“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.
Comments 0
Sign in to join the conversation
Sign In Create AccountNo comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!