By Sena Thoradeniya

The death of Ngugi wa Thing’o on 28 May 2025, the great Kenyan writer and the greatest among the East African writers, towering giant in African Literature brings a profound personal grief to me. Reasons are many. I have translated Ngugi’s classic, A Grain of Wheat” (first published in 1967) into Sinhala in 1999 (Revised second print in 2020) with a lengthy introduction running for 42 pages titled, Uhuru Flame” and some of his short stories including Money Galore” in 2008 (title story of the anthology of translated African short stories). My translation of Ngugi’s epic novel Petals of Blood” (1977) remained unfinished due to some practical problems.

Furthermore, in many of my writings and literary discussions I have elucidated Ngugi’s contributions as an academic, a writer and a revolutionary thinker, who used his novels, theatre and other writings to critique British colonialism and post-colonial Kenyan politicians and politics whom he described as Black Imperialists” and the death of hopes, the death of dreams and the death of beauty” respectively. 

It is deeply regretted that no media outlet in Sri Lanka -electronic or print- has reported his passing not even with a brief obituary even after a week has passed. They were completely absorbed in a beauty pageant held in Thailand, creating an illusion for gullible viewers and readers that crowning country’s contestant was a moment of national triumph. Unfortunately, she was not even among the top forty despite the congratulatory messages from the President and other top politicians who attempted to make it a political issue. When a Thai beauty was crowned our TV anchors had no shame in declaring it as a triumph of a Theravada Buddhist country!

It should be noted that in those days we obtained information about African Literature in the most challenging way importing books, critical essays and literary journals from various publishing houses in London utilizing our own funds. It was only from the 1990s the worldwide web made the internet accessible to the general public when websites and browsers have become common. 

In the introduction of the revised edition of the translation of A Grain of Wheat”I am happy to state that I was able to discuss Ngugi’s new works of non-fiction and autobiographical works such as Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance” (2009), ”Globelectics: Theory and the Position of Knowing” (2012), In the Name of the Mother, Reflections on Writers and Empire” (2013) and Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoire” (2012), (describing his school days during colonialism, Mau Mau and Emergency), In the House of the Interpreter: a Memoire” (2012), (his Alliance High School days), Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer’s Awakening” (2016), (his Makarere University College days) and Wrestling With the Devil” (his prison life) respectively.

The massive novel he wrote after a lapse of fourteen years Wizard of the Crow” (2007) depicts Africa’s present tragedy, set in thefictional Free Republic of Aburiria”, recognizable as modern Africa. This was also a translation from his native Gikuyu language translated by the author himself. In 2020 Ngugi published his poetic narrative, The Perfect Nine: The Epic of Gikuyu and Mumbi”, that narrates the story of Gikuyu and Mumbi, the founders of the Gikuyu tribe who sought noble suitors for their ten beautiful daughters. It is a mix of myth, folklore and Kenyan traditional lyrical literature, which reminds us a Buddhist Jataka Tale.

The first article on Ngugi in Sinhala was written by the late Susil Sirivardena in Mawatha (No. 6) when Ngugi was imprisoned by the Jomo Kenyatta government in 1978. It was a historical travesty the person who fought for Kenya’s independence from British colonialists, who himself was a creative writer (I have translated his The Gentlemen of the Jungle” into Sinhala, a scathing denunciation of British, French, Portuguese, German and Belgian colonialism), author of Facing Mount Kenya”, the first treatise on African culture considered as a text of cultural nationalism”,  independent Kenya’s first Prime Minister (1963-1964) and then the President (1964-1978), lauded as the Burning Spear” of the freedom struggle, Father of the Nation”,  imprisoning  a literary giant like Ngugi.

Ngugi’s few short stories were translated into Sinhala and appeared in a periodical.  Bobby B. Boteju included translations of two short stories written by Ngugi in his collection of African short stories titled Nisa Geethaya” (1992). This writer was invited to deliver the keynote speech at its launch.

