When the devil plays human what do you expect?

In Kenya during the Moi regime when revolutionary books had been banned, Ebrahim Hussein’s play ‘Mashetani’ somehow escaped Moi men eyes. It was not outlawed. It became a bible of a kind for the Mwakenya movement. Almost all the people I knew who were fighting against Moi regime had a copy of ‘Mashetani’. I was in class four when I first saw the book. Someone had translated it into my mother tongue Kikuyu and made photocopies. The book was one of the tools used to open our eyes about the repressive Moi regime. Actually it was a recruitment tool and despite being children we understood its message.

When people enquired about the banned Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s play, ‘I Will Marry When I want’, they would be told there is something better – Hussein’s ‘Mashetani’. Later the book became a set book (‘fasihi’) for many years in secondary schools in Kenya. To many Kenyans of my generation, Hussein is the greatest Kiswahili playwright of all time. He is held in awe and equated to Shabaan Robert, Tanzania and the world should honour him while he is still alive.

Unwittingly, Hussein, through his work, he was embroiled in the Kenyan struggle for second liberation. Today in the struggles within coalition government, ‘Mashetani’ is being re-played again and again, new constitution notwithstanding. ‘Shetani’ and ‘Binadamu’ – how in private all the politicians want to be ‘Shetani’ and in public they play ‘Binadamu’… With those kind of politicians, no African country needs enemies… And when the devil plays human what do you expect?

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* Ebrahim Hussein’s ‘Mashetani’ is published by Oxford University Press East Africa (ISBN: 978 019 572027 3).
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