Literary icon Prof Ngugi wa Thiong’o has known as out President William Ruto over his dalliance with the West, faulting him for siding with oppressors by “selling the country cheap.”
In a stinging open letter to the Head of State, Prof Thiong’o described photographs from Ruto’s current state go to to the United States as “very disturbing,” saying the president had chosen to betray the African satisfaction and grow to be the agent of the West.
“I saw you seated on a chair, grinning, while Biden stood behind you, his face beaming with satisfaction. Why not? He had just announced that you had signed off our beloved Kenya to make it a non-member ally of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). In other words you had agreed to become Nato’s errand boy in America’s struggle with Russia and China for access to resources of the continent,” he mentioned.
The US designated Kenya a non-member ally of Nato, a transfer US President Joe Biden mentioned was in recognition of “Kenya’s many years of contributions to the United States Africa Command area of responsibility.”
On his social media handles, President Ruto mentioned the partnership would assist “confront criminals and terrorists who deter our economic growth and prosperity.”
But Thiong’o would spotlight Nato’s legacy of main the purge on former Libyan chief, the late Muammar Gadadafi, whose country is a member of the African Union.
“Ruto, do you know that Nato, murdered Muammar Gaddafi, so that Libyan oil-fields which Kaddafi had nationalised, would revert to the West? Kaddafi was once the chairman of the African Union of which Kenya was a founding member,” he mentioned.
Similarly, he castigated the deployment of Kenyan police to Haiti, recounting the battle the Caribbean nation underwent to free themselves from their French masters, then led by the the most astute of army strategists, Napoleon Bonaparte.
“While you had been inside the White House, Haitians had been in the streets demonstrating, calling you a slave. Do you recognize the historical past of Haiti? Please learn The Black Jacobins the guide written by a as soon as Jomo Kenyatta Pan African ally, C L R James.
“Haiti, now a Black people’s State, used to be a slave colony of France. But led by Toussaint Louverture, Haiti, the richest colony of its time, fought French slavery and in 1804 it seized its independence. In USA slavery was then in full bloom. America did not want its African slaves to emulate Haiti, and it has never forgiven Haiti for that, and thus begun the story of America’s destabilisation of Haiti,” mentioned Thiong’o, who highlighted the obvious irony of siding with the West, “originally a settler colony taking over the land that belonged to Native Americans.”
“But the colonised Native Americans remained colonised. Kenya was equally a British settler colony. The white settlers wanted to have a similar kind of Independence. But the Mau Mau led by Dedan Kĩmathi stopped them. Years later, Algeria, Rhodesia and South Africa would follow the example of Kenya. Thus the country you now lead, was the first to stop the historical trend of white settlers claiming themselves independent as in America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.”