Ruto hails colonial critic's courage

Celebrated Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong'o, whose sharp criticisms of post-independence elites led to his jailing and two decades in exile, has died at the age of 87, Kenya's President said. Shaped by an adolescence where he witnessed the armed Mau Mau struggle for independence from Britain, Thiong'o took aim in his writings at colonial rule and the Kenyan elites who inherited many of its privileges, reports TimesLIVE. He was arrested in December 1977 and detained for a year without charge in a maximum security prison after peasants and workers performed his play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want). He went into exile in 1982 after he said he learnt of plans by President Daniel arap Moi's security services to arrest and kill him. He went on to become a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California-Irvine. Thiong'o ended his exile in 2004 after Moi left office after more than two decades in power. Kenya's President William Ruto paid tribute to Thiong'o after his death in the US. ‘Always courageous, he made an indelible impact on how we think about our independence, social justice and the uses and abuses of political and economic power,’ Ruto said on X. Thiong'o's best-known works included his debut novel Weep Not Child, which chronicled the Mau Mau struggle, and Devil on the Cross, which he wrote on toilet paper while in prison.