Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Makerere’s Wall of Fame, and Reminder of The Struggle

It’s been a while since I last posted at #TheBalcony. Today it will be somehow longer. 

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Makerere’s Wall of Fame, and Reminder of The Struggle

It was on a quiet Wednesday evening, as we drove back from the 2025 Journalism Awards Gala, me and comrade Wilson Kaija, that the news struck us. We were somewhere between the laughter of the after-party navigating Kampala traffic when Kaija’s phone buzzed with a message in one of the WhatsApp groups. A forwarded link, followed by a flood of reactions. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is dead.

That was how we heard. Just like that. In the age of social media, the world no longer waits for the morning paper or the late-night news. Anything breaks through instantly. and so did this. The subject of our conversation changed.

We talked of Ngũgĩ the way admirers do — with awe, with love, and with frustration. Frustration not with him, but with the world that seemed to never fully honour him. We wondered, half-joking, half-angry, whether the West had deliberately denied him the Nobel Prize. That most coveted medal, that global nod. How could they not? The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood, I Will Marry When I Want; these were not just books. They were blueprints for thought. Manifestos of resistance. Testimonies of a people’s pain and possibility.

Yet, year after year, his name would appear on the list of Nobel Prize contenders only to be passed over. We laughed bitterly, the way you laugh when the truth stings too much. But then again, we reminded ourselves, we are not the Swedish Academy. We don’t sit in their quiet, oak-lined rooms and decide whose voice is worthy of the world’s applause.

Still, it felt wrong.

And perhaps that’s why his death felt heavier than just the passing of a great writer. It felt like the closing of a chapter in the long, unfinished book of African liberation. Ngũgĩ was one of the few who never betrayed the struggle. He never traded his pen for comfort. He wrote in his native Gikuyu. He challenged colonial legacies, not just in governments but in the classroom, in literature, in language itself.

I remember shifting in my seat as the car rolled on. That night, I had been named runner-up in the Religion Reporting category. It was my first time submitting work to be judged, and I had dared to hope — hoped to take the win, to hear my name called, to climb the stage not just as a journalist, but as a victor. So yes, truth be told, wanted more than just second place.

Kaija and I talked for the rest of the ride, not just about Ngũgĩ’s books, but about his beliefs, his courage, his insistence on writing in African languages, and his rejection of the colonial idea that value must be measured by Western acceptance. He had been denied accolades, yes, but not greatness.

That night, our conversation was a small act of remembrance. Two young journalists, returning from a ceremony, suddenly reminded that the real awards are not medals or plaques — but the enduring echo of words that dare to tell the truth.

As we continued reflecting on Ngũgĩ’s passing, a message lit up on Kaija’s phone again — this time from James Tumusiime, another comrade. His message, too, carried a familiar tone of disbelief and disappointment. He lamented how Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o — a literary giant, a revolutionary mind, and a constant name among the Nobel Prize for Literature frontrunners — had once again left this world without ever receiving that ultimate recognition. Year after year, Ngũgĩ’s name had been whispered among likely contenders, his works cited as worthy. And yet, the prize never came. It was, in Tumusiime’s words, a robbery in plain sight.

Kaija and I couldn’t help but laugh — not because it was funny, but because it was absurd in that way only injustice can be. We had just been talking about that very thing. Like so many others who had heard of Ngũgĩ’s death that night, we were thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same frustration. It felt like a shared grief, not just for a man, but for the world he deserved to be celebrated in — a world that had denied him a seat among its officially canonized.

Our conversation carried us all the way to my humble home, where Kaija finally dropped me off. But the discussion lingered. We talked about Ngũgĩ’s lifelong fight to decolonize the African mind, his refusal to write in colonial languages, his radical turn to Gikuyu, and his belief that language was not just a tool, but a battlefield. His book Decolonising the Mind had been one of the first to shake my understanding of what it meant to be truly free. He reminded us that the chains weren’t only in the hands of the oppressor — sometimes, they lived inside our very tongues.

As Kaija drove off, my mind wandered again to an unforgettable article I had read not long ago — written by Carey Baraka in The Guardian. The piece documented three powerful days spent in conversation with Ngũgĩ. It was not just a profile. It was a meditation on legacy, on struggle, on survival. Baraka had managed to capture not only Ngũgĩ’s intellect, but his warmth, his aging body carrying the weight of decades of resistance. If you haven’t read it, I urge you — find it. Search “Three Days with Ngũgĩ”. It reads like a balm, like sitting at the feet of a prophet.

By the time I went to bed, it was well past midnight. But sleep came slowly, burdened with thought.

Thursday morning arrived too soon. The weight of the previous evening still hung in the air. I found myself on the campus of Makerere University, drifting through the now-familiar corridors of the Department of Journalism, looking for Wilson, who had promised to help me with a pending matter.

The Department of Journalism at Makerere University sits on the right wing of the CHUSS Building  standing next to St. Francis Chapel. The CHUSS is divided, in an informal but very symbolic way. on entrance to the right, you’ll find the Department of Literature, and to the left, Journalism, a curious arrangement, I’ve always thought, for two disciplines that often walk hand in hand, chronicling truth and shaping narrative in their own distinct ways.

Before I could even step into the department, I paused for a moment to take in the ordinary chaos of a typical Makerere life. The university pulsed with its usual rhythm of students drifting across the courtyard, many dressed in what my late mother would have described as “half-naked attire,” with raised eyebrows. others in bright and skimp clothes roamed the pathways. Some lounged on benches, others posed for selfies in front of faculty walls, a few scrolling through their phones, completely absorbed. and others moving left right and center possibly to lecture halls. The campus, as always, lived in layers; history on one hand, youthful exuberance on the other.

