Devil on the Cross

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  “Now, my friends! Seeing that I have been so blessed and fortune has been so generous to me, is it surprising that I should glorify and sing praises to modern theft and robbery?

  “Today I saunter down smooth, wide avenues, ones without thorns, or stones, or sweat. Can’t you all see that my hands have almost disappeared? They have no work to do. And my belly is becoming larger and larger because it is constantly overworked!

  “When I wake up in the morning, I swallow a few eggs on top of pieces of bread and butter and a glass of milk to chase them down. At ten o’clock or thereabouts I manage to put away a couple of pounds of cooked mutton. At twelve I attack four pounds of beef (fillet steak) dipped in wine and then nicely roasted over charcoal, and I wash the beef down with a cool beer, one bottle. At six, I nibble at a piece of chicken, just to have something in the belly as a base for whisky, pending supper proper in the evening.

  “I believe in the catechism of the lord in the parable that has just been narrated to us by the master of ceremonies, and particularly in all the commandments that he issued to his servants. Reap where you never planted, eat that for which you never shed a drop of sweat and drink that which has been fetched by others. Shelter from the rain in huts for which you have never carried a single pole or thatching grass, and dress in clothes made by others.

  “Let me tell you this, my friends, whom I love dearly: the day I began to follow those commandments was the day all my affairs started going smoothly, without a hitch.

  “My father was a court elder in the only courts black people were allowed to sit in during the colonial era, the native tribunals. In those days the court used to meet at Rũũwainĩ, in Iciciri district. It was during his tenure of office at that court that he learned how to straighten the law here, to break it there, and particularly how to bend it here and there to make it serve certain ends. He grabbed other people’s lands. There was not a single black man in those days who could beat my father in court cases. Look at it this way. All the members of those tribunals, from Cura in Kiambu to Mũrang’a and Nyeri, were his bosom friends. They normally came to our house to drink beer. On such occasions, my father would slaughter the best sheep in their honor. Once or twice he even slaughtered a bull! As a result, he grabbed other people’s land without fear and became a big landowner. He married several wives. He was an arrogant old man. He had only to meet a beautiful woman carrying firewood or coming in from the fields, and he would send for her: ‘The daughter of so-and-so must be brought to me.’ But my father neglected family planning of any kind. We, his children, were more numerous than his lands could support. I inherited only three things from my father: literacy, words of wisdom from his own mouth, and the letters he used to get from his European friends.

  “I was educated at Maambere, Thogoto, in Kiambu district, and I completed junior secondary. I became a teacher and taught in the same school for about two years. Then I joined the High Court, Nairobi, as a court clerk and interpreter. Our saying is true: the young of a goat steals like its mother. I had returned to my father’s origins.

  “The State of Emergency found me in the law courts. My father was one of the elders who were used by the colonialists in the purges of the Mau Mau followers. But as for me, I didn’t know which side I should support. I wasn’t cold and I wasn’t hot. I stayed like that, lukewarm, hiding in the law courts as an interpreter for those involved in murder cases.

  “When Uhuru came, it found me in the same law courts, marking time with my meager salary. I paused to check which way the Earth was spinning, the direction of the wind. Then I started a few petty businesses, shop- and hotel-keeping. But they were never profitable. In those days I had not yet mastered the holy commandments of a man-eat-man society.

  “It was then that I recalled my father’s words before he died of the disease of overeating. He had summoned me to his house, and he told me: ‘You have been wise to start a few shops and hotels. We have a saying that a pastoralist does not stay in one spot. On a journey, nobody carries food for anyone else; each traveler carries his own. A salary is nothing for a man with a family to look up to. But at the same time we black people cannot manage petty trades that need patience. It’s only Indians who have that kind of patience. My son, listen to your father’s words of love. I know you have book learning. But the wise man is he who has been taught by someone who has seen it all before and has learned from the experience. A career of theft and robbery is the only one for anybody who calls himself an adult. Learn from the whites, and you’ll never go wrong. The white man believes that there’s no business to beat that of theft and robbery. I’ll talk frankly. The white man came to this country holding the Bible in his left hand and a gun in his right. He stole the people’s fertile lands. He stole the people’s cattle and goats under the cover of fines and taxes. He robbed people of the labor of their hands.

