Images of Dedan Kimathi in Kenyan creative literature

Abstract

In the intricate relationship between history and fiction, it is often assumed that a body of fiction represents the values of a particular epoch. This sometimes ignores the inherent complexities when such literature attempts to portray the specifics with reference to historical characters or events. The fictive and factual vie for supremacy as the artist tries to balance the demands of art, history and purpose, providing unique challenges in art's creative reflection of history. The fiction on the emergency period in the 1950's in Kenya is a case in point, more so the works on Dedan Kimathi. Kenyan historians do not agree on the significance of Mau Mau. Interpretations are highly subjective in favour of conflicting perspectives on Kimathi's role in the Mau Mau struggle. The conflicting images of Kimathi in fictional works published texts provide the justification of the present thesis. Three major texts - two plays and a novel, some songs and poetic compositions - portray Kimathi and the Mau Mau movement in different and conflicting images. The study examines the nature of these images and linkages in the various interpretations of Kimathi and the movement. The research methodology has two components, library centred and a limited fieldwork component. The library component examines historical and literary critics' perspectives on Kimathi's portrayal and their insights into the subject. The limited fieldwork focuses on songs and some written poems and views from sources acquainted with Kimathi and the freedom struggle to supplement the analysis of published fictional works. In the process, a comparative perspective becomes inevitable between earlier and later works. The generic commonalties or diversities are noted and given due recognition. The plays, the historical novel and the poetic compositions are, respectively, examined in different chapters. The study uses the sociological approach to literary criticism as the analytical theoretical framework. 1]te analysis reveals conflicting images as ideological statements of the economic and social forces contending for supremacy in colonial and post-colonial Kenya, with the artists as mouthpieces for these forces. In the artist's sensibilities towards both Kimathi and the movement, one sees either unequivocal acceptance of cause or varying degrees of emotionalfmtellectual distance. Among the artists, Watene puts the greatest possible distance between himself and the "misguided" Mau Mau leader he perceives in Kimathi, while Ngugi and Micere applaud altruistic human and heroic virtue in Kimathi. In an attempt to settle the contentiousness of these extremes Kahiga chooses as his springboard the liberal acco'mmodation ideology which Maughan-Brown sums up as 'balance' 'freedom of speech' and 'the need to present all sides of the argument' (175). Kahiga extols Kimathi's heroism but paradoxically distances himself from the excesses of Mau Mau thereby validating the colonial and post-colonial order of things in Kenya. In the final analysis, the study suggests that the debate about the images of Kimathi in the fiction of history of Kenya's independence struggle remains a gold-mine for further intellectual excavation.