Kenya’s regime punished Maathai’s political run by stripping her livelihood and pension

Evidence

To do so, she was told she had to resign from her job at the university. She was then promptly informed by the electoral committee that she was disqualified (on a trumped up technicality) from running for parliament. So, twelve hours after resigning as chair of the university’s Department of Veterinary Anatomy, Maathai asked for her job back. Under pressure from the regime, the university refused to reemploy her and, moreover, denied her all pension and health benefits. Maathai, a forty-one-year-old single mother with no safety net, was thrown out onto the streets. One notes that, in 2005, shortly after Maathai was awarded the Nobel Prize, the very university that had treated her so appallingly tried to cash in on her international fame by awarding her an honorary doctorate in science. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 1155

Categorization

• XREF: This institutional weaponizing of livelihood against a woman activist extends the earlier claim that Kenyan elites attacked Maathai for being ungovernable and overqualified (ch29), and parallels how Carson’s authority was attacked as hysteria. — connects to: Kenyan elites attacked Maathai for being an ungovernable, overqualified divorcée — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 410; Vilification and marginality powered Carson and Maathai’s original environmental visions — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 405; Patriarchal regime and husband alike condemned Maathai for exceeding feminine control — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 1159

Broader Connections

• Patriarchal regime and husband alike condemned Maathai for exceeding feminine control #exemplifies (0.72) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 1159