  “‘How do you think Grogan and Delamere became rich? I would sleep with my mother before I believed that it was their own sweat that made them so wealthy. Which of us today, even though we now fly our own flag, can match the white man’s wealth? I have nothing to bequeath to you. But I did send you to school. And now I have offered you words of wisdom. Here are letters from some white men with whom I have worked and who have been very pleased with my services. I am their friend. They are my friends. If you are ever in trouble, go to any one of them with a letter that bears his signature. Tell him that you are the son of Gataangũrũ, and ask for his help.’

  “When I recalled those words, I sat down and I asked myself: Who has ever become rich by his own sweat? Who has ever become rich through his salary alone? My father never bought his property out of his salary. Cunning did it. It was not wages that provided Grogan and Delamere with their wealth. Cunning did it. Cunning, be my guardian angel. As for these miserable village shops with their stock of two matchboxes, two packets of cigarettes, tea bags that sell for twenty-five cents per bag, one sack of sugar and another of salt, a tin of cooking oil—whoever grew rich by owning them? Nobody. Cunning, be my angel. Hold me by the right hand and guide me always night and day.

  “I think that what made me remember my father’s words was the fact that after Uhuru a few black people started buying the lands for which the Mau Mau had fought. What was very surprising—and, indeed, this delighted a lot of people who not long before had been alarmed by the news of Uhuru—was that apparently it did not matter on what side one had fought in the battle for freedom. It did not matter whether one was called Mr. Hot, Mr. Cold or Mr. Lukewarm. The question of whether one had formerly been cold or hot or lukewarm was irrelevant when it came to the grabbing of land. What was important now was the handsome physique of money. And that money was not to be had by the labor of one’s hands: it was to be had through the cunning of one’s mind. Cunning was more profitable than hard work.

  “So I stopped working. I fell to my knees, and I prayed fervently:

  Cunning, be ye my guide,

  And lead me all the time,

  Waking and sleeping.

  And wherever I go,

  I would like you to give me

  The food I eat,

  The water I drink,

  Even the clothes that I wear.

  “From then onwards I never retreated, and I have never had any regrets.

  “I had hardly a cent in my pocket. But having watched the way the country was moving since the flag had been hoisted high in the sky, I was confident that for as long as I lived I would surely be able to survive by looting other people’s property. I kept turning my new outlook over in my mind till the words became a song:

  This is a new Kenya!

  Whether you used to be hot or cold,

  Don’t tell us old tales.

  Old perfume is no good for a new dance.

  Mind, produce cunning!

  Cunning, begin your work!

  “I looked this way and that, and I saw that the great
est appetite in the country was thirst and hunger for land. I asked myself this: Hunger multiplied by thirst—what’s the answer? I took out the pen and the paper of the heart, and I calculated thus:

  Hunger × thirst = famine.

  Famine among the masses = wealth for a man of cunning.

  Ha! A fool’s lawsuit, if unsettled, lasts for a long time. The beekeeper who postpones collecting the honey finds that the hive has collapsed. To say is to do: that is today’s motto.

  “So early one morning, I gathered up the letters I had inherited from my father. I went to the house of a European nicknamed Gateru, the Bearded One. He was called Gateru because during the Emergency he used to pull people by the beard until the hair and the skin of his victims came off in his hand. Gateru was one of the colonialists who used to be in the same anti–Mau Mau purging team as my father. The letter, praising my father for his faithful service, had been written during the period of the colonialist anti–Mau Mau oathing ceremonies. ‘Only your skin is black: you are a European at heart’ was how the letter ended. I told Gateru that my biggest need was for land. When he heard that I was the son of Gataangũrũ, Gateru did not bother to ask for any other form of security. ‘Yule alikuwa mzee mzuri, alipiga Mau Mau sawa sawa kabisa. Nitasaidia wewe.’

