Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o obituary
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who has died aged 87, was long regarded as east Africa's most eminent writer and, along with Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, a founding father of African literature in English.
Like Achebe, his novels showed the social, psychological and economic impact of the colonial encounter in Africa, as well as the disillusion that followed independence. In later years Ngũgĩ championed writing in African languages and published fiction, drama and poetry in Gikuyu, his mother tongue.
His first novel, Weep Not Child (1964), told the story of brothers who respond in different ways to the struggle in the 1950s for independence from British rule by the Land and Freedom Army (also known as the Mau Mau) in his native Kenya, and depicted the brutality of the British in their attempts to quell the rebellion.
After Ngũgĩ showed the manuscript to Achebe at an African writers' conference in Makere, Uganda, in 1962, Achebe secured its publication (under the name James Ngũgĩ) in the Heinemann African Writers series. It was awarded Unesco's first prize at the World Festival of Black Arts in Senegal in 1966.
Thereafter, many more of Ngũgĩ's novels and short stories were published in that series. A Grain of Wheat (1967), considered by some critics his best work of fiction, is set during celebrations for Kenya's independence day and deals with issues of single-minded heroism and betrayal, as well as the sufferings of detainees and women during the struggle for freedom.
An earlier novel, The River Between (1965), featured an unhappy romance and divisions between Christians and non-Christians. It was written while Ngũgĩ was studying for a master's degree in the UK, at the University of Leeds.
Ngũgĩ also wrote plays, including The Black Hermit (1962), which dramatises a conflict between the desire to stay with the traditional world of a rural village and the wish to benefit from modern improvements and wealth, and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, written in 1976 with Micere Githae Mugo, focusing on the deeds and aims of a leader of the Mau Mau.
Appointed professor of English literature and fellow of creative writing at the University of Nairobi in 1967, Ngũgĩ argued successfully for the re-formation of the department to place African literatures, including oral literatures and writing in African languages, at its centre. At this time he changed his name from James Thiong'o Ngũgĩ to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. He also published a series of influential essays gathered later in Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean Literature, Culture, and Politics (1972).
Increasingly alienated by the corruption and authoritarian policies that characterised Kenya's government under Jomo Kenyatta and his successor, Daniel Arap Moi, Ngũgĩ was influenced in his later writing by Frantz Fanon and Marxist ideology. Petals of Blood (1977), the last of his novels composed in English, was completed while he stayed in Yalta in Crimea, as a guest of the Soviet Union. Its central character, Wanja, a barmaid and prostitute, becomes a symbol of Kenya and the capitalist exploitation of labour, raped and damaged by corrupt businessmen and politicians.
In the same year that Petals of Blood was published, Ngũgĩ became involved in creating community theatre along the lines advocated by Fanon. Together with the Kenyan playwright Ngũgĩ wa Mirii he composed a play in Gikuyu, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which included members of village audiences as actors and vocal responders.
Its success, allied to its outspoken criticism of the Kenyan establishment, led to Ngũgĩ's arrest in 1977. He was detained in Kamiti maximum security prison in Nairobi for almost a year, until released partly through the intervention of Amnesty International. Finding that he had been stripped of his professorship and facing threats to his family, he left Kenya for Britain in 1982.
While in prison Ngũgĩ had used sheets of toilet paper to write Caitaani Mutharaba-ini (The Devil on the Cross), his first novel in Gikuyu. Drawing on styles and forms reminiscent of traditional ballad singers, the novel mingles fantasy and realism to satirise wealthy Kenyans who exploit the poor.
In Britain between 1982 and 1985 he worked with the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya and was writer-in-residence for the London borough of Islington. He was also in demand as a speaker at conferences promoting the reading and study of African and other Commonwealth literatures, often explaining his conviction that African and other indigenous writers should cease writing fiction in English, 'the language of the oppressor'.
His arguments were later published in several collections of essays, including Barrel of a Pen (1982) and Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986).
Born in the village of Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kenya, Ngũgĩ was the son of Ngũgĩ wa Ndūcū, a landowner, and his third wife, Wanjiku, in a family consisting of four wives and 28 children. After primary education in the village school he was sent as a boarder to the Alliance high school near Nairobi. There students were made to speak in English only, and beaten if caught speaking Gikuyu or other indigenous languages.
On his return home after his first term, he found that his village had been razed by British forces opposing the Mau Mau insurrection. His family were divided in their attitudes to the Mau Mau; some members opposed it, and one became an informer to the British government, while a half-brother joined the movement, another was detained, and a third, who was deaf, was shot in the back when he failed to stop in response to a command he did not hear. His mother had been detained and also abused.
