Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage)

by Maathai, Wangari

  9

  Fighting for Freedom

  In the autumn of 1989, I was working late in the office, as was often the case, when a young law student knocked on my door. Although I didn't know him, it was obvious he had some news for me. He told me that he had learned from very reliable sources that the government was planning to build a skyscraper in Uhuru Park. The park, which is located west of Uhuru Highway in the very heart of Nairobi, is the equivalent of Hyde Park in London and Central Park in New York City or any central open space in any city of the world—a large green swath amid the bustle of crowds and the concrete and steel of the metropolis. Its lawns, paths, boating lake, and stands of trees provide millions of people in Nairobi with a natural environment for recreation, gatherings, quiet walks, or simply a breath of fresh air.

  The young man had learned this information because he had overheard his father and uncles, who were very close to powerful people in the government, discussing the planned building project and commenting on how terrible it was. He knew they wouldn't make their concerns public and he didn't want to jeopardize their positions, since at this time whoever openly questioned the government's actions was arrested and detained, and newspapers and journals were closed down. The young man, however, was aware of my concern for the environment and knew that I was not afraid to speak out on such matters.

  “Don't let anybody know that I told you,” he warned me. “But I have heard that this tower is going to be a monstrosity and I was wondering what could be done.” I told the young man that I would not reveal his identity, a promise I have kept. “I've no clue about this tower,” I replied, “but I will write a letter to the minister for environment and inquire.” I had seen fencing in the park, but had assumed it had been put there temporarily for a major fun fair or religious gathering.

  What this young man told me was shocking. Uhuru Park provided everyone, whether young or old, rich or poor, with some respite in a city that was growing rapidly, as sprawling housing estates and commercial buildings took over land that was previously grassland or forest. Nairobi was no longer the “Green City in the Sun” I had walked in over twenty years before. While there were other parks, they were not in the center of town and not as large. Even Uhuru Park itself was shrinking. Over the years, a hotel, a road, a members-only golf course, and a football stadium had all been built on land that had been part of the park.

  In 1988, the government had further encroached on the park by building a monument near the intersection of Kenyatta Avenue and Uhuru Highway that celebrated ten years of President Moi's nyayo (or “step by step”) political philosophy and twenty-five years of independence. It had cost almost a million U.S. dollars. It was a bitter irony that the park, named to celebrate our independence, was subjected, like so many of Kenya's public goods, to land-grabbers in the government.

  By 1989, the park covered only thirty-four acres. Despite these past intrusions into the park, nothing would, literally, cast such a shadow over it as the proposed Times Media Trust Complex. Although the government disputed how much of the park would be consumed by the complex, what I discovered convinced me that it would be a sizable piece and that the construction would fundamentally alter Uhuru Park's character and role in the life of the city.

  As envisioned, the complex would consist of a tower sixty stories high and would house, among other things, the headquarters for KANU, the Kenya Times newspaper (the organ of the ruling party), a trading center, offices, an auditorium, galleries, shopping malls, and parking space for two thousand cars. The tower would be the tallest building of its kind in Africa and the complex would cost in the region of four billion Kenyan shillings (then about $200 million) to construct. Most of the costs would be funded through a loan guarantee from the government to the private investors involved. The plan also called for a huge statue of President Moi.

  As I learned the details, the plan for the complex seemed more and more absurd. Despite private investment in the project, the government could ill afford the huge loan it was offering. There were also many logistical questions: What about the enormous amount of car traffic that would be generated at an already congested intersection? The citizens of Nairobi didn't have adequate water pressure to keep a four-floor building functioning properly: How were they going to get enough water to flow around all sixty floors? What also annoyed me was that such grandiose and costly white elephants, which were more often monuments to ego than well-considered contributions to the public good, were being erected throughout Africa.

  Soon after that young man visited me, I discussed the project with some members of the executive committee of the Green Belt Movement. We agreed that the way to go about it was initially to simply write letters to the relevant governmental and business offices inquiring about the project: whether it was true that there was such a project, who was responsible, and who could assist us with information.

  On October 3, 1989, I wrote a letter on Green Belt Movement stationery to the managing director of the Kenya Times inquiring about the complex and urging him not to build it if the rumors about the plans were true. The park provided people with recreational facilities, I said, a break from life in the concrete jungle and a resting place where they could spend their free time. I reminded him that it was a space for public meetings and national celebrations, a playground for many city children, and that future generations were relying on us to keep the park in the form that it had been bequeathed to us. I sent copies of the letter to the office of the president, the Nairobi city commission, the provincial commissioner, the minister for environment and natural resources, and the executive directors of UNEP and the Environment Liaison Centre International. I also sent copies to the Kenyan press, and a small story about my appeal ran in the Daily Nation on October 4.

  In the manner typical of the government of the day, instead of responding, the regime ignored me. When the office of the president did not reply, I started writing to other offices, and the more I wrote the more they knew that I knew, and the more the word spread.