When I finally stepped into Wilson’s office, the air shifted immediately. He was already deep in discussion with a group of students. The atmosphere inside was tense. The kind of tension you can only find in a room where a lecturer is asking about assignments that were due, and the students are searching their brains for excuses that don’t sound like the last ones. Their eyes betrayed them with guilt, and panic.

Feeling like an old man intruding on a scene I had once known all too well, I quietly signaled to Wilson that I would return shortly. He glanced up, offered a half-smile, and mouthed, “Five minutes.”

So I stepped back out and, without much thought, crossed over to the Department of Literature, directly opposite. That’s when I found myself standing before what can only be described as a shrine of memory or say the Wall of Fame.

There they were all framed in quiet dignity, photo after photo of Makerere’s literary greats, hung side by side in soft harmony. Most of them in black and white, their images glowed under the crisp lighting that filled the hallway. The cream-colored walls held their stories gently, while a few beautiful art pieces added life and color to the space. The corridor, lit by a bright white bulb overhead, felt more like a gallery than an academic building. A sanctuary of sorts.

I counted the portraits, perhaps 31 or 32, though my memory might betray me on the exact number. Still, each face carried the weight of a legacy. And among them, on the left side after you hsave entered the corridor — the ninth frame if my counting was right — was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

His name was etched in the bottom corner of the frame, just like the others. But something about it,  maybe it was the freshness of the loss, or the gravity of the man, made it stand out more sharply than the rest. It wasn’t just a photograph. It was a monument to a struggle to language, to liberation, to literature as a weapon of the people.

The Wall of Fame didn’t feel like just a hallway of portraits. It felt like a silent conversation between generations; between those who came before and those of us who still search for meaning in their words.

"That’s the man and he stands among other great men here," said a woman, her voice calm but resonant, as she emerged from one of the doors across the hallway, directly opposite the frame where Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's portrait hung.

She must have been in her seventies, maybe older, her face carried the wisdom of time and her steps the authority of someone who had walked these Makerere corridors long before most of us. I didn’t catch her name, and she didn’t linger long enough for introductions.

She paused, looked at me for a moment, and added with a faint, almost rhetorical chuckle,

"I haven’t seen many people come here to look at that frame the way you’re doing. Why are you admiring the dead? why did you choose to come here today?”

Then, before I could even say a word, she existed, just like that, her soft footsteps swallowed by the silence.

I remained there alone still wordless, my gaze fixed on Ngũgĩ’s photograph. Her words stayed with me. Why are you admiring the dead? It wasn’t an insult, no. It was a question filled with quiet grief, perhaps even frustration not at me, but at the way we remember greatness too late. The way we bury not just the body, but the struggle.

I scanned the wall again. Close to Ngũgĩ there was Pio Zirimu, the formidable scholar and literary critic, whose commitment to African aesthetics laid much of the foundation for postcolonial literary thought. Benjamin Mkapa, former president of Tanzania, stood there too. Then there was John Nagenda, whose quiet intellect and literary grace had once moved Ngũgĩ himself to admiration.

Each frame held a name. Each name, a struggle. These were not just writers and leaders. They were architects of African consciousness, rebels with pen and voice. Yet here they now hung, mostly undisturbed  save for the occasional visitor like me, who stopped not only to admire but to remember.

My thoughts returned to something more recent as the other day, while preparing a paper, I had found myself drawn once more to Ngũgĩ’s works. I had been revisiting Decolonising the Mind and I Will Marry When I Want. In the former, Ngũgĩ lays bare the invisible chains of language, how colonialism didn’t just seize our land, but took hold of our minds by replacing our words, our metaphors, our very ways of seeing. And in the latter, he dared to go where many feared — exposing how post-independence African leaders had become mere agents of neo-colonialism, burying the dreams of the freedom fighters beneath new forms of greed and foreign dependency.

In these works, I felt the fire that had once terrified governments and censors alike. Ngũgĩ didn’t just write books. He intervened in history.

Yet here I was in a quiet hallway, staring at his portrait, surrounded by other fallen giants. A wall of fame, yes, but also a wall of forgotten struggle, where greatness is celebrated more in passing than in practice. Where we admire the dead, yet neglect the living legacies they fought to build.

That particular play, I Will Marry When I Want , always pulls me toward the work of Yusuf Serunkuma, a thinker and writer I admire. There’s something striking about the parallels between his sharp commentaries and Ngũgĩ’s fearless critique of post-independence betrayal. Yusuf doesn’t mince his words. He has made it his mission to consistently call out today’s African leaders — men and women who, in his view, have become little more than agents of neo-colonial interests. He writes and speaks with clarity and conviction, describing how these leaders collude with multinational corporations, siphoning the continent's wealth, leaving Africa ravaged, underdeveloped, and perpetually on its knees, begging for scraps from the very powers it once rose against.

Like Ngũgĩ, Yusuf refuses to be silent in the face of this betrayal. He holds up a mirror to our societies, reminding us that the colonizer may have left the throne, but his tools of debt, language, economic control, and cultural erasure are still firmly in place, now wielded by African hands. In this way, I Will Marry When I Want is more than a play. It’s a prophecy and a warning one that writers like Yusuf continue to echo in the present, urging us not to forget the struggle, and certainly not to romanticize freedom when its fruits remain unequally shared.