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Africa

Wangari Maathai: Africa’s tree lady dies in Nairobi

Wangari Maathai: Africa’s tree lady dies in Nairobi

Late on Sunday night, Wangari Maathai – the fearless campaigner, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, the politician, the Tree Lady, and the first ever female PhD holder from East and Central Africa – died in a Nairobi hospital bed after a long fight with cancer. She was 71, and one of the most remarkable women of her generation. By SIMON ALLISON.

Despite a lifetime of activism and achievement, it was only in 2004 that the world was introduced to Wangari Maathai. It was then the Kenyan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace; an award that was all about Maathai’s simple and far-sighted solution to deforestation and desertification in her country.

If there aren’t enough trees, she reasoned, then we should plant some more. Her Green Belt Movement was launched in 1977 to achieve exactly that, encouraging  women specifically to plant trees. It was an overwhelming success. Since its inception, some 20-30 million trees have been planted. That’s a lot of trees, and a lot of people who owe their continuing livelihoods to Wangari Maathai. The Green Belt Movement went pan-African in 1986, with successful offshoots in at least six African countries. It indirectly inspired the Great Green Wall of Africa project, an AU-endorsed vision for an unbroken line of trees stretching from Dakar to Djibouti designed to stop the Sahara Desert from spreading any further south.

Protecting the environment was central to Maathai’s beliefs. She explained her convictions in an interview: “God created the planet from Monday to Friday. On Saturday he created human beings,” she said. “The truth of the matter is… if man was created on Tuesday, I usually say, he would have been dead on Wednesday, because there would not have been the essential elements he needs to survive.”

She was prepared to stand up for what she believed in even as she was beaten, victimised and repeatedly imprisoned by a Kenyan government more interested in short-term profit. She famously started a campaign to protect Uhuru Park, a beautiful park in Nairobi which is that polluted city’s only green lung, from Daniel Arap Moi’s plans to build a $200 million skyscraper. Maathai marshalled female support and protested in the park, and confused police just couldn’t figure how to move them out of the way. They won that battle.

A less successful campaign was waged in 1992 to free political prisoners jailed by Moi. At a protest, Maathai was beaten into a coma by police. Her fellow protestors protected themselves only by taking off all their clothes; their nakedness shamed the police into leaving them alone.

The police couldn’t handle her, but neither could her husband. He is said to have commented that Maathai was “too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control,” and divorced her in the 1980s. For Maathai her divorce was the most painful experience of her life.

After 40 years as an activist, Maathai made the decision to try her hand in government, unsuccessfully running for president in 1997. She was more successful in her bid to become an MP in 2002, elected by her constituency with 98% of the vote as part of the opposition coalition which swept Daniel Arap Moi from power, and served as deputy environment minister during Mwai Kibaki’s first term.

It was around this time she attracted serious controversy by signing up to the Thabo Mbeki school of thought on HIV/Aids, describing the virus as made by “a scientist for biological warfare”, and calling for the creators of the virus to be tried for genocide. In the ensuing storm of criticism she softened her statement, saying all she meant was that the origins of the disease should be looked at very carefully.

With Wangari Maathai’s death, Africa has lost one of its most vocal and influential women, a committed protector of the environment and human rights and an intelligent and compassionate voice in the great debates which define how Africa develops. But her real legacy continues to grow, literally, in the form of the millions and millions of trees which, without her, would never have been planted. DM



Read more:

  • Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai dies in Nairobi in Kenya’s Daily Nation;
  • Sometimes, ecological value overrides economic outcomes in Uganda’s Daily Monitor;
  • Profile: Wangari Maathai on BBC news.

Photo: REUTERS

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