From Ngũgĩ to Gacaca: The ongoing struggle for epistemic liberation

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has left us. But his voice—unyielding—remains. His lifelong insistence that African languages, thought systems, and institutions must form the foundation of our futures resounds now more urgently than ever. This is not merely a tribute—it is a reckoning with the silences inherited through our education systems. As a teenage girl growing up in Kolwezi, Katanga—born to Rwandan parents in exile—I sat in a classroom studying Latin and the European history of ideas, searching for rootedness. The curriculum, like so many across Africa, was soaked in colonial inheritance. There was little room for Africa’s own histories, philosophies, or voices. But a few courageous teachers disrupted that narrative. I must name them: Nyembo Beya Katanga—whom we affectionately called Papa Raph—and Muyej Mangez Mans Ijimbol. They introduced us to thinkers we were not meant to read: Cheikh Anta Diop, Lorraine Hansberry, Franz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Angela Davis, Paulin Hountondji, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. They offered us mirrors in a world of borrowed images. These minds—some of whom shaped Ngũgĩ, others his contemporaries—planted in me the seeds of a lifelong quest to reconnect with Africa’s ways of knowing. “The call for the rediscovery and the resumption of our history is a call for the rediscovery of the basis of our being.” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the mind That rediscovery is not merely literary or symbolic. It is political, educational, and institutional. In Redemption Song, Bob Marley sang: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds.” This line echoes Ngũgĩ’s core belief: that the colonisation of the mind is the most enduring—and insidious—form of domination. Undoing it requires more than memory; it demands reconstruction. More than sixty years after most African nations gained political independence, we must ask ourselves: Have we truly freed our minds? Have our intellectuals moved beyond pronouncements from ivory towers in inaccessible language? Have our policymakers meaningfully anchored our institutions in the depth of our historical and cultural heritage? Too often, in the name of modernity, that heritage has been erased—or worse, dismissed as folklore. Few have genuinely sought to root institution-building in the time-honored traditions of our societies. Rwanda stands as a rare and deliberate exception—a nation that has, in its post-genocide reconstruction, embraced epistemic liberation as both principle and practice. In the wake of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, while many outside observers issued grim forecasts for a country in ruins, Rwanda turned inward—drawing from its own cultural memory to face the unimaginable. Gacaca courts, rooted in precolonial traditions of justice, were revived to foster accountability and reconciliation at the grassroots. Beyond Gacaca, Rwanda reimagined and repurposed a suite of indigenous practices—Itorero (civic education), Imihigo (performance contracts), Umuganda (communal labor), Ubudehe (community classification), Gir’inka (livestock redistribution), Umushyikirano (national dialogue forums), Umwiherero (leadership retreats), and Abunzi (local mediators)—to respond to contemporary national challenges. These innovations were not flawless, but they were authentically grounded. They anchored Rwanda’s recovery in its own epistemologies while adapting to modern governance needs. In doing so, Rwanda embodied Ngũgĩ’s vision: a modern African state governed by its own values, traditions, and intellectual foundations. This stands in sharp contrast to contexts where decolonial thought remains trapped in academia, while curricula and institutions continue to mirror colonial-era models—often ill-suited to African realities. The chasm between intellectual vision and institutional transformation remains both troubling and paralyzing. Why has so little of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s legacy been integrated into statecraft? Why are so many of our leaders detached from Africa-centered thinking? And why do we still educate students to succeed in systems we ought to be reinventing? Yet there are emerging signs of possibility. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), for instance, offers more than an economic promise—it is a platform to reimagine governance, education, and identity on our terms. In Rwanda, the African School of Governance (ASG) was created to cultivate leadership grounded in local realities. Similarly, the International Security Conference on Africa (ISCA) brings together thinkers and practitioners to co-create responses to Africa’s complex security and development challenges. These efforts reflect what Ngũgĩ called for: a decolonized mind birthing decolonized systems. As I mourn Ngũgĩ’s passing, I reflect—as a university lecturer—that we need more than renewed enthusiasm for concepts like epistemic freedom or knowledge decolonization. We must translate them into pedagogy that inspires students, policymakers, and institution-builders alike. Let Ngũgĩ’s departure not mark the end of a chapter—but the turning of a page. Toward a future where the call to free our minds becomes a lived blueprint for transformation.

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From Ngũgĩ to Gacaca: The ongoing struggle for epistemic liberation