Devils in power: Postcolonial shadows, African struggles and gospel of self-salvation in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s ‘Devil on the Cross’

By Umar Osabo

NGUGI wa Thiong’o, born in 1938 in Limuru, Kenya, is one of Africa’s most potent voices against colonialism and its disfiguring aftershocks. Initially writing in English under the name James Ngugi, he later abandoned both the language and the colonial identity it reinforced, choosing instead to write in his native Gikuyu. His imprisonment in 1977 by Jomo Kenyatta’s regime, following the production of his radical play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), was the final straw that drove him toward a lifelong commitment to linguistic and cultural decolonization. Devil on the Cross, written while he was incarcerated and smuggled out on toilet paper, marks a pivotal moment in African literature: the moment when the colonial language was metaphorically and literally flushed out.

Ngũgĩ’s political radicalism was never performative. He regarded literature not merely as entertainment but as a weapon in the hands of the oppressed. For him, the post-independence African elite were not liberators but collaborators in a continuing colonial enterprise. Devil on the Cross is his explosive indictment of neocolonial Kenya, and by extension, the rest of the African continent.

“Writers are the memory of a people. They must have a sense of history and a sense of the future.” — Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.

Set in a fictional Kenyan town named Ilmorog, Devil on the Cross follows Jacinta Wariinga, a young woman who represents the average African caught in the triple jeopardy of gender oppression, economic exploitation, and cultural alienation. Through Wariinga’s journey, Ngũgĩ lays bare the soul of a nation desecrated by the very elites who promised liberation.

The novel’s centerpiece is the “Devil’s Feast,” a grotesque gathering of Kenya’s comprador bourgeoisie. At this event, capitalists and bureaucrats boast of how they exploit the masses. Their speeches are laced with nauseating self-congratulations and grotesque moral inversions. Here, Ngũgĩ parodies the postcolonial ruling class, showcasing how they have become more ruthless than their colonial predecessors.

“A nation that worships the Devil on the Cross and crowns him with thorns of gold—that nation is damned.” (Ngũgĩ’s Devil on the Cross)

This parodic “feast” symbolizes the grotesque inequality in post-independence Kenya. Rather than eliminate colonial structures, the new elite have inherited them, using the same systems to dominate their own people. This tragic irony is a central pillar of postcolonial African reality.

Ngũgĩ situates his novel in a Kenya still reeling from the hangover of British imperialism. Although the country achieved independence in 1963, the political structure that followed was a continuation of the colonial system under a new flag. Land dispossession, poverty, and ethnic favoritism defined the post-independence state.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o

The Mau Mau uprising, once a symbol of heroic resistance, became a footnote in the state’s official history. Fighters were marginalized, and those who collaborated with the colonialists rose to power. This betrayal forms the core resentment in Ngũgĩ’s work. In his view, the liberation struggle was co-opted by a Western-educated elite who spoke the language of freedom but practiced the politics of exclusion and greed.

Wariinga’s Nairobi is a dystopia: full of moral decay, exploitative landlords, corrupt employers, and false prophets. The novel’s depiction of a corrupt university professor, an exploitative boss, and a deceitful religious leader reveals how every institution has been infiltrated by the same devilish logic of self-enrichment.

Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth provides a vital lens through which Devil on the Cross can be understood. Fanon warned of the emergence of a national bourgeoisie that would inherit the state and mimic colonial exploitation. Ngũgĩ dramatizes this warning.

“The national bourgeoisie steps into the shoes of the former European settlement… and develops a taste for power.” (Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth)

In Devil on the Cross, the ruling elite’s mimicry is almost surreal. They host ceremonies to venerate their looting, disguise their plunder as “development,” and parade their collaboration with Western companies as “investment.” Like Fanon’s comprador bourgeoisie, they are intermediaries, serving external interests while bleeding their own people.

Ngũgĩ emphasizes that colonialism did not end—it simply mutated. Economic dependency on Western capital, political systems modeled on Westminster and Washington, and an education system that prioritizes English over indigenous languages all ensure that African countries remain colonies in spirit.

