Butere Girls' drama brings back echoes of Moi-era crackdown on plays, free speech

The play is written by Cleophas Malala, the former Secretary General of UDA who was hounded out of office. Butere Girls’ High School who failed to perform the play for lack of props also protested the absence of their directors. 

Police presence was stifling at the festival on Wednesday and it culminated in the arrest and containment of Malala at Elburgon police station. 

The same old days of Ngugi 

Butere Girl’s High School and Malala are in the footsteps of theatre greats like the acclaimed author and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong’o. 

Ngugi, wherever he is today, will surely give a wry smile and smack his beard knowing the path he set ablaze decades ago is still warm. 

Plays remain a potent form of stating dissent and passing information way after his pioneering efforts from the sixties and seventies against the first government of Jomo Kenyatta. 

In 1977, a controversial play by the Kenya’s foremost author was banned and the author detained without trial. Undoubtedly, Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) is Ngugi’s most prolific piece of writing in collaboration with the late Ngugi wa Mirii. 

Ngugi, a prolific writer with pen poised for better governance, was arrested within months of his book’s publication and staging it in late 1977. Ngahiika Ndeenda is discerning piece of literature in its vision of a land riven with class strife, greed and avarice. 

His detention helped shine a light on Kenya’s human rights record. It also shaped his life in writing and political activism.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was released in 1978, after the death of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta. However, he was denied the right to return to teach at the University of Nairobi and shortly thereafter went into exile in 1982 and has never come back despite making visits during the Kibaki and Uhuru regimes. 

Ngugi returned to Kenya in July 2004, but his return had a tinge of tragedy. He was brutally attacked in his hotel and his wife got raped. He wrote a number of other best sellers but they were not taught in local schools for the next two decades.

Silencing political dissent 

When the former President Daniel Moi regime took power, it had no room for political dissent. Known for his tenacity, in detention, Ngugi produced the metaphorical “Caitani Mutharaba-ini” (Devil on the Cross), written on toilet paper  while serving jailterm at Kamiti, alongside the prison memoir “Detained.” 

He was on a tour of London to promote the two publications in July 1982 when he received a fresh coded message from the Nyayo administration warning that he would receive “a red carpet treatment” upon his return. Ngugi never stepped back into the country until Moi left power. 

Moi would not be spared the inconvenience of having theatre plays depicting his authoritarian regime in different ways and more so after the failed coup against his government in 1982. The Moi era saw an already bad situation of published drama worsening as there were even fewer plays published.

The concerns of the late years of Kenyatta era continued to dominate the major plays written at this period, but painting an even grimmer situation of the country and its leadership. 

Crackdown on playwrights 

Fear of harassment by the state and the exile of intellectuals from whom most of Kenyan published drama originated are some of the factors that contributed to a deteriorating situation of theatre in general. 

Many playwrights left the country and by doing so, were uprooted from the environments and social connections that shaped their perspectives. Those who stayed behind in Kenya began to focus more on social themes, embracing the symbolic mode of writing to hide the political messages in their plays or stopped writing drama altogether.

The Echoes of War 

The trending and controversial Butere Girls High School play is set in a fictitious Arabic society. It is a tale intergenerational conflict and mistrust, it shows the power of social media and artificial intelligence (AI) in fighting for social space and justice, it juxtaposes digital innovation to traditional and cultural norms. It explores other themes among them mercy, reconciliation and unity in a very inspiring way.  

Although it set far away from Kenya, it resonates very closely with the aspirations of the youth today, popularly referred to as the Gen Z, who aspire to take their future into their own hands to redirect the ship of their lives safely across the ocean and into harbor as seen through their lenses. 

A memorable quote from the play states, “this is a generational war, a war against authorities who have turned a deaf ear to our cries. A war against our own parents, who cling to their rigid ways… still trapped in outdated norms and primitive practices of the past.

 It is a war against a society that brands us “a rotten generation,” condemning us without understanding us. It is a war against religious leaders who chain our modern minds, refusing to let us explore the possibilities of a new world.” 

At the end of the play, the two divergent group, the brave new world and the aged rigid folks of yore, set aside their intergenerational war as they come to a bigger realization: it is not worth losing their society to the 'Echoes of War'.

Most people might not have heard of known of this play until April 3 April 2025 when the High Court ordered the principal of Butere Girls' High School to recall 50 drama students and allow them to prepare and participate in an upcoming drama festival. The court order was as a result of the principal’s attempt to block students from performing the play at the national drama festivals in Nakuru. 

Chaotic scenes were witnessed on Wednesday evening as journalists were assaulted and the students’ safety compromised in the melee that followed. 

Malala expressed shock at the police action saying the deployment of police among students was a blatant suppression of freedom of expression and speech and art.

Protests in Kenya have always had a dynamic form of expression especially when countered with police orchestrated violence and a curtailing of other basic rights of expression such as picketing. 

With Kenya Kwanza coalition having clamped down on the constitutionally guaranteed right to picketing, just like in the days of old, other avenues, notably from creatives in using music and play may just be the next avenue to continue the protests. 

The countrywide Gen Z protests in 2024, police killings, abductions and calls for the president to stand down is evoking memories of another era: the 24-year-rule of Daniel arap Moi. 

However, Kenya is a very different country today courtesy of its new constitution, boasting a range of institutional reforms and a freer media environment. 

The suppression of the creative sector from carrying messages might not be the best or effective way to handle dissent from the theatre, listening, changing and empathizing might just be the deal.