Remembering Kimathi, Jaramogi, JM: How long will they kill our heroes?

Conservative voices among the political class argue, ironically enough, that we should forget the past and focus on the future. In the same breath, they say we should not teach history and literature, and should instead teach science subjects.

Granted that a country mesmerised by its own past to the exclusion of examining its present and reinventing itself is incapable of progress. I also concede that science, engineering and IT are critical to our transformation.

And yet history, too, is critically important, precisely because it is from it that nations get examples of the values and inspirational narratives around which they organise their nationhood.

The American War of Independence, the crucial part played by George Washington, the making of the Constitution, the moral and physical courage of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War… these are the strands that weave the American national biography. What would the idea of French nationhood be without reference to the French Revolution?

Literature too is important. It is a mirror that reflects human follies as well as strengths, and in so doing, gives us a unique understanding of the human condition. It also captures in a way that only art can, a nation’s culture. Thus literature, like history, helps to create a sense of national being.

What would the sense of being Russian be without reference to its literature, to Maxim Gorky or Alexander Pushkin? The sense of Englishness would be severely curtailed without reference to William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens.

The reason why conservative voices want to do away with history and literature has little to do with concern about development, and has everything to do with the need to craft a narrative that projects them as the true representatives of the Kenyan spirit. So they speak of their individual struggles instead of the struggle for Independence or for constitutional change.

They cast themselves as representing good, rather than speak of the sacrifices made by the people for justice. They become obsessed with themselves. They are unaware of the angst that afflicts the lives of people in Meja Mwangi’s Going Down River Road.

That is why it is important to bring our history back into the national conversation. January 20 was the day in 1994 when Jaramogi Oginga Odinga died. His contribution to the Independence struggle is only eclipsed by his struggle to liberate Kenya from post-Independence dictatorship.

In his book, Not Yet Uhuru, he talks of the two forces fighting for the control of Kenya – a conservative force led by the noveaux riches whose motivation was personal wealth and the power to protect it, and those who still believed in the values of freedom and equity that had motivated the Independence struggle.

In the 1980s, at the height of the dictatorship, when even newspapers were afraid to report on voices of dissent, Jaramogi bought space in the same papers in order to call for a return to democracy.

On February 18, 1957, Dedan Kimathi was executed for his role in the anti-colonial struggle. For six years, Kimathi had led a fierce resistance against the colonial forces.

His ragtag army was the first modern armed resistance movement against colonialism in Africa. Algeria, Mozambique and Angola came after. Unlike the resistance movements that came afterwards, he had no rear bases and no assistance from sympathetic governments.

In the coming month, we will commemorate the murder of JM Kariuki. He was a principled and courageous man who, like Jaramogi, decried the betrayal of the nationalist struggle at a time when doing so amounted to a death sentence.

His struggle is summed up in his famous statement: “Kenya has become a nation of ten millionaires and ten million beggars.” On March 2, 1975, he was kidnapped from a hotel, tortured and executed.

Our nationhood is hollow because we do not invest it with the values represented by these heroes. We have not built our sense of nationhood on inspirational stories of self-sacrifice and courage.

Our political discourse is inundated with references to “hustlers” and “watermelons” and “nusu or full mkate.”

On TV discussions panels, we quote sound bites by third-rate politicians, instead of referring to the representations of despair and decay in David Maillu’s books. We talk of tribal alliances, not of alliances of interest as portrayed in our novels. We see ourselves as hostile tribes, not as Kenyan communities as Jaramogi and others did. We cast history and literature aside at our own peril.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator.

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