Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage)

by Maathai, Wangari

The four policemen remained on guard, two at the front door and two at the door next to the kitchen, for the second night. It often gets cold in Nairobi in the evening, so I called out to one of the officers through the kitchen window. “I know you're here to do a job and that you have to arrest me. But I'm also doing my job, and I'm not opening this door. I know you're cold. I will make you a nice cup of tea,” I continued, “but I don't have any milk. If I give you some money, would you go and get some?” The officer consulted his colleagues, which impressed me, and they agreed to the offer. One got milk from a nearby kiosk and I made tea, handing them the cups through the window. I had a cup myself, inside the house.

  This was my way of creating a rapport with the officers and reducing the tension between them and me. I didn't think the officers really wanted to hurt me; they just hoped I'd give up and come out. While a number of police officers were strong supporters of the regime, others were sympathetic to the pro-democracy movement. They knew they were enforcing repressive laws and allowing corruption to go unchecked.

  On the third day of the siege, however, the situation turned ugly. The locks on my doors and the steel bars on the windows must have annoyed the authorities greatly, since they acquired a pair of steel cutters from the army and went to work. When I heard the noise of them sawing through the window bars, I knew it was only a matter of time. Sure enough, I heard boots bashing in the doors, and suddenly three of the officers to whom I'd offered tea were in my living room. Taking me by the arms, they walked me through the broken doors and past a crowd of supporters at the gate, pushed me into a car, and drove me to the police station.

  To my consternation, the officers left the house wide open. There were hundreds of people around and they could have helped themselves to everything inside. However, when Mwangi heard about the police coming to arrest me, he called a friend and asked him to send two security guards to look after the house. They protected everything that was there. Mwangi himself kindly came, closed and locked the gate to the house after I had gone, and made sure the guards stayed.

  The charges against me were serious: spreading malicious rumors, sedition, and treason, the last of which carried the death penalty. Thankfully, by this time, I, as well as other targets of the regime, had a system whereby if I had been arrested or something had happened to me, people would spread the word to our supporters almost immediately. They would then inform the press and inquire about why I'd been arrested and what they could do to get me released.

  Nevertheless, it was a dark time. I was in jail again, confined to a holding cell at Lang'ata police station. For a day and a night I tried to sleep without any covers on the floor of a cell that was wet, freezing cold, filled with water and filth. I wondered whether the floor had been flooded deliberately. Unlike the first time I was imprisoned, I did not have a blanket and I was alone in the cell. I was also fifty-two years old, arthritic in both knees, and suffering from back pain. In that cold, wet cell my joints ached so much that I thought I would die.

  The guards left me alone, but I remember the near constant opening and closing of the cell door and the boom, boom, boom it made. The lights were kept on twenty-four hours a day, so it was impossible to sleep. I had no access to information or any idea about what was happening outside the bars of that cell. There was nothing I could do. I had to depend entirely on the guards assigned to contain me and the people outside trying to defend me. As I sat in those cells, denying me the ability to control what happened seemed to me to be the greatest punishment the regime could mete out to me.

  By the time of my court hearing, my legs had completely seized up. Crying from the pain and weak from hunger, I had to be carried by four strong policewomen into the courtroom. It was strange for me to feel so helpless. People were shocked when they saw me unable even to stand to hear the charges read. “What have they given her?! They have killed her!” people shouted.

  Some judges were sympathetic to the need for greater democracy but either had to act as the system demanded for their own personal safety or, less honorably, for their own personal comfort and privilege. In this case, the judge was fair, although he did require bail. He also demanded regular appearances in court that hampered my work and the work of my codefendants, who included the lawyers Paul Muite and James Orengo. Both of them, leaders in the pro-democracy movement, were also good friends. In those days, bail was often used as a way to curtail freedom and dissent, since it, or other deferred charges, made it impossible to travel and left you vulnerable to arrest at any time on numerous, vague accusations of wrongdoing.