Ngũgĩ went on to complete a degree in English at Makerere University College in Uganda in 1963, and in 1964 won a scholarship to Leeds. That same year he married his first wife, Nyambura, a teacher, farmer and small trader. He taught English and African literatures at the University of Nairobi from 1967 to 1977, while also serving as a fellow in creative writing at Makerere University.
Following his release from detention in December 1978 and subsequent move to the UK, he remained an exile from Kenya. His one attempt to return, in 2004, resulted in a brutal robbery and a sexual assault on his second wife, Njeeri, an incident that Ngũgĩ strongly suspected was encouraged by people close to the government.
While teaching in the UK and the US, Ngũgĩ wrote several memoirs, including Detained: a Writer's Prison Diary (1982, updated as Wrestling With the Devil, 2018), Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir (2010), and Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Memoir of a Writer's Awakening (2016). He also continued to write fiction in Gikuyu. His verse epic retelling the Gikuyu myth of origin, Kenda Mũiyũru: Rũgano rwa Gĩkũyũ na Mũmbi (2019), translated by Ngũgĩ as The Perfect Nine, was the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted for the International Booker prize.
He was the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees across the world, and was often seen as a leading candidate for the Nobel prize for literature; so much so that in 2010 many reporters gathered outside his home on the day of its announcement. When it became clear that the award had gone to Mario Vargas Llosa, Ngũgĩ seemed much less disappointed than the reporters, whom he had to console.
Having separated from Nyambura, who did not accompany him into exile, Ngũgĩ married Njeeri, a counsellor and therapist at the University of California, in 1992; they separated in 2023. He is survived by 10 children and seven grandchildren.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (James Thiong'o Ngũgĩ), writer and activist, born 5 January 1938; died 28 May 2025
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
2 days ago
- The Sun
Nepo-baby looks just like her 90s TV star mum as she cuddles a lion in Africa – but can you guess who she is?
TV star Donna Air's daughter Freya Aspinall looks just like her mum as she cuddles a huge lion in Africa. The 21-year-old conservationist is seen cuddling two lions in a recent video before releasing them into the wild with her dad Damien. 7 7 7 7 Freya works with The Aspinall Foundation, a charity run by her father, Damian Aspinall, and founded by her grandfather, the late John Aspinall. Freya rests her head on a lion in one photo on Instagram, and penned: "My beautiful ZEMO on the day we released him in Africa. I can't wait to see him soon." Freya spent much of her childhood surrounded by animals at Howletts and Port Lympne Wild Animal Parks in Kent. She now boasts 1.5m followers on Instagram, where she shares videos and pics of her life, and she says conservation is in her DNA. 'I grew up with animals and couldn't imagine my world without them,' she recently told the Financial Times. 'This is in my blood – I've always known what I wanted to do.' However, she has inherited Donna's striking features and is also very close to her TV star mum. It's been more than three decades since Donna shot to fame as a child star on Byker Grove, alongside Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. She later swapped acting for presenting, landing gigs on shows including MTV UK and The Big Breakfast. A string of cameo film roles followed before she participated in reality shows Splash!, Celebrity MasterChef and the tenth series of Dancing On Ice. Amazing moment millionaire conservationist Damian Aspinall's wife meets the tender gorillas he bred in Africa Donna, 45, is also known for having an on-off relationship for four years with Kate Middleton's brother James Middleton. Freya's parents, Donna and Damian, were introduced in 2000 at a dinner party by their friend Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. Donna was 21, Damian 40, and their relationship and parenting style quickly made headlines. Shortly after Freya's birth, the couple famously said they planned to place their baby in a gorilla enclosure at Howletts, allowing her to be carried off by a female gorilla. The move was a tradition Damian carried out with his eldest daughters when they were babies. In another video Freya feeds a gorilla snacks from her pocket. She says: "Animals don't belong in a cage in zoos they belong in the wild. We hate zoos. "Kifu is at our sanctuary because his wife's who are a little bit older than him need medical attention 3 times a day and wouldn't survive the journey back to Africa. "Gorillas live in a family group, so it would be completely unnatural to send him alone and separate him from his family. "It's the same as humans if we were sent away never to see our family again we would all be so unhappy. "So for him we give him the best life possible sadly at our sanctuary but his 5 sons are happily free in the wild where they belong. "It's important to highlight any animal that can go back to the Wild should go back to the Wild and those that 100% can't should be given the best life possible, but this shouldn't be an excuse for zoos to keep all animals behind a bars for their business." 7 7
The Sun
5 days ago
- The Sun
Hairdresser who left hubby & 3 kids for toyboy Masai warrior after Kenya holiday reveals how story ended
