By Yusuf Bangura
I’m saddened to learn about Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s death—one of the greats of African literature. The Nobel prize eluded him, but he shaped the minds of many young Africans.
We read his first novel *Weep Not, Child* for our GCE O level literature examination in 1968 at the Prince of Wales school. That novel gave us rich insights into Kenya’s oppressive system of land dispossession by British settlers and the armed struggles waged by the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, which was referred to as Mau Mau. The armed resistance paved the way for the transfer of political power to Kenyans.
*Weep Not, Child* also exposed us to some of Kenya’s beautiful names, such as Kamau, Njoroge, Mwihaki, Ngotho and Njeri. One of my closest high school friends (now deceased), who was at the Albert Academy, and I were fascinated by these names, developed a keen interest in Ngugi’s novels, and competed to narrate memorable lines in his books.
One section in *Weep Not, Child*, which I can still recall, stood out for us—Kamau’s deep pain and anger when he discovered that a girl that he was in love with was dating another man. He came out of his hiding place, where he had observed the girl intimately holding hands with her lover. Deflated, he swore to himself that he would inflict severe punishment on his rival.
My friend and I were very fond of the African Writers Series. We must have read most of the books published under the Series before I left Sierra Leone for university studies in the UK in 1971. Two other Ngugi books that we were fond of before we left the country were *A Grain of Wheat* and *The River Between*.
I also read his *Petals of Blood*, which was published in the late 1970s, when I was a graduate student at the LSE. *Petals of Blood* was a trenchant critique of Kenya’s post-colonial politics, which, Ngugi believed, failed to live up to the aspirations of the freedom fighters or deliver development.
Africa, and the literary world, have lost a profoundly imaginative, committed and fluent writer.
Yusuf Bangura
28 May, 2025
