Published June 10, 2025
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IS THIS A COINCIDENCE OR A DIVINE RECKONING?

  • “Ruto, you have chosen to betray that history of Pride. Ruto, you have chosen to become an agent of the West?
  • Ruto, you have chosen to sell your country cheap.
    Why, oh, Why?”     Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o
  • An Open Plea to President William Ruto To Pay Attention to The Message of The Late Prof. Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o
    By Professor Peter Ndiang’ui
  • On May 28 th , 2024, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Kenya’s uncompromising literary conscience and unrelenting voice for justice delivered a blistering, prophetic letter addressed to you, President William Ruto. It was not simply a critique. It was a lamentation from the soul of a wounded nation. A clarion call against betrayal. A last warning before the storm.
    Exactly one year later, May 28 th , 2025, Ngũgĩ exited this world.
  • The synchronicity of dates is no trivial footnote. It feels cosmic. Intentional. As though time itself paused to insist: These words cannot be buried.
  • They demand to be heard again—louder, bolder, with the force of the grave now behind them. And so we ask again: Mr. President, did you read Ngũgĩ’s letter? Did you understand its weight?
    Maybe you did. Maybe you did not. But now, with his death haunting our national conscience, the question is no longer whether you read it. The question is: Will you act?
    Ngũgĩ called you to account, not as a partisan, not as a cynic, but as a Kenyan elder, a freedom fighter of the pen, a custodian of our collective memory. He condemned the image of you grinning in the White House as President Biden announced Kenya’s new status as a “major non- NATO ally.” That moment, etched into history, reduced Kenya, once the fierce heart of African anti-colonial resistance into a subservient proxy for Western power.
    Worse still, he condemned your decision to send Kenyan police to Haiti, a nation born of the world’s first successful slave revolt. A Black republic that paid with blood for its freedom, only to be punished by centuries of foreign sabotage. Ngũgĩ asked what history will never forget:
    How dare a post-colonial Kenyan state participate in the re-subjugation of a Black people still reeling from the lash of empire? Ngugi let you know what history will never forget and what any of your advisors will never let you know.
    Now that he is gone, this letter becomes something more than political commentary. It becomes a national relic. A sacred document. A moral test. And we, the living, demand that it be heard—again and again—until it penetrates the walls of State House and touches your heart.
    When Ngugi passed on last week, you wrote a very emotional message to the nation. You mentioned how he made an indelible impact on all of us including you. You stated that there was probably no time when we were more united than when we awaited Ngugi to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature which we all felt he deserved. Mr. President Ruto, if Ngũgĩ truly meant something to you, as your public statement after his death claimed, then prove it. Not with empty eulogies. With action. Honor what he requested of you exactly one year before he passed on.
    This is more honor to him than any medal which he never requested.
    We call on Kenyan media houses, publishers, academics, civil society, religious leaders, and diaspora communities to resurrect this letter and carry it across platforms and borders until its truth is impossible to ignore.
  • And because we know your time is precious – consumed by crisis, most of them of your own making, including disappearances, abductions, killings, the erosion of civil liberties, and dangerous foreign entanglements, we have distilled Ngũgĩ’s warning into five clear and urgent demands to make easier for you to read:
    Summary of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Final Plea to President Ruto:
  • Cease being NATO’s errand boy.
    Kenya must never be used as a pawn in Western military agendas. NATO’s track record in Africa is written in the blood of our leaders like Muammar Gaddafi. Kenya’s dignity is not up for auction.
  • Withdraw Kenyan forces from Haiti.
    Read The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James. Learn why Haiti’s revolution matters to every African. Stop turning Kenyan lives into currency for American favors. Stop putting Kenyans through such shame.
  • End the shameful irony of Black-on-Black repression.
    To send African troops to police another Black nation’s struggle is not leadership—it is treason to Pan-African ideals.
  • Reclaim the legacy of the Mau Mau.
    Kenya’s history is not one of appeasement. It is one of bloodshed for freedom. Honor Dedan Kimathi not by lip service, but by defending Kenya’s sovereignty with the courage of our ancestors.
  • Stop selling Kenya to the lowest bidder.
    Our soil, our youth, our national honor, our national heritage —none are for sale. Stop turning Kenya into a laboratory for foreign experiments. We are a nation, not a NATO outpost.
    President Ruto, even if you choose silence, let this story from our folklore follow you: The hyena once spoke to the rock. The rock said nothing. But the hyena still declared, “I know you heard me.”
