Wangari Maathai: “We Can Never Give Up”

Abstract

Wangari Maathai – environmentalist, political activist, human rights champion, and international spokesperson for environmental justice – combined scientific expertise with traditional African respect for the land and compassion for individual persons. She was thus able to build a movement to preserve the land, foster citizen empowerment, and inspire activism to effect systemic change. Her legacy is both local and international, with more than 5,000 active citizen networks in Kenya having planted more than 51 million trees.

As a child, Maathai was taught to revere the earth as infused with divine presence. Through study, she added knowledge of scientific principles that govern the natural world, as well as complex interactions between humans and earth. What she saw was the delicate and essential interdependence of environmental and social needs.

Over the course of 45 years of activism, in Kenya and on the world stage, she learned to address individual human suffering and challenge the systems responsible for the pain, including political and economic corruption. Maathai was, in many ways, a prototypical grassroots leader in the heroic vein. She insistently rebuffed attempts to romanticize poverty or consider it inevitable; she refused to surrender to oppression and exploitation – sometimes at significant personal risk.

Maathai left rich resources – a memoir and handbook, essays, speeches, papers, editorials – plus an active Movement. Emphasis in this essay, which draws on those resources plus insights of scholars, journalists, filmmakers, family, friends, and critics, some through personal interview, is what her strategies and achievements suggest for ongoing leadership for Africa.

Citation

Dumbleton, S. (2023), "Wangari Maathai: “We Can Never Give Up”", Elkington, R., Ngunjiri, F.W., Burgess, G.J., Majola, X., Schwella, E. and de Klerk, N. (Ed.) African Leadership: Powerful Paradigms for the 21st Century, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 169-185. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-045-120231013