Political Corruption and Capitalist Dominance in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's 'Petals of Blood'

1. Political Corruption and
Capitalist Dominance in
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's 'Petals
of Blood'
Paper N/o., Subject Code, Name : 22413
Paper 206: The African Literature
Prepared & Presented By : Nirav Amreliya
Batch : 2021 - 2023 (M.A. Sem. 4)
Enrollment Number : 4069206420210002
Ro. N/o. : 18
Submitted To : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,
Vidhyanagar, Bhavnagar - 364001
(Dated On : 10th March, 2023)

2. ➢ Introduction to the Novel : Petals of
Blood :
● Written by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Published in the year 1977.
● ‘Petals of Blood’ (1977) deals with social and economic problems in East
Africa after independence, particularly the continued exploitation of
peasants and workers by foreign business interests and a greedy
indigenous bourgeoisie. (Britannica)
● The plot is based around the Kenyan Emergency and is also known as Mau
Mau Rebellion which took place in British-ruled-Kenya during the years
1952 to 1960 wherein British wielded victory until Kenya got independence
on 12th December, 1963.
● Major Characters : Munira, Wanja, Abdulla, Karega.
● Minor Characters : Nyakinyua, Kimeria, Chui, Nderi wa Riera.
● The novel offers an account of the combination of political content and
artistic form.

3. ➢ Political Corruption :
➔ Petals of Blood attacks the socio-political reality in Africa. Bribery, corruption and nepotism became the order of the day. It is
this social reality that aroused the interest of Ngugi. (Olutola)
➔ In attempting to settle this conflict, a difference must be established between the basic ideology, which a writer holds and the
writer’s presentation of that ideology in artistic form. On this, Marx and Engel’s propounded “objective partisanship” theory
which in practice works out as a compromise between political commitment, which should be embraced, and its open
expression in fiction, which is to be avoided. (Olutola)
➔ Terry Eagleton, a leading Marxist critic, in his book ‘Marxism and Literary Criticism’ (1976) writes :
“I think what we’re striving for is a form of organization that will release this tremendous energy (of the people of East Africa). I think
there is the danger of a black bourgeoisie blocking this energy of the bourgeoisie, but of the middle class everywhere, trying to block
the energy of people. But even more important in Africa, there is the problem of sheer economic development- the colonial
government left Africa, especially Kenya or Uganda in a state of sheer primitive underdevelopment, so the problem is clearer in these
countries because of the smallness of the bourgeoisie and because of the enormous underdevelopment of the countries. And also on
the whole the economy of the country is not always in the control of the people inside so there are a lot of troubles in East Africa.”
(Eagleton)

4. ➔ In the fifth chapter of the novel ‘Petals of Blood,’
there comes the reference of the political rot in
Post-Independent Kenya :
“The year that followed Wanja’s departure from
Ilmorog was momentous for the whole country. It
was the year that started with a mysterious
political murder in open daylight without the
assassins ever being caught. He was a national,
of Asian origins it is true, but one famous in the
whole country for his earlier involvement in the
struggle for independence and after, for his
consistent opposition to any form of post-
independence alliance with imperialism. He was
an implacable foe of wealth gotten from the poor
and whether in or outside Parliament, he would
call for an agrarian revolution.” (Thiong’o)

5. ➔ Politicians and the state forces of coercion do the acts of
savagery and brutality carried out on individuals’, Ngugi
Wa Thiong’o’s ultimate thematic insistence is to underline
the inevitability of a revolution of the workers and peasants
and the overthrow of the dispensation of the comprador
bourgeoisie. (Olutola)
➔ Day in and day out, the African continent is racked by
afflictions, disasters, macroeconomic crisis and
dysfunctions, debt over-hang, corruption, high level
illiteracy, squalor, disease, hunger and other negative and
destabilizing conditions thrown up by imperialism in
cahoots with a greedy and unpatriotic ruling class. And the
continent appears to be in limbo and suspended animation
as the received development paradigm from the West has
failed abysmally in addressing the ravaging socio-political
and economic problems that have engulfed it. (Uwasomba)

