Media Statements

The African National Congress (ANC) joins millions across the continent and the world in mourning the passing of Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a revolutionary writer, thinker, and anti-colonial intellectual whose life’s work radically transformed the landscape of African literature, cultural identity, and liberation thought.

Professor Ngũgĩ was not only a literary icon but also a fearless advocate of Africa’s total emancipation in all its facets including politically, economically, culturally, and intellectually. His work was central to redefining how Africans understand themselves, their history, their languages, and their place in the world. Through his novels, plays, essays, and public activism, he became a critical voice against both colonialism and neocolonialism, challenging the structures that sought to undermine African identity and sovereignty.

As a committed Pan-Africanist and ally of liberation movements, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o offered unwavering solidarity to the struggle for freedom in South Africa. He consistently used his global platform to condemn apartheid, call for sanctions against the apartheid regime, and inspire resistance through his radical imagination. His intellectual arsenal became part of the arsenal of the oppressed.

His imprisonment by the Kenyan regime for his revolutionary play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), written in Gikuyu, symbolised his belief that language is central to liberation. In response, he wrote Devil on the Cross on toilet paper from his prison cell, the first modern novel in Gikuyu, asserting that African languages must be reclaimed as vehicles of knowledge, power and dignity. This courageous act redefined the role of writers in liberation and sparked a continental movement for intellectual decolonisation.

Ngũgĩ’s seminal essays, including Decolonising the Mind, Moving the Centre, and Something Torn and New, helped generations of African scholars, cultural workers, and activists unlearn colonial frameworks and centre African epistemologies. He challenged Africa’s intelligentsia to think beyond Eurocentric paradigms and to rebuild African universities as sites of revolutionary knowledge production.

To the ANC, Ngũgĩ’s life was a testimony to the power of cultural resistance as a pillar of the broader national democratic revolution. He demonstrated that true freedom cannot be separated from theliberation of the mind, and that political independence without cultural and intellectual sovereignty is incomplete.

His literary works, including Weep Not, Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, and Petals of Blood, will remain timeless chronicles of African pain, hope, resistance, and the longing for justice.

As South Africa continues the work of transforming its education system, rewriting its history, and reclaiming its indigenous knowledge systems, we draw strength and inspiration from Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s legacy. His vision lives on in the continuing struggle for an Africa that thinks, speaks, and dreams in its own voice.

The ANC extends heartfelt condolences to the Thiong’o family particularly his children Wanjiku, Nduku, Njoki, Ngina, Tee, Kay, and Björn, and to the people of Kenya, the broader Pan-African movement, and the global community of progressive intellectuals and cultural workers.

May this great son of Africa rest in revolutionary peace.
Ria ratha na ria thũa. Tũrĩ aira!
Long live the spirit of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o!

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