  While my codefendants and I knew we were innocent of what we had been accused, we had no guarantee that we would be publicly vindicated. As I was carried out of the courtroom to an ambulance to take me to Nairobi Hospital, I gained courage and strength from the women who wailed and wept around me. I was in physical agony, wondering whether the arthritis would ever let my legs carry me again. Then I saw a banner from the women's rights group Mothers in Action that warmed my heart and helped me realize that no matter what happened to me there were people who cared, who wished me well, and who understood what it meant to be a woman fighting for the future of her country: WANGARI, BRAVE DAUGHTER OF KENYA, the banner said. YOU WILL NEVER WALK ALONE AGAIN.

  Such wonderful support came from many quarters. My son Muta, bless him, all of nineteen years old, talked to many members of the media about the case. Then there were my friends overseas, who, in these situations, would do what they could to ensure that I was safe. On this occasion, members of the Green Belt Movement sent out an alert that I was in danger. In the United States, Peggy Snyder, founding director of UNIFEM, Carol Coonrod of the Hunger Project, Caroline Pezzullo of GROOTS (Grassroots Organizations Operating Together in Sisterhood) International, which I had cofounded with others out of the Nairobi women's conference in 1985, and the late Bella Abzug and Mim Kelber, cofounders of the Women's Environment & Development Organization (WEDO) on whose board I served, called on members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to apply pressure to the Moi regime.

  As a result, eight senators, including Al Gore and Edward M. Kennedy, sent a telegram urging the government to substantiate the charges against us. Senators Kennedy, Gore, and the late Paul Well-stone followed up with a letter cautioning the president that arresting pro-democracy figures could further damage relations between Kenya and the United States. The government must have listened to someone, because in November 1992 the state withdrew the charges against all of us. There was, and never had been, a case to be made. We were free again and ready to continue our advocacy work.

  In Kenya in the early 1990s, outrages and abuses happened wherever you looked, and often simultaneously. Many young men landed in prison for political agitation. In January 1992, as I was still in the hospital recovering from my time in a police cell, Terry Kariuki, the widow of murdered politician J. M. Kariuki, acting as a friend of the mothers of these political prisoners brought the mother of one of the several dozen political prisoners then held by the regime to the hospital to visit me. The mother, Monica Wamwere, told me that she and a few relatives and friends had formed a group called Release Political Prisoners to appeal to the government to release their sons from detention. Some of the prisoners—such as her son, Koigi; Mirugi Kariuki; the brothers Rumba and Robert Kinuthia; Harun Wakaba; and Samuel Kang'ethe Mungai—were well known for their political activism, others were not; but all of them had been detained for advocating for greater democratic space.

  The mothers hoped, they said, that I would join them and put pressure on the government to have these men released now that it was no longer a crime to advocate for multipartism. I had not been directly involved with the issue of political prisoners, but the case the mothers were presenting seemed very strong: Since it was no longer a crime for Kenyans to demand a plural political system, there was no reason for the sons to be in prison. I agreed to meet with them as soon as I was released from the hospital.

  By late February,
I had been out of the hospital for several weeks and had regained my ability to walk, although my knees would never quite recover. I was still out on bail so ran the risk of being rear-rested, but I wanted to help the mothers and didn't want to allow a false charge to stop me from pursuing the truth. I suggested that we meet in my house. To my surprise, many of the relatives and friends were afraid, not merely to meet but even more so, to meet in my house: They were fearful of the system and knew that I myself was a target. I assured the women that my house served as an office, so if the police came we could always say we were members of the Green Belt Movement discussing tree planting and advocacy issues.

  Indeed, some of the women were members of the Green Belt Movement, and I knew that the Release Political Prisoners campaign was an issue Green Belt was concerned about and was part of the movement's mandate to promote democracy and respect for human rights. So a few mothers and other relatives, most of whom were female, came regularly to my house and we discussed our strategy over cups of tea. As I listened to these women, I felt compassion for them. As a mother myself, I wondered what it would be like to have your child thrown into a cell with no sense of when he might be tried or released. I thought of my own sons and brothers: What wouldn't I do for them?

