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Future Leaders by Mwangi Ruheni: book review


Future Leaders (1973) is set in rural Kenya. Like the author, the protagonist, Reuben Ruoro, has just graduated from Makerere University College in Nairobi with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture in 1958. This is a significant achievement, considering that from a class of 32 elementary Kenyan students, only 2 went to primary school; of 30 primary students in his final year, only 5 went to secondary school; and of a class of 25 secondary students, only 7 went to university. Only 5 Africans graduated from his agricultural science course (2 of them Kenyans). “I think I was born a very lucky boy,” Reuben says.

His university years taught him many things, not just subject matter. “You were taught to have an open mind and to keep it open even if all the others are closing theirs around you … An open mind is neither indiscriminating nor immutable. Ability to change one’s mind in the face of new evidence is not so common a gift” – it comes from training. At his graduation ceremony, he hears a speech that announces that the graduates are the nation’s future leaders. And he is ready to lead.

His first job is not as a leader, but as an agricultural officer in Nyeri District, working for Colonel Walker, a European. Only a month into the job, and after imbibing too much alcohol, he is “forced” to tender his resignation with three months salary when he is accused of conspiring to steal. “I had to figure out where my mistakes were, so as not to repeat them. Education means not only being able to tell what goes wrong, but why it goes wrong.” From this transgression, Reuben learns many lessons. “I think I was a fool to shoot off my mouth the way I did, especially after drinks. All those arguments I had with Sid and the Colonel … did not do me any good.”

His mother suggests he needs a wife. Reuben thinks this is a good idea – “if I got married, I would never lose my job again …. I think marriage gives a man some kind of extra wisdom, a better power of judgement, a more rational approach to problems.” So he seeks to locate a woman, Emma Njoki, that he met seven years previously, and has not seen since. This is not the end of his problems, because now there are lessons to learn about love, women, relationships, deceit, pretence, and coming to the aid of women in predicaments. He not only finds Emma, but she is with her best friend, Pauline Mwihaki, and he likes her short skirts and tight sweaters.

Embroiled in a bank robbery in which he is a witness, complications set in. With each attempt to do a good job to gain a better position, or to resolve relationship dramas, and to extricate himself from trouble – all to be a better man – he seems to make matters worse.
This “comedy of errors” is about a series of life lessons, yet it is also about lies, truth, actions, and consequence, and of crime and punishment. Is Reuben naïve or cunning? Is he a liar or is he misunderstood? What are reasonable and just punishments for his actions? And what are the outcomes of the women’s stealthy ways of seduction? And is he a worthy future leader?

Reuben is initially a difficult character to like, but the reader will decide as the novel progresses whether the ends justifies the means, and whether he has become a better man – enough to overlook his faults. It is a character analysis of the fluctuating kind – he is simultaneously arrogant, bombastic, silly, and naïve, a liar and a cad, and a good deal more. But Reuben is open about his decisions, his thoughts, and his feelings – and he openly identifies and admits his faults and failures, his good decisions and his unfortunate ones. He lies to everyone, and himself, but on paper – to the reader – he does not lie.  

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