Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage)

by Maathai, Wangari

  The Catholic archbishop of Nairobi, Ndingi Mwana N'zeki, could not believe what had happened. Unfortunately, none of us was able to secure the marchers’ release until the following day and only after everyone, including the nuns and priests, had been taken to court and charged. Only a group of underage schoolchildren who had been part of the march was allowed to leave without spending a night in jail.

  Those who had been arrested at the march were held overnight in a twelve-by-twenty-four-foot police holding cell that was already crowded with drunkards and petty thieves. After our failure to secure their release, a priest from the Catholic Church's Peace and Justice Department and I decided to keep vigil outside the cell in solidarity with the marchers. I wanted to join them inside, but this time the police refused to incarcerate me. They argued that I had not been arrested. The sisters told me not to worry and encouraged me to go home and sleep, but I couldn't. How could I leave? These were sisters like the nuns who had taught and mentored me for years. They were like my mother and sisters. I couldn't leave them in a police cell and go home and find sleep on a bed.

  Throughout that long night, we sang and prayed and kept our spirits up. But I was irate at this latest example of the government's harassment of peaceful, nonviolent protestors—people who weren't even protesting against the regime. Indeed, they were trying to help the regime by seeking the cancellation of the government's debt! It was not until late the next afternoon that most of the marchers were released on bail and ordered to appear in court at the end of May.

  Some couldn't be released until evening, when sufficient bail money had been gathered. I told the press how outraged I was by what had happened and assured them, and the government, that the members of the clergy involved were even more committed now to our campaign to cancel the debts.

  In May, we organized a service at All Saints Cathedral to pray for the marchers and educate the public further about the Jubilee 2000 campaign. While all of the nuns and priests were brave, some never recovered from the shock of being in that crowded police cell with no personal privacy, where buckets served as toilets. I wondered, having experienced being in such cells myself, how the nuns could handle these indignities. To this day, they still nurse injuries— physical and psychological. That, too, breaks my heart. For the government to treat the religious this way was, to me, the lowest level to which the system had sunk.

  Although the Jubilee 2000 campaign was extremely successful at mobilizing millions of people in wealthy and poor countries alike, debt is still a crucial issue for Africa.

  Between 1970 and 2002, African countries obtained about $540 billion (U.S.) in loans and paid back $550 billion. However, because of interest on that debt, by the end of 2002 the debtor countries still owed the lending agencies nearly $300 billion. Good governance and democratic space are essential to Africa's development. But even together, they cannot overcome this crushing debt burden. The debt still must be lifted if we seriously want to make poverty history. Recent efforts by musicians like Bono and Bob Geldof and other celebrities have given the campaign to cancel poor countries’ debts, including through the Make Poverty History initiative, renewed energy and a greater response from the world.

  As the new century began, many of us who had been working for years to expand democratic space and protect the environment had more hope—and conviction—that we could peacefully restore democracy in Kenya. Elections were to be held in 2002, and there were strong indications that President Moi would finally step down. The international community had grown weary of the corruption and misrule in Africa, where strong men drove their nations deeper into poverty and despair. Foreign capitals were quietly and not so quietly encouraging such men to retire.

  Despite this, Kenyans still had to contend with the realities of a government hell-bent on its own enrichment and power. The century had changed, but the government's attitudes and behavior had not. It was still absolutely opposed to the Green Belt Movement and our work. In March 2001, I felt this reality all too clearly. The previous year, the government, sensing that its end might be near, announced plans for a huge land-grab. Nearly 170,000 acres of virgin forest were to be degazetted and given to members of the government and its political supporters. Kenya's forested area had been gradually reduced to less than 2 percent of the land. This is dangerously below the UNEP recommended minimum of 10 percent required to protect watersheds and ensure regular rainfall and good harvests.

  Only a third of land in Kenya is arable. The rest is arid, semi-arid, or desert, and Kenya's forests are found only in the one third that is arable. Even there, the forests are largely confined to the mountains, so the loss of any forestland was and is very serious. In 2001, Kenya was also in the grip of a two-year drought, with thousands of people depending on food aid to survive.

  Notwithstanding these realities, the government's excision plan was massive. It covered nearly 10 percent of Kenya's remaining woodlands, including forested land on Mount Elgon, in the Mau and Nakuru forest reserves in the Rift Valley, and on my beloved Mount Kenya. The environment minister defended the plan, assuring the public that poor, landless Kenyans would get the land. He argued that since 1933 successive Kenyan governments had excised forests when they needed to and turned them into plantations of timber trees and farmlands for human settlements.

  It was common for those in power to dish out forested land to their friends and supporters. One particularly extreme example included in this grab was the allocation of a thousand acres of the Kaptagat Forest, near Eldoret, to a powerful government minister so he could build a monument to his late mother. He denied this, claiming that the forest was excised legally, amounted to less than two hundred hectares, and would be donated to an educational trust. Unlike in the past, however, such blatant misuse of land did not go unnoticed.

