"Mau Mau" and Violence in Ngugi's Novels

Author(s): David Maughan-Brown

Source: English in Africa , Sep., 1981, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Sep., 1981), pp. 1-22
Published by: Rhodes University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40399033

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 "MAU MAU" AND VIOLENCE IN NGUGI'S NOVELS

David Maughan-Brown

'Violence in order to change an intolerable, unjust social order is not sa

purifies man. Violence to protect and preserve an unjust, oppressive, so
is criminal and diminishes man.'1 Such is the uncompromising declaration,
strongly reminiscent of Fanon, which Ngugi makes in his 1963 review of Fred
Majdalany's A State of Emergency: The Full Story of Mau Mau.2 Well might Ime
Ikiddeh comment in his foreword to Homecoming, where the review was
reprinted: 'These essays reveal a militancy not commonly associated with his
creative work' (p. xiv). The main question which this article will attempt to answer
is why there should be such a discrepancy; why the attitude towards violence
expressed here should have had to wait fourteen years, until the publication of
Petals of Blood 3 in 1977, to find expression in Ngugi's fiction.
The answer, I will suggest, lies with the aesthetic ideology which determined
the production of Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat,4 whose nature can be
established both from the views about literature expressed in Ngugi's essays in
Homecoming and in various interviews, and from the obvious literary antecedents
of the fiction. The analysis of Ngugi's fictional treatment of the 'Mau Mau'
movement from Weep Not, Child to Petals of Blood, which the focus on attitudes
to violence entails, highlights the changes in the authorial ideology determining the
novels, and bears out Althusser's claim that fiction renders visible the ideological
structures which determine it.5
The key to an understanding of the ambivalent attitude towards 'Mau Mau' in
A Grain of Wheat, the novel on which I will focus most of my attention, lies, I will
suggest, with the debt that novel owes to Conrad in general and Under Western
Eyes in particular. The ideological sympathy with Conrad which determined the
choice of Conrad's novel as a model for the plot of A Grain of Wheat was
responsible also for a number of contradictions in the latter. Ebele Obumselu, in
an excellent essay which provides the most detailed account of 'Ngugi's debt to
Conrad' to date, points to the contradictoriness of the novel but doesn't examine
the aesthetic and authorial ideology which determines it. He says, rightly, 'A Grain
of Wheat is a radically divided work' but the reason he gives for this is, I think,
inadequate:

Whereas in 1910 when Conrad was writing, a century of revolutionary

nationlism in Poland and Russia seemed to be a story of wasted lives, at the
time when Ngugi was writing Kenyan nationalism was already triumphant.
Viewed realistically Haldin's posture would seem futile whereas Kihika had
already saved the nation. For historical reasons then, Ngugi identified with
Kihika but he still retained the plot which Conrad devised to show the futility
and the ironic contradictions of revolutionary nationalism.6
Apart from anything else, even in terms of A Grain of Wheat, let alone Petals of

English in Africa 8 No. 2 (September 1981)

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2 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

Blood, Kihika had very obviously not 'already saved the nation'.
My reference to 'contradictions' in A Grain of Wheat and my focusin
Ngugi's debt to Conrad make it necessary for me to make my critical ap
clear from the outset. As a social product the literary work will be larg
determined by the conditions of its production at a specific historical conjun
The essential function of literary criticism is to establish what those con
were, and the extent to which, and the ways in which, the production of th
was determined by them. The ideological factors operating on the autho
obviously be among the most important determinants. The questions the
needs to ask of the work, then, are not about how 'good' it is, or how one s
respond to it, but: what sort of necessity does a work reflect? What are its eff
historical and ideological determinants? What is its dialectical relationshi
history and to the ideology of that history which it reveals?
I don't see the function of criticism as being the passing of normative cr
judgement on the works under discussion; an absorption in establishing t
hierarchy of literary greatness has little to recommend it from either a
political or an academic point of view. I am not, therefore, interested in
pronouncing judgement on whether the novels under discussion are 'good' or not,
but in trying to account for why they are as they are. This is not a convenient
rationale for avoiding the recognition of literary inferiority: if I thought there were
any point in the exercise I would be happy to assert and justify my agreement with
Gerald Moore's feeling that 'Ngugi's last two novels form the most impressive and
original achievement yet in African fiction.'7 Pointing to the debt he owes to
Conrad is not, then, in any way a slight on Ngugi or an adverse aesthetic
judgement. This needs to be asserted in the face of Arman' s contention that
because the Western critic has to prove his racial superiority in relation to African
literature he has two courses open to him: he '.can deny the Africanness or the
creativity of it - or both. If it proves impossible to deny creativity, a western
source must be found for it, against the evidence if the evidence insists on being
uncooperative.'8 Given his educational background at Alliance High School,
Makerere and Leeds, the novels Ngugi wrote as a student could hardly have
avoided being strongly influenced by English literature and by the aesthetic
ideology which normally characterizes the university study of that literature. The
interesting question is why, in his early novels about 'Mau Mau', the dominant
influence should have been Conrad rather than any other author.
If it is no slight on an author to point to his literary debts in the process of
discussing the determinants operating on his work, neither is a derogatory aesthetic
judgement involved in referring to 'contradictions' in a literary work. The primary
function of ideology is to conceal the contradictions in a social formation through
a process of naturalization - what Barthes describes as giving an historical
intention a natural justification.9 As the production of all literature is inevitably
determined to a greater or lesser extent by the ideology of its author, historically
derived from his or her social group, all literature will necessarily be characterized

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 •MAU MAU* AND VIOLENCE 3

by such contradictions. While a number of important qualifications, for whic

there is neither space nor need here, would need to be made if I were to give a
account, the reading of ideology adopted here is essentially Althusserian. Ideol
is understood as a 'representation of the imaginary relations of individuals to t
real conditions of existence'10 and its very complex relation to literature is see
the light of Eagleton's account in Criticism and Ideology. 'The ideology of t
text', Eagleton argues, 'is not an "expression" of authorial ideology: it is the
product of an aesthetic working of "general" ideology as that ideology is it
worked and "produced" by an overdetermination of authorial-biograhical
factors'. 'General ideology' denotes 'that particular dominant ensemble of
ideologies to be found in any social formation,"1 in other words the dominant
ideological formation produced by a General Mode of Production. 'Aesthetic
ideology', which I will suggest is the major determinant of Ngugi's equivocal
treatment of 'Mau Mau' in the early novels, is 'the specific aesthetic region of
General Ideology'. Aesthetic Ideology is 'an internally complex formation' which
includes 'theories of literature, critical practices, literary traditions, genres,
conventions, devices and discourses' as well as an 'ideology of the aesthetic' which
is defined as: 'a signification of the functions, meaning and value of the aesthetic
itself within a particular social formation."2 It will be argued, in essence, that
Ngugi does not depic 'Mau Mau' in his fiction in the way in which he describes it in
his essays out of deference to a notion of what the 'good' book is and how much,
or how little, political statement ('propaganda') is appropriate to fiction, derived
from the liberal humanist critical orthodoxy from which he (like most of us)
derived his early views on literature.

