Dedan Kimathi

He was then instructed to take seven sips of the mixture from the banana stalk, seven small bites of the thorax, prick the dead goats eyes and insert a piece of reed into the seven holes of the ngata. Everything was done in a set of seven. Then the administrator had him take a bite of sugar cane, poured cold water over his feet and made a cross on his forehead with the blood and grain mixture. At the end, the spectators took hold of the skin ring around his neck, counting to seven, they all pulled breaking the ring and saying “May you be destroyed like this ring if you violate any of these vows!” Afterwards, he gathered in the room next door waiting till midnight. At the end of the night a total of fifty people or so took the oath. They were told before leaving they are all now “members of the KCA, and linked by an oath of unite which would extend brotherhood to all members of the Kikuyu tribe… The white man… was our enemy and should have nothing to do with him. The land stolen from our people by the Europeans must be returned; and this could only be achieved through an unbreakable unity of all kikuyu, who would act as a single man with a single purpose.” Afterward he was asked to pay an entrance fee. Majority of the oath takers felt a theme of rebirth, now born a true Kikuyu who called themselves ‘circumcised’. This oath had special meaning to the kikuyu people with elements of precolonial oath-taking, and elements reminiscent of the Gikuyu second-birth and circumcision…

The heated debate about Kenyan history and the dogged determination to deconstruct the traditional discourse, led to the inception of the play. In the Preface, the writers state, “… indeed all African Literature and its writers is on trial…the challenge was to truly depict the masses (symbolized by Kimathi) in the only historically correct perspective : positively, heroically and as the true makers of history.” The exercise is of reacting against Western episteme, envisioning the world of Mau…

impact of colonial cultural decline. Comrade Mzala rightly opines that “Art is an important weapon in the struggle; it either reinforces or undermines the power of the oppressor”. Through the novel Petals of Blood and Matigari we see Ngugi writing as a strong social satire. Both novels portray the life after colonial era but the common thing is the same situation and problem faced by natives during colonialism. Ngugi works are characterized by criticism against European unacceptable law and…