Ngugi’s epic drama jointly written with Micere Githae Mugo, The Trial of Dedan Kimathi” was produced and staged by the late Somalatha Subasinghe in 1977. Its Sinhala version was staged as Yadam”. This play brings back to life the murdered Mau Mau (Kenya Land and Freedom Army) freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi. But after the initial performances they failed to sustain audience attention perhaps due to lack of audience interest, production challenges and mainly political content of the play. Unfortunately, it failed to capture the revolutionary heroism of the protagonist. Being a versatile actress and a playwright are not enough to stage a powerful political play such as Dedan Kimathi”.  

Its songs were entirely in Gikuyu language. After the show the audience joined in the final triumphant dance and went in marching along the streets of Nairobi singing songs featured in the play. This play was staged in Lagos in 1977 at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture” (FESTAC).

Although Ngugi published his first novel Weep Not Child” in 1964, the first Sinhala translation of Ngugi’s novels appeared only in 1993 with Matigari”, his sixth novel, which was originally written in Gikuyu, translated by the author himself into English and published in 1986. Naravila Patrick was its translator.P.B. Jayasekeratranslated into Sinhala in 1997, Weep Not Child”and Ngugi’s fifth novel Devil on the Cross” the first novel Ngugi wrote in Gikuyu, translated by the author himself into English and published in 1982. The translation of Ngugi’s first novel, The River Between” (published in 1965) translated by Sunanda Mahendra was serialized in Irida Divaina” in 1984.

This shows a lacuna in Sinhala translation works. Many of the translators of African Literature undertook their translations without having an overall knowledge of the writers and their works, how a writer’s creative abilities, thinking and his/her worldview evolved from his/her formative years.  Translators were induced by others who provided the text to them. Otherwise Matigari” cannot be the first Sinhala translation of Ngugi’s novels.

In 1984 I had a tussle with a Sri Lankan professor as he wrote introducing James Ngugi as a Nigerian writer who had worked at the Nigerian Radio. When I corrected this error, he replied to me complete with academic arrogance that although Ngugi was born in Kenya he was a Nigerian writer and as he was his friend, he likes to call him James Ngugi! I only knew that the Nigerian writer Achebe working at the Nigerian Radio. It’s true that Ngugi was baptized as James Ngugi and all his earlier works carry that name.

But in March 1970 when Ngugi was addressing the fifth congress of the East African Presbyterian Society saying that he was neither a man of the Church nor a Christian, an old man raising his walking stick warned him to confess for the abomination and pray to the Lord that the speaker was a Christian and his name James bear testimony to it.  Ngugi until that time did not realise that his personal name presents a contradiction, is tainted bystigma and undermines everything he professes. Ngugi took his father’s name Thiong‘o Wa, published his Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics”under the new name Ngugi wa Thiong’o in 1972. It’s very strange that his Sri Lankan friend” was unaware of Ngugi’s name change even after fourteen years!

Not to be outsmarted he even sent a photocopy of a book cover carrying the name James Ngugi to the press!  This overenthusiastic friend” miswriting Mau Mau, as Mao Mao said that Ngugi was a staunch member of Mau Mau, which was totally incorrect. Ngugi was a student when the liberation struggle broke out in 1952. Although some students had helped Mau Mau fighters as scouts and movement of military supplies and provisions Ngugi had regretted that he did not get such an opportunity to support the forest fighters. His half-brother was involved in Mau Mau and killed, hismother tortured by the home guards, his house reduced to ashes. But he never forgot his peasant roots. He worked in pyrethrum fields owned by the European settlers. Petals of Blood” is the story of the pyrethrum cultivators, its white petals turning red!   

In 1998, a Sanatorium Writer” in the USSR days writing to a Sinhala daily said that British book publishers and book sellers induced African writers likeAchebe and James Ngugi rewarding them and turning their creations into a form of esoteric merchandise. Again, I had to intervene in defense of Ngugi and Achebe. A funny part of these dialogues was a Peradeniya academic pointing out Swahili as a  language spoken in Nigeria! Swahili is a language most commonly spoken in East Africa. There can be Swahili speaking people coming to Nigeria for business!

