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Meja Mwangi belongs to a second generation of Kenyan
creative writers in English. Mwangi began his prolific writing
career in the 1970s, a decade after his more well-known
compatriots such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Grace Ogot had
been publishing their works. When he burst onto the scene
with the award-winning Kill Me Quick in 1973, Mwangi was
hailed in various quarters as a rising star in the East African
literary constellation who was helping to disprove Taban lo
Liyong's oft-cited claim that East Africa was a literary desert
(Taban 1965, Nazareth 1976). Since then, Meja Mwangi has
gone on to establish himself as one of the most prolific of
Kenyan writers, publishing eleven novels in seventeen years
in addition to short stories, children's books and working with
a variety of projects in film. Mwangi's works have received
awards in Kenya and abroad, they have been translated into
six languages, and there are film versions of two of his novels.
If there is a single writer whose work is representative of the
entire range of Kenyan narrative fiction today, it is Meja
Mwangi. What is common to practically all of Kenyan--indeed,
we might even say African—writing is its major thematic
preoccupation with the dynamics of how tradition and
modernity interact in African society. This thematic
preoccupation has led in a number of directions, of course,
with major concerns being the disintegration of village life
following the arrival of the Europeans in the colonial era, the
disequilibrium caused by European formal education, the
torment of the "been-to", the influence of the missionaries,
and in the post-colonial setting the development of a new
African political and economic elite and the dilemmas of life in
the modern African city.
While Mwangi has touched on all of these concerns, we might
divide his work into three major categories. The first
comprises his Mau Mau novels. For many Kenyan writers, the
armed resistance to British colonialism in Kenya, which came to
be known as the Mau Mau revolt and reached its height in the
1950s, was a far-reaching experience. Mwangi has "exhumed
his Mau Mau ghost" in his two novels Carcase for Hounds and
Taste of Death (note). The'thrillers that Mwangi began to
write during the late 1970s and 1980s form a second category
of texts, and have put him at the heart of a raging critical
debate in the Kenyan literary establishment over the merits of
serious versus popular literature. The third category of
Mwangian writing, in fact written before Mwangi began his
popular writings, is that of the urban novel. Mwangi's urban
trilogv--Kill Me Quick. Going Down River Road, and The
Cockroach Dance—is a compelling and innovative set of texts
dealing with what is arguably the most pressing contemporary
social problem in Kenya: the rapid urbanization the country
has experienced since independence in 1963 and its
accompanying social problems. It is fair to say that critical
acclaim for Mwangi as a writer has come predominantly from
these tales of city life.
Meja Mwangi was born in Nanyuki, in Kenya's Central Province,
on December 27, 1948. While by no means a major city,
Nanyuki is an important center in a region which, during the
pre-colonial era when Mwangi was born, was part of the so-
called "white highlands," an area that had been set aside by
the colonial administration exclusively for settlement by
European farmers. The region features fertile farmland and an
excellent climate. Following the colonization of Kenya, the
resident Kikuyu and Maasai populations were either forced off
this land onto "native reserves" or permitted to remain as
squatters and laborers on the new white-owned ranches. The
fact that land alienation was most blatant in this part of the
colony, coupled with the importance of land in the Kikuyu
tradition, made Central Province the center of armed
resistance to the colonial authorities. The Land and Freedom
army, also known by the enigmatic name of Mau Mau,
effectively used its base in the forests if Central Province to
become an important force in the lead-up to independence in
1963.
In some of same ways that the Vietnam War was a watershed
in the North American consciousness, the Mau Mau struggle
was a defining and divisive experience for the colony and later
the nation of Kenya. In the 1950s, as resistance fighters in
increasing numbers took to the forests of Mount Kenya or the
Aberdare mountain range—both areas near Mwangi's home in
Nanyuki—the colonial administration declared a state of
emergency, restricting movement in the area, resettling
people into more easily controlled "villages," and using Kenyan
homeguards to combat what they termed a terrorist
movement. While there is no doubt that the Mau Mau fighters
were instrumental in convincing the British government to
grant political independence in Kenya, when the colonial
administration negotiated the terms of independence it was
with leaders who had not been personally involved in the
armed struggle. The result has been an uneasy official
position toward the Mau Mau participants during the entire
postcolonial era"that has followed. While giving lip service to
the patriotism of the freedom fighters, many politicians who
themselves took less confrontional and more collaborative
stances during that era are happy to forget it (note: about
Waruhiu Itote; Ngugi's position; more Mau Mau background).
Given its historical and social significance, writers—and
particularly Kikuyu writers—have felt compelled to deal with
the Mau Mau experience in one way or another, and Meja
Mwangi is no exception. He experienced the emergency as a
child, living in the area of the main conflict, and turned fifteen
two weeks after Kenya achieved political independence. Both
the promises of political independence and the troubled time
leading up to that point were central to his consciousness.
The 1970s, when Mwangi was entering his 20s and beginning
to publish his writings, was a time of disillusionment with the
unfulfilled hopes of independence in East Africa in general, and
a time of crisis for the city of Nairobi in particular. There
resulted what might be termed an entire genre of
"disillusionment literature," which vigorously criticized the new
African political and economic elite that appeared to have
betrayed the nation by using education and positions of
privilege for personal rather than collective gain. The term
neocolonialism was coined to describe a situation where a few
of the faces in the power structure changed but where unjust
colonial structures remained firmly in place. The disillusioned
intellectual, once so optimistic about national development
and the intellectual's role in nation-building, surfaced as an
important character in Kenyan writing (note: Ngugi; Kibera).
