“The Gen Z must understand power, where it comes from and who
operates it,”
That was the last bit of advice
that Pheroze Nowrojee gave amidst
the agitation by the young people in
Kenya against bad governance.
The senior counsel’s life-long passion for human rights and activism
was embedded in wide reading and
understanding of the past reform
and civil rights agitations in other
parts of the world, from Mahatma
Gandhi’s work to the Martin Luther
King Jnr’s August 28, 1963, march
on Washington for jobs and freedom to advocate for the civil and
economic rights of African Americans.
It is the organising principles from
these movements that informed his
approaches to activism using his law
practice over the years.
Nowrojee succumbed to pneumonia on Saturday in the US, where
he was receiving treatment.
He was
aged 84 and had a big family.
The prolific author and leading
Second Liberation activist believed
lawyers were a key wheel in its success.
He represented numerous political detainees, activists, journalists
and opposition leaders who were
victims of state oppression.
“Two key factors, as they grew,
year by year, defeated Moi. First:
the lawyers constantly held up the
alternative to Moi. Second: the lawyers suffered repression just as the
people did. It made the people believe in the lawyers. It led to belief in
the lawyers’ programme,” he once
wrote in Awaaz magazine.
The writing was titled “Saba Saba
1990 and the Lawyers”.
And in another public lecture, he
once said, “The lawyer’s duty is not
just to argue the law. It is to argue
justice, even if that justice is inconvenient to power.”
Born in 1941, Nowrojee hailed
from a family steeped in Kenya’s
early history.
