Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage)

by Maathai, Wangari

  In the hope that I could still contribute to changing the political culture, my supporters and I eventually founded and registered the Mazingira Green Party to allow candidates to run on a platform of green values, like those embodied in the Green Belt Movement, and to make these values more mainstream in Kenyan politics and society. “Mazingira” means “environment” in Kiswahili. We joined the Federation of Green Parties of Africa as well as the Global Greens, an international network of green parties in nearly seventy-five countries.

  In Kenya, the Green Party is still young and while there are people who care about the environment even in many of the other political parties, the idea of “green politics” in the way it is understood in Germany, for instance, is not in evidence in Kenya—yet. Indeed, this is true of Green Parties in many African countries. There is still a lot of work to be done to create a “Society of Greens” and build support for green values not only within the other political parties but also in the country at large. Only then would candidates with such values be voted in on that platform.

  After the disappointing experience of the elections of 1997, I resumed my position as the head of the Green Belt Movement, which was more than enough on my plate. This was partly because KANU continued to mismanage the country's natural resources, especially forests. Our efforts to protect these resources, especially Karura Forest in Nairobi, placed the Green Belt Movement in direct confrontation with the government yet again.

  One of the areas where green values have been challenged most in Kenya is in the way the government uses public land. During its years in power, the past regime had regularly given thousands of acres of forest or parkland to politically connected people for private use in return for political support. While the government was no longer able to parcel out land as spectacularly as it had tried to do with the Times tower complex in Uhuru Park, the practice of “land-grabbing,” as it is known in Kenya, was still widespread.

  The Green Belt Movement helped stop some of the most outrageous examples, including the selling off of Jivanjee Gardens, a botanical park given to the city of Nairobi by a prominent Indian family. Whenever a piece of public land was threatened with privatization, the Green Belt Movement erected a billboard painted in the colors of the Kenyan flag to alert the public of the threat so that members could protect the land from being “grabbed.”

  Still, we lost some battles and many of the deals were made by the government in extreme secrecy. People wouldn't know that public land had passed into private hands until they saw a building being erected. In Nairobi today you can see many office blocks, shopping centers, and even places of worship built on what was once state land.

  I felt very strongly about land-grabbing, since the destruction of the forest mirrored the government's looting of the nation's treasures, whether it was money from the treasury or natural resources from the environment. I knew that all of the Green Belt Movement's work would be in vain if the government continued to sell off or exploit natural forests. If we didn't do something about it, the Sahara Desert would continue to spread south and life for millions of people would only get harder as land suitable for agriculture and habitats for wildlife got scarcer.

  In 1997, I had written to the minister of environment and natural resources to protest the deforestation of Ngong and South Western

  Mau forests, as well as of Karura Forest. Then, in the summer of 1998, I learned of an example of land-grabbing so blatant and extensive that I knew this would be a fight we could not afford to lose. The government was taking public land in Karura Forest to the north of Nairobi and giving it to its political allies for executive offices and private houses. For the government to earmark forest for a research institute, tree nursery, or even a school was one thing. It was quite another to give a forest to friends. I soon learned that as far back as 1996, a vast swath of the Karura Forest that had previously been protected, or gazetted, had been allotted to private developers.

  I was outraged. For generations, Karura Forest had acted as a break between the winds off the savanna to the south and those descending from the highlands to the west and north. Its 2,500 acres of natural forest serve as a catchment area for four major rivers, while its dense undergrowth and canopy are home to many rare species of flora and fauna, including mihügü trees, Sykes monkeys, bush pigs, antelopes, and hundreds of species of birds. Situated on the edge of Nairobi, Karura Forest serves as the lung of the congested metropolis.

  By this time the Green Belt Movement had developed its own unofficial network of informers. In Karura, these included men and women from a nearby village who herded their goats in the forest and others who rode horses or hiked there. They passed on information to us about what was happening. When, in September 1998,I went to Karura to see the situation for myself, I discovered that a road had already been dug and workers were laying down what looked like a drainage system. Even though work had not yet begun on the houses, several structures to house the construction workers had been erected.

  I wrote to the attorney general on September 28 requesting a halt to any further construction in or clearing of the forest. As usual, the government's immediate response was to ignore us. However, we also alerted the press, and the Daily Nation newspaper hired a helicopter to fly over the forest and published the photographs on its front pages. The aerial shots brought home how much of the forest had been cleared and destroyed.

  We began our campaign to reclaim what had already been destroyed and to stop any more land being cleared in much of Karura Forest in the same way the Green Belt Movement began other campaigns: We would inform government officials of our concern and, if they didn't respond after some time, we would hold a press conference to let the media and the public know that the government was not responding. Eventually we would move in and try to reclaim the land by planting trees.