My focus on Ngugi's treatment of violence in the fiction clearly necessitates a

brief historical account of the 'Mau Mau' movement's resort to violence. The
causes of the 'Mau Mau' revolt did not have to do with Gikuyu culture or
psychology, as the colonial mythology maintained, but were socio-economic. The
primary cause was land-hunger. In 1952, according to Barnett: 'Less than 0,7
percent of the entire population, a figure which includes all Europeans [though
rather less than 10% of those actually owned the land in question] held what has
been estimated to be a minimum of twenty percent of the colony's best land."3 A
large portion of this land was underutilized while there was an acute shortage of
land in the adjacent Gikuyu 'reserves'; many Gikuyu peasants were forced to
become wage-labourers working for white farmers on their ancestral land - as
fictionalized in Ngotho in Weep Not, Child. The economic, social and political
discrimination of which this was only the most obvious, and bitterly resented,
example, extended to all facets of Kenyan colonial life. A study of the development
of African nationalist organisations in Kenya, from the East African Association
founded in 1919, through the Kikuyu Central Association, to the Kenya African
Union, proscribed in 1953, reveals two main concerns: constitutional reform which
would allow Africans a share in the political direction of Kenya, and the return of
land 'alienated' for white settlement. 'Mau Mau* was a militant response to years

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4 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

of frustration at the refusal of the colonial government to listen to demands f

constitutional and land reform. As Oginga Odinga put it: 'Kenya nationalis
turned violent because for thirty years it was treated as seditious and denied
legitimate outlet."4
The violence of the Emergency, declared in October 1952, was massivel
directed against the Gikuyu peasantry by the ironically termed 'security forces
Even by the official reckoning 11,503 alleged members of 'Mau Mau' were kil
as against 32 white civilians and 1,189 blacks allegedly killed by 'Mau Mau."5 An
the official figure has been vigorously contested, as seen in Maina-wa-Kinyat
statement: 'The contention by the British that 11,000 Africans died is grossl
erroneous. A conservative estimate is that at least 150,000 Kenyans lost their live
250,000 were maimed for life and 400,000 were left homeless."6 As Barnett puts
and there is ample evidence to back his claim:

A significant sector of the European settler community tended to interpret the

emergency declaration and legislation as promulgating a sort of 'open season
on Kikuyu, Embu and Meni tribesmen. Forced confessions, beatings, robbery
of stock, food and clothing, brutalities of various sorts and outright killing
were frequent enough occurrences to arouse a fear in the hearts of mos
Kikuyu that the intent of the Government was to eliminate the whole tribe.17
Some measure of the extent of the brutality can perhaps be obtained from t
report of a British Parliamentary delegation to Kenya in 1954: 'Brutality an
malpractices by the police have occurred on a scale which constitutes a threat
public confidence in the forces of law and order."8
The settler propaganda about 'Mau Mau', conveniently forgetting that blacks
were not allowed to possess firearms and had to resort to cruder weapons,19 m
great play on the bloodiness and 'savagery' of the 'Mau Mau' violence.
Goodhart's statement is typical: 'Brother butchered brother with evident enjoy-
ment.'20 Buijtenhuijs, by contrast, cites ? Dr Wilkinson who examined the bodies
of some 210 alleged victims of 'Mau Mau' and concluded:

The commonest method of killing with a panga was the infliction of about six
blows over the head. . . . this method was used so frequently that it suggested
that the terrorists had been trained to kill in this way. The method certainly
assured a quck and certain death for their victims.21

Four of the 210 bodies had been mutilated, which suggests that it was another
colonial myth that there was extensive mutilation of 'Mau Mau' victims.
Wilkinson was not a 'Mau Mau' sympathizer - as his terminology makes clear.
Turning then to the treatment of the Emergency and in particular to the image
of 'Mau Mau' presented in Ngugi's fiction, and taking the novels in chronological
order, it can immediately be seen that Ngugi's description of such 'security' force
acts as the shooting of the barber, Nganga, and four others from Njoroge's village,
and the torture of Ngothu and Njproge in Weep Not, Child, have a sound
historical basis. And a reading of Peter Evans's Law and Disorder22 lends

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 •MAU MAU* AND VIOLENCE 5

credibility to Ngugi's presentation.

It was said that some European soldiers were catching people at night, an
having taken them to the forest would release them and ask them to find th
way back home. But when their backs were turned they would be shot de
cold blood. The next day this would be announced as a victory over Ma
Mau. (p. 84)

When it comes to the attitude towards 'Mau Mau' in this novel Ikiddeh is clearly
right when he says that Ngugi 'tries hard to balance the brutality of the
homeguards with the violence of Mau Mau including Boro, Njoroge's own
brother.'23 'Balance', which seems to be the key word, is effected not so much in
terms of plot as in terms of the attitude of sympathetic characters. 'Balance' is seen
typically, for example, in a fragmentary and wholly inconclusive dialogue
attributed to Njoroge's school fellows:

'The homeguards with their white masters. They are as bad as Mau Mau.'
'No. Mau Mau is not bad. The Freedom boys are fighting against white
settlers. Is it bad to fight for one's land? Tell me that.' 'But they cut black
men's throats.' 'Those killed are the traitors! Black white settlers.' (p. 72)

The criticism of 'Mau Mau' is developed initially through Mwihaki's conscious-

ness: 'The declaration of emergency had not meant much to her. Yet as the years
went and she Heard stories of Mau Mau and how they could slash their opponents
into pieces with Pangas, she became afraid' (p. 89). The phrase 'into pieces'
becomes a key signifier in terms of attitudes towards 'Mau Mau', and the capital
'P' in 'Pangas' is equally suggestive. This elaborates on Njoroge's, 'I thought Mau
Mau was on the side of the black people' (p. 83), in response to a 'Mau Mau' threat
to close his school, which, at a time when all the Gikuyu independent schools had
been closed by the colonial government, had to be either government or missionary
supported. Njoroge's comment, unqualified by Ngugi, is the precise equivalent of
the white South African bewilderment that has greeted the burning of black
educational institutions since June 1976. Later, when Ngotho confesses, falsely, to
the murder of Jacobo, we are told: 'It was a confession that had shocked the
village' (p. 119). Irrespective of Jacobo's activities as a homeguard 'chief, his
murder is depicted as a shock to the communal sensibility.

There are two key passages in the novel in terms of the image of 'Mau Mau'.
The first recounts a dialogue between Boro and his lieutenant during which Boro,
the representative 'Mau Mau' leader in the novel, asserts that he believes in
nothing except revenge, that he has lost too many of those whom he loved for land,
or the return of the lands, to mean much to him; and he asserts further that
Freedom is an illusion. Ngugi's choice of subjects for the discussion relates clearly
to the name 'Land and Freedom Army'. In reply to the question, 'why then do we
fight?' he says: 'To kill. Unless you kill, you'll be killed. So you go on killing and
destroying. It's a law of nature' (p. 102). This brief snatch of dialogue effectively

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6 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

deprives 'Mau Mau' of any moral basis, any historical origins and any socio-
economic causes, and reduces it to the level of the pre-colonial, or pre-pax-
Britannica 'tribal' warfare which played so large a part in the justificatory
mythology of colonialism.
The second passage describes Boro' s visit to his father who has been tortured
and castrated by Howlands and is dying. The reader is told: 'Njoroge had seen him
enter. His hair was long and unkempt. Njoroge instinctively shrank from him.
Boro went nearer, falteringly, as if he would turn away from the light.' Boro
kneels by his father's bed and the dialogue goes:
'Forgive me, father - I didn't know - oh, I thought - '
*. . . Ha! I meant only good for you all, I didn't want you to go away - '
'I had to fight.'
'Oh, there - Now - Don't you ever go away again.'
'I can't stay. I can't.' Boro cried in a hollow voice.
'You must.'
'No, father. Just forgive me.' (pp. 124-25)
Ngotho dies, and it is said of Boro: 'He ran quickly out, away from the light into
the night' (p. 125). Much of the weight of the attitude towards 'Mau Mau' in the
novel is carried by the light-darkness symbolism (strongly reminiscent of Conrad
and The Nigger of the Narcissus in particular)24 used in describing Boro's arrival
and departure. He comes in, a creature of darkness, whose 'uncivilized' way of
life, and consequently moral standards, are signified by his long, unkempt hair,
shrinking guiltily from the unfamiliar light, symbolizing the home and family life.
The plot of Weep Not, Child seeks the reader's assent (or in the Althusserian term
'interpellates the reader') to an unfavourable view of 'Mau Mau' through its
account of the progressive disintegration of Ngotho's previously ideally harmon-
ious family, for which the movement is held responsible. In spite of Ngotho's final
words, 'All right. Fight well. Turn your eyes to Murungu and Ruriri. Peace to you
all . . .' (p. 124). Boro's return to the fight is still seen as a movement away from
light back into darkness.
All Boro (who, it must be stressed again, is the representative 'Mau Mau'
leader in this novel) can do when he visits his father is plead falteringly for
forgiveness. His plea stems clearly from his recognition of what his resort to arms
has meant 'in "human" terms' to his father, who has been broken spiritually by
the disintegration of his family and physically as a result of confessing to the
murder of Jacobo for which Boro himself was responsible. The scene as a whole
seems to depict a 'Mau Mau' leader, whom we are told 'looked like a child', who
has recognized the error of his ways; and ' "I can't stay. I can't" Boro cried in a
hollow voice' suggests that he goes out into the darkness again not out of any
commitment but because he is afraid of being captured.
In Weep Nott Child, then, Ngugi portrays with great sympathy the
landlessness of the Gikuyu peasants, represented by Ngotho, and the unemploy-
ment and political frustration of the Gikuyu soldiers returning from the war, but