  “He told me that he had a hundred acres of land for sale near Nairobi. He would sell it to me for 100 shillings an acre. Land used to be cheap then, unlike today. The whole lot came to 10,000 shillings. We agreed on a date when I was to bring him the money in cash or a banker’s order for the same amount.

  “I left his house, and went to see a friend, a young man who used to work in a bank. I told him that I needed a loan of 10,000 shillings. He laughed when he saw my face, lined with worry. Only 10,000? I said, ‘Yes.’ Again he laughed. He told me not to worry. He had just been given an Uhuru fruit. Now he was in charge of loans to promising African businessmen to help create a stable African middle class. A loan clerk? My heart began to beat with expectation. He told me: ‘But remember, in this world there is nothing for free. Give to me, and I will give to you: that’s the modern motto. This is the new Kenya. Give to me, and I will give to you. I’ll loan you 15,000 shillings. Of that sum, 10,000 will be yours. The 5000 on top is mine. If you don’t accept that arrangement, the door is over there and further on is the road.’

  “When I heard that, I felt anger choking me. What! He would loan me 15,000 shillings so that he could pocket 5000, and he would not even help me to repay the money? His profit was to be my debt? Then all of a sudden I burst out laughing. I saw that his outlook and mine were identical! Wealth is not the work of one’s hands but the cunning of one’s mind, cunning in a free market system to rob people of the fruits of freedom! ‘The shoe fits,’ I told him. ‘It does not need a sock.’

  “A week later, I had the 10,000 shillings in one pocket and, in the other, a debt of 15,000 shillings. I ran back to my European benefactor. We counted the money. He put his share in his pocket. Then the two of us went to Gateru’s farm. Oh! It was an arid wasteland. Nothing had ever been planted there. No shelter had ever been erected on it. It was a desert of couch-grass, thorny weeds and stones.

  “Anyway, a week after that I had the title deeds for a hundred acres of stones. And in all this time I hadn’t forgotten my arithmetic and the answers: hunger multiplied by thirst brings about mass famine, and mass famine is the source of the wealth of a cunning grabber. The loss of the masses is the gain of the few. One portion and another portion, seized from this and that hand, become a whole meal in the belly of him who grabs from the poor.

  “Now hunger for land gripped our village! I took the hundred-acre plot and divided it into fifty two-acre plots. Then I announced that only residents of the village were allowed to buy plots. The son of the homestead is always the first to be smeared with the luck-oil of initiation. I also announced that nobody was allowed to own more than one plot. Gĩtutu wa Gataangũrũ did not want to have anything to do with land grabbers.

  “I sold each plot for 5000 shillings. After a week there was not a single plot unclaimed. I didn’t even keep one for myself. Why should I want to own two acres of stones and thorns?

  “My pocket now rang with the joyous sound of 250,000 shillings. After paying back the bank loan and meeting all my other expenses, I was left with a clear profit of 220,000 shillings. And the whole transaction had taken less than a month.

  “My fame was fanned and spread like fire in the wilderness in a dry season. It was said that I was a man who acted on his words; that I was able to get land for the poor and sold it to them cheaply; and that I did not even keep a plot back for myself because of my love for the people. They started singing my praises, calling me son of Gataangũrũ, a child imbued with love of the people. Do you see what can be achieved by cunning? People had already forgotten that my father had been Gateru’s home guard, that I myself had remained in hiding in the law courts that used to convict and sentence Mau Mau adherents to death.

  “I learned a lesson. Before I donned the robes of cunning, I didn’t have a cent to my name. But now, after wearing the robes of cunning for only one month, I had a few hundred thousand shillings in the bank, and my fame was greater than that of any man who had shed his blood for his country—and all this without a drop of my sweat falling on the land I had sold.