  In the days after my letter to the attorney general, we visited Karura Forest on several occasions to raise awareness of the land grabbing and the destruction under way, always informing the government of when we planned to be in the forest. On the very first day that we arrived at what was now a building site in Karura Forest, we saw a large tractor, housing for the workers, and a group of young men hanging around. We had our suspicions, but went into the forest anyway. What we did not know was that the young men intended to attack us. As we were planting trees, they descended on us with machetes. The young men uprooted all the trees we planted and we were saved from being hurt only by the arrival of the construction workers, who had been given instructions to stop us from planting trees. They had followed us and now calmed the young men down, telling them not to beat the women but only to force us out of the forest. That day we got out without any confrontation.

  But we returned several more times and even established a tree nursery inside the forest. These visits became like teach-ins or the seminars we held with Green Belt groups. We would talk to the workers and explain the role the forest played in Nairobi's environment and inform them that Karura was being cut down so that wealthy people could live there and that they and their families wouldn't benefit at all. Sometimes our arguments were persuasive because the workers would agree that we could plant our trees. We also invited the press so that our message got out to the public.

  But on October 7 the campaign took on a new dimension. That morning, when we arrived at the forest, we went straight to the camp where the building site was, accompanied by twelve opposition MPs who shared our unhappiness with the government's mismanagement of environmental issues. The press joined us. We again asked the workers, who were each armed with a panga, or a short machete, to stop destroying the forest and let us plant trees, but this time, they wouldn't listen to our appeals. It appeared they were ready for battle. In no time all hell broke loose.

  I had walked farther into the forest with the other women to plant our seedlings. Suddenly, there was a commotion. People were running in all directions. Suddenly there was smoke. The reporters with me asked what I thought was burnin
g. “I hope it's not the forest!” I replied anxiously. I hurried back toward the smoke to see what had caused the fire. We saw trucks, tractors, and the buildings that the contractors had brought into the forest all aflame.

  Luckily, no one was hurt. While I regretted the destruction of property, I couldn't help but wonder what vehicles and buildings were doing in the forest in the first place, since they weren't part of any biodiversity I knew. The contractor was unable to take anyone to court because the workers had run away, and he didn't know who to charge. It is also true that public opinion in Kenya was by now against anyone who was perceived to be destroying our forests, wherever they were.

  By the time we announced that we were going again to Karura on October 17 to plant trees and stop further construction, the section of the forest slated for development had been blocked off by a fence and a huge gate, plastered with a big sign that said, PRIVATE PROPERTY. We informed the chief forester of Karura, the chief conservator of forests, and the police of our planned visit. But two days before, the police denied us permission to enter the forest, citing “security reasons.” We refused to be intimidated: After all, this was a public forest. We came as we had promised but were prevented from entering. That day our party included members of Green Belt groups, the public, and a few students. Since we could not enter the forest, we planted two trees at the gate and left. When we returned the next day, we found that those trees had been uprooted.

  We still needed to get into the forest, because the seedlings in the tree nursery we had established needed constant tending. We also needed to maintain our surveillance activities because once the fence was erected we didn't know how far construction had proceeded. Of course, we also wanted to ensure that the building did not go any further. So we informed the authorities that we would be in the forest again and asked them not to interfere with our activities. Their response was to send a large battalion of armed policemen into the forest to guard every possible entrance and keep us out of the forest.

  Fortunately for us, the authorities did not think about the possibility of our entering the forest through the strip of marshlands about three hundred yards across the border on the north side of Karura. Having been denied entry through the main gates, and knowing there were guards at the other entry points to the forest, we decided that going through the marshes was our only option. Once more our unofficial network of informers helped by providing us with a guide who knew his way through the swampy area. A group of about twenty—the women hitching up their dresses, the men rolling up their trousers, and all of us removing our shoes—stepped into the wet ground, using the footprints of our guide in front of us. I was armed with my watering can, and the press was with us, too.

  As we made our way across the marshes, at one point we had to walk along a log partly submerged by the fast-flowing river. You had to balance carefully to make sure you didn't fall into the water. Alas, some of those with us did tumble in, but fortunately the water was not that deep. It was only after many of us had crossed the river and were inside the forest that the police realized we were there. They were astonished to see me watering the seedlings in the nursery. The police thought they had the forest completely covered, and yet we had crept in. We beat them to it!

  Everybody but me was cleared from the nursery by the police, but they allowed me to go to the river, dip my can in, come back, and water the young trees again and again for over an hour. One officer stood guard and watched me work to make sure he could tell his superiors that he had caught up with me and that all I was doing was watering trees. I was all business with him. “If you aren't going to water these trees for me,” I said, “then you shouldn't bother me. All I'm doing is watering them. I don't want them to die.” He let me finish, which was nice. By the end of that hour, my dress was soaked and I was tired.