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 •MAU MAU* AND VIOLENCE 7

'Mau Mau*, as a result of its recourse to violence, is seen in entirely negative te

It lacks any kind of moral basis and results only in the destruction of family l
In A Grain of Wheat Ngugi's attitude towards 'Mau Mau' and violence seem
at first sight to be completely different. This is seen from such details as the
description of Kihika's raid on Mahee police station which is, as Obumselu poin
out, 'a straight heroic narrative.'25 The recourse to violence is endorsed here
without qualification. It is seen more pervasively in Ngugi's development of the
messiah motif used in both The River Between and Weep Not, Child. In the former
novel Waiyaki is seen throughout as a Black messiah (which was the original title
of the novel), as in, 'the Teacher, her black messiah, sent from heaven . . .>26. In
the latter Njoroge has messianic inklings: 'He felt a bit awed to imagine that God
may have chosen him to be the instrument of his Divine Service' (p. 94); these,
however, are not to be taken too seriously. Kenyatta, who is never explicitly linked
with the violence of 'Mau Mau', is seen as 'the Black Moses': 'There was a man
sent from God whose name was Jomo. He was the Black Moses empowered by
God to tell the white Pharaoh "Let my people go" ' (p. 58).
In A Grain of Wheat Harry Thuku and Kenyatta are seen as black Mosesses,
and all the nationalist leaders arrested on October 20th 1952 when the State of
Emergency was declared are seen in Christ-like terms. 'With the arrest of Jomo',
says Mumbi, 'things are different. All the leaders of the land have been arrested
and we do not know where they have been taken' (p. 21). The elegiac cadence is
obviously a deliberate echo of Mary Magdalene's: 'They have taken away the Lord
out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.' But now the
messianic motif extends also to those who explicitly endorse violence. Kihika's role
as a messiah is established early in the novel. His body is described as 'the body of
the rebel dangling on the tree' (p. 21); his death is referred to as 'Kihika's
crucifixion' (p. 31); and he is given Christ's words from the Garden of
Gethsemane: 'watch ye and pray' (p. 19). Nor is it just Kihika, as leader who is
seen in these terms; they are applied by Kihika to all members of the movement:

In Kenya we want a death which will change things, that is to say, we want a
true sacrifice. But first we have to be ready to carry the cross. I die for you,
you die for me, we become a sacrifice for one another. So I can say that you,
Karanja, are Christ. I am Christ. Everybody who takes the Oath of Unity to
change things in Kenya is a Christ, (p. 110)

Something of the force of the Messiah motif is undoubtedly diluted by the fact that
Mugo also sees himself as Moses, and even Thompson sees himself as a man of
destiny; and its ideological significance lies clearly in its stress on individual
destiny. But its overall effect is to credit Kihika and the movement as a whole with
the moral purpose denied in Weep Not, Child. (Confining the ascription of an
imprecisely suggested moral purpose to the mythological realm, of course,
bypasses if it does not preclude, the economic and political analysis necessary to
assess the justification for the resort to violence.)

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8 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

On close examination, however, it will be seen that the image of 'Mau

presented in A Grain of Wheat is anything but unequivocal. Uncertainti
Ngugi's position surround certain of his word usages. With a sentence li
whiteman's sword hung dangerously above people's necks to protect th
their brethren in the forest' (p. 5), for example, no clear narrative po
been established to help us assess the relative weight to be attached to 'pr
brethren'. Ngugi can also, on occasion, be seen to use the terminology of the
colonial settler accounts of 'Mau Mau' without any qualification, as in the
Rehabilitate' of: * During the Emergency he was seconded to detention camps, to
rehabilitate Mau Mau adherents to a normal life as British subjects' (p. 54). The
earnestness of the attempt to present both sides of the story, and thus achieve
'balance', through the use of Thompson as a white representative, precludes the
assumption that 'rehabilitate' and 'normal life' are ironic.
In the novel's description of 'Mau Mau' violence, emphasis is again laid on
the brutality of the killings through the reiteration of 'in pieces'. It is said of
Jackson: 'His body was one morning found hacked with pangas into small pieces
. . . Fortunately his wife and younger children were not at home' (p. 99). The
implication being that they, too, would have been left in 'small pieces'. This act of
violence is dwelt on again later in General R's recollection:
They surrounded the preacher's house and hacked him to pieces ... He knelt
down and, as the pangas whacked him dead, prayed for his enemies. This act
had almost unnerved General R. He called on his followers to dip their pangas
in the man's body that all might share the guilt, (p. 250)27
The baldly unqualified use of 'guilt' here is perhaps the clearest indication in the
novel that even the 'Mau Mau' leaders are to be seen as conceiving of their actions
more in terms of the destruction of individual life than in terms of any political
cause which could possibly justify the taking of that life. Because this is a novel,
the political cause has to take a subordinate role if the novel is not to be held as
'propaganda'. General R's responsibility for Jackson's death returns to haunt him
and almost renders him speechless at the climactic moment when he is about to
denounce Karanja, incorrectly, for Kihika's betrayal: 'Jackson, his accuser, stood
in front, with a bloody face' (p. 250). The violence of General R's past is clearly
stressed here in juxtapostion to the righteousness with which he seeks the
destruction of Kihika's betrayer. General R., who is described significantly as
having 'red eyes' (p. 240), is the living representative of the 'Mau Mau' leadership
in the novel. He is characterized as a man who had to flee his home village for
having attempted to kill his father. Buijtenhuijs is clearly wrong in his contention
that General R is to be regarded as being 'free from guilt'.28
Not even Kihika can be seen to have his author's wholly unequivocal
approval. This is best seen in the account of himself and his beliefs he gives Mugo
after he has assassinated Robson.

We must kill. Put to sleep the enemies of black man's freedom. They say we
cannot win against the bomb. If we are weak, we cannot win. I despise the
weak. Let them be trampled to death. I spit on the weakness of our fathers.

