Unbowed

Maathai attempts to stop the construction of a giant skyscraper in Uhuru Park, a beloved park in the center of Nairobi. (“Uhuru” means “freedom”). Maathai learns of the skyscraper’s planned construction from a young law student who wishes to remain anonymous. She is appalled at the needless expense of the project and the destruction of valuable natural space. She sees the project as not only a destructive act in itself, but also a symbol of the arrogance and indifference the Kenyan government officials have for their own people.   

Maathai wages a relentless campaign against the park. She writes to government officials, and to both local and international presses. While she receives the support of many Kenyan citizens—many of whom also write letters of protests to local papers—she is targeted by the government and consequently shunned by many friends and acquaintances. She is even treated as a “national emergency” in a Kenyan parliamentary debate, in which various Kenyan ministers vilify her in highly charged and personal terms (190).  

The Green Belt Movement shares offices with the National Council of Kenyan Women (NCKW), and the Kenyan government forces the NCKW first to move out of its headquarters and then, once it is discovered that the new, shabbier headquarters are also government buildings, to move into Maathai’s house. Here, she strategizes and hosts her group. A young political agitator takes shelter with Maathai in exchange for a job, only to eventually organize a strike against her, demanding that she pay her workers higher salaries. Both the police and the press side with Maathai in this strike. 

With the help of international funds and United States philanthropists, Maathai is eventually able to move her headquarters out of her household and into a small house in Lang’ata. International protest also helps to stop the planned construction in Uhuru Park. 

This chapter details the increased authoritarianism and repressiveness of the Kenyan government, and Maathai’s own increased pro-democratic activism. After a government minister, Robert Ouko, dies under suspicious circumstances, Maathai realizes that she herself might be a target. She is sheltered for a short period of time by friends in New York City where she has been giving conferences about the Green Belt Movement. Meanwhile, a pro-democracy demonstration in Kamukunji Park turns into a violent riot once security forces intervene. The demonstration will be known afterwards as Saba Saba, or 7/7 in Kiswahili: the date on which the demonstration occurred.  

After holding a publicity conference with the pro-democratic group, Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD), Maathai receives word that she might be a target for assassination. She barricades herself inside her own home, which she outfitted with barred windows after a burglary. She attempts to placate the cops outside of her house with tea; however, her window bars are eventually sawn through, and she is arrested and put into jail. Her former husband makes sure that her house is locked in her absence so that it is not looted. 

Maathai is released from jail due to pressure from international voices, including those of United States senators Al Gore and Edward M. Kennedy. Her brief stay in jail exacerbates the arthritis in her legs. While she’s recovering in the hospital, she is petitioned to join another cause: Release Political Prisoners. The group is composed of Kenyan mothers whose activist sons have been thrown in jail. Maathai directs the group in a public hunger strike in Uhuru Park. Once police break up the strike, the group then takes refuge in a cathedral, for what will ultimately be a year. Due to international pressure, the sons are released from prison in 1993. Maathai’s involvement will get her thrown into prison, and then hospitalized for injuries—this time a brain concussion—once again.  

While helping the striking mothers to organize, Maathai also attends international environmental conferences, including the Earth Summit, where she meets Al Gore. She tells him about her visit to Haiti and how that country’s deforestation has inspired her to intensify her efforts to protect Kenya’s own forests. 

During the Kenyan elections of 1992, Maathai chairs the Middle Ground Group, which attempts to find common ground among pro-democratic opposition groups. Despite her efforts and those of like-minded people, the election is compromised. Kenya now has a multi-party system in theory, but President Moi and his KANU party continue to hold most of the power.  

Maathai believes that the government is instigating tribal struggles and ethnic violence throughout Kenya as a way to maintain power: “Ethnicity is one of the major strategies that politicians have used to divide Africans” (236). She travels through the Rift Valley, her former homeland, holding teach-ins and attempting to unite and educate people. She founds the Tribal Clashes Resettlement Volunteer Service, which attempts to heal tribal divisions by peaceful means, such as forming youth football clubs. Maathai’s methods directly oppose the government’s practice of putting rural citizens in camps. The government continues to target her, and she must disguise herself while traveling. The government even goes so far as to blame her for the violence and uprisings. 

Maathai goes underground in Kenya, while at the same time drawing international attention to her cause and taking occasional trips abroad: “It is no exaggeration to say that these friends, the awards I received, and the conference I attended saved my life” (248). The tribal conflicts eventually recede, but Maathai remains alert to the possibility of such conflicts in the future. She discusses these conflicts as a natural outcome of Kenya’s mixed history as a tribal society and a colonial subject.  

