David Maillu has written an open letter to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who now resides in America, criticising his “intellectual prostitution” and asking him to return to the country of his birth, Kenya.
“You left the country to live, work and give weight to capitalism, the ideology you had been fighting fiercely against in Kenya,” Maillu writes in the letter published by the Daily Nation. Maillu says it is time that Wa Thiong’o gives something back to his fellow Africans. “Surely, Africans need you much more than Americans do… You could come up with something like Wa’Thiong’o Creative College University, or a research institution, or a drama college, or a literary centre.” He also rebukes Wa Thiong’o for expressing negativity about Kenya at international events.
Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ has written a response defending his father, pointing out that Maillu’s attempts to squash any negative sentiment about Kenya makes obvious his “silence and intellectual hypocrisy” when it comes to oppression in the country.
Wa Ngũgĩ does not appreciate Maillu trying to “put a wedge between Kenyans abroad and those at home”. Instead of asking why these intellectuals are working abroad and not in Kenya, he suggest that better questions would be: “What role can the Kenyan diaspora play in the intellectual and economic development of Kenya? Or can Kenyan professors in the West get their institutions to work with our Kenyan universities?”
Dear Ngugi, kuhana atia mundu witu?
Allow me to write an open letter to you on behalf of myself, your intellectual fans and the spirits engaged in building our mother continent.
Just in case I sound irritant, bear with me, knowing well that he who cries has no beautiful lips.
Former dictator Daniel arap Moi must be smiling all the way to the political bank. His emboldened intellectual surrogates have dusted off their fimbo ya nyayo pens and are crawling out of the woodwork of political irrelevance.
They are out to rewrite Moi’s history of corruption and oppression and their role in it. In the process, they want to redefine the role of the intellectual into that of an apologist for oppression and misrule.
Book details
- In the House of the Interpreter by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
EAN: 978184655628
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- Killing Sahara
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EAN: 9789966463814
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Images courtesy David G Maillu, UCI and Eza Magazine