[News] Wangari Maathai: Reclaiming the Earth

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Wangari Maathai: Reclaiming the Earth



Horace Campbell
2011-09-29, Issue <http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/550>550
<http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/76724>http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/76724

The best tribute we can pay to this great woman 
of Africa is to continue to organise so that we 
can gain higher levels of spiritual awareness and 
build the shared values for peace and social 
justice across the planet,' writes Horace Campbell.

‘In the process of helping the earth to heal, we 
help ourselves’ – Wangari Maathai

The implantation of British rule was brutal 
across the continent, particularly in Kenya. Out 
of this brutality has emerged a society that is 
continuously seeking to repair itself and repair 
Africa. This is the promise and numerous Africans 
have stepped forward to keep this promise. 
Kenyans have used many forms of struggle to 
organise for a new society: Legal, political, 
intellectual, moral, environmental, economic and 
spiritual. It is in this process of repair that 
Kenya has continued to be one of the firm bases 
for Pan-Africanism and African renewal and for new healthy humans.

This week, the material world lost one such 
Kenyan who has made her mark on the world, 
Wangari Maathai. She joined the ancestors but 
left her imprint along with those Kenyans who 
made the promise that Africa will be free and the 
environment will be reconstructed by thinking 
human beings. Wangari Maathai built a movement to 
reclaim the earth. She wrote, she campaigned and 
she toiled within the ranks of those who wanted a 
united and democratic Africa (in the ranks of the 
Economic, Social and Cultural Council of the 
African Union (ECOSOCC). She struggled for over 
40 years, developing new strategies of 
mobilisation to reclaim nature from the current 
destructive forms of production and consumption. 
Although her contribution to numerous movements 
in Africa will be celebrated, she is now known as 
one of the foremost internationalist and 
environmentalist of the Green Belt Movement of 
Kenya. As an African feminist who broke through 
the barriers imposed by the hierarchies in 
neocolonial Kenya, she had to be principled to 
survive the storms of chauvinism, regionalism, 
masculinity and repression. Yet, in the society 
where she made such a sterling contribution, her 
transition has refocused attention on the central 
link between health and gender. It is a 
reinforcement of the reality that a society 
cannot be free at the social and political level 
without the facilities for health care for all.

NYERI DISTRICT AND THE PROMISE

Wangari Maathai was born on 1 April 1940 in Nyeri 
district of Kenya. This is a District in the 
Central Province of that East African society 
that saw its share of cruelty, repression and 
barbarism of British colonialism. It was from 
this district where many of the top leaders of 
the Kenya Land and Freedom Army emerged. Dedan 
Kimathi, who is now a national hero, was born in 
this district and is the most well-known of those 
sons and daughters of Central Province of Kenya. 
Kimathi fought against the British and his 
courage and bravery informed the stories of 
African independence beyond the borders of Kenya. 
It was a district that saw its share of freedom 
fighters and Home Guards. (The Home Guards were 
those Kenyans who collaborated with the colonial 
overlords). Wangari Maathai grew up as a teenager 
in the midst of this ferment and was herself 
chosen to serve the interests of those who wanted 
to forever dominate Africa. She refused. While 
accessing western education she never turned her 
back on the intellectual and spiritual resources 
of the village community. In fact, when she was 
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, in her 
acceptance speech, she acknowledged the fact that 
a lot of what she had learnt about environmental 
protection came from her childhood experiences in 
the village community of Nyeri in rural Kenya

In this tussle between Home Guards and those with 
their eyes on freedom, Britain deployed numerous 
tools to maintain the exploitation of the 
peoples. The establishment of the British Gulag 
was accompanied by an intensified effort to train 
a cadre of Kenyans who were supposed to be 
‘modern’ and opposed to the ‘atavistic and 
barbaric’ forces who were called Mau Mau. Frank 
Kitson, the British military expert who refined 
the weaponising of anthropology developed tools 
of counter-insurgency in Kenya that have been 
refined and used in other parts of the imperial 
military world. A component of this low intensity 
campaign was the educational system that was to 
teach the superiority of western civilisation and 
groom new allies who were ‘responsible Africans.’ 
These were the Africans taken to boarding schools 
so that the stories of the freedom fighters would 
not pollute their minds and inspire their hopes. 
Wangari Maathai, like so many promising Kenyans 
of that era was trained to turn her back on the 
people of Nyeri district and the struggle for freedom in Africa.

British propaganda had mobilised the resources of 
the Anglo-American media to promote the 
‘modernised’ types. Through the colonial 
institutions of socialisation and political 
mobilisation –churches, mosques, schools, social 
clubs, etc – the British imperialists worked hard 
to suppress the national liberation movement 
while putting in place an intricate hierarchy 
based on race, gender, ethnicity and regionalism. 
By the time of the explosion of the war for 
independence in Kenya, the United States security 
planners had moved in to support the British 
project of maintaining external control over 
Africa with Kenya as its beachhead. The US 
government organised an airlift of students from 
Kenya to the United States and Wangari Maathai 
was a beneficiary of this airlift. But she did 
not internalise the ideas of western consumerism 
and worship of the god of capital. She used the 
opportunity to educate herself and became the 
first woman PhD in Veterinary medicine in East 
Africa and the first professor in that field of study in Kenya.