6. ➔ In the following chapter number six, the author
highlights the uselessness of the education system
that was only focused on theory-based teaching and
learning along with the timid teachers who - here in
the times of dire drought in Ilmorog - fail to address
the issue at moment. :
“It was hopeless: it was a gigantic deception. He and
Munira were two ostriches burying their heads in the
sand of a classroom, ignoring the howling winds and
the sun outside. Was this not the same crime they had
accused Chui in Siriana? How could they as teachers,
albeit in a primary school,ignore the reality of the
drought, the listless faces before them? What had
education, history and geography and nature-study
and maths, got to say to this drought?” (Thiong’o)

7. ➔ Ania Loomba has rightly quoted Ernest Renan in her
groundbreaking work titled as
‘Colonialism/Postcolonialism’ (Second Edition, 2005) with
reference to what we know today as Eugenics :
“Racist ideologies identified different sections of
people as intrinsically or biologically suited for
particular tasks. Aimé Césaire angrily quotes Ernest
Renan on this point:
Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who
have wonderful manual dexterity and almost no sense of
honour; govern them with justice, levying from them, in
return for the blessing of such a government, an ample
allowance for the conquering race, and they will be
satisfied; a race of tillers of the soil, the Negro … ; a race of
masters and soldiers, the European race. Reduce this noble
race to working in the ergastulum like Negroes and
Chinese, and they rebel. … But the life at which our workers
rebel would make a Chinese or a fellah happy, as they are
not military creatures in the least. Let each one do what he
is made for, and all will be well.” (Loomba)

8. ➢ Capitalist
Dominance :
➔ There’s no rule that political fiction shouldn’t wear its heart on its sleeve and
Petals of Blood, which is filled with intricate threading of different stories
and first-person narratives, is not a simplistic anti-capitalism manifesto.
(Kasim)
➔ Ngugi interprets the class struggle in the novel along the Marxist line. The
struggle is a result of the conduct of the power elite in their relationship with
the lower classes. He regards the Kenyan power elite,the businessmen,
intellectuals, and the traditional rulers, among others, as accomplices that
have failed the Kenyan masses because they are obsessed with wealth
and property and forget the plight of the ordinary people, thereby
abandoning them to providence and charity. (Omijie)
➔ Capitalism took over when colonisation bowed out of the scene. It was only
a change of drivers and not a change of direction. Unfortunately, this ugly
scène still permeates most contemporary African nations where the
comprador bourgeoisies in collaboration with international organisations,
business organisations, retired army generals and police chiefs own large
expanses of land, thus depriving the peasants of their means of livelihood.
(Omijie)

9. ➔ Ngugi has criticised capitalism in this novel. He has exposed the ugly side of it. He
has aptly shown that the fruits of freedom are not for the freedom fighters as the
parasite class has taken the place of the colonial masters. Freedom fighters like
Abdulla who had an idealistic mission for their country regret for being a part of
freedom movement as they lost everything they have in post-colonial capitalistic
Kenya. Ngugi’s women characters show the social as well as capitalistic aspects.
They are mere a commodity or a thing of sexual satisfaction. So, Ngugi’s this novel
offers a scathing criticism of post-colonial capitalistic Kenya. (Waghmare)
➔ The capitalists and their agents, Chui, Mzigo and Nderi, move in their development
projects like roads, banks, factories, distilleries and housing estates, which quickly
destroy the fabric of traditional Illmorog. The destruction of the mysterious spirit -
Mwathi by a giant built bulldozer - and crushing of his abode by the Trans-African
Highway are the concrete symbols of annihilation of a once proud society by a
ravaging force of modernization, and the deceived peasants lose their land and their
possessions to the local profiteers and their international collaborators. The general
mass has always been subjugated by the so called elite class because of the division
of the local public on regional, linguistic and ethnic basis. The public wait for 'flowers
to bloom' as promised by the deceitful politicians, and thus, cast their votes in favour
of Nderi wa Riera once again. After Karega's departure Wanja plans to take revenge,
she rebukes and tortures Munira to his ruin. (Bhardwaj)

