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FREEDOMWAYS

THIRD QUARTER 1973

of missionaries and colonial administrators.  Ngugi, like Dr. Blyden, realizes that values change in Africa as they do in other countries and societies, and that some customs become obsolete and should be discarded.  Both of them were clear on how to use what is relevant in Africa, past and present, in order to open the door to Africa's future.  Both of them knew, that the economic system of capitalism could bring no long range benefit to African people, because this was a system of exploitation that took away more than it gave.  Ngugi calls attention to Jomo Kenyatta's powerful book Facing Mount Kenya as a "living example of this integrative function of culture."  To read it, "is to witness a world with an inner, dynamic spirit; it is also an authentic refutation of the missionary condemnation of what they, the semi-gods, thought was savage and dark.... After discussing all the aspects of Agkuyu life, Kenyatta concludes with an aggressive assertion of the primary role of culture in a people's discovery of their identity."

In an essay "Kenya: The Two Rifts" he discusses the physical, political and cultural conflicts within his country, including the delicate problem of Asians, who, he says, have always struggled to achieve political unity with the Europeans, therefore, this act of political indiscretion made them estranged from the Africans; and this estrangement had grown more critical after the African independence explosion.  He traces the history of the Indian presence in Kenya in 1900, and shows that they were originally brought to Kenya as laborers to perform certain menial tasks that did not attract the Africans.  They had later been used as petty commercial entrepreneurs and buffers between the Africans and Europeans.  He states that this conflict was one of the contributing factors that led to the Mau Mau Uprising.  In the article "Mau Mau Violence and Culture" he tells of the Uprising itself, and shows how this outbreak of violence in Kenya had its genesis in the European take-over of African lands early in the century, and that the root of Mau Mau grievances was in the alienation of the African from the land he owned before the coming of the Europeans.

In "Church, Culture and Politics," he refers to the role of the church, especially the missionaries, as the hand maiden of the colonial system.  Having no sentiment toward the Christian Church, and not being a Christian, he can speak critically of the Church without any feeling of guilt.

In Part Two of the book "Writers in Africa," Ngugi mentions the role of the writer in awakening the African consciousness, and in

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