LABELLED A ‘CRAZY WOMAN’

Yet Wangari Maathai was not carried away by her 
professorship. Her training and education was 
used to strengthen the organisational 
capabilities of women in Kenya and she became the 
national chairperson of the National Council of 
Women of Kenya. During the period of the 
dictatorship in Kenya she had to develop the 
political skills to work with women in a way 
where the autonomy of the organisation could be 
maintained. For her work among women and because 
she refused to be cowed by men and by the state, 
she was labelled a ‘crazy’ woman. She became well 
known because of her work among grassroots women 
in Kenya in building the Green Belt Movement. The 
idea of a grassroots environmental movement in 
Kenya gave birth to one component of a larger 
global project that is now called the environmental justice movement.

THE GREENBELT MOVEMENT AND RECLAIMING THE EARTH

Working tirelessly, nationally, across Africa and 
internationally, Wangari Maathai pierced through 
the manipulation of self-help schemes that were 
actually being used by politicians to enrich 
themselves and to oppress the people. The idea of 
Harambee (African self-reliance) had been 
co-opted by the ruling elite in Kenya to 
disorganise and divide the poor, especially the 
Kikuyu peasantry who had fought in the 
independence struggle but who were being 
manipulated by the capitalists among the Kikuyu. 
These capitalists mobilised ethnic chauvinism to 
divide Kenyans. Because of the work of women such 
as Wangari Maathai, the ethnic chauvinists 
mobilised young and unemployed males in order to 
act as a force to demobilise the working class in 
Nairobi and the Kenyan heartland. This force of 
manipulated young Kikuyus is sometimes called 
Mungiki. In 2008 we saw the fruits of this 
demobilisation when organised violence reinforced 
the theft of democracy. The ethnic chauvinists 
(called tribalists) who controlled the levers of 
banks and new speculative capital in Eastern 
Africa were called hyenas; these hyenas wanted to 
deny Kenyans the promise that this space should 
be a beacon for decency and justice.

Wangari Maathai and decent women in Kenya worked 
hard to rise above this manipulation in order to 
keep the promise of dignity and freedom. The 
Green Belt Movement was a broad based movement, 
which had as its core mission a project to 
reclaim the earth. More than 40 years ago, it was 
clear that the forms of economic engagement in 
Africa was destroying the earth and speeding 
desertification across the continent. Today we 
can see the evidence of this environmental 
degradation with the reality that the impact of 
global warming will decimate millions across 
Africa. We know that Africa leads the world in 
forest fires and that forests, which cover 20 per 
cent of Africa, are disappearing faster in Africa 
than on any other continent. Wangari Maathai 
grasped these realities decades ago and in 1977 
in an effort to save the forests and the planet 
earth worked with other grassroots women to plant 
millions of trees to save the earth and to 
reclaim spaces of hope. The Green Belt Movement 
has planted close to 50 million trees and the 
United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) now 
recognise this tree planting effort as a central 
aspect of the struggle to repair the earth.

CONTINUOUSLY REFINING ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS

Wangari Maathai organised a self-help project to 
empower women, establish self-confidence among 
them and to stand up to oppressors. Because of 
the intensity of the oppression in Kenya, she had 
to devise novel forms of organising for social 
justice. But social justice could not follow a 
straight path based on good leaders such as 
Maathai. She was tested over many years by 
incarceration, banishment, grounding and other 
forms of intimidation. She did not bow. She has 
also recorded that tenacity in her own words in 
the book, ‘Unbowed’. Many of us heard about the 
heroic struggles to keep spaces of community 
solidarity open in Kenya. Uhuru Park in Nairobi 
and Jevanjeee Gardens are two such public spaces 
where she made her contribution, by ensuring that 
people had access to these spaces. Other 
grassroots movements in Kenya now benefit from 
these green spaces and one such Kenyan movement, 
Bunge la Mwananchi, is challenged to keep the 
promise of Kenya and to learn from Wangari 
Maathai that the leadership role of women cannot 
be based on tokenism. Kenya is the capital of the 
NGOisation of social movements in Africa and 
progressive forces have to devise new ways every 
day to navigate through the traps of cooptation 
and corruption of the ideas of social power of the poor.

LESSONS

Wangari Maathai has left many lessons for 
grassroots organisation on how to navigate the 
snakepit of NGO politics. When imperial power 
recognised the work of Wangari Maathai, the 
United Nations Environment Program, (UNEP) sought 
to tap into her experiences as an organiser. Yet, 
the United Nations operatives in Kenya could not 
see that environmental justice could not come 
from simply working with donor agencies. 
Environmental justice will only come from a 
change in the system. We saw this clearly at the 
Copenhagen Summit in 2009. Wangari Maathai was 
very present at this meeting where the 
environmental justice forces from the South came 
to the understanding that the question of climate 
change was not one of finances, but one that involved system change.