  On March 7, 2001, I traveled to Wang'uru, a village two hours from Nairobi and not far from Mount Kenya, to join Green Belt members who had been working to raise awareness of the government's latest attempts to grab more of Kenya's forests. We planned to collect signatures and petition the government to change its plans for excising the forests. We also erected a billboard warning that a village plot was in danger of being grabbed.

  After planting a few trees in the village, we moved to a nearby shopping center. While I spoke about the land-grabbing through a bullhorn from the backseat of the office Land Rover, Green Belt members attempted to collect signatures from the people shopping. Suddenly, the police arrived. Even though the Land Rover was still moving, one officer opened the driver's door, pushed my driver out of the car, and got behind the steering wheel. I had been carjacked! While other policemen chased away the women who tried to follow us, the officer drove me to Wang'uru police station. We didn't say a word to each other as he drove wildly to the police post. When we arrived, he pushed me into a cell and locked me up. Later, I was transferred to a police station where I was thrown into a crowded and filthy cell.

  Jail, again. Another night in a dirty, cramped police holding cell. Only two days before, President Moi, opening a women's seminar in Nairobi, had told the women assembled that “because of your little minds, you cannot get what you are expected to get.” People were appalled and many Kenyans protested. But I knew this attitude all too well. March 8 was International Women's Day. I could almost smile at the irony.

  The government's heavy-handed tactics against me backfired. The Green Belt Movement and friends in the U.S. faxed and e-mailed news of my latest arrest to friends and supporters throughout the world. The Kenyan authorities were so bombarded with complaints about the illegal arrest that by the next afternoon they had to charge or release me. I was taken to court three times in the morning as the police tried to come up with a charge that would withstand the scrutiny of the presiding judge. They could not and the doors of the jail were thrown open for me to walk through to freedom. I was released without charge.

  Spitefully, the police had stolen the Green Belt Movement billboard we had erected at the side
of the highway the day before, but at least I had a few hours in which to celebrate International Women's Day. Unfortunately, I also learned upon my release that the government minister for lands had announced plans to degazette a further ten thousand acres of forestland. It appeared that both victory and suffering were my constant companions.

  Given the changes we knew were coming to Kenya, I had thought I wouldn't be harassed or arrested again in 2001. But I was wrong. That July 7, a rally was held in Nairobi to commemorate ten years of the multiparty system and the eleventh anniversary of the Saba Saba demonstration. The government didn't want any such commemoration, which it considered a political statement. I decided not to go to the rally. Instead, I invited members and friends of the Green Belt Movement to come to Freedom Corner in Uhuru Park to plant new trees for Saba Saba and honor the heroes of Saba Saba, like Kenneth Matiba. We had just finished our planting when we heard the news that the Honorable James Orengo had been arrested at the Saba Saba commemorative rally. Suspecting that the police might come for us next, we dispersed.

  It was a nice sunny morning in Nairobi, so three of us who had been at the tree planting—Vertistine Mbaya, Marion Kamau, and I— walked to the nearby offices of the department of forests, sat down on a bench inside the compound, and began to chat. Suddenly, the gates were thrown open menacingly by burly policemen in civilian clothes. They held walkie-talkies in their hands and appeared to be in a hurry. “She's here!” I heard them shout as they approached us. They came up to the bench where we were sitting and announced that I was under arrest. “Why are you arresting me?” I inquired.

  “Because you have been holding an illegal meeting,” they replied.

  “But you found me seated here, just talking to my friends!” I answered calmly. But they weren't listening. They just threw me into a police car and drove me to Gigiri police station near the UNEP headquarters. “When will they leave me alone?” I wondered to myself.

  When I got to the police station, I was questioned and explained what I'd been doing: planting trees at Freedom Corner to mark the anniversary of Saba Saba. “Lock her up alone,” thundered the officer in charge. My friends spent the whole afternoon trying to find out where I had been taken. At about four o'clock in the afternoon, some members of the opposition, including Dr. Makanga, Honorable James Orengo, and Honorable Beth Mugo, discovered me in the police station. They brought me tea and I was allowed to visit with them outside the cell. At about six o'clock that evening, I was released without charge and went home. All they wanted was to humiliate and intimidate me. They achieved the former, but never the latter.

  That was the last time I was held in jail or a police holding cell in Kenya. I can only hope that those days are over. Even though the country truly changed after the 2002 elections, to this day I cannot say for sure that I will never be arrested again or spend another night in police custody. You can never tell. Things can change overnight.

  Meanwhile, a wonderful opportunity opened for me to return to the classroom I had left twenty years previously. In New York in late 2001, I met with James Gustave (Gus) Speth, the former head of the UNDP, at the office of my longtime friend Mary Davidson, then a banker in New York who also introduced Green Belt to the Marion Institute, of which she is a cofounder. Gus was also a friend from the time he served as the principal White House adviser on environmental issues to President Jimmy Carter. He invited me to be the Dorothy McCluskey Visiting Fellow for Conservation at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where he was the dean. I would be there from January to June 2002. It was a great opportunity to reconnect with Gus and a privilege to be invited to teach at such a prestigious institution.

