Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage)

by Maathai, Wangari

  “There are policemen outside! And they're armed!” I said loudly. I wanted to alert the people in my living room that police officers were at the door and vice versa. We wanted to show that we were not afraid of the government. In 1989, all of us would have been arrested and people would have fled from every conceivable exit when there was a knock on the door. While arresting all of us there that night was a legal option, by 1992 the security forces were somewhat constrained by the press, public opinion, a more powerful opposition, and, at times, the court. On that night, therefore, nobody moved. The police officers could see we were no longer intimidated enough to run for our lives, and that helped further the cause of democracy. That evening I used my wits and did something the police didn't expect: I decided to disarm them figuratively, even if I couldn't do it literally. I invited them into the house and led them to the living room where everyone was meeting.

  The living room was not large. This evening, it was so packed that I couldn't even offer the officers seats. “This is my house,” I told them, “and these are my friends. They came to visit me and we are talking about this country.” I then introduced everyone by their first names, which to the police wasn't useful at all. Then I turned to the officers and said, “I guess you'd like to introduce yourselves now.” Everybody, including the policemen, laughed, although they didn't give their names.

  The officer who seemed to be in charge spoke up: “You're not supposed to have more than nine people in a meeting.”

  “Well,” I replied, “this is my home and I can't tell people to get out because there are more than nine of them. They came to visit.”

  Then I turned to my guests and asked, “Why did all of you people come over together anyway?”

  They laughed. “We're here discussing the future of this country,” one of the guests, John Khaminwa, a very good lawyer, told the police. “Wangari is the secretary and whatever you want to know she can tell you, because she's been taking the minutes.”

  “Actually what I'd really like,” I added, “is if the officers sat down and they took their own minutes.”

  Again, everybody laughed. With that, we started our pro-democracy “preaching.” “We're trying to liberate you, too, because you're also being misused,” we told the officers. “The law that says we can't meet if we're more than nine is a colonial law, an oppressive law. These are the laws we're trying to change so we can meet in our own houses, in our own country, without anybody telling us how many people can be here.”

  They listened for a few minutes and then prepared to leave. One of the officers said in as stern a voice as he could muster: “The only thing we would like to tell you is that it would be good to finish this meeting as soon as possible.”

  “We'll finish soon,” I replied, “but we still have a few items on the agenda.” Once the police left, we finished the meeting quickly, because they could have gone for reinforcements and come back to arrest us. There was only so far you could push. When the police came with guns, you didn't know whether they had live ammunition. If you tried to move too quickly you could easily be shot dead.

  In tandem with MGG activities in the months before the December vote, Paul Muite, Ngorongo Makanga, Timothy Njoya, and I started the Movement for Free and Fair Elections, along with some others we knew from the Freedom Corner protest. We coordinated a series of seminars to educate people about the upcoming elections and translated materials about the elections and the opposition parties’ platforms into local languages to make them more accessible to ordinary people. These efforts complemented the public education that the National Council of Churches of Kenya and the Catholic Secretariat's Justice and Peace Commission were doing in the lead-up to the general elections.

  Between June and December 1992 we held many town hall-style meetings followed by open forums, where everyone could speak. We generally organized these seminars in church halls at the invitation of local communities, and each one attracted several hundred people. These open forums provided an alternative vision of Kenya's future from that of the government. At the seminars, local people were able to question leaders and politicians and organize themselves within their communities. In this way, we adapted the Green Belt Movement's approach to embedding decision-making at the local level and made sure the communities claimed ownership of their needs and aspirations.

  Despite all of our efforts, the opposition failed to unite around a single candidate for president. All the opposition party leaders expressed a desire to come together to defeat the incumbent, but they all wanted to be the presidential candidate and expected the other party heads to come and talk to them first. The MGG invited the leaders to our forums: “You can talk to the people,” we said, “and tell them why you feel you should, or cannot, unite.” Most of the time, though, the heads of the parties didn't come, but rather sent a representative or had no presence at all. This turned into an education in its own right: We let the public know that these were their leaders and that they were not interested in forming a united opposition.

  The year preceding the elections was bloody and difficult. It is estimated that as many as two thousand people were killed in early 1992 during the so-called tribal clashes stirred up by elements in the government. Throughout the campaign, opposition politicians were harassed and barred from holding rallies. For instance, an opposition rally in March that was due to be held in Uhuru Park had to move to All Saints Cathedral because heavily armed police squads barricaded the park. Even then, security officers pursued the demonstrators into the church and beat them in an unprecedented way: Never before had the police beaten people in church to the point where blood was spilled onto such holy ground.

  During the nominating period, thugs hired by elements in the government barred fifty opposition candidates from handing in their candidacy papers. This meant that KANU was unopposed in nearly twenty constituencies, and it was reported that just before election day at least sixteen people—stoned, beaten, or assaulted in some other way—died. The Green Belt Movement was also publicly attacked for its role in the pro-democracy effort and one youth leader even called for the government to deregister the movement as an NGO. Fortunately, nothing came of that demand.