  The trees watered, the police officer offered me a ride in his car and escorted me out of the forest through the main gate, which was now wide open. Our supporters who had walked through the marshes and the press were there to meet me, barefoot and with my shoes hanging from my neck. The next day, the Kenyan newspapers carried an interview with me, which was greeted with astonishment by many. They didn't expect to see me emerging from the forest, but rather stuck on the outside trying to get in past the big gate. They were very supportive.

  After the fires of October 7 and the standoff of October 17, the struggle for Karura Forest became an international affair, as the media and global organizations began to take notice. On October 27, Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, the headquarters of which had been carved out of Karura Forest some twenty-five years previously, issued a statement that Karura Forest was “a precious natural resource that the city cannot afford to lose.”

  Many UNEP staff members were appalled that Karura Forest was being privatized and came incognito to our rallies in support. UNEP officials told us, either directly or through their staff, that they had contacted senior members of the Kenyan government and expressed the hope that the forest would be saved. This encouraged us, because not only did we feel that we weren't alone but we had an important agency working with us.

  On December 5, I invited one hundred delegates—Africans, Europeans, and North and South Americans—then attending the Euro-African Green Conference in Nairobi to visit our tree nursery in Karura and to plant symbolic trees there. We informed the police that we were coming to the forest and were able to get in through one of the entrances that was not guarded that day. We warned the delegates that there might be a confrontation with the police, who, when we arrived, were there in full force and armed to the teeth. But they didn't bother the delegates, whom I thanked for being there and for participating in saving the forest. It was great, I added, that the police were also in our company. And with that, we all planted trees in the forest.

  After this, rather than do what was right, the government decided to ratchet up the tension and the level of violence. In December it told those who'd been given plots in the forest that it was up to them to protect their property. That meant hired security. It was easy to pick up unemployed men in downtown Nairobi and pay them enough to make sure that Wangari and her team would not only get nowhere near the forest but be hurt if they did. The presence of armed thugs posed a much greater threat than we'd experienced before. These men were scattered throughout the forest, away from the cameras and anyone who might be able to stop an “accident” from happening. We decided, therefore, that when we visited again on January 8, 1999, we would not try to enter Karura Forest. Instead, we would plant a tree at the gate to make our statement that the government should return the land to the public.

  I knew it was important to have people of standing with us who might protect us from violence. That day we were accompanied by six members of Parliament, journalists, a few international observers, Green Belt group members, and supporters from affiliated groups, such as Friends of Forests and the Kenya Human Rights Commission, an organization independent of the government that had been established to monitor human rights abuses in the country. When we arrived early on the morning of January 8, we were confronted by two hundred guards armed with machetes, clubs, whips, pangas, and bows and arrows. Some even had swords.

  They walked toward us and surrounded our group. “You can't get into the forest,” they said.

  “We're not trying to get into the forest,” I replied, trying to keep calm. “We just want to plant a tree here.”

  “You can't do that,” responded the men, shaking their heads. Some of them also shook their pangas.

  “I can't leave this place today until I plant a tree,” I said.

  “This is private property,” they snapped back.

  That was not true. “This is public land, and we're entitled to plant a tree on public land.” This conversation, if it could be called that, went on for some time before I had had enough. “It is time for me to plant a tree,” I declared, and set out to dig a hole with my hoe.

&nbs
p; No sooner had I started digging than the men got aggressive and began hurling abuse and obscenities at us. “Who do you think you are, woman?” they shouted. This was hurtful, because these men were young enough to be my children. It was also frightening. These young men seemed unstable and could easily have been on drugs or drunk on alcohol.

  It is hard to know precisely when violence starts, but in a heated atmosphere, it can take an instant, like a coal bursting into flame. In this case, we suddenly found ourselves under assault from whips and clubs, and stones began flying through the air around us. When the blow came, I felt not so much pain as surprise, even though from the beginning the thugs clearly wanted to hurt or even kill us. I put my hands to my head and found it was bleeding. Strangely, my mind was very clear and calm. “Now, why would he do something like that?” I asked myself. “Why would he hit me?”

  We always encouraged people to run when they were attacked. It was one thing to shout, “Leave the forest alone;” it was another to nurse a wound in the hospital. Some of those who joined our campaign for Karura and who were with us that day were also young, and we didn't want them to be so afraid that they wouldn't protest again. In all our campaigns it was our persistence that won the day more than our bravery.

  Even as I saw people running, I remained still, almost transfixed. I found it difficult to move until Dr. Makanga and Lillian Muchungi caught hold of me. They were longtime Green Belt staff members and friends, and the three of us ran. As we all scattered, the thugs began howling and hurling even more stones at us and smashing the cars that some of us had arrived in. I was very worried, because people were falling on top of one another as they fled. Four of the MPs, some of the journalists, and two German environmentalists were hurt, and there would be many broken legs and arms. Thankfully, the thugs didn't follow us as we made our way to the main road, climbing over fences to reach it, and then to the nearest police station. It was two miles away and it took us about forty minutes to get there.