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 'MAU MAU' AND VIOLENCE 9

Their memory gives me no pride. And even today, tomorrow, the wea
those with feeble hearts shall be wiped from the earth. The strong sha
Our fathers had no reason to be weak. (p. 217)
In the first place that somewhat unconnected 'trampled to death' would see
relate back to Karanja's vision at the railway station: 'Everybody was running
away as if each person feared the ground beneath his feet would collapse. They ran
in every direction; men trampled on women; mothers forgot their children; the
lame and weak were abandoned on the platform. Each man was alone, with God'
(p. 108). The blunt Met [the weak] be trampled to death' in this context cannot, one
imagines, be designed to win the reader's approval. Kihika seems here to be
characterized as going some way toward endorsing a cult of violence, youth and
strength such as was one facet of fascist ideology. In the second place, when
examining the image of 'Mau Mau' in Ngugi's novels it is impossible to read this
passage without having Boro called to mind. Ngugi ensured the alienation of the
reader's sympathy from Boro by depicting him as contemptuous of, and
disrespectful towards his father. It was Boro's contempt more than anything else
which resulted in Ngotho's decline from the position of widely respected head of
the ideal family which he held at the beginning of the novel. Disrespect for the
elders is a trait which is shown to characterize 'Mau Mau' generally in Weep Nor,
Child: 'The young men of the village usually allowed the elders to lead talks while
they listened. But these others who came with Kori and Boro from the big city
seemed to know a lot of things. They usually dominated the talks' (p. 50). Boro
tries to force Ngotho to take the 'Mau Mau' oath but Ngotho refuses because:
'that would have violated against his standing as a father. A lead in that direction
could only come from him, the head of the family. Not from a son: not even if he
had been to many places and knew many things' (p. 74). The 'obviousness' of the
interpellation asserting the Tightness of respect for the elders, and a father in
particular, can hardly have changed between the writing of these two novels.
Kihika's preparedness to 'spit on the weakness of our fathers' can only be an
extreme expression of the attitude held against Boro; moreover, Kihika's assertion
that 'our fathers had no reason to be weak' in so historically conscious, and
accurate, a novel is clearly absurd. The clue to the authorial attitude determining
this account of Kihika is perhaps found in: 'He spoke without raising his voice,
almost unaware of Mugo, or of his danger, like a man possessed' (p. 217). Kihika
would seem, here, to be depicted as a man haunted by the Conradian 'fixed idea',
and as Conrad puts it in Nostromo: 'A man haunted by a fixed idea is insane. He is
dangerous even if that idea is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the heaven
down pitilessly upon a loved head?'29 That the reader is clearly intended to take a
detached and somewhat critical view of Kihika's behaviour and the beliefs he gives
expression to in this encounter with Mugo is seen most obviously in the irony of his
declaration: 'There are those who'll never keep a secret unless bound by an oath. I
know them. I know men by their faces' (p. 218) - a declaration made to a man
who will betray him within the week.
Much less space is devoted to Lt. Koinandu, the other 'Mau Mau' fighter
described in A Grain of Wheat, than to Kihika or General R., but Koinandu is

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10 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

central to a discussion of the image of 'Mau Mau* in the novel. He is describ

having 'fought and killed ruthlessly (p. 242), in the forest, but his importan
in that Ngugi, somewhat startlingly, makes him rape the white Dr. Lynd. Ma
argues on the strength of his Malagassy experience, and news-reporting o
Zimbabwe war seemed to confirm this, that in situations of racial tension in
violence is perpetrated by black men on whites there is an instinctual need,
whites are concerned, to ascribe rape to the attackers as well as violence.30
would appear, however, to be not one allegation of rape perpetrated on w
women by 'Mau Mau' in any of the 'non-fiction' accounts of the movement,
whether written by historians or by settler sympathizers such as Majdalany. Nor do
any of the colonial novels based on 'Mau Mau' describe such incidents. Even
Ruark refrained from exploiting this prime weapon in the race propagandist's
arsenal. Koinandu's rape of Dr Lynd opens the way for such interpretations as
Obumselu's: after the pure enthusiast, Kihika, gets killed, and Mugo is crushed by
his own over-sensitivity and remorse, 'the stage is open to ... the paricidal maniac
General R-, and the rapist Lieutenant Koinandu, "apes of the sinister jungle"
Conrad calls them.'31 Why then, one has to ask, should Ngugi, of all people, be the
one writer who chooses to describe the rape of a white woman by a member of the
movement? The answer to this question, to which I will return, a question which
highlights the equivocal attitude to 'Mau Mau' in A Grain of Wheat, lies, I would
suggest, with the aesthetic ideology which determined the production of this novel.
The image of 'Mau Mau' presented in Petals of Blood is, by contrast, wholly
unequivocal and entirely consistent with Ngugi's 1963 statement that 'violence in
order to change an intolerable, unjust social order . . . purifies man.' As my main
interest here lies in attempting to account for the discrepancy between the attitude
towards 'Mau Mau' expressed in the essays and the image of 'Mau Mau' in the
early novels, I will confine myself to two or three points. Ngugi is at pains in Peíais
of Blood to place 'Mau Mau' in an historical tradition of black struggle and
resistance. This is done on several occasions through a catalogue of names, for
example:

Names which were sweet to the ear ... Chaka . . . Toussaint . . . Samoei . . .
Nat Turner . . . Arap Manyei . . . Laibon Turugat . . . Dessalines . . .
Mondhlane . . . Owalo . . . Siotune and Kiamba . . . Nkrumah . . . Cabral
. . . Mau Mau was only a link in the chain in the long struggle of African
people through different times at different places, (p. 137)

The closeness to Fanon is now made obvious in the fiction. Abdulla, the maimed
forest-fighter whose unqualified heroism completes the rehabilitation of the image
of 'Mau Mau' in Ngugi, reflects: 'He was never to forget that moment, the
moment of his rebirth as a complete man, when he humiliated the two European
oppressors and irrevocably sided with the people. He had rejected what his father
stood for, rejected the promises of wealth, and was born again as a fighter in the
forest . . .' (p. 137). Karega, we are told, reclaimed the brother who had been

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 'MAU MAU' AND VIOLENCE 11

executed by the British, 'in pride and gratitude (p. 228), because he had
live bullets, ready to die. This Karega now regards as the ultimate measu
commitment to the cause of a people's liberation. The conclusion the reader is
invited to share, expressed through Karega's consciousness, is that the true lesson
of history is that the so-called victims, the poor, the downtrodden, the masses,
have always struggled with spears and arrows, with their hands and songs of
courage and hope to end their oppression and exploitation, and that they will
continue struggling until a human kingdom comes (p. 303). The resort to violence
is regarded in Petals of Blood as a necessary and inevitable part of the struggle.
Having outlined the changes in the image of 'Mau Mau' as presented in the
novels from Weep Not, Child to Petals of Blood, 1 would like to focus my
attention now on A Grain of Wheat and attempt to account for the ambivalence of
the attitude towards 'Mau Mau' suggested by the fiction. The first point to make is
that the ambivalence here is part of, indeed paradigmatic of, a wider ambivalence.
Gerald Moore is obviously right when he suggests that A Grain of Wheat 'offers us
no single hero, and is indeed critical of the whole popular cult of heroes'. ?: The
'alliance of the author', as W.J. Howard puts it, 'is downward, away from the
saving hero to the people of the village themselves.'" The ambivalence I have
referred to is most strikingly seen in (if it doesn't derive from) Ngugi's choosing to
base the plot of the novel (in which he moves away from the single protagonist
towards a group of equally weighted characters, a collective consciousness) on
Under Western Eyes, a novel which focuses on the responses of the individual
psyche under stress with an exhaustive thoroughness seldom equalled in English
literature. Under Wester Eyes is a celebration, par excellence, of individual
consciousness.

