By Comrade Wanjohi wa Makokha
I write today with a quiet heart. News has reached me from an ex in faraway Berlin that the great man of philosophy, Jürgen Habermas, has died. He lived a long life thinking about how human beings speak to one another, argue with one another, and build societies together. For many people, he was a great philosopher of Europe. For me, a poet still pursuing philosophy long after conferment of a doctor of philosophy, ears ago, he became something more personal: a teacher whose ideas walked with me through the dusty roads of my life here in Africa.
Habermas was born in Germany in 1929, just five years after our second president Daniel arap Moi was born in Sacho, Baringo County. He grew up in a country that had been broken by war and dictatorship. Perhaps that is why he spent his whole life thinking about democracy and about how ordinary citizens can speak freely without fear.
Two of his books made him famous across the world. The first was The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. In this work, he explained that democracy needs spaces where ordinary people can gather and discuss public issues, places where ideas are tested by conversation. These spaces may be newspapers, cafés, meeting halls, or even street corners. Habermas called this shared space “the public sphere”.
The second important work was The Theory of Communicative Action. In this book, he argued that human beings can solve problems through honest conversation. If people speak truthfully, listen carefully, and respect one another, they can reach understanding. He called this process communicative action.
These ideas may sound like they belong in universities and thick books. But in my life, they found a home in unexpected places. I grew up in this great country of ours where politics is not an abstract word. Even our flag shows us so. It is something that sits beside you when water fails to run from the pipe. It sits beside you when the roads turn to mud after rain. And it sits beside you when leaders promise things and forget them after elections.
When I began living in a slum in northern Nairobi, I saw how our countrymen and countrywomen, waseewasee, create their own small democracies even in hardship. In the evenings, men and women gather outside kiosks, near water points, or under the thin shade of tin roofs. There we talk. We argue. We laugh. We complain about the price of maize flour. We ask why garbage is not collected. We ask why the drainage is blocked.
Later, I helped organise small ex-alcoholic meetings in our community. We met on open ground, we still do, sometimes with plastic chairs, sometimes just standing. We spoke about sanitation, water, no maternity spaces and safety. No microphones, no big up flags, just voices.
When I first read Habermas and his idea of the public sphere, I smiled quietly under my moustache and whiskers. I thought: this German man has described something I see every day. Our dusty gatherings in Githurai were also a public sphere. We were citizens speaking to each other and slowly gathering courage to question authority.
And I saw something else he insisted on. Wajameni, let us call it, rational debate. Habermas believed democracy grows stronger when people challenge leaders with arguments, not with violence. In our meetings, we learned to do exactly that. We prepared questions. We demanded answers from local officials. Sometimes we succeeded. Sometimes we did not. But the act of speaking together already changed us.
Habermas also entered my home… homes. I am a voluntary polygamist and a father of approximately twelve children. A non-nuclear family like mine can easily become a battlefield of voices. Different mothers, different temperaments, different generations. Without care, small disagreements can grow into deep wounds.
But Habermas’s idea of communicative action gave me a simple discipline: create space for conversation. In our household, we sit together often. We talk or percolate openly about problems. Children speak. Mothers speak. I speak last. Everyone is encouraged to say wha int they truly feel. Including our current lastborn Bobo wa Makokha, I try to make sure no voice is laughed at or dismissed.
Mzee Habermas imagined something he called the “ideal speech situation”. Comrades, think of it as a moment when people talk as equals, without fear, manipulation, or domination. Of course, no family reaches this perfection. But we try. And the trying itself softens hearts.
When conflicts rise between siblings or between wives, we sit down and talk until the anger becomes language. When anger becomes language, it becomes something we can shape together.
In this way, I also discovered that Habermas’s philosophy sits comfortably beside our African wisdom of Ubuntu. Ubuntu tells us that a person becomes a person through other people. Our humanity grows through relationship. Communicative action says something similar: understanding grows when we speak and listen to one another with respect.
In Githurai community meetings, in family discussions, in theatre classrooms where I teach literature and drama, I have carried these ideas quietly. I tell my students that a play can become a public sphere. When audiences watch a story together, they begin conversations about power, justice, and dignity. African literature has always done this—challenging dictators, exposing injustice, reminding people that freedom requires voices.
Today, as I mourn Habermas, I do not mourn only a philosopher from far away. I mourn a man who helped me see the beauty hidden inside ordinary conversation. When neighbours argue about water, when children question their father, when citizens stand together and ask leaders to listen… that is democracy breathing. Habermas helped me name that breath. And for that, I thank him.
Go well, master. A luta continua.
– Dr. Wanjohi wa Makokha is the secretary general of the Literature and Performing Arts Society of Kenya.