Margaretta wa Gacheru: She who loved art and it loved her back

There is a moment when one gets really bad news that time seems to stand still – like the moment in a play where the stage goes dark in between acts so that they can change the set.

And you know in your heart, and as a fact, that the before-act and the after-act will never be the same again.

I experienced exactly such a moment on Thursday (nane/nane) when I got a phone call that “Margaretta wa Gacheru passed away this morning, after being taken to hospital on Sunday …”

What made it more surreal was that I had been with Dr Margaretta on her last ever public outing just last Saturday at the KITFEST (Kenya International Theatre Festival)’s dual launch of their 2024 brand ambassador as well as the new Face of KITFEST, 2024.

I was seated right behind her, with her on the front row of the show.

And how apt that for a woman who had written about Kenyan art and theatre every week across half a century, Dr Margaretta ’s final curtain call was at the ultimate venue for thespians – the Kenya National Theatre in Nairobi, right next to the University of Nairobi (UoN).

It was to the UoN that Margaretta Swiggert from the US arrived 50 years ago in 1974 as a Rotary ambassador, looking to get a Master’s degree in African Literature in two years – and then return to her American homeland.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, ironically playing the role of academic gatekeeper, decreed that her first degree in Sociology and Comparative Religion wasn’t ‘relevant’ to literature; leading young Margaretta into the arms of Professor Micere Mugo – who “rewinded” her back to do an undergraduate degree in literature.

Now she could do her Masters’, although Ngugi once again led her off her chosen “Pan African” subject and into African American literature, where Margaretta handed in a thesis on Malcolm X and the theme of the “house nigger.”

In the meantime, Margaretta had been busy on stage with the UoN’s Travelling Theatre led by poet John Ruganda and lawyer-actor Stephen Mwenesi, first appearing on stage alongside one John Sibi-Okumu in The Trial of Dedan Kimathi.

And also fell in love with a fellow humorous graduate student, Gacheru wa Migwi, whom she married in 1978 to the great enragement of society, a union that lasted until 1982, but was blessed with a son called Migwi.

By then, Margaretta had made the switch from Westlands to Eastlands, Mercedes to motorbike, and made peace that Kenya was going to be her home unto death.

In 1992, the year Margaretta joined Nation Media Group (after 15 years with Nairobi Times, the Weekly Review and Kenya Times as a theatre writer), at first, she wrote about the political women who emerged in 1992 – Agnes Ndetei, Beth Mugo, Charity Ngilu and ‘Iron Lady’ Martha Karua – before getting three weekly columns to cover the arts, theatre and cultural lifestyle across Kenya.

She would still be writing in the theatre for the Business Daily as well as researching for an American university at the time of her death, despite being physically ill – in a wheelchair with oxygen tubes and her minders, but still ‘Margaretta’ was cheerful.

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