Africa’s Green Belt

On a winter day in 1999, Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Maathai was doing what comes naturally to her: planting trees. As in Thailand, where a Buddhist monk who protected trees by ordaining them was thrown in jail, Maathai’s activities made the authorities uneasy. The seedlings that Maathai and her cohorts in the Green Belt Movement were attempting to plant replaced trees felled by real estate developers, whose private security guards were reportedly behind an attack that left Maathai’s head gashed and many of her supporters injured.

Danger is nothing new to Maathai. The 1999 incident represented the third physical assault on the courageous activist in recent years. In 1992, she was clubbed unconscious by police during a hunger strike and was hospitalized in critical condition. She can expect no protection from the Kenyan government: President Daniel arap Moi has called her “a mad woman” who is “a threat to the order and security of the country”; a government minister recently called her “an ignorant and ill-tempered puppet of foreign masters.”

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