ICON OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
“Who shall find the Proverbial valiant woman?” I have! A political activist, environmentalist, author, wife, mother, university professor, feminist, parliamentarian, founder of the Green Belt Movement, first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize “in recognition of her contribution to sustainable development, human rights and peace”, and the inspiration for “Care for the Earth” environmental resource center in Ndori (Rarieda), Kenya, which I instituted fifteen years ago.
Wangari Muta Maathai was born the third of six children on April 1, 1940 in the rural village of Ihithe (Nyeri) Kenya. But she was nobody’s fool! Already as a small child she was an iconoclast, doggedly determined to get an education, when most girls were uneducated. Wangari did primary education with the Consolata Missionary Sisters in Kenya before making her way to Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas, and finally to graduation with a master’s degree in biological sciences from the University of Pittsburgh. In time she became the first woman in all of East and Central Africa to earn a PhD and to head a university department.
As the leader of the National Council of Women in Kenya she endured vicious attacks from President Moi’s Kanu government, as well as from her own conservative colleagues in the council. Many hypocritical moral pretensions were leveled against her by those who were unquestionably intimidated by her intellectual superiority.
While Professor Maathai chose never to portray herself as the typical single-issue gender activist but always insisted on being measured as her own person and not as a plank for the feminist caucus, never along the lines of “us-versus-men”. Nonetheless, she was a prophetic trailblazer for all those women who have been stereotyped by the less competent.
Wangari was a grassroots woman with a “preternatural luminosity of spirit” and a glittering academic career open to her. Not at all infatuated by designer clothing or the affectations of an accomplished expert, she was most often found in the villages, dressed in a traditional Kikuyu wrap-around, planting trees with her network of rural women helping to restore indigenous forests. Her dedication and devotion to the greening of the planet (over 30 million trees planted since 1977), earned her world renown and recognition.
But in Kenya, Wangari Maathai will forever be remembered for two courageous, feisty crusades against the corrupt culture of those in power: the destruction of Uhuru Park (the only green spot in the sprawling city of Nairobi with its horrific slums), confiscated by Kanu politicians for an ego-driven construction of their 60-storey office complex; and the exploitation of Karura Forest on the edge of the city, which serves as the lung for the congested metropolis. These events brought her to prison and torture. Professor Maathai remained “Unbowed”, the title of her captivating memoirs. Karura Forest was spared, and because of an international outcry, the government had to abandon the Uhuru Park project after an elaborate public ground-breaking ceremony.
Upon her death on September 25, 2011, the political power that brought her so much grief, now having to eat humble pie, promised a state funeral. At the time of this writing, the burial of this valiant woman had not yet taken place. May she enjoy the prize of everlasting peace!