It was at this time—around 1970—that Mwangi moved to
Nairobi to continue his education. In addition to the climate of
political disillusionment, the city's population was for a variety
of reasons quickly outgrowing the capacity of its
infrastructure. Although Nairobi has been characterized by
rapid growth throughout its history, in the decade following
independence and with the dropping of restrictions on African
immigration to the city, the growth reached unprecedented
heights. By the early 1970s, housing, employment and
transportation facilities were being strained more than ever.
Slums, always a feature of Nairobi's geography, were growing
at alarming rates. The government responded with a number
of autocratic measures reminiscent of colonial era tactics,
lending credence to charges that Kenya's was a neocolonial
social system. Historically, Nairobi had been designed as a
white man's city, and during the colonial era the South African
model of racial segregation in housing and business was
adopted almost wholesale. Pass laws were issued to restrict
immigration, and vagrancy acts allowed unwanted immigrants
to be returned to the countryside. In the late 1960s, when the
post-independence relaxation of immigration restrictions
allowed a huge growth in the city, the government reinstated
some of the colonial-era vagrancy laws, and President
Kenyatta urged Nairobi residents who had no jobs to "go back
to the land." These measures had relatively limited impact,
and Nairobi has continued its rapid growth since. Not
surprisingly, this rapid urbanization, perhaps the most
significant social phenomenon of postcolonial Kenya, was soon
being treated by Kenyan writers, with Leonard Kibera's Voices
in the Dark the first example of this trend.
Meja Mwangi is somewhat unusual among Kenyan writers in
that he was not part of the university community, which has
been the traditional fount of creative writers and artists in the
postcolonial East African setting. After completing his "0" level
exams at Nanyuki secondary school and his "A" level training
at Kenyatta College near Nairobi, he applied for but failed to
gain admission to the journalism and television broadcasting
programs at the University of Nairobi. He instead embarked
on a career of practical experience with the film industry.
Mwangi worked as a soundman with a French television
company ORTF, traveling throughout East Africa, and later
joined the staff at the British Council in Nairobi as a film
librarian. It was while at the British Council that he wrote his
first novel (although the second to be published), Carcase for
Hounds.
The importance of film to Mwangi's creative expression cannot
be overemphasized. As a child in Nanyuki, he would regularly
attend the open-air film offerings of the mobile movie theaters
that came through town showing mostly Hollywood
productions, and when Mwangi moved to Nairobi during the
1970s, he came to a town where recently released American
and British films were regularly shown. Later, his connections
with French television and with the British Council led to jobs
on a number of major films that were shot in Kenya. Mwangi
was location manager for Shadow on the Sun, casting director
for Kitchen Toto, and assistant director for the Hollywood hits
Gorillas in the Mist. White Mischief and Out of Africa. The
result has been a decidedly cinematic vision in his writing and
a narrative style reminiscent of fast-moving popular film.
Mwangi's characters, like many Kenyans of Mwangi's
generation and younger, are conversant in tough-guy
American slang; they reflect the alienation and individualism
most obvious in urban postcolonial Kenya. Not surprisingly,
two of Mwangi's novels have been associated with films:
Carcase for Hounds was made into Cry Freedom (note) and
The Bushtrackers was a screenplay collaboration with the
North American journalist Gary Strieker.
extract from an essay by J. Roger Kurtz
| essay continued ... |
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| photo by Heidi Zingg Knöpfli |
| "... i find this novel (The Big Chiefs) a great piece of literature, impressive and despairingly reflecting the realities, despite its ending. I actually virtually saw it as a piece of theatre and could very well imagine it performed on stage. It has a power reminding me of Waiting for Godot". ruedi küng Schweizer Radio DRS |
| Weapon of Hunger is perhaps Meja Mwangi's best book yet. The picture he paints of the relentless quest for modern Africa is grim. What is most depressing, is that there seem to be no solutions. Western philanthropists, such as Jack Rivers, are portrayed in a favourable light as sincere people. All their energies, however, are expended on trying to understand Africa's problems and once they understand them they realise that the problems are beyond them. As for the Africans themselves, they could have provided solutions, but since they are lined up in warring factions, that is impossible. While the two sides fight on to the finish, will million of ordinary people continue to starve to dead? That is the questions which Meja Mwangi asks himself and which he asks the readers of weapon. Lyne Mansure Weekly Review |
| "In his 449-page novel, THE LAST PLAGUE, Kenyan writer, Meja Mwangi, achieved two things: he wrote a restrained AIDS novel that was true to the apocalyptic character of the pandemic, and he wrote a classic of delirious humour. It is this combination of tragedy (that never quite loses its grasp on hope), deft satire, and unexpected humour that bushwhacks the reader at the most sombre moments, that makes this book compelling rereading, even seven years after its first publication." - Books Worth Reading AFRICAN WRITING. |
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| "[The] Mzungu Boy, with its play of light and dark, innocence and experience, goodness and evil, is a superb achievement on the part of its author, Meja Mwangi." - Globe and Mail |