  “The question is this. The land wasn’t mine, and the money with which I’d paid for it wasn’t mine, and I hadn’t added anything to the land—where did I get the 220,000 shillings? From the pockets of the people. Yes, because the land really belonged to the people, and the money with which I bought it came from the people! I myself had only switched things from one hand to the other. I had done a bit of multiplication and put the answer into my pocket.

  “It was then that I learned that my talents lay in juggling and multiplication and pocketing the answers. I founded societies, companies for buying land in the Rift Valley. This is what I used to do. I would go to the Rift Valley and look for about a thousand acres of land. I and the seller would agree on the price. I would return to Central Province or, more correctly, to my village or the districts near my home. I would then announce that a piece of land of a given size and quality had been found, and that people should buy shares in the syndicate, the society, that had been formed to purchase the land.

  “I remember one farm in Subukia. That was the farm that really made me! It was a thousand-acre farm, and it had on it countless cows. The owner was one of those Boers who used to swear that they would never live in a Kenya ruled by blacks. So he was selling the farm cheaply because he was in a hurry to migrate to South Africa before Congo-type chaos broke over the new Kenya. I was introduced to him by Gateru. I bought the farm for 250 shillings an acre—the whole farm cost me 250,000 shillings. As was now my practice, I divided the farm into two equal parts. One half, 500 acres, was for the society. The other half was divided into smaller plots of two acres each, so that each member of the society, on buying a share, would become the owner of a plot. There were 250 shares in all. A share cost 5000 shillings. So the contributions of all the members amounted to a total of 1,250,000 shillings. After giving the Boer his 250,000 shillings, I was left with a cool million. I put the whole sum into my bank account. I gave the people the farm. They were delighted. They begged me to head the society, but I refused. I told them to choose their own leaders, and, of course, I advised them to choose leaders who were honest, leaders who were not greedy for money. My job was merely to acquire land for the people and to leave it to them to run it themselves.

  “My fame spread throughout the ridges. And my bank account swelled. It was from the same gullible people that I later got a few cents to buy my many farms: coffee, tea, wheat plantations and ranches.

  “Today I’m about to join hands with some foreigners from Italy, who are planning to purchase an entire county in Meru and Embu to grow rice and sugar. But I have not abandoned the lucrative business of la
nd speculation.

  “There are two ideas that I’d like to develop now. The first concerns ways and means of increasing hunger and thirst for land in the whole country; this will create famine, and the people will then raise top-grade tycoons. The masses will do that in this way: as soon as hunger and thirst for land have increased far beyond their present level, we who have the land will be selling soil in pots and tins, so that a man will at least be able to plant a seed in them and hang them from the roof of his shelter!

  “My friends, when we reach the stage of selling soil to peasants in tins and pots, we’ll really be making money! Imagine the whole population holding trays or plates or baskets, queuing for soil at your place! Later they will hang their few grains of soil from their roofs or verandahs and plant in them potatoes to bribe their crying children to be quiet!

  “The other idea I’d like to follow up is how we, the top-grade tycoons, can trap the air in the sky, put it in tins and sell it to peasants and workers, just as water and charcoal are now sold to them. Imagine the profit we would reap if we were to sell the masses air to breathe in tins or, better, if we could meter it! We could even import some air from abroad, imported air, which we could then sell to the people at special prices! Or we could send our own air abroad to be packaged in tins and bottles—yes, because the technology of foreigners is very advanced! And then it would be sent back to us here labeled Made in USA; Made in Western Europe; Made in Japan; This Air is Made Abroad; and other similar ads!

  “Our people, ponder about those ideas. When peasants and workers became restive, and they became too powerful for our armed forces, we could simply deny them air till they knelt before us! When university students made a bit of noise, we could deny them air! When the masses complained, we would deny them air! When people refused to be robbed or to have their wealth stolen, we’d simply switch off the air until they came to us with hands raised, beseeching us: ‘Please, steal from us. Rob us mercilessly. . . .’” By the time Gĩtutu wa Gataangũrũ had finished his testimony, he was panting with fatigue. Drops of his sweat fell to the floor. His protruding belly was trembling as if it wanted to break loose and fall to the ground.