The first and the most comprehensive critical perspective on Ngugi was written by his former professor at the Makarere University College (later university) Uganda, David Cook in 1982.  Can we Sri Lankans imagine a university professor writing a book about a student except a blurb in a back cover of a book?

Ngugi was not only a writer. He was a literary and a cultural critic, a theoretician in literature and culture. The only other African revolutionary writers who can be compared with him were Sembene Ousmane of Senegal (referred to as the father of African cinema”) and to a lesser degree Alex La Guma of South Africa.  At the demise of Ousmane in 2007 I wrote an article illustrating his literary and cinematic career describing him as the African writer who gave a voice to those which have been struggling over centuries of colonial yoke to regain their voices and their languages. Writer of nearly a dozen of novels in French at one stage, like Ngugi he stopped writing in French and turned into his native Wolof instead. The Ugandan poet Okot p’ Bitek first wrote his major poem Song of Lavino” in Luo language; he later translated it into English. 

Until the emergence of Ngugi what was considered as African Literature was the literature produced in West Africa, especially in Cameroon and Nigeria and Ghana written in French and English languages respectively.  Within a short period, he became a towering figure in African Literature and received worldwide acclaim. He became the most talked about writer and critic in African Literature because of his ideas regarding what language African Literature be written in. African Literatures were written in the languages of the colonialists English, French and Portuguese respectively.

We have discussed this aspect in four articles published in The Island” in February-March 2020 participating in a dialogue on Cross-Writing initiated by our friend Prof. Wimal Dissanayakeciting Ngugi’s seminal work Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature”.  

Influenced by the writings of Marx and Frantz Fanon, the ideology Ngugi expressed in his literary works and critical essays was vastly different from that of other African writers.  As a person who translated some masterpieces of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Mariama Ba and some other African writers into Sinhala I am very clear about this.  His writings reflected his leftist, revolutionary ideals. His voice most often was for the emancipation of the Kenyan, African and Black people in general, a voice denouncing keeping masses in bondage, against exploitation and oppression, a clarion call for returning land expropriated from Kenyan peasants. His voice was anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and a voice against Black Elites” who usurped power after gaining nominal independence from the British, French, Belgian and Portuguese colonialists respectively.

The political solution he envisioned was a peasant revolution, to replace black capitalists and capitalism with African Socialism. These ideas were expressed vividly in his epic novel Petals of Blood” which narrates Kenya’s historical development from feudalism to capitalism and the beginning of neo-colonial honeymoon. Ignominious plunder of capitalism, theft, corruption, treachery, accumulation of new wealth, in short plunderers gathering the fruits of Uhuru” (freedom) tree are brilliantly depicted in Devil on the Cross”. Its culmination was portrayed in Matigari”, the story of a fictitious freedom fighter of Mau Mau fame emerging from the forests and roaming in the countryside in disguise; an allegory that a man has arisen to give life to the liberation struggle; for freedom arms that were fallen from the hands of old militants must be grabbed by the present generation.

People were searching for a man called Matigari”whom they thoughta returnee Mau Mau freedom fighter from the jungles.  People gathered in motor parks, beer shops and other public places to hear both novels Devil on the Cross”and Matigari”read in parts.Kenyan police hearing that a person called Matigari”was roaming in the countryside organizing the peasantry and people were talking about him, deployed an extensive search to track down and capture him. Later after discovering that Matigari”was a fictitious character they raided all book stores and seized books available for sale and banned its sale in Kenya.

Thus, as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi had compiled a chronological account of his country’s modern history. The other noteworthy aspect of his writings was exploring Mau Mau as his central theme. In A Grain of Wheat”, a Mau Maudetainee Gikonyo returns to his village to find his wife Mumbi raped by a home guard and carrying a child. Central theme of this novel is finding the betrayer of Kihika, the leader of village freedom fighters.