    So now we say to you: You have heard us. You have heard Ngũgĩ. You can no longer claim ignorance. This is not just a letter. It is a reckoning. A mirror. A warning from the tomb of a prophet. Let these words disturb your sleep. Let them stand as judgment when the pages of history are written. Let them provoke your thamiri, your conscience, if it still lives beneath the weight of power.
    And while we are at it, let us add here an issue that is too painful to even write about. Mr. President, hear us now—because our cries have gone unanswered for far too long. You sit in the highest office of this land, entrusted with the most sacred duty: to protect the lives of the people.
    And yet, Albert Omondi Ojwang is dead—killed under the watch of those sworn to serve and protect – Utumishi Kwa Wote – including Omondi. We demand to know: What crime did he commit worthy of death? Was he armed? Was he dangerous? No. His only weapon was a voice—his right to speak, to question, to tweet. And for that, your government deemed him a threat?
    Is this how fragile your grip on power has become. That a mere tweet shakes your regime to its core? That a whisper of truth is met with bullets and batons? Are your police so untouchable that an accusation becomes a death sentence?
    Albert died in police custody. He was in a cell—under your government’s watch. Under your care. And he is not the first. How many more bodies must we bury before you act? How many mothers must weep, how many fathers must break down in morgues identifying their children, before your conscience stirs?
    You are a parent, Mr. President. So feel this: the raw, shattering agony of losing a child. A child whose life was stolen by those wearing the uniform of your state. Kenyans are tired. We are angry. We are broken. And we are done begging. Either you rise to the duty you swore to uphold, or you step aside for someone who will. The blood of our children cannot continue to stain your silence.
    This is not just painful. It is unbearable.
    We again end with this request. Please Mr. President, do not bury Ngũgĩ with flowers and speeches. Honor him by confronting your betrayal. Change course. Not tomorrow. Now. In honor of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.
  • In defense of Kenya. In fidelity to truth.
    Prof. Peter Ndiang’ui
  • Fort Myers, Florida
  • ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
  • May 28 th , 2024
    An Open Letter to William Ruto
    By Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
    Dear William Ruto, 
    The images of your recent State visit to the USA were very disturbing to me and to every patriotic Kenyan.
  • I saw you seated on a chair, grinning, while Biden stood behind you, his face beaming with satisfaction.  Why not? 
  • He had just announced that you had signed off our beloved Kenya to make it a non-member ally of NATO. 
  • In other words, you had agreed to become Nato’s errand boy in America’s struggle with Russia and China for
    access to resources of the continent.
  • Ruto, do you know that Nato, murdered Muammar Gaddafi, so that Libyan oil-fields
    which Kaddafi had nationalized, would revert to the West? Kaddafi was once the chairman
    of the African Union of which Kenya was a founding member.
    But this other picture was no less disturbing. While you were inside the White House,
    Haitians were in the streets demonstrating, calling you a slave.  Do you know the history of
    Haiti? Please read The Black Jacobins the book written by a once Jomo Kenyatta Pan African ally, C L R James.
    Haiti, now a Black people’s State, used to be a slave colony of France.  But led by Toussaint Louverture, Haiti, the richest colony of its time, fought French slavery and in 1804 it seized its independence. In USA slavery was then in full bloom. America did not want its African slaves to emulate Haiti, and it has never forgiven Haiti for that, and thus begun the story of America’s destabilization of Haiti.
    Ruto do you see the irony of your actions? The USA, was originally a settler colony taking over the land that belonged to Native Americans. In 1776 The White settlers declared their independence from their English King.   But the colonized Native Americans remained colonized. Kenya was equally a British settler colony. The white settlers wanted to have a similar kind of Independence. But the Mau Mau led by Dedan Kĩmathi stopped them.
  • Years later, Algeria, Rhodesia and South Africa would follow the example of Kenya. Thus the country you now lead, was the first  to stop the historical trend of white settlers claiming themselves  independent as in  America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. 
    Ruto, you have chosen to betray that history of Pride. Ruto, you have chosen to become an agent of the West? Ruto, you have chosen to sell your country cheap.
    Why, oh, Why? 
    Atlanta, Georgia
  • Disclaimer – The Diaspora Times allows people to express themselves within the norms of common decency.
  • It’s here that you enjoy the freedom of expression, which is a basic fundamental right as contained in the 2010 constitution of Kenya. We only publish facts, and the scholarly mind is at liberty to write comments and views. We have no intention of hurting anyone, and all who stand for truth can make our country have the best form of democracy never experienced before.

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