  In the course of these meetings I suggested to the women that they meet the attorney general and petition him to free their sons and all the political prisoners. I agreed to accompany them to provide moral support and to serve as a translator. We agreed to meet at Uhuru Park and walk together to the office of the attorney general. “The government always responds to something that is done aloud and publicly,” I said to the women. “If you go to the attorney general quietly and appeal to him, you'll be wasting your time. He'll say, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ but he'll do nothing.” I had another strategy. “When we see him, we'll tell him, ‘We will wait in Uhuru Park for three days for all the sons to be released. During that time we'll go on a hunger strike and pray.’ ” I also recommended that we take our bedding with us to the meeting. Then the attorney general would know, I said, that the mothers wouldn't leave Nairobi for their villages without their sons and that we were prepared to sleep in Uhuru Park while they waited.

  On Friday, February 28, 1992, about five mothers, their supporters, and I met in Uhuru Park and walked with our bedding to the office of the attorney general. He received us and I served as the translator as the women explained their case. When the meeting ended, we told him that we were going back to Uhuru Park to wait for the sons to be released. The attorney general was taken aback. “Don't go to the park,” he said. “Go home. We've received your petition and we'll review the cases and we will take action.” But we knew all about the government, how it never really listened or did what it promised. When we left the office, we walked back to the park and camped at the same intersection of Uhuru Highway and Kenyatta Avenue from which we had started. There we were joined by others, mostly men, who supported the initiative and wanted to make sure we would be safe spending the night at the park.

  Evening arrived, and the sons had not come. We took fifty-two candles, one for each man we knew was in prison, put them in brown bags, and lit them. We almost caused a traffic jam at the corner, as people from all over the city slowed their cars to look at the flickering lights in the park. Pedestrians stopped, too, to listen to the women explain why they were on a hunger strike. By the time night fell, our camp had grown to include more than fifty women, many of whom were mothers and relatives of political prisoners. We built a fire to keep ourselves warm.

  Kind gestures came from many ordinary people who supported our cause. One Indian man gave us a huge tent because he was worried that it might rain and several of the mothers, who were between sixty and eighty were frail. Some people donated money, while others brought water, juices, or glucose to keep the mothers healthy since they were not eating. Still others joined us as we sang freedom songs and hymns to keep our spirits up.

  The mothers had many supporters whom I came to meet over the course of what became a long campaign. One of them was Dr. Ngo-rongo Makanga (also known by his Christian name, John), a member of the pro-democracy movement who ran a pharmacy at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi. He and I later cofounded the Green Party in Kenya, of which he became secretary general. Dr. Makanga also joined me and the Green Belt Movement in many other struggles, including over the infamous tribal clashes in the Rift Valley.

  The night came and went. Saturday dawned and a second night passed, and still the women had not been reunited with their sons. On Sunday, we decided to hold a church service, which Reverend Njoya and other clergy, dressed in their vestments and carrying Bibles, conducted for us in the park. As people left their own churches after Sunday services, many joined us and the gathering swelled. We decided to erect a sign, so I asked some friends to prepare a large board and write FREEDOM CORNER on it and bring it to us. We planted it where our encampment was, so the spirit of the corner matched the spirit in which the park had been named. That section of Uhuru Park has been called Freedom Corner ever since.

  Over the three days, many people who had been victims of torture came to Freedom Corner and began to tell their stories. “What you do not know,” they said, pointing to Nyayo House, a government building opposite the Nyayo Monument in Uhuru Park and immediately across the road from Freedom Corner, “is that underneath that house are torture chambers. Men have been maimed there. Some of them have died after what they have gone through.”