  When it was held, the election was by no means free and fair. Reports were widespread of ballot boxes being stuffed and some voters intimidated. When the results came in, KANU had received only 36 percent of the vote. As those of us in the MGG feared, the opposition parties split the remainder among them, leaving KANU the largest party in Parliament and Moi still the president. After the elections, many people remembered what we had said: The opposition hadn't united and we were defeated despite the fact that, as seen in the voting pattern, a majority of Kenyans wanted change.

  There was, however, some good news. A record nineteen women ran for Parliament and six of them were elected, the most ever. Five of the women MPs represented the opposition. Many more women won seats in local and town councils. I knew how tough they must have been to have survived parliamentary elections in a country where a good African woman was not supposed to be involved in politics.

  Nineteen ninety-three did not start well for Kenya. When the newly elected Parliament met for the first time in January, the president suspended it, which he was free to do; and Parliament did not meet again until late March. Apparently, this gave KANU time to persuade some members of Parliament to rejoin the ruling party and to develop a strategy for dealing with opposition MPs. As the year continued, repression increased. People in the opposition were subject to verbal attacks and restrictions on their movement and the ability to do their jobs. As if to prove the president's contention that multiparty politics would degenerate into ethnic violence, the “tribal clashes” that had occurred in 1991 and 1992 flared up again at the beginning of 1993, around the time the mothers of Freedom Corner were ending their hunger strike. The conflict was most intense in the Rift Valley, where I had spent the early years of my childhood.

  Ethnicity is one of the major strategies that
politicians have used to divide Africans. In 1994, the world witnessed the horrendous genocide in Rwanda that killed nearly a million people, and inter-ethnic violence in the Darfur region of Sudan has displaced and killed hundreds of thousands. I do not believe that people who have lived as neighbors for hundreds of years start attacking and killing one another with no provocation or support from those in power. What happens is that politicians stir people up and give them reasons to blame their own predicaments on people from other ethnic groups. This terrible tragedy has cost Africa many lives and many years that could have been used to promote development.

  When ethnicity is linked to land, the result is often combustible. An example can be seen in the fate of the farm in Naivasha where the Green Belt Movement planted its second green belt in 1977. Then, much of the land on the farm was still largely virgin, full of acacia trees and giraffes, antelopes, and zebras. Since that time, however, a huge flood of settlers from the highlands has come into the area and begun cultivating crops. As a result, the wildlife has disappeared, our trees and the others that were there have been cut, streams regularly dry up, and the whole area is fast becoming a desert. This land, which was always fragile, really should have been kept as grazing ground and not converted into farmland. The soils cannot support the crops, especially from the highlands.

  During the dry season, pastoralists (herders that move with their livestock to forage and find water) would bring their livestock to graze on this land. However, because of the destruction of the vegetation, the pastoralists were frustrated in their efforts to find grazing ground and streams. Now this area of Naivasha, on the edge of the Rift Valley, has seen repeated conflicts between the pastoralists, who come from one ethnic community, and the farmers, who belong to another. This is an all-too-common example of conflicts resulting from environmental devastation.

  Moreover, since the arrival of the Europeans, the politics of land in Kenya has been fraught. When independence came and there was a program through which people could purchase land, Kikuyus like my father were in a position to buy some of the settlers’ farms on which many had lived as squatters. In the latter years of Kenyatta's presidency, resentment had grown among non-Kikuyus about the power and land Kikuyus were perceived to have amassed during the Kenyatta years. The resentment is often highlighted and exploited by politicians.

  When President Moi came to power, he gave the impression that he was correcting some of the problems of Kenyatta's administration when, in fact, his government was using ethnic politics to displace some communities and in the process appease others. Tribal clashes were witnessed in parts of the Rift Valley and on the coast. The communities most affected included the Kikuyus, Luhyas, Maasais, Sabaots, Kisiis, and Luos.

  In Kenya, people depend on their land and primary natural resources, and are very attached to them. They can quickly make an enemy out of someone who has taken land that is seen as theirs. It was this history and attitude that made it easy in the early 1990s for agents in the government to stir up supporters in the Rift Valley to lash out against “other” tribes occupying “their” land.

  The ethnic violence that erupted in early 1993 in the Rift Valley, Nyanza, and Western provinces was widely believed to have been kindled by senior members of the government and ruling party,

  KANU. Because the government appointed the chiefs and subchiefs in towns and villages, it used them to maintain its control at local levels and to organize attacks on communities that the regime wanted “cleansed.” It was partly for this reason that the pro-democracy movement recommended the dissolution of this provincial administrative structure. Unfortunately, when it came to power in 2002, the new, democratic government retained this system with vigor.

