NALSU mourns Zarina Patel, Kenyan human rights, working-class champion, historian, friend

The Neil Aggett Labour Studies Unit (NALSU) at Rhodes University, South Africa, is sorrowed by the passing of Kenya's remarkable champion of human rights, writer, and artist, Zarina Patel at the age of 88. Zarina was managing editor of AwaaZ magazine in Nairobi, Kenya, which is online here, and author, including of Unquiet, the biography of the founder of radical trade unionism in East Africa, Makhan Singh. During her lifetime, she was honoured, but was always a humble and kindly person, believing that "principle, commitment, honesty and sacrifice are not just utopian ideals but are possible, and, in fact, essential."

Zarina Patel was an internationalist, a champion of the working-class, and of women. We were honoured to have Zarina speak at our 2021 Vuyisile Mini Workers School for trade unionists and working-class movements, on the theme "Back to the Future: Lessons from African Labour History." NALSU and AwaaZ co-published Building African Working-Class Unity: The Makhan Singh Memorial Lectures in 2022, co-edited by Zarina and NALSU's Lucien van der Walt. A complete copy of this text can be downloaded here . It includes texts by Baba Aye, Antonater Tafadzwa Choto, Pyarally Rattansi ,and van der Walt, as well as one of Zarina's last essays, on "Makhan Singh and the Ghadarites." Her essay has been posted here. More joint work on African labour and left history can be found here.

Born in 1936, Zarina was involved in struggles to better this broken world for most of her life. A full account of her rich life is simply not possible in this single tribute. We draw here on our engagements with Zarina, on the excellent biography by leading labour historian Dr George Gona of the University of Nairobi, "Zarina Patel: An Indomitable Spirit" and on Zarina's own web page here for what follows.

Zarina grew up in the final years of British colonialism. She witnessed, too, how the newly independent government headed by the Kenyan African National Union (KANU) under Jomo Kenyatta developed into a repressive, highly corrupt, patronage-based system and personality cult. Under Kenyatta and his successor, Daniel arap Moi, the KANU party-state sought to swallow the trade unions and control all independent spaces in society. It also had a hand in the assassinations of opponents, both within and outside the party, including Pio Gama Pinto, Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, and Tom Mboya. This regime was, nonetheless, blessed by the USA as a Cold War ally.

Trained as a physiotherapist, Zarina was influenced by feminist, left-wing, socialist, and Marxist ideas. As George Gona shows, she was sceptical of dogmatic assertions, favouring debate and democratic practices. What she would not compromise on was the need to fight injustice and exploitation; she was an ardent opponent of class systems, and of communal, racial, and religious strife and hatred.

After a brief period of reconciliation and nation-building, Kenyatta's government had promoted a narrow Kikuyu ethnic chauvinism; Moi continued the tradition, but increasingly relied on a Kalenjin base. Divide-and-rule extended to fostering hostility to Kenya's South Asians, of which Zarina was one. As in southern Africa, African / Asian links were far older than European colonialism, but most Indians arrived as cheap labour under Britain. The communalist politics that wracked post-colonial Kenya fostered violent clashes and youth militias amongst the poor, with the tragic results seen in, for instance, the 1992 and 2007 elections; it included attacks on racial minorities, with, for example, rioters targeting Indians in 1982, and orchestrated anti-Indian killings in 1993.

Zarina was part of the underground 12 December Movement active in the 1970s and 1980s. This was a non-racial, socialist movement with black and Asian members. Zahid Rajan, later Zarina's partner, was another member. Leaders included Ngugi wa Thiong'o, East Africa's premier novelist. Repression was intense. Zarina and Zahid weathered the storm., and helped the cell produce underground newsletters. Zarina also did remarkable paintings, participated in a Catholic Church leadership development programme that mobilised the poor (and got banned by Moi in consequence), and engaged in battles against corruption.

She was tireless in her fight to restore the 1963 democratic constitution, and, more generally, open space for the popular classes to remake Kenya from below. In 1991, she was central to the struggle to prevent the destruction of the Jeevanjee Gardens in downtown Nairobi, working with figures like Wangari Maathi. These had been donated by local Indian critic of colonialism, Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee, way back in 1906. She served in the leadership of the SDP, which is now the Communist Party of Kenya. She was part of the Asian African Heritage Trust, and the Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission taskforce.

This background fostered Zarina's commitment to new research into the history of struggles in Kenya, of Kenyan labour and the left, and of local Indians in the workers' and independence struggles. Challenging stereotypes and exclusions, she began work on a ground-breaking series of books, issued from 1997. Challenge to Colonialism tells the story of Jeevanjee;  Manilal Ambalal Desai: The Stormy Petrel recovers the story of a remarkable radical  who worked closely with Harry Thuku in the anti-colonial movement;  The In-between World of Kenya's Media: South Asian journalism, 1900-1992 sheds light on important traditions of critical, fact-based journalism; and there is, of course, Unquiet: The Life and Times of Makhan Singh, which stands alongside Singh's own two-volume history of the unions as a towering labour history of the British period and early independent statehood.

And, during all this work, the indefatigable Zarina also edited AwaaZ with Zahid, and established the Makhan Singh Memorial Lectures, worked with many, many groups, and people, among them the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the unions, and NALSU. 

Zarina's life and research revealed a far richer, more complex history than the narrow patriotic history fostered by KANU, which had reduced the whole liberation struggle to the party, and Kenyatta. Her works drew attention to the role of journalists, the independent left, workers, and trade unions - and Indians - in fighting for independence, change and dignity. They showed that Indians were Kenyans, part of the nation, past and present. And her work also pointed to paths not taken, drew lessons for today.

In Unquiet she showed, for example, how the demand for full independence in East Africa was first voiced by the unions, by Makhan Singh - and how these unions organised across borders, spanning Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. She showed their connections to movements in South Africa, India, Britain, and Ireland. She showed how, after independence, many who fought for a better Kenya, like Singh and Oginga Odinga, were marginalised - some, like Pinto, were assassinated - as the new KANU elite captured the state. And, as Gona noted, Zarina herself was "among the Kenyan patriots, revolutionaries ... who fought for and instigated the political changes that Kenyans are enjoying."

Many Kenyans, Africans, and people everywhere, mourn Zarina, and we join them in extending our condolences to Zahid, her widower, and her son, Raahat. As Ngugi wa Thiong'o's powerful tribute poem, available here reminds us, "You always marched step by step with all seekers of justice," "Marching with all the workers and peasants of Kenya, Africa, Asia and the world," "Zarina you have left us/ To be with us always."

Note: A partial bibliography of Zarina's writings, and reproductions of some of her paintings, can be found in Gona's "Zarina Patel: An Indomitable Spirit." The AwaaZ website is a rich repository, as is Zarina's own webpage.