A WOMAN who left her husband and three children for a Masai warrior "holiday husband" has revealed the regret she feels over her bizarre love affair. Decades after swapping her comfortable, suburban life on the Isle of Wight for a remote region of Kenya, Cheryl Thomasgood has spoken out on her disastrous marriage to a tribal Kenyan warrior. 9 9 She explained how she felt she was used as a "meal ticket" by Masai warrior Daniel Lekimencho who she met at the Bamburi Beach Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya. Cheryl was just 34 when she became besotted with the tribesman who travelled to her hotel as part of a group that performed traditional Masai dancing for tourists. Within weeks of meeting the hunky warrior Cheryl had dumped her second husband, Mike Mason, and their three children to be with her new tribal toy boy. The 6ft 2-inch-tall Kenyan warrior was ten years younger than Cheryl when they met and struck up an intimate relationship. Shortly after meeting the dashing warrior Cheryl flew home briefly to tell her husband Mike that their marriage was over before jetting back to the Samburu region of Kenya to live with her new man. Cheryl and her new partner made headlines across the globe with people left gobsmacked at her decision to abandon the comfortable middle-class life for a new home and partner in rural Kenya. Cheryl's life now consisted of helping the warrior cook, clean and hunt, sleeping on goatskin and surviving on a diet of cow's blood and cabbage in a mud hut. Cheryl and Daniel eventually decided to leave the hardships of life in remote Kenya behind and planned to have children in the UK. The bizarre pair returned to the Isle of Wight in 1995 and married on Valentine's Day, both wore traditional Masai clothing to the ceremony. Their marriage produced a daughter, Mitsi, who is now 27-years-old, before it came to an abrupt end. Cheryl has spoken out for the first time, more than 30 years later, after the couple's relationship fell apart when her spiritual husband became obsessed with wealth. She describes feeling used as a "meal ticket" in an emotional interview with the MailOnline. Having reached an age where she wants to reflect on her life Cheryl chose to speak out about her "tormented" relationship with Masai warrior Daniel. She said: "I made a huge mistake, it was very wrong of me, and I have a lot of regrets, especially about how it damaged my children." 9 9 Cheryl split with Daniel in 1999 just four years after they were married and one year after their daughter was born. Now, 65-year-old Cheryl lives alone in a seaside town in Somerset where she is well known among the local community. She has kept her controversial past hidden from the community with none of her friends aware of the bizarre relationship she once had with the Masai warrior. Cheryl has been doing a lot of thinking about her relationship and the damage it caused her and her family. She explained how her and her Masai lover became inseparable after meeting and would often discuss the Masai way of life, culture and focus on spiritual over material wealth. But Cheryl has now told how shortly after arriving in the UK Daniel became obsessed with material things and money. The odd couple lived in Newport on the Isle of Wight with Cheryl's three children after coming to the UK. Cheryl explained that Daniel quickly changed his outlook on life, becoming ever more obsessed with money and material gain, she described her warrior husband becoming a different person inf ront of her eyes. Cheryl believed she had met and married a spiritual warrior but described Daniel turning into more of a Victor Meldrew type character later in their relationship. She detailed how Daniel quickly became moody and miserable over the couples lot in life, wanting more money and more possessions, changed by life in the UK. The couple began to argue often with Cheryl seeing Daniel's spiritualism evaporating before the lure of middle-class living. Daniel reportedly began wanting for a bigger home, designer gear and cash to send home to Kenyan relatives. Cheryl recalled the only time Daniel being happy was when the Kenyan warrior was jumping around in the garden doing his traditional Masai dance. 9 9 9 She added: "He would say that he was getting ready for battle and wanted to jump as high as an elephant. The kids loved it, but it got on my nerves after a while." Cheryl began to question Daniel's motives in being with her after witnessing his transformation and new obsession with material wealth. Cheryl doubted that Daniel loved her and felt as if she had been used by the Masai warrior for material gain, beginning to think Daniel saw her as an escape route from his tribal life in Kenya. Her doubts set in soon after the pair married in the UK but she chose to stick out their relationship to prove to the people who doubted them that it could work. Trying to pinpoint what went wrong in the peculiar relationship Cheryl blamed a slew of drastic cultural differences between her and her husband. She reportedly felt that adjusting to life in the UK was too tough for Daniel and his struggles assimilating, combined with the pressure on the pair to make their relationship work, led to the eventual end of their marriage. Cheryl admitted that she suffered sexual abuse as a young girl and spoke about the harrowing difficulties she faced growing up in a dysfunctional London household with alcoholic parents, she was reportedly contemplating suicide at the time she met Daniel. She revealed how she was urged to go on her Kenyan holiday by a friend who was in the same church choir as her, the pair went on