Injustice Against Ngugi?: Unverified Claim of Domestic Violence by his Son Uncritically Accepted as Gospel

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Ngugi's Son's Accusation of His Father and the Burden of Truth 

The great writer Ngugi's son publicly accused his father of being physically violent against his mother and people have taken him on his word.

Why?

Must it be factual because the man was his father?

What do we know about his relationship with his father and about the tensions of their family?

Why should a person be condemned just beceause a child or a spouse accuses the person?

Are those family members not fallible humans too?

 Accusations of physical violence, often directed against men, draw outrage, and rightly so, although it should also necessitate the need to investigate the accusation, and if not investigated, to be treated with caution.

I also hope verbal and attitudinal violence, which women are more likely to engage in, is more subtle but perhaps equally destructive depending on context, would also inspire the same outrage, while people are encouraged not to tolerate it bcs it can become normalized in relationships, and also needs to be investigated when reported or if not investigated, managed with caution.

Rape claims can be false.

Domestic abuse claims can be false.

My  argument is that the fact that Ngugi's son claimed his father was violent does not make the claim factual.

The Western legal approach to accusations is ideally "innocent until proven guilty".

But when it comes to accusations against men in sexual or domestic situations it has become "guilty until proven innocent".

That is a misandrist mindset, which needs to be dismantled in sensitivity to the fact the need to seek the facts and context in such situations.

Secondly, bad as domestic violence is, its not the same as rape.

We need to know-what are the facts?

Was Ngugi actually physically violent against his wife?

Then, if it can be proven he was, we also need to understand the context.

What were the dynamics of his relationship with his wife?

Women and men can be verbally and/ or attitudinally abusive, contributing to abusive behaviour from the other party.

I consider it overstretching the case by conflating a claim of physical violence with one of rape, as a respondent to my argument did.

Its also unrealistic to refuse to examine the context even in verified claims of domestic  physical violence by claiming that bcs its wrong the context is irrelevant.

Both partners can be abusive to each other. All forms of violence and abuse should be condemned.

Bottom line- we don't know whether or not Ngugi's son is saying the truth and its unjust to take him on his word.

We also need to understand the dynamics of their family 

In the absence of such info what we owe the son is respectful attention not the current rush to anoint him as the truth speaker for his family.

[Victor Okafor]

Friends, as you know, the human experience is a mixed bag, encompassing the good and the ugly. The thoughtful questions posed by Dr. Oluwatoyin Adepoju are in order. In our sinful world, can individuals be falsely accused even by relatives? You bet, it happens. Do both men and women engage in domestic disputes? You bet, disputes happen, but not all the time. No human relationship is perfect, and anyone who claims perfection in his/her own relationships is self-evidently fake. The African cultural universe embraces its own sense of due process and requires a methodical adjudication of claims by both a plaintiff and a defendant before a verdict of guilty or innocence is rendered. So, the legal principle that an accused should be deemed innocent until proven guilty is not an exclusive Western jurisprudential expectation. I presume that each one of us expects this right  of presumption of innocence until proven guilty to be extended to us if we ever get entangled in the judicial system. “Nobody knows tomorrow,” reads a common note of wisdom that we often see on the external frames of public transportation buses that traverse our bustling cities.

An age-old adage says that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. We should, at all times, not sometimes, unreservedly extend to others, rights which we believe we are entitled to. And so, anyone on this forum who subscribes to the universal principle that a person must be presumed innocent until proven guilty should deem Ngugi Wa Thiong'O innocent of any and all accusations leveled against him by whomever during his earthly sojourn, given that the said accusations were not subjected to the scrutiny of due process. That said, one thing is for certain: each of us will ultimately answer to our Creator, the owner of our lives, for how we led our earthly lives.

Sincerely,

Victor O. Okafor, Ph.D.

Professor and Head

Department of Africology and African American Studies

Eastern Michigan University

Email: vok...@emich.edu

https://www.emich.edu/aaas/faculty/v-okafor.php

https://www.facebook.com/DAAASEMU/

Tel: 734.487.9594 

Food for Thought: 

“I myself do not judge a man [or a woman] by  the color of his [or her] skin. The yardstick that I use to judge a man [or a woman] is his [ or her] deeds, his [her] behavior,  and his [or her] intentions." -- Malcolm X.

