Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage) by Maathai Wangari

Author:Maathai, Wangari [Maathai, Wangari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307492333
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-14T00:00:00+00:00

The later 1970s and early 1980s were hectic years for me. I was being pushed and pulled in many directions and I pushed and pulled myself, too. As the Green Belt Movement took off under the auspices of the National Council of Women of Kenya, its activities attracted some favorable attention in the Kenyan press. We began to be noticed overseas, too, and a Danish schoolchildren's group began raising money to support our work. Soon, the Green Belt Movement was seen as one of the NCWK's most successful initiatives.

With the encouragement of colleagues in the NCWK, I decided to run for the post of NCWK chairman in 1979. I lost by three votes in an election that had a measure of ethnic politics in it. Many in Kenya, including the new president, Daniel arap Moi, an ethnic Kalenjin, wanted to reduce the influence Kikuyus were perceived to have in the country, including in the leadership of voluntary organizations, one of which was the NCWK, which was quite influential at that time. This is the only way I could understand why the NCWK's organizational members would not have elected me chairman, but overwhelmingly voted for me to be vice-chairman, a position in which I would be the immediate assistant to the chair. (In the NCWK it was the organizations that cast votes, not individuals.)

We used the term “chairman” and not “president” because Parliament had passed a law soon after President Moi took office that decreed that Kenya could have only one president. From then on, heads of organizations or private enterprises had to use another term, which most often was “chairman.”

In 1980I ran again for the post of chairman, and there was still considerable infighting among NCWK members about which candidate to support. This time, it wasn't only my ethnicity that generated opposition, but it appeared that elements in the government took an interest in the election, especially through one organization, Maendeleo Ya Wanawake. I realized I was involved in a political game, even though I believed I was not in politics.

Maendeleo Ya Wanawake (Kiswahili for “Progress for Women”), a prominent national women's organization set up to assist rural women to develop their skills and generate income, was one of the NCWK's members. Its chairman was always a rural woman and the leader at that time was very close to the president. My understanding is that elements in the government encouraged Maendeleo Ya Wanawake to take control of the NCWK from the elite women running it. They knew that if the chairman of the NCWK declared, “We support the new president,” it would carry a lot of weight in the country. The president could then say, “See, the women of Kenya support me.”

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