During the Kenyan elections of 1992, Maathai chairs the Middle Ground Group, which attempts to find common ground among pro-democratic opposition groups. Despite her efforts and those of like-minded people, the election is compromised. Kenya now has a multi-party system in theory, but President Moi and his KANU party continue to hold most of the power.  

Maathai believes that the government is instigating tribal struggles and ethnic violence throughout Kenya as a way to maintain power: “Ethnicity is one of the major strategies that politicians have used to divide Africans” (236). She travels through the Rift Valley, her former homeland, holding teach-ins and attempting to unite and educate people. She founds the Tribal Clashes Resettlement Volunteer Service, which attempts to heal tribal divisions by peaceful means, such as forming youth football clubs. Maathai’s methods directly oppose the government’s practice of putting rural citizens in camps. The government continues to target her, and she must disguise herself while traveling. The government even goes so far as to blame her for the violence and uprisings. 

Maathai goes underground in Kenya, while at the same time drawing international attention to her cause and taking occasional trips abroad: “It is no exaggeration to say that these friends, the awards I received, and the conference I attended saved my life” (248). The tribal conflicts eventually recede, but Maathai remains alert to the possibility of such conflicts in the future. She discusses these conflicts as a natural outcome of Kenya’s mixed history as a tribal society and a colonial subject.  

Maathai decides to run for Parliament but loses the election due to blatant sabotage. She is frustrated by the “cult of personality” that exists even in political opposition groups: “Communities rallied around one of their own, encouraging well-known personalities to compete with those from other communities, irrespective of philosophies or ideologies” (258). 

She returns to her work with the Green Belt Movement. Her project is now saving the Karura Forest, which has been earmarked for development. She and her group plant trees in the forest to protest its change from public to private land. They encounter violent resistance from police officers and government-hired thugs. Meanwhile, the buildings under construction are destroyed in a separate protest by local tribes. A student group also becomes separately involved in the protest, resulting in another violent confrontation. International condemnation increases, eventually halting the construction; however, illegal logging continues.  

Maathai must cope with the death of her mother, which she calls “the greatest personal loss I have had so far” (274). She describes her mother, who lived with her in her later years, as someone who was a great appreciator of nature if not an environmental activist. She also describes her as a “forever friend” (275). 

Maathai becomes co-chair of the Jubilee Campaign, a campaign focused on relieving the African national debt. She also becomes involved in the Kenyan Debt and Relief Network, cofounded by the Green Belt Movement. Again the Kenyan government tries to suppress her activism: While walking to the Nairobi World Bank office to deliver a signed request for debt relief, Maathai’s group (which includes many clergy members) is thrown in jail. Maathai herself escapes this punishment due to circumstance and luck. She, along with many others, agitates for the prisoners’ release. They are released on bail the following day. Maathai is vocal to the press about her outrage at their treatment. 

Maathai herself is arrested twice more in this chapter: once for protesting the proposed gift of 170,000 acres of Kenyan national forests to government officials and then for quietly commemorating Saba Saba with friends and colleagues in Uhuru Park. Her time in jail is brief, and she is released both times due to pressure from her network of friends and activists: “All they wanted was to humiliate and intimidate me. They achieved the former, but never the latter” (284). 

After a stint at Yale University, where she teaches in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Maathai decides again to run for Kenyan Parliament. She runs as a part of the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) and this time wins 98% of the vote. Her campaign slogan, “Rise up and walk,” is a reference to the Biblical story of the disciple Peter telling a beggar that he cannot give him money, but can still empower him: “What I wanted the voters to understand was that I could not give them alms or even miracles, but together we could lift ourselves up and address the conditions of our poverty and disempowerment and regain our sense of self-respect” (287). Her election takes place alongside the 2002 election of Kenyan President Kibaki, who succeeds President Moi. 

In this epilogue, Maathai writes of hearing the news on October 8, 2004 that she has received the Nobel Peace Prize. She was on her way from Nairobi to her parliamentary constituency in Tetu when she received the call from Oslo on her cell phone. Once at her hotel, she publically celebrates the news by planting a tree before Mount Kenya: “At this moment I felt I stood on sacred ground” (293).  

Maathai discusses the philosophy of “linkage” that has inspired her political life and earned her the Nobel Prize (294). She uses the analogy of an African stool with only three legs: one leg represents human rights, the other leg “sustainable and equitable management of resources” and the final leg “cultures of peace” (294). If any one leg is missing, the seat of the stool—that is, the state—cannot survive. 

Maathai also discusses her continuing activist commitments outside of her job as Minister of Parliament, including being a goodwill ambassador for the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem. She urges those who “witness the degraded state of the environment” to continue their activist work: “We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!” (295)