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[gbemisoye tijani]

This response is objective.All sides are not ignored nor declared innocent or faultless . Implying  that both the son and the living mother should exercise the universal concept of forgiveness if indeed - truthfully speaking Ngugi ' s attitude or actions have not been maritally  perfect especially  with his wife and son . Above all let's rest the issue as it was because the major actor has passed on
an immortal journey.Sorry to hear about this.Don't worry.We- all of us should be students of tolerance till eternity.Nobofy or couple is perfect on planet earth no matter how highly placed or referred by few people.This is another raw material for fictional writings.May God Almighty bless his next home and forgive his imperfections on planet earth.Amen and Amen that should apply to us all still alive on this sinful world.
Gbemi Tijani MST
Paul Harris Fellow
Former Unesco Club founder Leader in Ogun State High School in the late 70s in Nigeria Southwest

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

If we’re going to take the bull by the horns, 

we’ve got to face facts: Domestic Violence in Africa 

( Perhaps a good reason why Roman Catholic priests don't

get married and raise families, as then, they too would

not be exempt from the general malady and in no time

at all could find themselves singing “The Song of Ocol” 

or LL Cool J after saying the Sunday morning mass 

Not that wife-beating is a national pastime in Kenya. There's said to be a certain "tribe" /ethnic group in Sierra Leone ( not to cause offence I won't name them ) but it's reported that their woman believe that you don't love them if you don't beat them regularly. Ditto ,the last time that I was at Bonde Bar ( reggae music) a Swedish somebody came over to whisper some sweet nothings in my ear. So where's your boyfriend, I asked her. O I left him in Gothenburg , she replied, and I don't love him any more, she added, he beats me all the time. All the time indeed. Sweet love and affection.

Domestic Violence in Sweden ?

Reminds me of this story about purported national characteristics  back then, when Hashem offered the Torah to other nations but for one reason or the other they would not accept it.  

Succinctly narrated here: 

https://www.dafyomi.co.il/parsha/yitro3.htm#:~:text=Next%20Hashem%20went%20to%20the,from%20the%20daughters%20of%20Lot%2C

Anyway, today, 

Domestic Violence is a worldwide problem

Nothing new under the sun : 

Consider this juicy piece of gossip, 

self-confessed by Nobel Literature Laureate Bertrand Russell: 

“I went out bicycling one afternoon, and suddenly, as I was riding along a country road, I realised that I no longer loved Alys. I had had no idea until this moment that my love for her was even lessening. The problem presented by this discovery was very grave. We had lived ever since our marriage in the closest possible intimacy. We always shared a bed, and neither of us ever had a separate dressing-room. We talked over together everything that ever happened to us… I knew that she was still devoted to me. I had no wish to be unkind, but I believed in those days…that in intimate relations one should speak the truth.”

The serial monogamist Bertrand Russell was married four times…  

I wonder what he thought of polygamy…

Reality : 

Wa Thiong'o's second wife

So there could be the problem of sibling rivalry,

jealousies, unedited sob stories  

and other complications arising

from wife number one 

Sara and Hagar 

Ishmael and Yitzhak 

even Rabbi Ovadia chirping

that Hashem, ”regretted” 

having made Ishmael & 

his descendants 

Once again we find ourselves standing 

on dangerous, shadowy territory 

willingly or unwillingly 

disposed to committing 

some painful, unholy, 

biographical heresy

Wa Thiong’o: Did he?  Didn’t he?  

Shit happens.

Personally, I understand that in some heated, domestic situation, 

al-cohol combined with an excess of self-righteous emotion  

or indignation, could be be an almost lethal combination

leading to domestic violence 

The problem is not merely or peculiarly only African, 

in Russia it may be enhanced by Vodka

it’s more or less  a universal situation 

the fundamental bitchin’ that goes on in every kitchen 

As the bard sang,

“You got men who can't hold their peace and women who can't control their tongues

The rich seduce the poor and the old are seduced by the young.”

In some places it’s even worse than that :

“Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools

You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules”

It should be futile to speculate 

that rumours about 

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o being linked to Domestic Violence 

cost him the Nobel Prize in Literature

several years running

There’s no smoke without fire, true, but we shouldn’t rush to conclusions on the basis of suspicion only. Not even if we are  - without evidence, prepared to believe the very best or the very worst about somebody who, in terms of human nature, apart from the Jesus or the Shylock  of our imagination, is not very different from you and me. After all, so far, the “unsubstantiated claims” have been made outside of a court of law with its own more rigid rules as to what can be legally admissible as reliable/ credible / verifiable evidence and truthful testimony, on oath, the outcome of rigorous  cross examination

 

