Legacy Leaders – Wangari Matthai

Throughout October, Next Leadership will be observing Black History Month by recognising the leaders who have influenced us. Our Legacy Leaders series kicks off with insights from Founding Director Kate Coleman; over the coming weeks, we will hear from members and close friends of the Next Leadership family. We encourage you to share your personal Legacy Leaders with us as we celebrate those who have shaped our culture, society and values.

Wangari Matthai

There are many ways to define legacy, but few are as inspiring or as succinct as:

You have no idea what your legacy will be because your legacy is every life you touch.

- Maya Angelou

I’m grateful for the many pioneers who have ‘touched’ my life over the years, including Maya Angelou of course.  This makes it particularly difficult to know where to begin our legacy leaders series for Black History month.

We know, in theory at least, that black people make history every day, but this month is a powerful reminder of the need to shine a light on what is often relegated to the shadows. Having been erased from the ‘official’ record myself and then reinstated, following the outcry of others, I know firsthand that in many pioneer ‘stories’, the contributions of people of colour are often overlooked, downplayed, erased or ‘whitewashed’. Clearly, ‘honour’ is not necessarily given where ‘honour is due’ (see Romans 13:7).

This is no less true in the global environmental movement where remarkable individuals such as Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough or groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace are well known. But environmental degradation disproportionately impacts those who live in the global South, so we should not be surprised to find many unsung heroes/sheroes emerging from that part of the world too.

Wangari Muta Maathai (1940-2011) was born in Nyeri, a rural area of Kenya in East Africa.  Her life was a series of firsts: the first woman to gain a Ph. D. in East and Central Africa; the first female chair of a department at the University of Nairobi; and the first African woman and the first environmentalist to become a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2004.  Professor Maathai authored four books: The Green Belt Movement; Unbowed: A Memoir; The Challenge for Africa; and Replenishing the Earth.

She was often inspired by the Bible, described herself as ‘a good student of Jesus Christ’ and was uncompromising in her denouncements of Christianity’s connection to colonialism, and its readiness to endorse the culture of exploitation of natural resources that ultimately led to soil erosion and environmental devastation.

As a result of her background, struggles and opportunities, she was blessed with piercing insights others simply did not have.  She could see the way that global and local corruption, poverty, war, deforestation and the lack of empowerment of women were interrelated, and she set out to do something about it.  Thankfully, she didn’t do it alone, she grounded herself in her relationships with rural women.  She knew that women who were routinely ignored and dismissed could not be so easily avoided if they worked together.  So together they started a movement whose impact is still being felt today, many years after her death. 

She recognised that, ‘every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times, but all of them picked themselves up and kept going and that is what I have tried to do.’  She is ‘among the most prominent environmental activists of the last century’ and has had a lasting impact on women’s lives and the environmental movement today. The evidence, as they say, speaks for itself, “since she founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, over 51 million trees have been planted and over 30,000 women have been trained in conservation trades that help them earn a sustainable income, such as beekeeping and forestry. Moreover, the Billion Tree Campaign has seen universal success and has transformed into the Trillion Tree Campaign with ever greater ambitions, particularly needed as climate change accelerates.”  (Celebrating the life and legacy of Wangari Maathai July 30th 2021).

Numbers 11:25 describes an instance where God took some of the power of the Spirit that was on Moses and put it on seventy others, momentarily.  If you aspire to be, or even ‘accidently’ discover, as I did, that you are, a first in your field, sphere, sector, denomination or church, you will need some of Wangari’s Spirit of conviction and commitment (but this time, without end). 

In Wangari’s own words: “We cannot tire or give up.  We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!” 

Will you?