The parallels between A Grain of Wheat and Under Western Eyes are obvious
and only worth ennumerating in so far as they indicate the extent to which Mugo's
experience is that of a typical Conradian protagonist. He is a 'solitary', socially
isolated and without family ties, intent on keeping to himself and avoiding
involvement (like Razumov and Heyst). Confronted with a test, in this case the
totally unwelcome and unsolicited confidence of a wanted man (like Razumov and
the captain in The Secret Sharer), he fails it (like Jim, Dr Monygham, Razumov,
Découd etc.). Mugo's reasons for betraying Kihika - his fear of being caught, his
resentment at having his ordered world broken into, his need for human contact -
are the same as Razumov's. Mugo's subsequent suffering, a self-imposed penance,
is similar to Dr Monygham's, and his passing of the test at a subsequent
opportunity parallels those successes of Jim, Dr Monygham and Razumov and, as
in the case of Razumov and Jim, leads to his death.
There are numerous parallels in detail, from the use of the assassin's sisters as
confessors, to the wearing of greatcoats by Haldin and Kihika, to such parallels in
narrative as: 'Razumov had sunk into a chair. Every moment he expected a crowd
of policemen to rush in';'4 'Mugo collapsed on a stool and felt he would cry. He
would be caught red handed housing a terrorist' (p. 216). This last is an example of

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12 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

the intense focus on the relation between psychological stress and physica
which characterizes Under Western Eyes and the treatment of Mugo in A
Wheat. The psychological states of Mugo and Razumov are remarkedly si
and some of Mugo's more extreme reactions can be understood only in ter
parallels with Under Western Eyes. They do not seem consistent with Mugo's
character but are consistent rather with Razumov's sometimes implausible
responses. Thus Mugo's sudden desire, in which 'he revelled', 'to humiliate
Mumbi', 'to make her grovel in the dust' (p. 158) seems to parallel Razumov's
bizarre intention, over which he 'gloated', to steal Natalia's soul (p. 359). The
point is not that Ngugi's novel is derivative (A Grain of Wheat is obviously much
more than just a straight imitation of Under Western Eyes); the point is that the
intensity of the focus on Mugo's state of mind seems somewhat at odds with the
movement away from individual consciousness implicit in the departure from the
single protagonist structure. Two other elements of the novel, in particular, are
derived from Conrad. The first of these is the insistent stress on aloneness, seen
already in Karanja's vision, 'Each man was alone, with God'. It is also seen in
Mugo's 'every man in the world is alone, and fights alone, to live' (p. 166) and
Gikonyo's: 'One lived alone, and like Gatu, went into the grave alone' (p. 135). It
could perhaps be argued that this pervasive aloneness, seen most obviously in
Mugo's social isolation, is the result of the breakdown of traditional communal
structures under colonialism and that the impetus of the novel is towards their
reconstruction; but if this is the argument of the novel it is not articulated
sufficiently clearly, and the impression is created that aloneness is seen as part of
the human condition.

The second important element in the novel which is derived from Conrad and
seems to conflict with the movement away from a focus on the individual is the
invocation of the pattern of individual guilt and redemption, which obviously has
marked affinities with Christian tradition. This is* particularly obvious in that area
of the plot devoted to Mugo where the Conradian test which is successfully passed
follows the pattern of confession followed by expiation and, thereby, redemption.
Mugo's death, which is no longer necessary in terms of the community, as will be
seen, can serve only as personal atonement for his betrayal of Kihika. Where
others would regard Mugo's suffering in detention as sufficient expiation, he,
displaying something of the self-laceration of a Dr Monygham, does not, and his
at times paranoid responses, dwelt on with a Conradian intensity, reveal a
pervasive sense of guilt.
Ngugi's choice of Conrad as a model, then, sets up tensions, indeed creates
polarities, within the novel. This choice was, it need hardly be said, ideologically
determined. I will return to a discussion of its determination in a moment. These
tensions are perhaps best seen by reference to Kihika's and Mumbi's contrasting
visions of what amount to different ways in which the grain of wheat of the title
(and the epigraphs preceding chapters one and fourteen) can fall into the ground
and die. Kihika says: Thousands were gaoled; thousands more were killed.

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 •MAU MAU* AND VIOLENCE 13

Men and women and children threw themselves in front of moving trains an
run over. Blood flowed like water in that country. The bomb could not kill
red blood of people, crying to be free* (p. 102). We are told that:

Mumbi was always moved by her brother's words into visions of a heroic
in other lands marked by acts of sacrificial martyrdom; a ritual mist
surrounded those far-away lands and years, a vague richness that excited and
appealed to her. She could not visualize anything heroic in men and women
being run over by trains. The thought of such murky scenes revolted her. Her
idea of glory was something near the agony of Christ in the Garden of
Gethsemane. (p. 102)

Kihika talks of the wholly unglamorous self-immolation of anonymous men,

women and children who sacrifice themselves for a cause. Mumbi focuses on
'glory' and the glamour of individual self-sacrifice. The structural movement away
from the single protaganist of Ngugi's first novels, and the new focus on villager
not singled out by their education, would seem to endorse Kihika' s vision. The
messiah motif and the deaths of Kihika and Mugo seem to endorse Mumbi's.
Indeed, as pointed out earlier, Kihika is actually given Christ's words from th
Garden of Gethsemane: 'watch ye and pray'. In terms of the image of 'Mau Mau',
it is significant in this context that it is not until Petals of Blood that Ngugi
representative forest fighter can be a member of the rank and file and not a leade
with the 'glory' attaching to his leadership, and thereby individual, role.
Now it is undoubtedly true that, as Monkman suggests, in A Grain of Wheat
Ngugi is demonstrating 'the need for a complete re-examination of tradition
concepts of heroism, martyrdom and villainy.'35 It is also true that, as the same
author points out, Mumbi's concept of heroism is changed when, after Mugo
confession, she realizes that Judas can also be a hero. And it is true, too, tha
Mugo's confession does seem to have produced in the crowd a radical disillusion o
some sort, as exhibited in their leaving before the programmed sacrifice. But Jud
can only become a hero through his courage in making a spectacular public
confession - which is very much the Garden of Gethsemane rather than the
railway track route to martyrdom. And if Ngugi's intentions in the novel ar
accurately captured by Monkman's, 'Finally, the villagers realise that the
possibility of rebirth and growth lies not in the elevation of heroes and
condemnation of villains from the past but in the union of all men in an objective
recognition of their inter-dependence and of their common potential for future
achievement',36 then they cannot, I would suggest, be realized under the aegis of
the literary mentor Ngugi has chosen. Kihika and Mugo remain heroes; each has
sacrificed himself to the ultimate benefit of the community, but with the glamour
of individual martyrdom. The novel form makes the achievement of the pointed
anonymity of Breughel's Fall of Icarus extremely difficult. The symbolic value of
the martyrdom of each depends on his previously developed individuality. Nor is

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14 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

'heroism' in these terms confined to Mugo and Kihika. To the extent tha
succeed in overcoming the consequences of their individual acts of betray
and Gikonyo are also heroic.
There seems, then, to be a tension between the structure of the novel, w
several protaganists, and the plot, which imposes an elevated singleness o
and Mugo. A certain irony attaches, then, to Ngugi's 1966 criticism of
'Soyinka's good man is the uncorrupted individual: his liberal humanism
to admire an individual's lone act of courage and thus often he ignores th
struggle of the masses.'" A Grain of Wheat might seem to suggest that t
form is better suited to the depiction of the individual's lone act of cour
the creative struggle of the masses; certainly the climax of the plot here
Mugo's lone act of courage and seems to override the tentative gestures
the creative struggle of the masses symbolized by Gikonyo's stool. But th
comparison with Sembene Ousmane, who also moves away from the single
protagonist in God* s Bits of Wood, and there succeeds in rendering a group
consciousness rather than a series of individual consciousness, reveals that it is not
the novel form itself which necessitates a retention of heroic individualism. While
Ngugi's first introduction to Marx's writings at Leeds allowed little time for the
assimilation of the Marxist problematic before the writing of A Grain of Wheat,
and his ideological position was clearly not as coherent or consistent in that novel
as it is in Petals of Blood, it is as important to note that Ousmane was one of the
very few 'first generation' African writers to escape a university literature
department education, and thus the narrow view of the possibilities of the novel as
a political vehicle, determined by the liberal humanist aesthetic ideology which
tends to characterize such institutions.

