By Kamau Walkui

The death of Prof. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has cast a melancholic shadow over Kenya and the literary world. While his death is a profound loss, perhaps the deeper tragedy is that we are only now in his death loudly proclaiming his worth. The country that ignored and exiled him in life has turned overnight into a wailing nation of mourners, with politicians labouring to pay tribute to a man they once abhorred and whose work they wanted unheard.

Prof. Ngũgĩ was a literary titan and a relentless advocate for decolonisation of mind, language, education, and identity. He dared to write in his beloved Gĩkũyũ. He challenged the ruinous colonial tyranny, laying bare the cruel destruction it had visited on Kenya and Africa more generally. He exposed injustice with fearless clarity. In return, Kenya’s rulers jailed him, banned his plays and banished him into years of exile. The very soil he loved denied him peace even as he was feted and decorated elsewhere.

And yet, now in his death, we have found our voices. We are filling acres of newspaper and social media pages with glittering eulogies. Politicians are issuing glowing accolades in the most flowery of platitudes. Yet they were silent while he was alive and his potent message challenged us to think, reflect, change and act.

This is the hypocrisy Kenyans must confront; the peculiar Kenyan habit of withholding flowers until we are standing beside a coffin. Of ostracising voices of truth in life, then mythologising them in death. Of celebrating corpses with millions of shillings with pomp while ignoring the living. Leading Kenyan universities judged Prof. Ngũgĩ unworthy of an honorary doctorate but twelve foreign universities did. While Kenya awarded its medals to corrupt politicians and tribal warlords, all Prof. Ngũgĩ ever received was the nebulous titled “Order of the Elder of the Burning Spear”, a gesture so paltry it bordered on insult.

Prof Ngũgĩ deserved to be celebrated as a literary and intellectual light. His classical works should have been taught in every secondary school as foundational texts to invoke the intellectual curiosities of young Kenyan pupils. And yet they were largely ignored by the very institutions meant to champion thought and lasting freedom.

Prof. Ngũgĩ refused to be swallowed by the toxic colonial residue that still defines much of our national psyche. He reminded us unashamedly that the language of our mothers is not a burden but a gift. That freedom of thought is not treason, and that literature can be a sword against oppression. He fought for the dignity and identity of the black race but we repaid him with contemptuous silence.

All is not lost and we can in death right the wrongs we committed while he lived. We could do by embracing what he lived for in four ways: Making his writings and works an essential reading of the curriculum especially in secondary schools to ignite the curiosities of young Kenyans to become future Ngugis. We need to translate Kenyan literature in indigenous languages including Swahili. Our country needs to recognise local intellectuals, writers, and artists before they are forgotten. Names such as Francis Imbuga, Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo, Grace Ogot, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, and Meja Mwangi are fading from national memory.

May we choose not to elevate, value and celebrate the dead above the living. We must reject as false that the reward for principle, truth and brilliance is posthumous praise, lest we become a country that buries it alive.

Prof. Ngũgĩ has left us, but not empty or bereft. His ideas, courage, and words remain alive as when he first wrote them. I suppose he would still say Weep Not Child!