Wangari Maathai is not in heaven

It does not look like that great daughter of the motherland, Prof Wangari Muta Maathai, is now resting somewhere in heaven as recently suggested by the celebrated public intellectual Gado in one of his Daily Nation cartoons. (The Tanzanian academic Issa Shivji tells us that a public intellectual is a person ‘whose vocation is to comment, protest, caricaturise, satirise, analyse and publicise the life around him or her.’ Gado is definitely one such.)

But why is his suggestion of heavenly bliss for Wangari Maathai doubtful? The distinguished environmentalist, social justice activist and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace died on September 25, 2011 and was accorded what was billed as a state funeral on October 8. Maathai’s remains were cremated in accordance with her wishes. Gado had depicted her being received with jubilation at heaven’s gates. That seems quite unlikely.

First of all, if one agreed with Nation writer Gitau Warigi that Maathai shunned elitist life, how is it conceivable that she would want to spend even one minute of eternity in heaven, which is touted by preachers as the abode of ‘the chosen few’? Maathai loved the earth and all its different peoples. Inclusiveness was her ethic.

Second, Maathai’s view of Christianity would certainly be at variance with what has been taught by generations of preachers ever since the missionaries landed here to capture native hearts and minds for the colonizer. It is Africa’s wealth – from the days of the Slave Trade – that built the West, including those magnificent cathedrals in Europe.

Probably realizing this, as a young woman Maathai dropped her baptismal name Mary Josephine, preferring her Gikuyu name Wangari Muta. As a rule, a Christian name means a European, or at least a foreign, one. Could heaven’s gatekeepers forgive Maathai’s radical decision?

And third, it can be supposed that, were Kenya not a ‘God-fearing nation’, Maathai (who for the love of trees did not want to be buried in a wooden coffin) would most certainly have openly protested at the cutting down of trees to make church pews where poor people sit down to be taught to accept oppression – to ‘turn the other cheek’ instead of standing up to the oppressor.

If our gallant freedom fighters, whom we shall celebrate on Mashujaa Day, 20 October, had embraced this piece of pacifistic nonsense, we would still be in colonial chains. Had Maathai and the heroes of the second liberation ‘turned the other cheek’, Daniel arap Moi and ‘the 40 thieves’ would still be tenants at State House. There would be no new constitution.

What is more, in her private life Wangari Maathai chose the painful option of divorce when she realized her marriage was essentially dead. She refused to remain in that union till death. That is a serious sin.

So, Wangari Maathai is not the kind of person who dies and goes to heaven. She rests in the bowels of Mother Earth. She will become part of the natural environment of Africa and the world. Her spirit, like those of the other great women and men who once walked our land, will continue to live in our midst, nudging us to overcome our little fears and confront injustice wherever we sniff it; urging us to dream dreams that are bigger than ourselves.

Yet cartoonist Gado is free to hold the opinion that Wangari Maathai was met with great jubilation in heaven. It is his inalienable right to ‘caricaturise, satirise, analyse and publicise the life around him’ as he sees it.

Plenty has been written and said about Prof Maathai since her physical death and more is sure to come. That is as it should be. But we must guard against vultures swooping down to feast on Wangari. For example, in his message of condolence President Mwai Kibaki said:

‘In politics, the late Professor Maathai will be remembered for the role she played in agitating for political reforms that paved the way for the country’s second liberation. In her quest to serve Kenyans in different spheres, the late Professor Maathai vied and became the Member of Parliament for Tetu and an Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.’

That is spin. Things did not happen quite like that. A year before Maathai was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Peace, she had won the Tetu seat and President Kibaki appointed her an assistant minister. That is how he appreciated the woman who ’will be remembered for the role she played in agitating for political reforms that paved the way for the country’s second liberation’.

The truth is Kibaki really did not think that highly of Prof Maathai. He dumped her in the assistant ministers’ rank, effectively equating her with intellectual midgets and colourless politicians like Kalembe Ndile, Bifwoli Wakoli and Ferdinand Waititu. How did the country’s chief executive, elected to actualize the second liberation, appoint Prof Maathai an assistant minister while reserving a full cabinet post for the graying semi-literate tycoon and Moi’s bosom buddy Njenga Karume?

Would Prof Maathai have been treated that way, especially after the Nobel Prize, if she had been a man? Would her voice on important national issues have been so ignored?

Listen to Nation columnist Rasna Warah: ‘Unfortunately, for all her efforts, Wangari Maathai remained a prophetess and heroine who was better recognised abroad than at home. Derided and scorned by the Moi government and grudgingly tolerated by Mwai Kibaki’s administration, Maathai was a general in an army that was unconscious of its own might.’ That is precisely what happened.

Speaking of recognition abroad, the editor of an Australian Christian newsletter apparently struggled to get a church angle for the Maathai story and settled on this headline: ‘Loreto convent education led to Nobel Prize.’

Another spin. The only reference in the article to Maathai’s high school education and its supposed effect on her winning the Nobel Peace Prize was this: ‘She was the eldest of six children and graduated in 1959 from Loreto Limuru Girls' High School run by Catholic nuns.’ There is no evidence anywhere of how Catholic nuns sowed in Maathai the seed of her prodigious contribution to Kenya and the world. Her own story is that she first developed her love for the environment and for social justice from her childhood and the reality surrounding her.

President Kibaki declared two days of national mourning in Maathai’s honour, which meant flying flags at half-mast. Just that? At what point did the Kenyan people decide that that is the proper sign of national mourning? Where are those flags to be found in the country except in schools and public offices? How was that national mourning?

There was also the state funeral where, mercifully, politicians were not allowed to make speeches – Kibaki, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka did speak briefly, though. As Kenyans, we need a serious discussion about who deserves a state funeral and what that should involve. Maathai was the third Kenyan to receive the honour, after the first president Jomo Kenyatta (1978) and Vice President Michael Kijana Wamalwa (2003). Moi, who conspicuously said nothing about Maathai’s death and who skipped her funeral, will certainly receive a state funeral as well when his time comes.

A funeral - whatever pomp and pageantry attend it - is always about the disposal of a dead person. Is that a fitting acknowledgement of our heroes and heroines? Is Moi one of them?

Finally, across the road from Freedom Corner at Uhuru Park in Nairobi where reformists have for years waged their campaigns against misrule, where Maathai’s funeral was held, stands a huge monument featuring a raised arm clasping a club. Everyone knows what that is: it is a monument to Moi’s tyranny – appropriately located a short distance from the infamous Nyayo House torture chambers. That evil monument stands in the park which Maathai saved from Moi who wanted to build a skyscraper there in 1989. Why shouldn’t that edifice be knocked down and in its place a monument erected to the great memory of Prof Wangari Muta Maathai?

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* Henry Makori is Editorial Assistant at Pamabazuka News.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.