The symbolic value of Kihika and Mugo as mere grains of wheat, 'bare grain',
who die so that their community may be quickened, is betrayed by the necessities
of the novel form, as interpreted in terms of the aesthetic ideology Ngugi derived
from his study of English literature, and by the similarly determined choice of the
plot of Under Western Eyes as his model. The question about the status of the
individual which is at the centre of the structure of the novel and which generates
its ambivalence is precisely paralleled by the question about the sanctity of
individual life which is at the heart of the debate about violence and, mediated
through an aesthetic ideology stressing a focus on individual sensibility as the
novelist's business, produces the ambivalence of the attitude towards 'Mau Mau'
in the novel.

The disparity between the image of 'Mau Mau' in the early fiction and the
non-fiction can, then, I would suggest, be seen in terms of the overdetermination
of authorial ideology by an aesthetic ideology, where authorial ideology is
'general* ideology as worked and produced by the determination of authorial-
biographical factors. Eagleton's categories are not entirely satisfactory but seem
the best available for the purposes of distinguishing between the two ideological
strands combining in the production of fiction. It must, of course, be stressed that

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 'MAU MAU' AND VIOLENCE 15

there is a very close dialectical relation between the two: while Ngugi's
Conrad as a model suggests general sympathy with Conrad's ideological
that sympathy is mediated through the aesthetic ideology which counte
Ngugi's attraction to Conrad's fiction in the first place.
In terms of ideology the fiction up to A Grain of Wheat reveals tw
Firstly, as this examination of the treatment of violence in the fiction
overwhelmingly, Ngugi's notion of 'good' fiction, based on an aesthetic
derived from his literary 'education' in English departments oriented t
traditional critical orthodoxies, appears to have demanded a 'balance' which
prevented the fictional expression of views, particularly those on violence,
articulated outside the fiction. The 'aesthetic ideology' adopted within educational
institutions again obviously has a very close dialectical relationship with political
ideology and is ultimately politically (and thus 'in the last instance' economically)
determined. Secondly, the ambivalence in the fiction can to some extent be seen as
revealing residual ideological sympathies, all traces of which have been consciously
eliminated from the essays. It is the treatment of the whites, and in particular the
rape of Dr Lynd, which suggests to me that what we find in A Grain of Wheat is
attributable more to the imposition of an aesthetic ideology than to the lingering
presence of earlier ideological commitments.
Homecoming reveals a marked shift in Ngugi's ideological position away
from the liberal humanism of the early essay 'Kenya: The Two Rifts', written when
he was at Makerere: 'To look from the tribe to a wider concept of human
association is to be progressive. When this begins to happen, a Kenya nation will
be born. It will be an association not of tribal entities, but of individuals, free to
journey to those heights of which they are capable' (p. 24). This must be related
chronologically to the ideological attraction to Conrad whose work Ngugi first
encountered at Makerere.

There is obviously not the space in this essay for the detailed account of
Conrad's ideology which would be necessary before one could point with any
certainty to those elements in it which might have attracted Ngugi, or determined
Ngugi's own ideological position at Makerere, where he devoted a long essay to
Conrad. Ngugi's experience during the Emergency, when his mother was detained
as a result of his senior brother's political involvement with 'Mau Mau', paralleled
Conrad's early experience of his mother's suffering as a result of his father's
political involvement and might have predisposed him, like Conrad, towards an
early hostility to revolutionary activity.
It is possible here only to point to two probably influential aspects of
Conrad's ideology, as identified by Eagleton. Eagleton suggests, firstly, that
'Conrad inherited a belief in his subjugated fatherland as a corporate body with a
messianic sense of its historical destiny'.38 It is easy to see the sympathetic chord
which might be stirred in a student from colonial Kenya, and this might, in
conjunction with Ngugi's devoutly Christian background, have contributed to the
pervasive messiah motif in the fiction. Secondly, Eagleton cites Fleishmann's

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16 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

argument that Conrad directly inherits the organicist tradition of ninete

century Romantic humanism and that his positive values are the reaction
Carlylean imperatives of work, duty, fidelity and stoical submission. Eaglet
adds: 'Yet his fiction, with its recurrent motif of the divided self, is also sh
through with a guilty, lawless Romantic individualism which struggles to s
itself to communal discipline. Conrad's social organicism, in other words, is u
with an extreme, sometimes solipsistic individualism.'39 The tension identifie
precisely parallels the tension between the ostensible direction of A Grain of
towards social community and the contrasting focus on individual conscious
The stress on betrayal in the novel reveals fidelity as one of its positive v
while considerable prominence is given to work and stoical submission, part
ly through Mugo.
Finally, stemming from another biographical parallel, it would seem l
that Ngugi would have welcomed any ideological position elaborated to co
Conrad's own sense of guilt at what he saw as his betrayal of Poland, firstly
leaving the country and secondly by writing in English. Ngugi's consciousn
the anomaly of writing in English would be likely to have been compounded
fact that English was the language of the oppressor. And there are suggestion
Ngugi was embarrassed by his failure to play any part in the 'Mau Mau' revol
At Leeds, where he went in 1964, Ngugi first encountered Fanon and Ma
and this influence is very obvious in the 1966 essay 'Wole Soyinka, Aluko an
Satirical Voice', the closest essay chronologically to A Grain of Wheat. We
for example:

For the élite, however, independence is a boon. Under the banner of

Africanization, it grabs at jobs in the civil service and jostles for places on the
directing boards of all the foreign companies - Shell, I.C.I., Unilever, Union
Minière, Anglo-American banks and mining corporations that really run the
economy of the country.41

And the political role of the writer is explicit: 'It is not enough for the African
artist, standing aloof, to view society and highlight its weaknesses. He must try to
go beyond this, to seek out the sources, the courses and trends of a revolutionary
struggle which has already destroyed the traditional power-map drawn up by the
colonialist nations.'42 That looks like an accurate enough programme for Petals of
Blood, though that novel reveals a stronger commitment than suggested by simply
seeking out sources, causes and trends, but it would appear to bear little relation to
A Grain of Wheat.
When Ngugi comes to speak in his persona as a writer, however, considerable
stress is placed on the need to be able to stand aloof. In a 1964 interview we find
Ngugi saying:

The history of Kenya has been one of racial tensions, racial quarrels: one of
the African people feeling they have been rejected, or feeling they have been
subjugated to a certain class or position. Now the problem with the African

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 •MAU MAU' AND VIOLENCE 17

writer in Kenya is surely one of being able to stand a little bit detached; an
problem, the human problem, the human relationship in its proper perspec

By 1968 Ngugi had abandoned the extreme guardedness of the phrase 'feelin
have been' as seen, for example, in, 'the vast majority of submerged, explo
masses in Africa';44 but, speaking as a writer to the Kenya Historical Asso
he still stresses detachment:

The novelist, at his best, must feel himself heir to a continuous tradition. He
must feel himself . . . swimming, struggling, defining himself in the
mainstream of his people's historical drama. At the same time he must be able
to stand aside and merely contemplate the currents.45

Why must he? What determines this insistence if not a view of political
commitment as incompatible with the novelist's 'art'? The commitment of Petals
of Blood suggests that Ngugi has abandoned this central element in the aesthetic
ideology. In that novel he clearly feels himself heir to a continuous tradition, an
historical tradition; in A Grain of Wheat the continuous tradition to which he felt
himself heir would seem to have been a predominantly literary one.
To return then to the rape of Dr Lynd which is crucial both to an examination
of the image of 'Mau Mau' in the novel and, I would argue, to an understanding of
the ideological determinants operating on the production of the novel. This is the
description of the rape:

He and two men laid her on the ground. He vibrated with fear and intense
hatred. He hated the white man - every one. He was being avenged on them
now; he felt their frightened cry in the woman's wild breathing. White man
nothing. White man nothing. Doing to you what you did to us - to black
people - he told himself as he thrust into her in fear and cruel desperation.
(P. 242)

Robson argues that the rape, which was originally seen through Dr Lynd 's
description only as an act of lust against a powerless woman, is now, when
recollected through Koinandu's consciousness: 'not seen as an act of lust . . . but
as a futile rebellion against European domination. In his own words, he is: "Doing
to you what you did to us - to black people"/46 A number of factors make it
difficult to see the rape in this light, which is not to deny the validity of the
depiction of colonialism as the rape of Africa. Firstly the rape is preceded by
Koinandu's salacious public previews: 'Man, I'll break her in. I'll swim in that
hole. The others laughed at Koinandu's delightful tongue' (p. 242). This seems to
vindicate Obumselu's suggestion that 'the rapist' Koinandu is intended to be seen
as an 'ape of the sinister jungle'. Secondly, the political motive is cast into doubt
by 'he told himself. Thirdly 'fear and cruel desperation' seem at odds with the
authorization given by the political motive. Finally, Koinandu's feeling of guilt
years later suggests, in the pattern of guilt in the novel, that he is to be seen as
somebody who has something to feel guilty about.

