Dedan Kimathi has been a presented in the play as the leader of the freedom fighters in Kenya. He has been project as a daring and courageous person and his ultimate goal is freedom of his people. Dedan Kimathi is the high priest of Mau Mau.
He also has been projected more of a general character as a leader of freedom fighters rather than specific individual. The Preface to the play clearly states:
“We agreed that the most important thing was for us to reconstruct imaginatively our history, envisioning the world of Mau Mau and Kimathi in terms of the peasants’ and workers’ struggle before and after constitutional independence. The play is not a reproduction of the farcical ‘trial’ at Nyeri. It is rather an imaginative recreation and interpretation of the collective will of the Kenyan peasants and workers in their refusal to break under sixty years of colonial torture and ruthless oppression by the British ruling classes and their continued determination to resist exploitation, oppression and new forms of enslavement.”
Kimathi has been presented as he existed in the minds and memories of the people among whom he lived and grew up and those with whose help he organized the freedom struggle and as he is mentioned in the official records, documents and history books written by some armchair academics. Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Micere Mugo have projected Dedan Kimathi in the play to counter the colonial’s portrayl of Dedan Kimathi as a gun-totting terrorist.
Kimathi is a legend among the Kenya people. They talked of him as still being alive. “‘Kimathi will never die’, the Woman in play says. “But of course if your people have killed him, go and show us his grave!’ She said this in a strange tone of voice, between defiance and bitterness and for a moment we all kept quiet.”
The authors have not tried to eulogize Kimathi as they also point out his weaknesses. For example, in the Third Movement, while speaking to the Girl and Boy, the Woman makes the following remarks about Kimathi:
“...He so hated the sight of Africans killing one another that lie sometimes became a little soft with our enemies. [softly]: He, Great commander that he was, Great organizer that he was, Great featless fighter that he was, he was human! [almost savage/v, bitterly]: Too human at times!”
Dedan Kimathi has also been presented as being friends of Kenyans. In the Second Movement, when Shaw Henderson visits Kimathi in the prison for the First Trial, he says - “All your people know me I’m a Friend”.
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