  Shortly after, I discovered that construction of the tower block would require the demolition of two historic buildings, so I wrote a letter to the director of the National Museums of Kenya, who had recommended that the buildings be preserved, asking for his support. In addition to the people I sent my first letter to, among those I copied this letter to were the executive director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the ministry of public works, the permanent secretary in the department of international security and administration, and the managing director of the Kenya Times (again). Nobody could say that they were unaware of our concern.

  I also shared my letters with the press. Fortunately, many journalists were very interested and pleased I was raising this issue, and as they reported on my new campaign people around the country began to take notice. Kenya was still reeling from the blatantly rigged elections just a year earlier and many Kenyans, including the press, felt powerless against the government. They were, therefore, happy that someone was speaking out.

  On October 26, three weeks after my initial letter, I wrote to Sir John Johnson, the British high commissioner in Nairobi, urging him to intervene with Robert Maxwell. Maxwell was, along with KANU, reported to be one of the major shareholders in the project and was then the proprietor of London's Mirror Group Newspapers. I requested that Sir John ask Mr. Maxwell to recognize that while many Africans might not know the full consequences of their environmental actions, people in Western Europe, Japan, and America had no such excuse. Surely the British and Americans wouldn't tolerate a tower block in the middle of Hyde Park or Central Park, I suggested to him, so why then should the people of Nairobi?

  Still no direct response. A week later I wrote to the resident representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) about the complex. I complained that the owners of the Kenya Times and international investors were taking advantage of the Kenyan people, who were so busy trying to meet their basic needs that t
hey “did not have time to complain, restrain, demonstrate and challenge the unadmirable locals who have collaborated [on the project] and the irresponsible financiers who have persuaded them to.” I felt strongly that the issue extended beyond the preservation of the park to a matter of the government being responsible and accountable to its citizens.

  There were millions of silent, despairing Kenyans, I explained to the UNDP representative, who wondered what had happened to their society, “to moral justice, to fair play and to responsibility and accountability of those who have been put in places of responsibility, those who are supposed to protect them, to guide them and to lead them to a brighter tomorrow.”

  I continued, “There are also the millions of Kenyans of tomorrow, our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who will either curse us or feel deeply ashamed at the lack of foresight, at the magnitude of greed, and at the arrogance of those who are promoting destruction and want to call it development.” I hoped he would “stand for the weak, for the poor, for the lonely, for the fearful, for the ignorant, and for the silent. We must not stand for the powerful only, or the rich only, or for the arrogant only. Justice does not demand that.”

  Although I had been writing all these letters, the authorities refused to reply to me directly. Instead, they spoke through the media. At a press conference in mid-October the minister for lands and housing told the Daily Nation that those who opposed the tower were “ill-informed” and said that the complex would be a “landmark.” I replied with an open letter to the minister outlining my concerns, which I shared with the press.

  In the November 7 edition of the Standard, a widely read daily newspaper whose shareholders at that time were mainly KANU officials or supporters, the minister for local government and physical planning denied that the Times complex would take more than a small portion of public park land. He lauded it as a “fine and magnificent work of architecture,” and called those who opposed the project the “ignorant few.” I wrote to him that same day and asked him to consider the environmental consequences of the decision to let the project go ahead. The logic behind the complex, I suggested, was the same as the attitude of development with destruction that had led to acid rain, poisoned rivers, deforestation, and climate change. I exhorted him to solicit the opinions of people whom I considered not the “ignorant few” but the “informed many” in Nairobi and to reconsider the plan.

  I closed with an appeal: “We have tried to reach out and plead with all relevant authorities over the imposing Times complex at Uhuru Park. We appeal to Nairobi residents to raise their voices even higher, ‘Do not be afraid of speaking out when you know that you are in the right. Fear has never been a source of security. Speak out and stand up while you can. If the ministers refuse to listen, the president will. If the ministers ignore us we will keep going until our faint voices reach the president at State House. He too claims to be an environmentalist and he cares for his people.’ ”

  This last observation was true—to a degree. Earlier that year, President Moi had publicly burned millions of Kenyan shillings’ worth of poached elephant ivory before the world's cameras and to the world's applause. It was perhaps a vain expectation, but I hoped that his newly burnished environmental image might influence his attitude toward the park as well.

  At the heart of all my letters was a simple question: I was asking, “Is it true?” All the government had to do was answer yes or no. Fortunately, the press made it impossible for the government to ignore me entirely. Reporters went to the people I'd written to and asked them, “Have you told her whether it's true or not?” The officials would splutter and call me names and suggest that something was wrong with my head and the press would then faithfully come and tell me and the country what had been said about me. In turn, I would write to the officials and demand that they explain why they had told the press what they had. This went on until the building of the Times complex at Uhuru Park became a national discussion.