In the political context of the as yet never-ending Luo-Kikuyu rivalry, if the rumours of wife-beating were unsubstantiated, the cloud of suspicion that was being promoted by the media must have already, sufficiently tarnished his reputation,  perhaps according to the Law of Jante, “ welcome to the club” as a man, husband, father but would not have necessarily tarnished his reputation as a writer, an ideologue and a decoloniser of the African mind.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Correction : Bonden Bar ( not Bonde Bar) 

Sympathy, empathy, outrage : This sad story 

Ethical relativism perspectives : 

Domestic Violence in Kenya 

Domestic Violence in Sweden 

Domestic Violence in Nigeria 

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Domestic Violence in the United States

Domestic Violence in South Africa 

Countries ranked in Domestic Violence

Domestic violence ranking by country

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

In a 1995 interview, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o said that Njeeri was his only legal wife, adding that although he had grown-up children with his first wife, Njeeri was his only wife and that he had “no valid marital bond with any other woman”. - Search

Another complicated case

https://www.google.de/search?q=Malik+Obama+on+Barack+Obama&sca_esv

Malik Obama on Barack Obama - Search

On Wednesday, 4 June 2025 at 14:07:07 UTC+2 Oluwatoyin Adepoju wrote:

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

And last, but not least, Domestic Violence in Sierra Leone

where I suppose Joe is still bragging “Ai gee am good beat” 

and Sally is still showing off to her best friend,

the love marks she got from the latest beating. 

Best friend is a little envious and is complaining 

that her man never beats her. 

“Maybe, he doesn’t really love you”, says Sally 

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

God have mercy

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[Dr. Oohay]

Fortunately or unfortunately, some obverse reality ALSO appears (for better or worse) anytime any HOT or suspicious “legal” or non-legal controversy appears.

Oohay

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/3b06243d-ae31-463c-9f0b-2b73ba06681en%40googlegroups.com

.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Dr Oohay, 

You hit the proverbial nail on its head right there :

“some obverse reality ALSO appears (for better or worse) anytime any HOT or suspicious “legal” or non-legal controversy appears.”

Indeed, “for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.”

Ray Charles also hit on that mostly US reality in his hit song  Child Support Alimony  understandably ( sympathetic understanding ) alimony being one of the reasons why  although St Paul advised “it’s better to get married than to burn “ ( to burn with lust and then to burn in the hell-fire afterwards) because of the spectre of alimony some men of substance don't want to get married, don’t wanna be fleeced like a sacrificial lamb in the divorce court, not even at Reno . About the celebrity alimony scandals , I think of Tiger Woods and smile. Because of the spectre of alimony, I suppose that polygamy would not be an economically wise or viable option for most weakly paid men over there in the United States. 

When Wa Thiong’o made that statement “that Njeeri was his only legal wife, adding that although he had grown-up children with his first wife, Njeeri was his only wife and that he had “no valid marital bond with any other woman”, he was probably under some kind of pressure to clear the air, just in case some rival marriage claims were being made or should pop up in the usual African polygamic context, he himself an outcome of such an arrangement since his father Thiong'o wa Ndūcũ had four wives and twenty eight children , Ngugi born of his third wife,  Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ. So, given that traditionalists often complain about Christian missionaries interfering with their bountiful marriage customs and other cultural norms, we must admit that that statement of Ngugi’s represents a radical generational departure from the family culture and marriage customs. We may choose to call it modernity or according to Wa Thiongo’s mode of expression, refer to it as decolonisation of body and mind from the trammels of ancient tribal mores and marriage customs, hence his magnum opus in Gikiyu, “ I will marry when I want.”

Having mentioned Tiger Woods, I must say that last night as I followed proceedings at The Toyin Falola Interviews: A Panel Discussion on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: Life and Literature , as  I listened to Okey Ndibe , I found myself thinking of tigritude and  Blake’s The Tyger… Interestingly enough, after the matter of Wa Thiong’o excising the FGM scene in a later (Gikiyu?)  edition of his The River Between  was brought up, I was  anxiously waiting and half-expecting Brother Ndibe to pounce ( like Soyinka's or Blake’s tyger) on this kind of controversy rearing its ugly head, but as Nobel Literature Laureate Bobby Dylan once humbly sang,

“Democracy don't rule the world

You better get that in your head

This world is ruled by violence

But I guess that's better left unsaid!”

So, so many possible things were left unsaid.

And so, even posthumously we may safely observe that Wa Thiong’o in this instance did wisely bow down or bend to societal pressure, as FGM even in the context of post-colonial modernity in Kenya and other African countries where FGM was practised by some ancestors, is still a very sensitive issue.  

