This is an article from 2002 that I came across in a Google search for
Kikamba links. Note mention of the author's writing in the Kamba
language. This is from the ArtMatters site at
http://www.artmatters.info/books/articles/maillu.php
Publisher of African Bible for President
Writer David Gian Maillu has written what many consider pornography.
However his publishing of the Bible of African religion and growing
interest in politics is confounding many.
If you believe the controversial writer, he will succeed President
Daniel arap Moi later this year when elections are held. Yet he is not
among the garrulous politicians jostling for power in the media glare.
Maillu, who says he has a "blueprint" for Kenya's development,
declares the country's current parliament as an exclusive men's club
that marginalises women and youth. "This club can't discuss polygamy,
rape or any other issue affecting women and youth. Riots are common in
our institutions of learning because the youth feel the government
does not care about them," he says, adding he hopes to correct this
anomaly through "The Dr Maillu Revolution: Mapinduzi ya DR Maillu"
that he says is based on African social order of age and gender.
He calls for three political parties corresponding to youth (18-25
years), women, and men. "Such a system is inclusive, has no room for
tribalism or gender insensitivity, and does not give room to political
party defection unless, of course, one changes one's gender or age,"
he chuckles. In his theory, each party elects its own representatives
to a three-chamber parliament at grassroots and national levels. There
is no voting across gender and age divides at civic and parliamentary
levels except at Presidential polls where candidates from the women
and men's parties are fielded as the youth party is ineligible on the
virtue of the age of its members. But Maillu says this is not
marginalisation as the best youth candidate becomes prime minister
with the winning presidential candidate being declared President and
the runner up deputising. Asked why he has not publicised his
revolutionary views as elections are fast approaching, Maillu says
"Timing is important in African politics. This is why I am bidding my
time lest someone short-circuits it."
What are his credentials for the presidency-does he have experience?
"Kenya needs untainted-not experienced-president," he retorts. "Those
who are messing up Africa are experienced politicians." In 1997,
Maillu's declaration of interest in the presidency at a Press
conference in Nairobi was largely ignored by the media which, he
speculates, colluded with politicians to frustrate him as "Kanu has a
phobia for writers." This time round, Maillu believes he will succeed
President Moi. And who can argue with this palmist over his contention
unless one communicates directly with the supernatural as he? A
self-made man, Maillu was in the 1970s rebuffed by editors and
publishers and vilified by academicians and critics in the 1980s.
Although his formal education ended at Standard Eight, Maillu is
considered East Africa's most published author. He has over 70 books
in print and numerous manuscripts on various subjects in the works.
His humorous, sexually explicit pocket size novels had been bashed as
pornography although it was widely read. Had it not been for his
winning of the coveted Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literauture in 1992
which left critics dumbfounded, he probably would have continued to be
ignored.
Six years later, in July 1998, Maillu stunned detractors further when
he earned a Doctor of Letters degree in African Literature and
Political Philosophy from St Clements University of south Australia.
Maillu says this was not an honorary but earned degree "through
rigorous academic research and writing." "The institution was
impressed by my African Indigenous Political Philosophy, Our Kind of
Polygamy, and Broken Drum novel" he says. The 1124-page Broken Drum is
arguably Africa's longest novel. As to why he had to be recognised by
a foreign institution and not a local one, Maillu says the latter did
not like him for his un-conventional thinking. DR Maillu, who plans to
stand on the yet to be registered Communal Democracy of Kenya Party
(CDK), says he began his writing career as soon as he learnt how to
read and write. His first writing was the translation of an English
story book, The Prince With Golden Hair, into his Kikamba language.
After Standard Eight, he conducted his education through
correspondence and attained an Advanced Level certificate in fine art
and economics.
While working as a graphics designer with Voice of Kenya, Maillu
composed and recited Kikamba poems on the national broadcaster. He
says the programme was so popular that it inspired Ngugi wa Thiong'o
to start writing in the Kikuyu before he ran off tangent into
irrelevance after marrying what Maillu terms unAfrican (Marxist)
ideologies which have alienated him from the people he purports to be
writing for. Maillu later published the poems in an anthology-Ki
Kyambonie (What has Happened to Me?) in 1972. Maillu says he turned to
self-publishing because publishers at the time preferred academic
books to creative writing. They had also rejected his manuscripts
terming terming them pornography. His first products were Kisalu and
His Fruit Garden and English Spelling and Words Frequently Confused
(1972), and Unfit for Human Consumption, My Dear Bottle, and After
4.30 (1973). Although the 1973 publications were condemned, Maillu
does not think they were pornographic as "openness is called for in
African literature." Saying his "writings are usually at two levels:
the humorous (surface) and the critical (intellectual)," Maillu
explains that anyone who reads them at only one level is likely to
misunderstand it." He wrote My Dear Bottle after newspapers declined
to print Mathare Valley, a poem he had written, for "allegedly being
critical of the Jomo Kenyatta regime" for making people live in
squalor. He created a fictional character to say everything the poem
had contained and, he says, readers devoured it.