 From all corners of the world this call for 
system change is inspiring initiatives to educate 
and mobilise the grassroots. Whether it is in the 
Niger Delta of West Africa, in rural China, in 
Europe or Latin America there is a worldwide 
movement to reclaim the earth. In Latin America, 
the indigenous movement has recognised this need 
for system change and it is from Bolivia where we 
have been signalled that there will be new first 
laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. 
 From Bolivia we have heard of The Law of Mother 
Earth, which was agreed on at an international 
meeting of April 2010. This Law of Mother Earth 
redefines Bolivia’s rich mineral deposits as 
‘blessings’ and is expected to lead to radical 
new conservation and social measures to reduce 
pollution and control industry. In the African 
philosophy of Ubuntu, humans and nature share the 
biosphere and our ancestors taught us to respect 
nature and eschew the idea of domination over nature.

SYSTEM CHANGE AND SPIRITUAL RENEWAL

Slowly, the promise of those who are fighting for 
a new earth is gaining ground, and in her 
passing, Wangari Maathai has again shone the 
light on the need to save Africa and to save the 
forests. Those who believe that this is an 
overnight project falter quickly. This was the 
experience of the Pan African Green belt 
movement. Working from the inspiration of Wangari 
Maathai and other Kenyan women, there had been an 
attempt to develop the Pan African Greenbelt 
movement in 1986. Those who placed themselves at 
the leadership of this exercise did not realise 
that planting trees and watching them grow 
require a new kind of political engagement. The 
Pan African Climate Justice Alliance is a new 
kind of Pan Africanism and the aspiring forces 
from this formation will do well to read very 
carefully the words of Wangari Maathai. She has 
left her writings for us to consider. From 
Bolivia, those who are struggling for the rights 
of Mother Earth have outlined the same rights 
that Wangari Maathai articulated in the African 
context. The declaration of the Bolivians on the 
rights of Mother Earth outlined the following 
rights: The right to life and to exist; the right 
to continue vital cycles and processes free from 
human alteration; the right to pure water and 
clean air; the right to balance; the right not to 
be polluted; and the right to not have cellular 
structure modified or genetically altered. This 
declaration was reminder that the struggles that 
Wangari Maathai engaged in Kenya was part of a worldwide struggle.

Imperial planners, ever adept at cooptation, are 
now planning to co-opt the ideas of this movement 
that is growing in all corners of the world. 
After nearly a decade of promoting ‘sustainable 
development’ the World Bank has suddenly become 
an environmental movement with its new mantra 
being ‘Green growth.’ The thinkers within the 
bank cannot see the contradiction between the terms 'green' and 'growth'.

CANCEROUS ENVIRONMENT

Wangari Maathai had pierced through these 
contradictions and came to the understanding that 
spiritual renewal is central to environmental 
justice. In her book, 
‘<http://www.powells.com/partner/23116/biblio/9780307591142>Replenishing 
the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World’, she wrote:

‘Through my experiences and observations, I have 
come to believe that the physical destruction of 
the earth extends to us, too. If we live in an 
environment that's wounded­where the water is 
polluted, the air is filled with soot and fumes, 
the food is contaminated with heavy metals and 
plastic residues, or the soil is practically 
dust­it hurts us, chipping away at our health and 
creating injuries at a physical, psychological, 
and spiritual level. In degrading the 
environment, therefore, we degrade ourselves.’

Many of us did not know how wounded Wangari had 
been by the cancerous conditions that degrade all 
of us. Her struggles with ovarian cancer should 
be another prod for those who connect all forms 
of struggle to understand that health, life, 
environment and peace are all interconnected. She 
was a living example of this interconnection. 
When Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace 
Prize in 2004, there were those who did not 
understand the interconnections between, peace, 
the environment and health but now Wangari 
Maathai has reminded us of that link. She wrote 
simply that, ‘In the process of helping the earth to heal, we help ourselves.’

Wangari Maathai kept her promise to the people of 
Kenya and of Africa. Those who are still in the 
material world have a beacon to follow in keeping 
the promise of Nyeri district, Dedan Kimathi and 
Wangari Maathai. Kenya remains in the news 
because of the intensity of the freedom struggle 
that continues in that corner of Africa. Whether 
it is the ongoing case of reparative justice 
relating to the British Gulag that is winding 
through the British courts and intellectual 
system, the legal questions of criminal violence 
that is before the International Criminal Court, 
the day to day democratic struggles or the 
massive drought and famine in East Africa, we 
understand that Kenya is at the centre of the 
struggle for a new world. As one young Kenyan 
student said to me, Wangari Maathai showed young 
women in Kenya that they can achieve leadership 
roles by dedicating themselves to struggle. This 
student stated clearly that Wangari Maathai 
showed that in the struggle, women did not have to take a back seat to men.

The best tribute we can pay to this great woman 
of Africa is to continue to organise so that we 
can gain higher levels of spiritual awareness and 
build the shared values for peace and social justice across the planet.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Horace Campbell is professor of 
African-American studies and political science at 
Syracuse University. He is the author of ‘Barack 
Obama and 21st Century Politics: A Revolutionary 
Moment in the USA’. See <http://www.horacecampbell.net>www.horacecampbell.net.




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