Renowned playwright, author, activist, instructor, and poet Prof Micere Githae Mugo has died.
Mugo passed on Friday, June 30 at the age of 81.
Micere Mugo will be remembered as one of the foremost inspirational writers of all time who wrote from the African consciousness with profound effect.
Anything she wrote, was drawn from the consciousness of their realities with a stark touch spirit of stoic determination.
Some of her notable books include ‘My Mother’s Poem and other songs‘ and ‘songs and Poems‘.
Mugo was a political activist who fought against human rights abuses in Kenya.
The activism led to her arrest and she was forced out of the country in 1982 after an attempted coup.
Mugo went to Zimbabwe and continued writing.
In 1991, her second work of literary criticism, African Orature and Human Rights appeared.
Mugo’s publications include six books, a play co-authored with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and three monographs.
Mugo was a founder of the Pan African Community of Central New York and one of the organization’s first presidents.
She was also the founder and former president of the Syracuse-based United Women of Africa Organisation.
At the National Theatre on January 10, 2023 artists, human rights and social justice activists, and feminists, gathered to present Professor Micere Githae Mugo with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Some of her notable books include ‘My Mother’s Poem and other songs’ and ‘songs and Poems’.
Born in 1942 in Baricho, Kirinyaga County, Mugo rose to become one of the well-known literal critics and literature professors in the nation.
She taught in Zimbabwe and at the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University, in the United States.
One of her notable moments was when she was forced into exile in 1982 from Kenya during former President Daniel Arap Moi’s era for activism.
Mugo attended Alliance Girls High School and later Makerere University, where she undertook her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966.
She would later enroll at the University of New Brunswick in Canada for her Masters’s in 1973 before advancing to the University of Toronto for her Ph.D. in 1978.
Mugo embarked on her journey as a lecturer at the University of Nairobi in the 70s and became the first female to be made the Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
She was the founder and President of the Pan African Community of Central New York where she initiated volunteer programs in two prisons.
Prior to her death, Mugo was a consultant for the “Africa on the Horizon” series by Blackside and also served as the chairperson of the board of directors of the Southern Africa Regional Institute for Policy Studies (SARIPS) in Harare, Zimbabwe.
She obtained several international accolades including the Marcus Garvey Award from the Canadian Branch of UNIA in 1985, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for writing and publication in 1992, and the Human Rights Award, Onondaga County Human Rights Commission in 2004 among others.
Several leaders took to social media to pay their condolences.
Former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga eulogized Mugo as a revolutionary leader in the struggle for the country’s independence.
Also, read;
