Radical Utu. Besi Brillian Muhonja
and its deliberations. Out of this presentation and the ensuing action plans, a new idea and program was born, committed to reforestation and saving the environment. The organization approved the idea and established the Save the Land Harambee project (Maathai 2007a, 131). On June 5, 1977, to celebrate World Environment Day, the NCWK and Save the Land Harambee organized a march to Kamukunji Grounds in Nairobi, where they planted seven trees in honor of seven Kenyan (s)heroes: Wangu wa Makeri, Waiyaki wa Hinga, Mekatilili wa Menza, Masaku Ngei, Nabongo Mumia, Ole Lenana, and Gor Mahia wuod Ogalo. Save the Land Harambee was the forerunner of the GBM (119–25). Both, albeit cash strapped, operated as successful components of the NCWK.
Wangari Mathai’s personal life, at the time, was not progressing as well as her public one. In 1977, she and her husband separated, and in 1979 Mwangi Mathai filed for divorce. The three-week divorce proceedings in court turned ugly. Whereas some have reported that Mwangi sought divorce on the grounds that she was too uncontrollable and strong-minded, Wangari maintained that he falsely claimed she had been unfaithful and contributed to the deterioration of his health (Maathai 2007a, 145–46). The case ended with a win for him and new troubles for her. In an interview with Salim Lone of Viva magazine following the ruling, she stated that the judge would have had to be corrupt or incompetent to render that judgment. The judge then threatened her with a contempt-of-court charge if she did not withdraw the statement. She refused to back down and was charged and found guilty. Sentenced to six months in prison, she was taken to Lang’ata Women’s Prison without the opportunity to say goodbye or explain the situation to her children. After three days, her lawyer negotiated a deal wherein she wrote a statement the court found sufficient, setting her free (147–50).
Most know Wangari Maathai as a radical outspoken activist. She questioned whether her life would have taken the same trajectory had she stayed married to Mwangi (Taking Root). Following the divorce, Mwangi demanded that she drop his name, and she made the bold choice to change it by adding an extra a, becoming Wangari Muta Maathai.
Her life at this time also underwent other weighty changes. The court case, lawyer’s fees, and the fact that she had decided not to ask for support from Mwangi left her in financial difficulties (Maathai 2007a, 152–53). Additionally, she had to relocate to a new house with her children. Struggling to make ends meet, she accepted an offer from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to work as a consultant for six months in Lusaka, Zambia, with the Economic Commission for Africa. Upon reaching that decision, she loaded up the kids in the car, drove to Mwangi’s house unannounced, and dropped them off, promising to return in a little while. She failed to explain that the “little while” would be six months. The children would stay with Mwangi until 1985, when they came back to stay with her of their own volition.
Meanwhile, events in the Kenyan political sphere further stimulated the development of her public persona. While her marriage was deteriorating, on August, 22, 1978, Jomo Kenyatta passed away and was succeeded by Daniel arap Moi. This ushered in a period of adverse interactions between Maathai and Moi as his presidency produced conditions that required more radical responses from activists. Her personal contestations with him started with her interest in the position of chair of the NCWK at the annual elections in 1979. She ran for the post that year but lost by three votes and served for a year as vice chair.
The following year, when she ran for chair again, the government, not wanting her to serve, interfered openly with the elections through representatives of the NCWK’s largest member organization, the MYWO. The government representatives expected the MYWO to take charge by making the case that the NCWK was an organization for elite women that was disconnected from grassroots women and who could not understand their needs or represent their interests. Even with this interference, Maathai won the election (Maathai 2007a, 157–58), and she would be reelected year after year until 1987, when she did not run for office. Her initial win caused the government to pull support for the NCWK, forcing members to find other ways to fund their operations and initiatives. Further, the MYWO withdrew from the NCWK, and the government directed most support toward women’s initiatives through the former. Despite these roadblocks and immense financial problems, the NCWK gained local and global visibility for its work on the environment, development, and women’s empowerment under Maathai’s leadership.
The 1980s were tough yet defining years for Maathai. At a time when she was struggling to rebuild her life after the divorce, she started her seven-year service as chair of the NCWK. Moi’s power increased in 1982 when, following a failed coup attempt, the president and his government pushed through a constitutional amendment to make Kenya a de jure one-party state, although it had been so, de facto, since 1969. The hyperauthoritarian president grew steadily more intolerant of any opposition, and this informed his relationship with Maathai for years to come. The government heightened its suppression of detractors and opposition leaders, a situation that would endure through the decade, leading to the exiling of many Kenyans, including academics and artists such as Micere Githae Mugo, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wangari wa Goro. The attempted coup drew the country’s ethnic political identifying lines sharper as Oginga Odinga and his son Raila Odinga were implicated in it, with Raila placed in detention for six years.
It was during this decade that Maathai’s political identity came into focus, fueling her radical activism. In 1982, Maathai gave up her position at the University of Nairobi to run for a parliamentary seat, but she was blocked from running on a technicality, which she contested in court. The University of Nairobi, whose chancellor was President Moi, declined to offer her back her job, which she had left only three days earlier, stating that it had been given to someone else (Maathai 2007a, 162). As Vertistine Mbaya, a board member at the GBM and a close personal friend of Maathai’s, remembered, Maathai had nothing left to lose, and this heightened the lengths to which she was willing to go in her advocacy (Taking Root 2008).
Without a job, she settled in as the only full-time worker and coordinator for the GBM, an unsalaried position. Eventually, funding from the Norwegian Forestry Society, the Voluntary Fund for the United Nations Decade for Women, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) allowed the GBM to expand its programs and staff, and Maathai stayed on as coordinator, ending her job hunt. Having one leader for both the GBM and the NCWK at the same time provided prime opportunities for the two organizations to feed each other’s missions and projects. For Maathai, it was an opportunity to fine-tune her ideas and ideals on questions of women’s rights, environmentalism, and governance.
Maathai’s public persona as a political, gender, and environmental activist and as a critical thinker continued to grow even as the Moi administration intensified its crackdown on government critics, often inciting global criticism for political arrests and human rights abuses. So intense was the state’s focus on Maathai that she encouraged her children to move to the United States for their safety and to continue their studies (Maathai 2007a, 155). The conflict between Maathai and the government on the plans to erect the Times Media Trust Complex Tower, a sixty-story skyscraper, and a statue of Moi at Uhuru Park in Nairobi, chronicled in chapter 4, intensified this animosity. Following this event, the GBM was evicted from the government offices it occupied, and she moved all GBM operations to her house in the South C neighborhood in Nairobi, where it was located until 1996.
The work of the GBM became progressively intertwined with the work of the prodemocracy movement, and Maathai became an outspoken advocate for a democratic Kenya. The 1988 elections left many Kenyans unhappy, and as the 1990s approached, agitation for democratic governance was on the rise. The murder of Foreign Affairs Minister Robert Ouko in February 1990 sparked more dissent against the government, emboldening the prodemocracy movement, which was calling for a return to multiparty politics. The Saba Saba prodemocracy meeting at Kamukunji on July 7, 1990, which organizers proceeded with despite the fact that they had been denied a license, was violently disrupted by police (Muigai 1993, 27). That day, 7/7, would become known in Kenyan history as Saba Saba Day (saba being “seven” in Kiswahili) and remains a significant marker in the journey toward a democratic Kenya. The events of that day galvanized more Kenyans to stand behind the struggle for democracy and captivated the world’s attention. Maathai, later, planted trees at Uhuru Park to memorialize the victims who died on the day. After Saba Saba, she remained a constant fixture in what would become known as Kenya’s