the holiday that would change her life forever together. When Cheryl went to Kenya she was at a low point in her life she said, suffering with childhood trauma and stuck in an unhappy marriage to her second husband Mike. She had seen Daniel was an answer to her problems, believing he could help her heal and find peace through spirituality. Cheryl now admits that her love affair with the Masai warrior was just an escape from her problems and not an answer to them. Asked about what she regrets the most about her time with her warrior toy boy, Cheryl said: "The impact all this had on my children. Having a Masai warrior as a father was not easy for them. Daniel was trying his best, but he could never understand the Western ways and couldn't be the dad that they needed." Cheryl said that her children had missed out on having a proper father figure in their lives because of her relationship with Daniel and the break down of her first two marriages. Despite having no contact with Daniel Cheryl maintains that she still has good relationships with all of her children, referring to her daughter Mitsi as "the one good thing" to come out of her and Daniel's strange and difficult marriage. Her eldest son Steve is now aged 43 while his brother Tommy is 41, her daughter Chloe is aged 34 and Mitsi is 27. Cheryl insists that she loves her new quiet life and has zero intention of marrying again following a hattrick of "disasters." Following the pairs disastrous marriage and eventual split Masai warrior Daniel remained on the Isle of Wight where he now works in a supermarket. 9 9
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE I dumped my husband after falling madly in love with a Masai warrior on holiday in Kenya... we wed and had a daughter. What happened next was heartbreaking
A former hairdresser who left her husband and three children for a Masai warrior has revealed that she is haunted by regret and felt used as 'meal ticket' by him so that he could escape poverty for a better life in the UK. Cheryl Thomasgood made headlines around the world when she swapped her comfortable home on the Isle of Wight for a mud hut in a remote region of Kenya after falling in love with Daniel Lekimencho. Cheryl who was aged 34 at the time was on holiday in the East African country in March 1994 when Daniel came to her hotel as part of a group that performed traditional Masai dancing for tourists. Within weeks of becoming besotted by him, she dumped her husband Mike Mason and her three children, two of them from her first marriage to pursue a new life with the 6ft 2-inch-tall dashing warrior who was ten years her junior. Her bizarre relationship with Daniel was widely featured in talk shows and newspapers at the time with the nation perplexed and shocked at how Chery could abandon her family and their middle-class life for one gruelling poverty with a Masai warrior she barely knew. After her three-week holiday when she first met him, she briefly returned to the UK to tell her second husband Mike that their marriage was over and then went to live with Daniel and his tribe in the Samburu region of Kenya. Her life involved helping them to hunt and cook while she slept on goatskin and survived on a diet of cow's blood and cabbage. She and Daniel eventually returned to England in 1995 and married on Valentine's Day of that year at Newport Registry Office on the Isle of Wight with both wearing traditional Masai clothing. Now, more than 30 years later Cheryl revealed that she has chosen to speak for the first time in honest detail about her relationship with Daniel because she remains tormented by it and is at an age where she is reflecting on her life. Speaking to MailOnline, she cried: 'I made a huge mistake, it was very wrong of me, and I have a lot of regrets, especially about how it damaged my children. Now I just want to make peace with it all. 'My relationship with Daniel was crazy, it became a media circus, the whole country was fascinated by us and I'm now trying to make sense of it. Would I do it all again? No, I wouldn't. I paid a very high price for being with him.' Cheryl is now aged 65 and lives alone in a seaside town in Somerset after splitting from Daniel in 1999, a year after their daughter Misti was born. She is well known in her local community, where she has been living for the past decade but revealed that none of her friends know about her controversial past and the notoriety she acquired. She said: 'I've been doing a lot of thinking about what I did, all the hurt I have suffered and caused and all the things that happened. It's quite a lot to take on and talking honestly about it now helps me. But I'm sure that a lot of people who've got to know me over recent years will be very shocked to find out about it all.' Cheryl revealed that what attracted her most to Daniel when she met him at the Bamburi Beach Hotel in Mombasa was that he was the first man who she felt truly listened to her and that he was not obsessed by money and material things. She said: 'We became inseparable soon after meeting. He would speak about the Masai way of life, their culture and how they weren't obsessed by materialism, and he was also a very sincere. Something very deep changed in me, and I fell in love not just with him but all that the Masai stood for.' But what still shocks her to this day is how quickly Daniel changed after arriving in the UK as he became obsessed with money and material things and constantly complained about life. Speaking from her neatly maintained semi-detached home, Cheryl broke into laughter as she described him as a Masai version of Victor Meldrew-the perpetually miserable and sullen character from BBC comedy One Foot In The Grave. The couple lived in Newport with Cheryl and her three children at the time; two boys called Steve and Tommy, who she had with her first husband Robert; and her daughter Chloe, who was born during her second marriage to Mike. Cheryl recalled: 'He came to the UK and became a different person. I thought I had a met a spiritual Masai warrior, but I ended up with a miserable old sod who became more like Victor Meldrew. 