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18 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

To me this scene suggests the ultimate extreme in attempts to provide 'b

sides of the question'. Ngugi provides the one account in all the fiction about
Mau' of the rape of a white woman by a freedom fighter, who is depicted in
seems clearly intended as a most distasteful light, and this is, ironically, beca
is the most 'serious' of all the writers. The attempts at a sympathetic depicti
the consciousnesses of Howlands and Thompson are determined by an aes
ideology that demands 'objectivity', the presentation of all points of view
above all, that the writer be 'non-political'. The rape of Dr Lynd is simpl
logical extreme in providing 'the other point of view' where history becomes
account. It is significant that in Petals of Blood Ngugi does not feel it incum
on him to present the reader with Mzigo's, Chui's or Rimeria' s side of the qu
via an insight into their consciousnesses. It is, of course, equally significant
whereas in the earlier novel the two sides of the question were seen essentia
terms of a white side (shared by a minority of blacks whose economically
determined reasons for sharing it remain wholly unexamined; for example,
Karanja's becoming a homeguard is depicted as resulting entirely from his love for
Mumbi) and a socially largely undifferentiated black side, in Petals of Blood the
two sides are seen in terms of class divisions within black society.
By 1977 Ngugi had broken decisively with the aesthetic ideology rendered
visible in A Grain of Wheat, but the Author's Note to Homecoming, written
presumably in 1972, shows that ideology dying very hard:

In a novel the writer is totally immersed in a world of imagination which is

other than his conscious self. At his most intense and creative the writer is
transfigured, he is possessed, he becomes a medium. In the essay the writer
can be more direct, didactic, polemical, or he can merely state his beliefs and
faith: his conscious self is here more at work. Neverthless the boundaries of
his imagination are limited by the writer's beliefs, interests, and experiences in
life, by where in fact he stands in the world of social relations, (p. xv)

The last sentence, with its recognition of the limitations of the author's possible
consciousness, and its acceptance of the social determinants operating on literary
production, sits very uneasily in juxtaposition with 'transfigured', 'possessed' and
'medium' which belong to the theological vocabulary of immanentist criticism.
Directness, diacticism and polemic are still clearly out of bounds to the novelist.
The aesthetic ideology of the critical orthodoxy which Ngugi had broken from
by the time he wrote the final draft of Petals of Blood, which I have argued
determined the treatment of violence in the earlier fiction, is best exemplified in the
comments on Ngugi' s own work made by critics working in terms of that
orthodoxy. These can be divided for my purposes here into two groups; firstly,
those in quest of balance and universality (for all Ngugi' s 1966 comment, 'I am
very suspicious about writing about universal values',47 the use of white conscious-
nesses in Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat presumably derives in part from
a sense that greater universality is imparted thereby), and, secondly, readings of

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 •MAU MAU' AND VIOLENCE 19

Ngugi's treatment of 'Mau Mau* based on the critics' preconceptions about

violence.

In the first group Howard complains of the 'excessive amount of historical

fact included in the novel' and 'a confusion between fiction and history', but
applauds the fact that 'on occasion [his] imagery becomes universalized as he
moves deeper into the human problems of all men rather than the immediate
historical problems of some.'48 Roscoe, while commenting that Ngugi's political
outlook, as expressed in Homecoming, might not * appear promising background
for creative writing' (he thinks Marxism informed all Ngugi's fiction), goes to
great lengths to insist that Ngugi is not a propagandist, 'but a committed literary
artist, concerned about aesthetics, anxious to reflect beauty in the external world
and in human experience through well built prose.' He deplores 'the tone of
Homecoming, especially the "Author's Note", [which] is palpably at odds with
the restrained patient prose of the novels.'49 Robson comments: 'In Petals of Blood
Ngugi goes beyond what is acceptable in fiction; he is giving us polemic. Basically
it is a question of balance.'50 And Hower's verdict is that 'Ngugi's sensitivity to the
human motives on both sides of the conflict is (to the European reader, at least)
one of his great strengths as a novelist.'" Hower's projection of a monolithic
'European' critical response is symptomatic. Balance, restraint, patience, univer-
sality, the absence of polemic, and sensitivity to the human motives on both sides
are what the critics look for and, not coincidentally, what they tend to find in
Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat, but not Petals of of Blood.
I will cite just two examples of readings of Ngugi's treatment of 'Mau Mau'
which would appear to be determined by the same resistance to violence that
characterizes Weep Not, Child. Hower is clearly not entirely wrong in his
interpretation of Boro's reasons for requesting Ngotho's forgiveness in the scene
discussed earlier; it is a matter of emphasis. Where Ngugi is stressing the effect of
the violence of the Emergency on family relationships in general and Ngotho's
family in particular, Hower interprets him as suggesting that any resort to violence
for any reason must inevitably have a destructive effect on the 'humanity' of the
person resorting to violence: 'Boro also takes a position which commits him to acts
of violence, acts which later cause him to shudder with the knowledge of how great
a price his humanity has paid as a result of his revolutionary activities.'52 Roscoe's
account of Ngugi's presentation of 'Mau Mau' in A Grain of Wheat, via a 'picture
of isolated guerrillas operating in a hit-or-miss way in scattered areas, with little
sense of a home base and frequently slaughtering their own people'53 clearly has
nothing to do with Ngugi and everything to do with Roscoe's own preconceptions
about 'Mau Mau' in particular and violence in general. The relationship between
the critical orthodoxy of which these comments are representative, Ngugi's
aesthetic ideology derived from that orthodoxy, and the novels should now I hope
be clear.

In conclusion, then, it is clear that an analysis of A Grain of Wheat reveals a

number of contradictions. Some of these are determined by social factors

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20 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

governing the production of literature in post-Independence Kenya with wh

have not been directly concerned here. One example would be the narrative
position as one of the Thabai villagers (exemplified by 'our village' and direct
addresses to the reader projected as another villager) adopted in a novel written in
English, which could only in reality be addressed to the élite in Kenya - the
villagers described in the novel would only have spoken Gikuyu. Other contradic-
tions, such as the obsessive focus on individual acts of betrayal and the guilt
consequent on them in a novel whose structure seems directed expressly against a
focus on individual consciousness, can be seen to have been determined by the
complex dialectical relationship between aesthetic and authorial ideology. A third
set of contradictions associated with Ngugi's first two novels, ones on which I have
focussed most of my attention here, appear to have resulted from the overdetermi-
nation of aesthetic ideology. Notable here are, firstly, the adoption of an attitude
to violence similar to Fanon's outside the fiction in contradiction with the
révulsion from violence within the fiction, particularly in Weep Not, Child, an
secondly, the fact that the apparent sympathy for 'Mau Mau' in A Grain of Wh
finds expression in the only novel" about 'Mau Mau' to fictionalize the rape o
white woman by a member of the movement. The examination of Ngugi's
treatment of violence and the image of 'Mau Mau' in the fiction has highlighted
crucial areas of ideological concern. Where for example two ideological strands
produce an ambivalent ideological stance in an author's ideology at the time of his
writing of a novel, as the conflict between the liberal humanist and Marxist strands
produced contradictions in Ngugi's ideology at the time of his writing of A Grain
of Wheat, then, this analysis seems to suggest, the author's view of the
requirements of the form he has chosen, determined by his aesthetic ideology, will
sway the balance in determining the stance the novel takes up on crucial ideological
points, such as the primacy of the individual and the resort to violence.