10. ➔ In the Part Two : Toward Bethlehem, Abdulla gives his testimony of once having been the part of the Mau
Mau Rebellion which was against of the bourgeoisie of Kenya and British Colonizers. :
“...and despite the sun and the drought and his anxiety over the fate of his donkey he would feel that Mau
Mau was only a link in the chain in the long struggle of African people through different times at different
places…Aaa! New horizons…again…like that time in the forest…with Ole Masai. They called him Muhindi,
but now he did not mind that.” (Thiong’o)
➔ In the further course of the same part, we find that Nderi wa Riera turning from “truly a man of the people”
into an aristocratic capitalist. :
“Then he was flooded with offers of directorships in foreign-owned companies. ‘Mr. Riera, you need to do
anything; we do not want to take too much of your busy and valuable time. It is only that we believe in
white and black partnership for real progress.’ The money he had collected from his constituents for a
water project was not enough for piped water. But it was adequate as a security for further loans until he
bought shares in companies and invested in land, in housing and in small business. He suddenly dropped
out of circulation in small places. Now he could only be found in special clubs for members only, or in
newspapers - photographed while attending this or that cocktail party. As if to reinforce his new social
standing, he took a huge farm in the Rift Valley.” (Thiong’o)

11. ★ Works Cited :
❏ Bhardwaj, Dr. Pallavi. “Marginalization, Lack of Agency and Subjectivity in Ngugi Wa ... - IJCRT.” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF
CREATIVE RESEARCH THOUGHTS (IJCRT), Baddi University of Emerging Sciences and Technology, Baddi, Makhnumajra Dist. Solan,
Himachal Pradesh-173205. India., 3 Mar. 2020, https://www.ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2003005.pdf.
❏ Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Ngugi wa Thiong’o". Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Jan. 2023,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ngugi-wa-Thiongo. Accessed 10 March 2023.
❏ Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism. University of California Press, 1976.
❏ Kasim, Saudha. “Looking Crony Capitalism in the Eye.” Deccan Herald, DH News Service, 30 July 2022,
https://www.deccanherald.com/sunday-herald/sunday-herald-books/looking-crony-capitalism-in-the-eye-1131148.html.
❏ Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Routledge, 2010.
❏ Olutola, Akinwumi, and Vishwanath Bite. “Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood as a Mirror of the African Revolution.” The Criterion An
International Journal in English, 26 Oct. 2021, https://www.the-criterion.com/ngugi-wa-thiongos-petals-of-blood-as-a-mirror-of-the-african-
revolution/.
❏ Omijie, Chukwuyem Othniel, and Chinedu Aroh. “Class Relation and Struggle in Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood and Festus Iyayi’s
Heroes.” Questjournals.org, Quest Journals Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science, 18 July 2021,
https://www.questjournals.org/jrhss/papers/vol9-issue7/Ser-3/E09073337.pdf.
❏ Thiong'o, Ngugi wa. Petals of Blood. Penguin Books, 2005.
❏ Uwasomba, Chijioke. “The Politics of Resistance and Liberation in Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross.” Journal
of Pan African Studies, Chijioke Uwasomba Department of English Obafemi Awolowo University , Ile-Ife , Nigeria ., 30 Nov. 2006,
http://www.jpanafrican.org/docs/vol1no6/PoliticsofResistanceandLiberation_vol1no6.pdf.
❏ Waghmare, Dr. Balkrishna Dada. “Aayushi International Interdisciplinary Research Journal : Pramod P.Tandale : Free Download, Borrow,
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Mahavidyalaya, Kundal. Tal. Palus, Dist- Sangli. MS. (INDIA) (Affiliated to Shivaji University Kolhapur), 24 Jan. 2016,