  As the victims related their horrific experiences, others, including grown men in their forties, embraced the freedom of that corner and found the courage to speak up. “Let me tell you my story,” “I have never spoken about this before. I've been out of prison now for ten years, and this is the first time I have told anyone that I was tortured.” Some related that they had been abused and beaten to the point where they would never be able to father children. While we listened to the men, we prayed and sang for comfort and courage.

  Laypeople and the clergy bore living witness to what the government had been doing to its citizens behind closed doors. While some of us knew, or at least suspected, that such things were happening, it was nevertheless shocking to hear the details. However, some were hearing this information for the first time, and people could barely believe the horrific stories they were being told by fellow citizens.

  Throughout Monday, there was still no sign of the sons. By this time, there were several hundred of us at Freedom Corner. Although we had told the attorney general we would wait in the park for three days, we knew we could not leave now. The next day, March 3, dawned mild and sunny. During the morning, we saw groups of paramilitary police, batons and guns at the ready, cordoning off the area to prevent anyone else from reaching us.

  Around three o'clock that afternoon, the police ordered a member of the Release Political Prisoners campaign to tell us to disperse. There wasn't enough time to do anything before the police began firing tear gas into the camp and charging us from behind and in front, beating us with their batons. Chaos! People ran everywhere, including onto the streets surrounding the park. Some of the young men who had joined us fought back as the police chased them across the road to Nyayo House and down Kenyatta and Haile Selassie avenues as well as through the park.

  As the battle continued throughout the afternoon, tear gas and the sound of gunshots filled the air. Police reinforcements stormed the tent where I was singing and praying with the mothers. When the police arrived in the tent, the fifty or so people inside were initially defiant, not believing the police would attack them. The protestors linked arms, which meant that when the police began their assault they could not easily take one without taking many. I saw people rise up in groups as police batons rained down.

  In that immediate moment, I recall worrying that the paraffin lamps we lit at night would be disturbed and the tent would go up in flames. In the next instant, however, I was knocked unconscious. Even in the mêlée, good samaritans rescued me and rushed me to the hospi
tal with two other women who were badly hurt.

  The mothers in the tent refused to be intimidated and they did not run. Instead, they did something very brave: Several of them stripped, some of them completely naked, and showed the police officers their breasts. (I myself did not strip.) One of the most powerful of African traditions concerns the relationship between a woman and a man who could be her son. Every woman old enough to be your mother is considered like your own mother and expects to be treated with considerable respect. As they bared their breasts, what the mothers were saying to the policemen in their anger and frustration as they were being beaten was “By showing you my nakedness, I curse you as I would my son for the way you are abusing me.”

  By the time I arrived at the hospital I was dehydrated. Fortunately, my doctor, Dan Gikonyo, was on hand at the hospital and as always attended to me promptly. It was important for those of us in the pro-democracy movement to have doctors we could trust, and Dr. Gikonyo was a man I trusted whenever I needed medical assistance. When I first came to, I had the strangest feeling, as though I were hanging upside down. One of my friends and a Green Belt board member, Lillian Njehu, was with me and I kept telling her I felt like I was falling. Lillian stayed with me throughout my time in the hospital, which was a big sacrifice for her, and made sure I was protected day and night. Such was the spirit of sisterhood.

  When I was sufficiently recovered, I called a press conference. I was told that the police claimed I had incited them to beat me unconscious and that I had asked to be given a black eye and a baseball-sized lump on my head. I informed the press that although after what had happened to me I would have to stay away from “dangerous ground,” I wouldn't be silenced or deterred from telling the truth and I wouldn't go away. “The mothers,” I emphasized, “had a right to seek the freedom of their sons.”

  The evening of March 3 the police forcibly removed all the women who were still in the park and took them to their homes. As they were being removed, the women cried, “We will only move from this place when the government brings our sons here!” The authorities ordered the women to end their hunger strike and told them not to return to Nairobi. Freedom Corner was cordoned off and we were unable to get to it again. By the time the police left, all our bedding and personal effects, including blankets, lamps, and the tent, had disappeared with the Nairobi City Council, never to be seen again.