NOTES

1. Ngugi wa Thiong'O, Homecoming (London: Heinemann, 1972), p. 26.

2. Fred Majdalany, A State of Emergency: The Full Story of Mau Mau (London: Longmans, 196
3. Nfugi wmThiong'O, Petals of Blood, (London: Heinemann, 1977).
4. Ngugi wa Thiong'O, Weep Not, Child, (London: Heinemann, 1964, reset 1976); A Grain of W
(London: Heinemann, 1968).
5. cf. Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy (London: New Left Books, 1971), p. 204.
6. Ebele Obumselu, 'Ngugi's Debt to Conrad', The Benin Review, 1 (1975), p. 85.
7. Gerald Moore, Twelve African Writers (London: Hutchinson. 1980). d. 286.
8. Ayi Kwei Ar mah, 4Larsony, or Fiction as Criticism of Fiction', New Classic, 4 (1977), p. 34.
9. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (London: Paladin, 1973), p. 109. Barthes is referring specifically to
myths, but myths are seen here as the form ideological interpellations normally take in seeking assent
to the propositions of ideology.
10. Althusser, p. 152. Althusser's concept of 'interpellation' (see pp. 161-65) is also used in this essay.
11. Terry Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology (London: New Left Books, 1976), pp. 59 and 54.
12. Quotation and summary from Eagleton, p. 60.
13. D.L. Bar nett, Mau Mau: The Structural Integration and Disintegration of Aberdare Guerilla Forces,
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, U.C.L.A., p. 37.

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 •MAU MAU' AND VIOLENCE 21

NOTES

14. Oginga Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru, (Nairobi, Heinemann, 1968), p. 123. The question of the
categorization of 'Mau Mau' is, of course, more complex than this would suggest. I have argued
elsewhere ('Social Banditry: Hobsbawn's Model and "Mau Maurt ' African Studies, 39, 1 (1980 pp.
77-97) that the years from 1947-52 saw the simultaneous development of a peasant movement among
the 'squatters' in the 'white Highlands', and the elaboration of an increasingly militant nationalist
leadership in Nairobi, Nakuru and elsewhere, whose resort to violence would have been definable as a
war of national liberation. The arrest of the nationalist leaders, and the eviction of many 'squatters'
from the 'white Highlands' which followed, can be seen to have pre-empted the logical development of
the war of national liberation, while immeasurably accelerating the impetus of the peasants' revolt.
Many of the 'Mau Mau' actions against Gikuyu, including Lari, should be seen not in terms of the
'civil war' of colonial mythology, but as the action taken against large-scale land holders by a landless
peasantry.
15. Robert Buijtenhuijs, Le Mouvement Mau Mau, (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), p. 223.
16. Maina-wa-Kinyatti, 'Mau Mau: The Peak of African Political Organization', Some Perspectives on
the Mau Mau Movement, ed. William R. Ochieng and Karim K. Janmohamed. Special issue of Kenya
Historical Reviews, No. 2 (1977), 297.
17. Barnett, p. 67.
18. Report to the Secretary of State for the Colonies by the Parliamentary Delegation to Kenya, Jan.
1954, (London, H.M.S.O. Command Paper No. 9081). d. 7.
19. Anthony Clayton reveals that 337 blacks were executed for unlawful possession of firearms during the
Emergency up to April 1956. Anthony Clayton, Counter-Insurgency in Kenya (Nairobi: Transafrica
Publishers, 1976), p. 54.
20. Philip Goodhart and Ian Henderson, The Hunt for Kimathi (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1958), p.
17.
21. Buijtenhuijs, pp. 287-8.
22. Peter Evans, Law and Disorder, (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1956).
23. Ime Ikiddeh, 'James Ngugi as Novelist', African Literature Today ed. Eldred Jones, (London:
Heinemann, 1972), No. 2, p. 6.
24. Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the Narcissus (London: Dent, 1964). For example, the contrast
elaborated between «the great light of the open sea' and 'the profound darkness of the shore' p. 168, a
pattern of symbolism initiated at the beginning of Chapter 2. p. 27.
25. Obumselu, p. 86.
26. The River Between, (London: Heinemann, 1965, reset 1975), p. 133.
27. The effect of recounting the episode from two points of view is, of course, to stress the violence
involved; the same device is used with the rape of Dr. Lynd. Is it, one has to ask, simply coincidence
that Ngugi and Ruark should both use this device in fictionalizing the acts of violence committed by
'Mau Mau'? Ruark 's use of two descriptions of the attack on the McKenzie farm in Something of
Value (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1955, pp. 376-380 and 386-388) is obvious an extreme version of
what Ngugi is doing, but both are probably attributable to a notion of the novelistic requirement to
'give both sides of the story'.
28. Robert Buijtenhuijs, Mau Mau Twenty Years After (The Hague: Mouton. 1973). p. 93.
29. Joseph Conrad, Nostromo (London: Dent, 1974), p. 379.
30. O. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban, (London: Methuen, 1956), p. 110.
31. Obumselu, p. 83.
32. Moore, p. 272.
33. W.J. Howard, 'Themes and Development in the Novels of Ngugi', The Critical Evaluation of African
Literature, tá. Edgar Wright (London: Heinemann, 1973), p. 113.
34. Conrad, Under Western Eyes (London: Dent, 1974), p. 16.
35. L. Monkman, 'Kenya and the New Jerusalem in A Grain of Wheat', African Literature Today No. 7,
Focus on Criticism, ed. E. Jones, (London: Heinemann, 1975), p. 112.
36. Ibid., p. 113.
37. Homecoming, p. 65.
38. Eagleton, P. 132.
39. Igid., p. 134.

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22 DAVID MAUGHAN-BROWN

NOTES

40. See, for example, the attacks on those who did not take part in the movement in A Grain of
and Petals of Blood. Gikonyo says: 'whom do we see riding in long cars and changing them da
if motor cars were clothes? It is those who did not take part in the movement, the same who
the shelter of schools and universities and administration* (A Grain of Wheat, p. 80). And o
Munira it is said: 'He always felt this generalized fear about this period of war: he also felt guilty
if there was something he should have done but didn't do. It was the guilt of omission: other
men of his time had participated: they had taken sides: this defined them as a people who had
through the test and either failed or passed' (Petals of Blood, p. 62).
41. Homecoming, p. 65.
42. Ibid., pp. 65-66.
43. African Writers Talking,ed. D. Duerden and C. Pieterse, (London: Heinemann, 1972), p. 128.
44. 'The Writer and His Past', Homecoming, p. 39.
45. Ibid.
46. C.B. Robson, Ngugi wa Thiong'O, (London: Macmillan, 1979), p. 54.
47. Union News, Leeds University, 18 November 1966. Quoted by Howard, p. 102.
48. Howard, p. 118-19.
49. Adrian Roscoe, Uhuru's Fire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 173-75, 190.
50. Robson, p. 101.
51 . Edward Hower, 'The Post-Independence Literature of Kenya and Uganda', East Africa Journal, 7,
11 (1970), 26.
52. Ibid.
53. Roscoe, p. 183.

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