'He was always moody and complained a lot and we started fighting all the time. All his spiritualism quickly went out of the window. He became obsessed by money, so that he could send it to his relatives in Kenya, designer clothes and wanting a bigger home.' As a smile spread across her face, she recalled: 'The only time when he was really happy was when he was jumping up and down in the garden doing his traditional Masai warrior dance. He would say that he was getting ready for battle and wanted to jump as high as an elephant. The kids loved it, but it got on my nerves after a while.' Cheryl revealed that Daniel's transformation and obsession with money caused her to question his motives as to why he wanted to be with her. She said: 'I doubted if he loved me and felt that he just used me as a meal ticket to escape his life in Kenya. Once he was in the UK it all became about him and what he wanted, and he just wanted more and more. 'He didn't seem to care about me. He started driving me nuts and I realised that this was just a marriage of convenience for him. I moved a mountain for him, but I knew that he wouldn't move a molehill for me.' Cheryl said that she started feeling these doubts soon after the couple married but felt compelled to stay in the relationship because she wanted to prove that they could be happy, despite public opinion that they could not and that she was a bad wife and mother. She said: 'Things became very toxic between us, I realised that I had made a big mistake, but I had to continue putting the effort into the relationship.' In recent years she said she has been thinking more and more about what went wrong in her relationship with Daniel. She added: 'There was just too much pressure on both of us and too many cultural differences. I think it was all too much for him in particular. Combine that with the doubts that I had over why he wanted to marry me and if he really loved me and things were never going to end well between us.' Cheryl broke into tears as she recalled her childhood revealing that she suffered years of sexual abuse and was raised in a dysfunctional household in London by parents who were alcoholics. At the time she met Daniel she was contemplating suicide and battling depression and was urged to go on holiday to Kenya by a friend who was in the same church choir as her. The two went on the break that changed Cheryl's life together. Cheryl said: 'I suffered a lot of trauma in my childhood and that's something I'm still dealing with. When I went to Kenya I was at a really low point in my life; trapped in an unhappy marriage and suffering from mental health problems. 'In Daniel, I was looking for healing, inner peace and spirituality and thought that I had found all of that in him because in Kenya, he had all of those qualities. But sadly, that didn't last. 'I thought I was in love with him but really I was just trying to escape my unhappy life and cope with my trauma.' Cheryl is still undergoing therapy for her childhood trauma and has also been diagnosed with PTSD. She does not have any contact with Daniel, who remained on the Isle of Wight after they split and works in a supermarket. Asked about what she regrets the most about her time with him, Cheryl is quick to point out: 'The impact all this had on my children. Having a Masai warrior as a father was not easy for them. Daniel was trying his best, but he could never understand the Western ways and couldn't be the dad that they needed. 'The children missed out on having a proper father, not just with Daniel but also my other two husbands. All of them were useless, bad fathers and I was too mentally unwell to be a good mother and made a lot of bad life decisions because of this. 'My children deserved stability and love, but I was not able to provide them that, not with any of my marriages. That is my biggest regret, but we all have them and that's just life.' Cheryl added: 'Any parent wants their children to have a loving, stable home but all I gave them was chaos and uncertainty and that still hurts. I went from one disastrous marriage to another.' Despite her regrets over her children, Cheryl maintained that she has good relations with them all and regularly sees them. She refers to her youngest daughter Misti, 27 as the 'one good thing' to have come out of her marriage to Daniel. Her eldest son Steve is now aged 43 while his brother Tommy is 41. Her daughter Chloe is aged 34. She added: 'I love Misti and all my other children to bits. I'm very proud of them all and they've grown up to be fantastic adults. Misti reminds me that not everything with Daniel was negative. She's grown up to be a very intelligent and articulate woman.' Cheryl insisted that she now loves the quiet life and has no intention of every marrying again following a hattrick of 'disasters.' Asked what advice she would give any woman who goes on a break and finds a 'holiday husband' she warned: 'Be careful what you wish for and be aware of what you're getting into, or you could up regretting it for the rest of your life.'
