MICERE MUGO, A CHARISMATIC FREEDOM FIGHTER WHO RESISTED TO THE END

By Margaretta wa Gacheru (posted August 2, 2023) Celebrations, tributes, and performances in remembrance of the life and rich legacy of Professor Micere Mugo were held over the past fortnight all around Nairobi, As I write, BD Life only attended one, last Monday at the Kenya Cultural Centre’s Ukumbi Mbogo. That one was coincidental with the celebration Pan African Women’s Day and the concept of ‘Love as a Practice’ which correlates at several points with the philosophy of Utu/Ubuntu, a notion so important to the understanding of Micere. Organized by the team of Irene Asuwa and Ruzuna Akoth from the Feminist Conversations Kenya, the women in attendance were not all drawn from the upper escelons of Nairobi society. There were several feminist scholars, academics, and activists among the room-full of Kenyan women and men. In the main were mostly grassroot women from the heart of Eastlands, from Kayole, Dandora, Eastleigh, and Buru Buru. Apart from the former Presidential candidate Martha Karua, there were no big-name women leaders in the hall, only women leaders of grassroot organizations like Ukombozi Library, Social Justice Centre, Ecological Justice, and Cheche Books and Art Centre. But we were all attentive when Irene and Ruzuna ran a video featuring Micere speaking about her own ethical upbringing. It was wonderful listening to this charismatic professor who I had the good fortune to listen to at University of Nairobi before she had to flee the country for her life. Micere was explaining how she was raised by a father who brought his daughters up to know themselves as fully entitled to be treated on equal terms with boys and men in every walk of life. She spoke almost reverently about the way the children were taught never to impose their will or wishes upon any of the workers they had on the family’s land. “We were not poor. In fact, my father had more than 150 workers on his land at a time. But he also taught never to treat them, or anyone, like a lesser being,” Micere explained. She further shared how she was brought up to treasure humility and to always practice it. She was also brought up to know she could do what was traditionally seen as men’s work just as easily as men could learn to do women’s work. “The chores were all shared equally so that girls learned to do boys’ work, and boys could learn women’s work as well,” she added. Her upbringing clearly had an impact on her expectations and dreams. For example, even as she came home from Canada after living overseas for many years, (becoming the first Kenyan woman to earn a Ph.D in Literature in the process), she rapidly rose from being a lecturer at University of Nairobi to become a professor, and eventually the Dean of the Faculty of the Arts. During the three hours program held in her remembrance in the US (and which was featured on local TV and YouTube), many speakers shared their experience of Micere’s many initiatives to assist those in need and less fortunate than she. Micere was also a great African revolutionary at heart. It was in that spirit that the Traveling Theatre from the Social Justice Centre based in Kayole came to the National Theatre to stage an incredible play, scripted by David Tafari. Based on a true story, the 1945 massacre of women protestors who were adamant about not being party to the destruction of the Aberdares rain forest. This was before the Emergency was declared by the Colonizer in 1952. Some say the women’s intense resistance to chopping down the forest in order that coal mines be dug, roused awareness and anxiety among the Brits. It showed the Brits a level of powerful grassroots resistance that they hadn’t anticipated. The dramatic portrait of the women outwitting the oppressive rules established to more effectively exploit Africa’s lands, air, and laborers, offended the women greatly. They were not only being told to go dig the trenches but also to chop down the trees. Their resistance to these so-called rules revealed a revolutionary spirit and militant solidarity that couldn’t easily be broken. The colonizer finally gave up on ‘politely’ making the women comply. It was then that he sent in his Home Guards to ‘teach them a lesson’. More than 100 women were slaughtered and hundreds more badly beaten, maimed for life. It was only after that eventful day in 1945 that men were brought in to do the dirty work the women had resisted. The lesson in all this is not that the job got done by men. It was that the revolutionary spirit lives on, proving as Micere believed, that equity and social justice are real possibilities. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------