  If the authorities had provided a convincing statement as to why the Times tower complex had to be built in Uhuru Park, I would have had to sit down and think of another reason to oppose it. As it turned out, the main justifications the project's proponents offered during the whole episode were that it would be a prestigious project, look magnificent, and that the tower would provide spectacular views of Nairobi and the surrounding area. This was not, of course, a serious answer to my question. Fortunately, those in power were so keen to appear good in the eyes of the international community that any exposure through the media forced them to respond. And respond they did.

  The government was so arrogant at that time that in addition to not answering my letters directly and belittling my concerns via the press, it began to abuse me in public. On November 8, 1989, members of Parliament used a parliamentary procedure reserved for a national emergency to interrupt their ongoing debate to discuss … me. For forty-five minutes, MPs, including a minister and an assistant minister, lined up to express their outrage at what I had done. How dare I write to a foreign government over what they considered a sovereign issue! Had not Kenya achieved independence years ago? And yet there I was threatening to take them back to the colonial past! The complex would not affect the park at all, they said. Indeed, the government was looking at the possibility of building a public space even bigger and better than Uhuru Park. Furthermore, the president himself was internationally recognized for his commitment to the environment.

  The Green Belt Movement was a “bogus organization,” one MP claimed, that only erected billboards while I spent my time traveling the world collecting money for unknown purposes. Reflecting on my letter to the minister of local government, one MP claimed I had called for people to rise up against the government, a statement he considered “ugly and ominous” and that deserved to land me in court. After all, said another, I wasn't an MP, with the privileges of Parliament: What mandate did I have to speak for the people?

  Then the abuse turned personal. To the cheers of a packed house, one MP said that because I had supposedly repudiated my husband in public, I could not be taken seriously and that my behavior had damaged his respect for all women. He accused me of incitement and warned Green Belt Movement members (my “clique of women” as he called them) to tread carefully. “I don't see the sense at all in a bunch of divorcées coming out to criticize such a complex,” he concluded. Some MPs suggested that if I was so comfortable writing to Europeans, I should go and live in Europe. Members laughed while one parliamentarian even advocated calling down a curse, or salala, on me. All of this could have gone on much longer had not the Speaker stepped in and called an end to the farrago. But he had a final dig. “We hope Maathai has heard the sentiments of this House,” he said.

  Yes, I had, and I wasn't going to take those slanders lying down. As I read the newspaper headlines—“MPs Condemn Prof Maathai” and “Prof Maathai Under Fire in Parliament”—I knew that this was just what I needed to stake my ground. What had begun as my attempt to answer the call of a young law student had become a con- test between me, asking the government to explain its actions, and the government behaving badly in response. As it turned out, the more the government misbehaved, the worse it seemed in the eyes of the public and, later, the international community.

  The day after my vilification in Parliament, I wrote a letter to Philip Leakey, who was my constituency MP and an assistant minister for the environment, to respond to what, as I'd read in the papers, had been said in Parliament about me. I explained that the only reason I had written to the British High Commission was that one of the investors in the project was Robert Maxwell, whose whereabouts I did not know, and that it was absurd to call me anti-government because I had simply raised a question. I noted the president's interest in the environment, and said that it was precisely because of this concern, which I shared, that I had thought if I raised my voice about the Times complex he might hear me.

  Far from acting against the spirit of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Kenya's ind
ependence from Britain, I continued, I was acting in the spirit of Uhuru, or freedom. “When I see Uhuru Park and contemplate its meaning,” I wrote, “I feel compelled to fight for it so that my grandchildren may share that dream and that joy of freedom as they one day walk there.” I reiterated that I was not against the complex per se, but its placement in the park. I also made clear that I had no intention of fleeing Kenya—for Europe or anywhere else. “This is home and this is where I will be. I hope that I will be buried right here in the heart of it.”

  At another time and in another forum, I told Mr. Leakey, I would discuss my marital status with the MPs, since they were so interested, but that I wanted to keep the focus on the issue at hand. “The debate is on the proposed Times complex at Uhuru Park,” I wrote, and MPs should not be distracted by, as I put it, “the anatomy below the line (if they know what I mean).” In spite of what the MPs might think, I assured him, my being a woman was irrelevant. Instead, the debate over the complex required the use of “the anatomy of whatever lies above the neck!”

  I'm sure the MPs were amazed that I was willing to tell them to concentrate on what was supposedly between their ears. That quote found its way into the press. Even though what had been said about me in Parliament was deeply unpleasant, it wasn't anything new, either for me or other critics of the government. I had been publicly humiliated during my divorce and denied reemployment at the University of Nairobi because I had dared to challenge the ruling party. Indeed, it was almost the price I had to pay to be free. I knew in this case I hadn't broken any law or done anything that warranted jail or mistreatment. I had asked a question, which I knew was a right guaranteed in the Kenyan constitution.

  On November 16, I wrote to the president directly, urging him in an appeal of “last resort” to stop the construction of the complex. I suggested that saving Uhuru Park for Kenya's children, ordinary people, and future generations would be symbolic of his personal commitment to preservation of the world's environment. I felt, I wrote “like the Dutch boy at the dikes as the sea swelled,” with the president as the last hope.