that's why writers and artists are in a prophetic tradition.