  I enjoyed my time at Yale immensely. I cotaught a course on sustainable development that focused on the work of the Green Belt Movement, and spoke on many panels on the environment, Africa, and women. I discussed students’ research and interests with them, and had some time to think and write. As part of the coursework at Yale, I was able to bring some of the students to Kenya, where they participated in a Green Belt Safari. This is an experiential learning ecotour that exposes visitors to all aspects of the Green Belt Movement's work, from the realities of environmental degradation in Kenya to the theory behind what we do, to spending several days in rural homes of Green Belt group members, to planting trees. Participants also go on a traditional wildlife safari and learn about how this type of tourism is not always sensitive to its environmental impacts and often leaves behind destructive footprints.

  This experience made a great impression on the students from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and I hoped that it could be a regular arrangement. An opportunity came in 2004, when a Yale graduate, James Leitner, sponsored another group of students to come to Kenya on a Green Belt Safari. We hope this continues in future years. In 2004, Yale awarded me an honorary doctorate in humane letters. I received this wonderful honor at the commencement ceremony in May along with Willie Mays, the legendary American baseball player; medical researchers David Baltimore and

  Bernard Fisher; writer Tom Wolfe; educator Nannerl Keohane; Egyptologist Jan Assmann; and photographer Lee Friedlander.

  Throughout my life, I have never stopped to strategize about my next steps. I often just keep walking along, through whichever door opens. I have been on a journey and this journey has never stopped. When the journey is acknowledged and sustained by those I work with, they are a source of inspiration, energy, and encouragement. They are the reasons I kept walking, and will keep walking, as long as my knees hold out.

  In 2002, another opportunity arose for me and my country to fulfill a long-held dream—realizing a truly representative democracy. Once again, the question of whether I should run for Parliament in the elections scheduled for that December came up. Even though I had run in 1997, it was still a big decision for me to join elective politics. I told my supporters that I had to finish at Yale and would then return to Kenya. Once the semester at Yale was over, in June 2002, I returned home to begin a new adventure.

  Once I got back, I decided to contest the parliamentary seat in Tetu again. In preparation for these elections, the opposition that had been frustrated at the polls for a decade finally agreed to unite, coming together under one umbrella, the National Rainbow Coalition, or NARC. All the major communities—the Luhyas, Luos, Kikuyus, Kambas—united, too. With that, momentum built. It looked as if, finally, the opposition could win the elections.

  I knew I wouldn't be elected unless I was part of NARC. I was causing consternation among my supporters, because they wanted me to run as a candidate of the Democratic Party, which was dominant locally, and not as a Green. NARC had agreed, however, to field one candidate for each seat. Whichever individual won the first round of voting in November 2002 would become the NARC candidate, so it wouldn't matter, after all, which party candidates came from. When the primary vote for the Tetu constituency was held, I polled higher than the other candidates and was chosen to represent the Tetu constituency as the NARC candidate.

  My slogan was “Rise Up and Walk,” which was inspired by the story from the Bible (Acts 3:1-10) when the disciples Peter and John come across a beggar, who has all the characteristics of a disempowered person: He is poor, self-effacing, dejected, and has no sense of pride in himself. On seeing him in such a dehumanized and humiliated state, Peter says to him, “Silver and gold we do not have, but what we have we give to you.” And, taking him by the right hand, Peter helps the lame man stand up. “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” Peter says.

  What I wanted the voters to understand was that I could not give them alms or even miracles, but together we could lift ourselves up and address the conditions of our poverty and disempowerment and regain our sense of self-respect. Together, we could establish governance that was responsible and accountable to the people. The slogan was the essence of what the Green Belt Movement had been trying to do all those years: “Rise up and walk!”

 
It took people some time to understand that we had formed a coalition and came from different parties. Once they understood it, however, campaigning was easier. The Green Belt Movement was not directly involved in the campaign, but everywhere I went Green Belt members came out in support. I spent quite a lot of time campaigning for NARC and its presidential candidate around the country—so much, indeed, that my own constituency organizers became worried that I wasn't spending enough time campaigning in Tetu! I knew, however, that I had a good chance of winning the seat, because the opposition was working together and I was finally in a position to present my candidacy as I was. Unlike in previous years, the campaign was not marred by wholesale violence or intimidation, and people knew that this time the elections would be free and fair. Democracy, they felt, had finally arrived.

  Election day itself was marked by huge numbers of people across the country and from all the communities exercising their democratic rights and responsibilities peacefully—even euphorically. While I had been prepared to win the parliamentary seat, I had not expected the large turnout. When the ballots of the first free and fair election in Kenya in nearly a quarter century were counted, I was astonished and gratified to discover that the voters had elected me to Parliament with 98 percent of the votes cast—a truly humbling experience. The people of the region that nurtured me had put their hopes and trust in me, as I had in them. I was determined that we would rise up and walk along the new path that we would create together.

  It was a wonderful time in Kenya. After twenty-four years of struggle and difficulty and setbacks, of jailings and beatings and insults, and of determination and perseverance and hope, we had finally come together and could proudly proclaim that December day: “We made a change in Kenya. We brought back democracy!” And we had done it without bloodshed, and the people knew that their government would now be accountable to them, and that if we did not govern them well, we could be dismissed from power, democratically.