Ngũgĩ’s narrative vision aligns with Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People and Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. All three writers explore the betrayal of the independence dream.

Achebe’s Chief Nanga, like the devils at Ngũgĩ’s feast, is a caricature of the corrupt African politician. Armah’s nameless protagonist faces the same existential despair Wariinga does. But Ngũgĩ alone calls for armed cultural and ideological resistance. Where Achebe offers satire and Armah offers despair, Ngũgĩ offers revolution.

“The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born because the ugly ones have entombed the soul of the continent.” (Armah)

Through this intertextual matrix, Ngũgĩ’s novel becomes not merely a Kenyan tragedy but an African one. The corrupt elites of Ilmorog, Lagos, Accra, and Harare are cut from the same colonial cloth.

Wariinga’s journey is emblematic of the triple colonization African women face: colonized by empire, patriarchy, and class. She is exploited by a boss who impregnates and abandons her, harassed by landlords, and belittled by an intellectual elite that sees her only as an object.

Her transformation—into a gun-wielding revolutionary who executes one of the exploiters—is deeply symbolic. It is Ngũgĩ’s dramatic declaration that African women are not passive observers but active agents of change. Her arc is not just personal redemption but revolutionary catharsis.

Feminist readings of the novel, such as those by Florence Stratton, praise Ngũgĩ’s refusal to make Wariinga a mere victim. Instead, she embodies the rage, resilience, and renaissance potential of African womanhood.

Writing Devil on the Cross in Gikuyu was not merely an aesthetic choice; it was a political act. Ngũgĩ argued that language is not neutral—it carries the weight of ideology. To write in English, for him, was to continue colonizing the African mind.

In his essay ‘Decolonising the Mind,’ Ngũgĩ writes: “Language carries culture, and culture carries… the entire body of values by which we come to perceive ourselves and our place in the world.”

In Nigeria, as in Kenya, the preference for English in schools, courts, and governance perpetuates alienation. Indigenous languages are sidelined, and with them the cosmologies, ethics, and philosophies that once sustained African societies.

To liberate the African mind, Ngũgĩ insists, we must first liberate the African tongue.

Nigeria’s saga mirrors Kenya’s: an independence struggle, followed by a parade of corrupt rulers, military coups, civil war, and a ruling class that worships foreign capital. The looting of oil wealth, the marginalization of women, the ethnicization of politics—these are not unique failures but shared symptoms.

Ngũgĩ’s Wariinga could be a Nigerian graduate navigating Lagos, a Zimbabwean nurse in Harare, or a Ghanaian student facing Westernized curricula. Her story is everywoman’s story in postcolonial Africa.

The call, then, is urgent: Africa must look inward. Political reform must be grounded in cultural revival. Education must reconnect with indigenous knowledge. Economic development must prioritize local empowerment over foreign dependence.

Ngũgĩ is not content to diagnose—he prescribes. The novel’s end, where Wariinga executes a corrupt magnate, is symbolic. It is not a literal call to arms but a demand for moral and political reckoning.

Reforming Africa means: Reclaiming indigenous languages and philosophies. Dismantling exploitative capitalist structures. Centering women in development. Grounding education in African realities. Holding leaders at all levels accountable.

Wariinga is not an assassin—she is an archetype. Her revolution is internal and external. Her gun is not just metal; it is metaphor. It fires at fear, silence, and complicity. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross is a clarion call to Africans: the age of excuses is over. Colonialism may have planted the tree, but it is we who water its poisoned fruits. The novel ends not with despair, but with confrontation. That is its genius. It does not lull us into pity but provokes us into action. The devil wears our skin now—and only we can exorcise him.

“Tomorrow is born of today. What we do now will shape the face of our children’s future.” —Ngũgĩ

Let us, then, dethrone the devil—and enthrone the people.

* Dr. Osabo, a critical thinker, writer, a pan-African journalist and social commentaror, can be reached at: umarmosabo@gmail.com