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President William Ruto yesterday led the country in mourning literary giant Micere Mugo who died on Friday after a long battle with cancer. She was 80.

Mugo, a professor of literature at Syracuse University, was known for her fierceness in fighting against human rights abuses in Kenya.

“Her struggle called for extraordinary courage in confronting entrenched hegemonic practices and ideologies, which served the purpose of anchoring the reactionary strategies of the postcolonial power establishment. President Ruto said of Mugo in an eulogising tweet.

“Prof Mugo undertook her agitation with fierce determination, unshakeable courage, captivating imagination and boundless grace. In so doing, she paved the way for many generations of Kenyan intellectuals and freedom fighters, including many women, academic, civil society, political and corporate leaders to pursue and achieve true equality in every sector of national endeavour.”

Defence Secretary Aden Duale offered a 19 per cent discount towards his recent publication For the Record to honour Mugo, saying it is his “little way of paying tribute and honour to this great heroine of our times.”

Former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga also eulogised Mugo, calling her a “revolutionary leader”.

Mugo was born Madeleine Micere Githae in 1942. She was a playwright, author, activist, instructor and poet. She was a literary critic and professor of literature at Syracuse University where she ended up after being forced into exile from Kenya. Her publications include six books, a play co-authored with Ngugi wa Thiong’o and three monographs.

Born in Baricho, Kirinyaga, Mugo was a sister to former ambassador Robinson Githae, former Kenya’s first Chief Nursing Officer Eunice Kiereini. Born of teachers, she received a solid education, attending the prestigious Alliance Girls.

Mugo was experimented on by the colonial government who sought to find out if black people had similar cognitive competencies as white people. She was forcefully enrolled into an all-white high school for two years. She emerged the best student.

She later attended Makerere University where she earned her B.A in 1966. She proceeded for her masters at the University of New Brunswick in 1973, and pursued a doctorate course from the University of Toronto in 1978.

She taught at the University of Nairobi from 1973 where she rose to Dean, Faculty of Arts. She was the first female faculty dean in Kenya. Mugo bloomed in Moi era. The Moi regime afflicted human rights abuses on Kenyans and Mugo stepped up, becoming a political activist. She was consequently harassed and arrested.

One incidence of arrest saw her placed in a cell with men only. “Most struggles are not without casualties. There is a price for standing up and being counted,” she said.

Following the 1982 attempted coup on Moi’s government, there was a determined effort to cramp down on activitist. It is then that Mugo, with her daughters Mumbi and Njeri, ran south. They found welcoming hands in newly independent Zimbabwe, then hungry for intellectuals.

Moi stripped her off her Kenyan citizenship but she acquired Zimbabwean in 1984. She then taught, worked, and wrote from the diaspora. “Writing can be a lifeline—especially when your existence has been denied, especially when you have been left on the margins, especially when your life and process of growth have been subjected to attempts at strangulation,” Micere Mugo