‘Amuthing’ Mashujaa and the value of creative ability

“People mutht be amuthed,” lisps Mr Sleary, the Director of the Circus, in Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times. He says that people “must be amused” as an explanation to Mr Gradgrind, of the relevance of the Circus to the lives of the people. Mr Gradgind, an industrial manufacturer by profession and a utilitarian by persuasion, considers the circus, or “showbiz”, a total irrelevance. I will tell you more about their debate later.

Let me first tell you about my recent “amuthement” at the Mashujaa honours’ list. I admit my rather lukewarm expectations of this year’s Heroes’ Day. I suppose the many momentous events since August had left me, and maybe not a few others, emotionally exhausted.

But when the honours lists were announced, and especially as the photo line-ups of the various awardees began to emerge, I felt a rising heat of excitement under my collar. Then it became an amusement, born particularly of fond memories, before subsiding into a few serious reflections on utilitarianism and competence-based skills.

Artists from different fields have been honoured on previous Heroes’ Day celebrations. But I had the impression that there were more theatre artists on this year’s list than on most previous ones.

As you know, these are the club to which I and most of my best friends subscribe. I had good reason to start celebrating, partly because among us, though there is healthy competition for excellence, the time-hallowed culture is the success of one is success of us all. So, the state recognition of anyone of us is recognition for all of us and all of our community.

Highly prized stock

One of the photo line-ups that that triggered the amusement in me had Steenie Njoroge, Edwin Nyutho, Mueni Lundi, and veterans Tirus Gathwe and David Kakuta Mulwa among several other winners, all wearing their medals. Another heart-melting one had Margaretta wa Gacheru sporting her medal over a glorious embroidered green khaftan. The shots came to me over the lines, because I did not have an invitation to Uhuru Gardens, but they made the occasion as warm and as real as if I had been there.

The good humour emanated vigorously from the robust presence of the medallists in the pictures. You probably know that “stage presence” is our most highly prized stock in trade, that ability to take control of the space around you and use it to the best communication effect. Some of the photos, indeed, looked like curtain line-ups from our best performances of the late 1970s or vintage 1980s. It was also uplifting to realise that most of my comrades from those roaring years are still in wonderfully good trim.

Maybe theatre work has some health benefits yet to be discovered by medical science. Maestro David Mulwa once told me that he had to jog for at least 45 minutes every day before entering the dressing room for his performances in John Ruganda’s 1979 production of Athol Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye. My personal testimony is that the learning of lines (revising dialogue) could be an antidote to the degeneration of memory.

Memory, or memories, indeed, is what made me celebrate my friends’ medal awards with a special relish. For each of those “Mashujaa” I have just mentioned, I could narrate a scene or two in which I had interacted with them in a show at KU, UoN ED II, Kenya National Theatre, Maison Francaise, VOK TV and a host of other performance venues all over Kenya. Shujaa Tirus Gathwe was also my favourite director at the National Theatre.

A recognition that particularly delighted me was that of theatre, visual arts and culture all-round media woman, Margaretta wa Gacheru. I am a strong admirer of Dr Gacheru’s style of total involvement, apparently with thorough enjoyment, into the art scenes and activities on which she writes. She ended up becoming a full-fledged Sagana woman.

It is a reality she seems to take for granted but which she values profoundly in terms of her commitment to her country’s history. As she shared with some of us, what she relished most about the moment of her decoration was the opportunity to sit next to 91-year old Field Marshall Muthoni of the Freedom Struggle.

Most importantly, however, the abundant awards to my comrades in this year’s Heroes’ Day honours list gives me strong hope that our leaders will continue to recognise and support us who work in the creative industry. This should naturally arise out of our leaders’ awareness of and faith in the value of culture, the arts and the humanities to our society. No society can adequately and competently develop on the one foot of STEM-competence (science, tech, engineering, maths). We need the other foot of HED-competence (humanity, ethics, decency) to stride forward into a truly human future.

Utilitarian supporters

We who communicate by “amusing”, know that those who laugh understand and sympathise. Mr Gradgrind and his utilitarian supporters, in Dickens’ novel, did not have time for wonder, sympathy or laughter. What mattered to them were hard “facts” and figures. The only relevant question to them were: what is this, how much does it weigh (or cost), what is its use (or utility)? It did not matter to them if something was beautiful, honorouble, respectful or joyful.

The renascent adoration of STEM-competence and implied neglect of the HUMAN-competence in some of our foundation systems reminds me of that hard-grinding Utilitarian philosophy of 19th century industrialising Europe which marked the most problematic systems of that century: slavery, capitalism, imperialism and materialist communism.

These systems or mixtures of them, made some people and some countries very powerful and very rich. But for most of humanity, certainly in Africa, they were all recipes for Hard Times, in the words of Charles Dickens’ novel.

The hard times are a continuing tale among most of us ordinary people. Could our creative workers, avoiding the pitfalls of both the selfish greed of capitalism and the materialistic triteness of communism, point out to us the way to better times?

Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and [email protected]