Origins our own Goni Billas” in 1988-89 can be traced to Special Branch agents who helped the British forces in the screening and capturing ofMau Mausympathisers. They were dressed in huge hoods with eye-holes who were known as Little Sacks” or Gakunia”.   

To understand Ngugi’s vision, militancy, and his views about the use of languagein African literature, Africannationalism, culture and liberation a treasure houseis open with his critical writings, Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary”,  Writers in Politics”, Barrel of a Pen”, Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture and Politics”, Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature”.

 In Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms”, Ngugi emphasizes the emancipating culture from Euro-centrism. He elaborated the need to move the centre from its assumed location in the West to a multiplicity of centres of the world, in short freeing culture from Eurocentrism.

All hell broke loose with the staging of the play I Will Marry When I Want” jointly written in Gikuyu in 1977 by Ngugi and Ngugi wa Mirii. To expose the corrupt regime and neo-colonial exploitation, disillusion of people, Ngugi went in search of a new audience. That was the reason he chose his native language instead of writing in English. This play was written with the inputs given by peasant masses.  Old Mau Mau fighters and villagers participated in the writing and revising the text, adding songs and dances, refining the language and changing metaphors and similes.  It was said that its traditional opera songs were written with the help of an illiterate peasant woman who choreographed the dances to the songs. Ngugi wrote later that he understood the power of collective work and its creativeness with this play.  Mingling with the people he got the feeling of a new man, emancipating himself from decades of alienation caused by colonial education.

 It contained songs of Mau Mau fighters and their Oaths. Theatergoers went back to their homes singing songs of the play as in a demonstration. The government banned the play. The playhouse was attacked and burnt. Ngugi was imprisoned without a trial on December 31 1977. First draft of Devil on the Cross”was written while he was in prison, ironically on toilet paper. Ngugi wrote later that for prisoners to add injury to their punishment a course toilet paper was provided. He was released in December 1978 by Kenyatta’s successor Daniel Arap Moi, a Home Guard who collaborated with the British Army in the suppression of Mau Mau fighters, their sympathizers and kith and kin. Ngugi was removed as the professor of English at the Nairobi University. Then began his self-exile, first to England and then to America. His co-writer Ngugi wa Mirri died in exile in Zimbabwe.

This brings to the fore the question of which language should be used for creative writing to serve the masses. Ngugi disliked calling literature written in thelanguages of the colonialists English, French and Portuguese by African writers as African Literature. He was convinced as far back in 1969 that writing in English had no value. He said that using colonialists’ languages what African writers have created was a Euro-African or an Afro-European literature.

In an interview given in 1969 Ngugi said that I have reached a point of crisis. I don’t know whether it is any longer writing in English. The problem is that I know whom I write about. But whom do I write for ?  The problem he had to resolve was the problem of audience, for whomhe was writing. With the beginning of writing in his native Gikuyu he found who were his actual audience. At the time of writing Petals of Blood” he became more and more disillusioned with the use of a foreign language to express Kenya’s soul and the social conditions in Kenya”. He said that people should express their national aspirations and their national history in the various national languages of Kenya, like Gikuyu, Luo, Girima, Kambi and Masai, all part and parcel of Kenya’s national culture.

Although Ngugi’s novel Petals of Blood” written in English, considered as a proletarian novel, an uncompromising, merciless denunciation of the ruling class and its cronies, blistering condemnation and exposure of their sellout, it did not provoke them and they did not take any action against him. But rulers became panic only after he began to write in Gikuyu.

As stated earlier the first novel Ngugi wrote in Gikuyu was Devil on the Cross”. That was also the first novel written in Gikuyu. It was a big challenge for him to use a language which did not have a modern novel. He wrote later that he learnt his language anew; while writing the novel, rediscovered its creative essence and the power of collective word. Switching into Gikuyu was not an easy task although it was enriched with traditional or oral literature as any other African language.    

