Lessons we can learn from Maathai

When a great achiever and an internationally respected person like Wangari Maathai passes on, some of the logical questions those left behind ask are: what can the world learn from her example?

Are there useful lessons that Kenyans can learn from Maathai’s public life?

There are many lessons that much of the world can learn from Maathai’s public life, but I will comment on only four.

The first is that while we cherish our ethnic, gender, racial and national identities, there are times when circumstances require that we view ourselves as human beings first.

Once we do so, our achievements can be assessed in relation to those of other members of the global human family irrespective of their identities.

Maathai was always conscious of her multiple identities and respected them, but she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 not as a Gikuyu, a woman, an African or a Kenyan.

She won the prize because, on the basis of her achievements, she had towered above everyone else in the global human family.

Thus, she was recognised as the first among the best in the world.

For this reason, describing her as the first African woman, or the first Kenyan, to win the Nobel Peace Prize, as many commentators have done, gives the wrong impression and could be interpreted as demeaning of her achievements, because she was not competing among Kenyans or among other African women.

The second lesson is that if we are in public life, we should focus on doing what is good for society or the community as a whole, not just on what benefits us as individuals.

Maathai’s environmental activities and other campaigns might have benefited her, but the primary motivation behind them was to do what was good for the Kenyan community and for humanity.

If many other Kenyan and African civil society leaders and politicians undertook some of their activities primarily for other-regarding rather than self-regarding reasons, their communities would be transformed within a relatively short time.

Unfortunately, many politicians and some civil society leaders appear to be interested mainly in looking after themselves rather than promoting the issues that would benefit the community as a whole.

The third lesson is that if we are convinced that our cause is right and that it can benefit the community, we should maintain our focus on pursuing it, irrespective of what the political leaders or executives in our workplace may say.

Maathai’s activities in the 1980s and 1990s, which challenged government policies on various projects, enraged the Moi Government, which, in turn, harassed her on many occasions, but she did not give up.