Kenya’s Lone Crusader Wins
Nobel Peace Prize
By Rasna Warah
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Wangari Maathai. UNEP
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There are many firsts in Wangari Maathai’s life. In 1971, she was among the first women in East Africa to obtain a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy degree). Five years later, she became the first woman in the region to chair a university department. In the 1980s, she gained notoriety for becoming one of the first Kenyan women to obtain a divorce, at a time when it was taboo in polite Kenyan society. And today, at the age of 64, she has become the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ms. Maathai, a committed environmentalist, won the award for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, by combining science, social commitment and active politics, she showed the world that it is not just enough to protect the existing environment; rather, it is important to secure and strengthen the base on which ecologically sustainable development depends—on poor rural women.
In 1977, Ms. Maathai formed the Green Belt Movement, which aimed to mobilize poor women around the country to plant trees. She knew that asking a poor rural woman not to cut down a tree for fuel was like asking a hungry man not to fish. Her campaign was, therefore, aimed at producing sustainable wood fuel, while at the same time combating soil erosion and deforestation. To date, the Green Belt Movement has succeeded in growing more than 30 million trees around the country. However, it was her political activism in the 1980s and 1990s that made her a household name, but often also the subject of ridicule, in Kenya.
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| Wangari Maathai, Assistant Minister of Environment of Kenya and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate; at a tree-planting ceremony on 11 October at the UN Office in Nairobi, joined by Klaus Topfer, UNEP Executive Director, and Anna Tibaijuka, UN-HABITAT Executive Director. UNEP photo |
In 1989, she almost single-handedly took on the ruling party, the Kenya African National Union, and President Daniel arap Moi by opposing the construction of a 62-storey building in Uhuru Park, Nairobi’s largest public park. Just before construction work was to begin, Ms. Maathai and some members of her Green Belt Movement held a vigil at the park, despite threats of arrest and physical beatings. Members of the ruling party dismissed her as a “mad woman” and “an unprecedented monstrosity” who threatened the order and security of the country. But Ms. Maathai was undeterred, and the building project was eventually stopped, amid international outcry. (The place in the park where she and her fellow women comrades spent days and nights is now known as “Freedom Corner”.)
Then in 1990, at the Freedom Corner, Ms. Maathai was severely beaten by police while agitating for the release of political prisoners. Ten years later, when large chunks of Nairobi’s forests were being illegally allocated to private developers, she invaded one of these properties in Karura Forest, where a drunk guard and a hired gang of thugs whipped and badly injured her. Although many like-minded people joined her crusade, few were willing to be beaten and arrested.
Fortunately, moral support for Ms. Maathai often came from other countries, which lent her campaign the international legitimacy that made it impossible to crush her. During this time, she won various international awards, including the Better World Society Award (1986), the United Nations Africa Prize for Leadership (1991), the Golden Ark Award (1994) and the Sophie Prize (2004). She is also listed on the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global 500 Hall of Fame.
But in the skewed political climate in the 1980s and 1990s in Kenya, where corruption was rewarded, she cut a lonely figure indeed. It was only with the installation of the new coalition government in 2002 that Ms. Maathai got the chance of making a difference within the Government, not outside it. She was appointed Assistant Minister of Environment, a relatively powerful post, but one that did not hold ultimate authority in the Ministry or within the government.
Winning the Nobel Peace Prize has vindicated not just Ms. Maathai but all Kenyans who have been fighting for a more just society. There is now talk of giving her a ministerial position. Perhaps this gesture is a little too late for her. Kenyans are waiting with bated breath to see what Ms. Maathai will do next. For a woman who is not scared to take the long and treacherous path, it would not be surprising if she achieves yet another first in the near future—that of being the first female president in a continent run by men. |
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Rasna Warah, a writer based in Nairobi, Kenya, is a Board member of the Society for International Development’s Eastern Africa Office. |
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