Critics said that the use of Gikuyu has released previously untapped aspects of Ngugi’s creative talent and he has achieved remarkable success in two languages writing in Gikuyu and translating the same into English.

He told in 1980, one of the greatest tragedies of Africa is a complete disconnection of the elite from their linguistic base”. In reality because of language what happens is that the messenger who is sent by the community to go and fetch knowledge from wherever they can get it becomes a prisoner. He never returns, so to speak metaphorically because he stays within the language of his captivity”.

A cynic may argue that these are old grannies’ tales that we Sri Lankans have passed that age in the 30s or 40s. But no one can deny that at present thanks to our education system Sri Lanka producing hordes of alienated young people who do not have any knowledge of our native languages, history, literature and culture. Future belongs to them, including politics!   

The most notable struggle Ngugi was involved in the academic field culminated in renaming the English Department as the Department of Literature in 1968. Making Africa the focal point shedding dominancy of Euro-centric culture and literature was its aim.

Most of the African writerscontinue to write in acquired languages English, French and Portuguese respectively despite the argument that African Literatures should be written in African languages. Writing in their native languages is a big risk as they cannot reach a wider audience across Africa and beyond. Roughly 750 languages are identified in Africa. The most populous state in Africa, Nigeria has about 400 languages. Not all writers have the luxury of translating their own works as Ngugi to a language of the colonialists.

The most prestigious and the oldest international journal of African Literature founded in 1968, African Literature Today” had to dedicate its No 41 issue (2023) titled African Literature in African Languages Today” to explore African Literature in African languages. It says the dominance of African Literature written in European languages over those in indigenous languages continues to be an issue. It reexamines the often-asked question what is the state of African Literature written in African languages”.

Isn’t it a supreme irony that illiterate peasants portrayed in African novels who do not either speak or understand the oppressors’ languages speaking in English, French or Portuguese?

An academic in Dar Es Salam University, Tanzania used the term Translingualism to discuss Ngugi writing in his native language and translating them into English, addressing the relationship between translation and minor languages.

Did anyone of our English writers stop writing in English and start writing in either Sinhala or Tamil? Instead there are many failures who tried to pose as English writers. Did any academic in Sri Lanka champion linguistic decolonization and cultural authenticity?  

African literature cannot be understood properly merely reading a novel of Chinua Achebe or a novel written by a writer of younger generation, may be of 3G, such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi or a crude and vulgar Sinhala translation of Achebe.

Announcing the death of Ngugi, his daughter Wanjiku wa Ngugi in a Facebook note said, he lived a full life, fought a good fight”.

e–Con e-News wrote that our English Departments appear to know very little of Ngugi. A contributor to the same web journal wrote that I had the honour to meet him, (we felt we were in the shade of a giant tree), at a commemoration he organized for the Ugandan poet Okot p’ Bitek whose work I have shared before. Kenya is just across the seas from Sri Lanka and links with that great country should not be left to traders, nor should African countries be used as synonyms for failure as our English-colonized media (AI or not) led by BBC continually do. The Dynamite and Missile Makers refused Ngugi their Nobel prize which he deserved, not once but several times, if that is a measure of quality, but luckily it isn’t. Our artists continually fail us for they fail to plumb the depths of our past to understand the challenges to build a modern future.”

Two university dons at Peradeniya writing articles on Soyinka’s A Play of Giants” and Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah” respectively was a big news to be included in an article titled, The English Department and the University” (in More Open Than Usual? (1992)). One wag questioned who cares a writer who has written more than 50 articles on African Literature in both Sinhala and English.

What would be the position of Ngugi if he were born in Sri Lanka? In addition to state repression he would be hounded by the academia and the NGO aristocracy as a racist, Gikuyu-athiest supremacist influenced by Victorian morality” and Protestant-Buddhism”, a Gothrikaya” (tribalist), who attempts to take back Sri Lanka to the stone age; a person who deprives others of good things in civilization, literature or other aspects of culture, a censor, a cultural policeman, having learned Shakespeare and Conrad himself!