  When I and others in the Kenyan opposition learned what was happening and detected the government's hand in it, we decided to bring the facts to light. We wanted people in Kenya and overseas to understand this was not just random tribal violence but rather cynical, political manipulation of the deadliest kind. As had happened with Uhuru Park and the protest by mothers of the political prisoners, people came and informed me about what was happening and asked for my help. Fortunately, I was in a position to take action.

  In February 1993, I gathered several friends active in opposition politics, including Dr. Makanga, and visited the Rift Valley to verify what we had heard and read about. Local guides showed us houses burned and schools destroyed, leaving adults and their children with no place to go. Women had lost their husbands, men their wives, and many parents their sons and daughters. People had been displaced from their homes and were sleeping in churches. It was devastating—and it was all being done with the full knowledge of our government. “This is wrong,” I thought. “The politicians must be stopped.” We began to organize the victims of the violence. We held seminars, usually in local churches, where we would appeal to people not to engage in retaliatory attacks. I urged them to recognize that this was not an ethnic quarrel, but rather one that was politically instigated. “You can't beat them, so don't join in,” I pleaded. “Things can only get worse.” This was proved to me by what happened in Rwanda only a year later.

  I also wrote, signed, and circulated leaflets to local communities with the same message. I warned of the dangers to Kenyan society if the clashes continued—escalating violence, further involvement of government security forces, anarchy, and the use of the army to restore order. This would result, I wrote, in soldiers turning their guns on citizens and on one another and the situation deteriorating into a chaotic showdown, “Somalia-style.” I begged people to think about how their actions could ensure that this terrible future did not come to pass.

  I also helped to establish the Tribal Clashes Resettlement Volunteer Service. We proposed activities that could quell the violence and reknit ties among the communities. We gave footballs to some adults and urged them to form youth football clubs. “The minute the ball is on the ground, the youth might forget their differences and come together to play,” I said. We then encouraged the adults to discuss the violence with the young people and persuade them to be positive and peaceful in their interactions with children from other communities.

  In some of the camps we discovered women who were practically going mad because they were used to cultivating their fields and were now sitting in camps day and night. We decided to lease land for them so they could do something with their minds and hands, for which they were very grateful. We also suggested to the communities that they establish tree nurseries. “When the seedlings are ready for planting,” I told them, “invite the other communities and give them seedlings. Tell them, ‘These are trees of peace. We are not interested in conflict. We want to foster peace.’ ”

  At first, the other communities would not visit the nurseries. In time, however, they came and took the trees and planted them on their land. I'll never know whether they saw the trees as symbols of peace or took them because they were free. But communities on both sides of the conflict planted trees and, in many cases, I know they sustained the nurseries. On a few occasions, the two communities and I planted trees of peace together on land over which the two sides were fighting.

  While the victims of violence were happy with what we were doing, the aggressors generally were not. As February wore on, it became increasingly dangerous to work within communities, since the government—not wanting people to see the truth on the ground—declared the clash sites “no go zones” and prevented people from entering. They accused those of us who visited the areas of inciting violence, even though we were there to do just the opposite.

  I knew from my experiences the previous year that the government meant business: I could be hurt, jailed, or worse. So I took precautions. I tried as much as possible to stay within the law, because I knew the authorities were looking for any excuse to lock me away. This meant that whenever I was in trouble, my lawyers and supporters could say to the government, “She has not broken any law.”

  I also made sure I didn't deliberatel
y expose myself to danger. As much as possible I traveled incognito and by night. I would leave Nairobi in the early hours of the morning, often with Dr. Makanga at the wheel, and arrive in the Rift Valley before dawn. Through a network of supporters, I could switch cars every twenty miles or so. This made it hard for the police to “mark” a car I was in. One time, I dressed like a nun (the nuns of Mathari and Loreto-Limuru finally got me into holy orders!). I removed the braids in my hair and wore a scarf, which made me virtually unrecognizable. Local people would inform us of what was happening around their area and help us avoid danger spots where security forces were operating.

  I always made sure the press was with us, so they could record what was happening and take the news to Kenyans and the world. The people who were affected by the clashes were very happy because their only hope was that their stories got out. Otherwise, they were very isolated. Fortunately, the Kenyan press, while interested in selling newspapers, was also sympathetic to the need for political change, because journalists were also victims of the government's oppression. In this way, we did what we needed to do in the glare of the world.

  Immediate danger was never very far away during those first few months of 1993. One night we drove from Nairobi to a town in the Rift Valley called Burnt Forest, which lived up to its name since the town was on fire. We left Nairobi in the middle of the night, because we wanted to arrive early to learn what was happening before the authorities knew we were there. We were in a convoy of two vehicles. In the front car were Dr. Makanga and myself, along with Kenyan journalists. In the second were a crew from the German television station Deutsche Welle and more local reporters.