Now that the missionaries’ gold standard of “lay down your weapons and turn the other cheek”, “Love your enemies" etc is over, in the post-colonial modernity too, violence has its special language or indeed violence is also a language, in some cases, the only language which some people understand. As a language of resistance we had the Mau Mau Rebellion in tune with the Malik el Shabazz ethos “There is nothing in our book, the Koran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully.” - and therefore on the domestic front too , sometimes, the human factor, responsible for domestic violence 

[Dr. Oohay]

NOT Either Or ….

Perhaps, certain lines of virtue and vice in the life(time) of a HUMAN (famous or infamous) still lie to us (for better or worse) through the still living; not even “fame” or “notoriety” can immunize any character (in fiction or non-fiction). Not just the saint or the sinner BUT BOTH.

Oohay

On Sunday, June 8, 2025, 1:16 AM, Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Yes indeed, both.

The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady

[Salimonu Kadiri]

In connection with the recent demise of the great Kenya writer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Mr. Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju posed a rhetoric question: Injustice Against Ngugi? The reason for the rhetoric question, Mr. Adepoju adduced it to, "Unverified Claim of Domestic Violence by his Son Uncritically Accepted as Gospel." 

To begin with, it was in the online Kenya Times of 13 March 2024, that it was published that Professor Mukoma wa Ngugi, the son of Ngugi wa Thiong'o had narrated that his father used to batter his mother named, Nyambura. That allegation by a son against his father was made 14 months before the demise of the accused, Ngugi wa Thiong'o. However, it would appear as if Mr. Adepoju imagined that there existed those who uncritically accepted as gospel the accusation of Mukoma against his father, Ngugi, although Mr. Adepoju failed to mention just one uncritical mind that accepted the accusation as a gospel.

Ngugi went into exile from Kenya in 1977 after being jailed for a year by the Kenya government. He sought and got political asylum in the United States. Before he fled from Kenya, he was traditionally married to Nyambura with whom he had six children who in order of seniority are Thiong'o, Kimunya, Nducu, Mukoma, Wanjiku and Njoki. It is not clear whether the United States did not permit Nyambura and her six children to join Ngugi or the Kenya Government did not permit his family to leave Kenya. 12 years after living a bachelor's life in the US, Ngugi met his second wife, Njeeri wa Ndung'o, in 1989 and they were blessed with two children, Mumbi-Wanjiku and Thiong'o. In 1995, Ngugi was reported to have stated in an interview that he was legally married only to Njeeri, which was correct because his marriage with Nyambura, the mother of his six children was traditional and never legalised in the court. In Africa, when a woman has a child with a man both are automatically recognised as husband and wife. Nyambura the first African wife to Ngugi died in 1996.

According to online Kenya Times of 13 March 2024, the fourth child between Ngugi and Nyambura, Professor Mukoma wa Ngugi, had on November 28, 2022, posted in his X accounts to say, "It hurts to see my late mother, Nyambura (my daughter is named after her) being systematically erased from the Ngugi wa Thiong'o's story." In the post, Mukoma shared a picture of an old feature article done by Ngure Kagiri titled, "A novelist's lonely wife: Battered and persecuted Nyambura Ngugi hold on to a dream." The picture was accompanied by a caption that read, "My father Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, physically abused my late mother - he would beat her up." The article of Ngure Kagiri on the relationship between Ngugi and Nyambura must have been published on or before 1995 when Ngugi publicly declared that he was legally married only to a woman named Njeeri. Ngure Kagiri's article was reasonably a hatchet job for the Kenya government aimed at tarnishing the image of Ngugi. It was from Kaguri's article that Professor Mukoma derived his knowledge of his father's brutality against his mother, Nyambura. None of Mukoma's three senior brothers ever claimed to have witnessed their mother, Nyambura, being battered by their father, Ngugi. It is very remarkable that it was 27 years after his father declared being married legally only to Njeeri that Mukoma discovered that his late mother was being erased systematically from the Ngugi wa Thiong'o's story and therefore felt hurt. Of course, Mukoma wa Thiong'o is a writer and as a professor of English at Cornell University, USA, it is not unlikely that he was out to market himself as a feminist to sell more of his published books.

With the above-said, it is false to assert that there is, "current rush to anoint him (Mukoma) as the truth speaker for his family."  While morning the demise of  Ngugi wa Thiong'o I think it is culturally and traditionally impolite to initiate an unnecessary debate on a minor issue created about three years ago by those who wished to tarnish his image. 

S. Kadiri

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: 09 June 2025 19:53
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Injustice Against Ngugi?: Unverified Claim of Domestic Violence by his Son Uncritically Accepted as Gospel

 

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