"I used a prostitute in After 4.30 to warn newcomers to Nairobi of the
dangers of city life while Unfit for Human Consumption was a
commentary revolving around a model family man who backslid from his
Christian morality to go into debauchery," he explains. That he could
write, edit and design enabled him to launch his Comb Books with his
wife, Hannelore. He however laments that powerful politicians
conspired to destroy the company in 1978. "Although I still had four
months remaining before I could start repaying a loan from a
parastatal financial institution, the politicians used auctioneers to
attach my publishing equipment including household goods." Maillu
later rose from the ashes with another outfit, Maillu Publishing
House. He also wrote for other publishers who had by now accepted him.
He is currently working on My High School Love Affair (a novel on
AIDS) as he awaits the publication of his African religion bible, Ka:
The Holy Book of Neter (The Soul of God). Through it, he says, he is
merely formalising African religion in which there is neither hell,
heaven nor paradise. People are born innocent and sinless. He says he
owes no apology for being African. Maillu contends it is
discriminatory to teach Christianity and Islam in schools without
according African religion a similar status. Comparing The Soul of God
with John S Mbiti's African Religions and Philosophy, Maillu says the
latter is "a scholarly view of African religion" while the former is
"the law of African religion." He claims Christianity sprung from the
African religion. Maillu chaired the six-man (all university
professors) team that compiled the Soul of God. The said Bible will be
in various African languages. A specialist in African literature,
philosophy and art, Maillu argues that formal education does not make
any one a better artist but that it nevertheless affirms one in
today's certificate-obsessed world. "Unless a balance is struck
between creativity and academics, the latter usually stifles the
former. But I am not discouraging people from going to school."
Claiming that most African academicians and writers are hypocrites,
Maillu commends writers Chinua Achebe and Ayi Kwei Armah for their
commitment to Africanism but criticises Wole Soyinka for being a
by-product of the West whom he aspires to please through difficult
vocabulary on the pretext that he is not writing for the hoi polloi.
"There are no classes in African thinking. Africans write and speak to
communicate and not to impress Soyinka's so-called intelligentsia."He
says Ngugi WA Thiong'o began well but lost his way when he "copied
others."
Maillu is reissuing some of his best sellers as double volumes in an
attempt to promote African languages. While After 4.30 has a Kiswahili
novel (Ameokolewa), My Dear Bottle has a Kikamba novel attached to it.
Ki Kyambonie, on the other hand, is accompanied by a social
commentary, Kila Kimuisaa Mukamba (What devours the Kamba community?).
"This is an explosive political commentary on the Kamba political
landscape since Kenya's independence in 1963," he explains. He claims
politicians have used the Kamba culture of servility, isolationism and
individualism to destroy the community. A musician, painter,
philosopher, theologian and politician, DR Maillu says he wrote
African Indigenous Political Ideology to prove to the West that Africa
indeed does have an advanced political system.
What are his achievements?
"I have a happy family, am at the peak of my career, and have attained
a nice ripe old age," he says. "I need this revolution to move things
and improve the lives of Kenyans."
Second born among six siblings, Maillu was born of peasant parents in
1939. His father died while he was still a child and was brought up by
his mother. No wonder he says it is from she that he derived most of
his inspiration. Paying tribute to his German wife whom he says she is
more African than many black people, he says, "My wife Hannelore is
the controller of most of the things I do." Father of two-Christine
Mwende and Elizabeth Kavuli-Maillu says he has no regrets in life.
So how would he like to be remembered? "A thinker who was gifted in
many things. I want to leave a melody in people's lives, something
that will inspire them." When he is not giving lectures abroad or
writing in Nairobi, Maillu enjoys traveling to his Makueni home where
he has a botanical garden and a two-story house styled on the
traditional Kamba basket-weaving style. Maillu hopes to someday turn
the property into a museum of Akamba artifacts and college of creative
writing.
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