"And so I'm saying that, yes, colonialism was terrible, and I describe it as a legacy of wars, but we ought to be moving away from that by now"

Wangari Maathai acknowledges the profound harm of colonialism while rejecting a politics that remains trapped in it. Calling it a legacy of wars highlights not only the literal violence of conquest but the ongoing battles seeded by that period: fractured identities, adversarial politics, resource plunder, and institutions built for control rather than care. Those “wars” persist as mistrust between communities, militarized governance, extractive economies, and ecological devastation. Yet her insistence that we ought to be moving away from that by now is a call to agency. History must be reckoned with, not inhabited indefinitely.

Moving away does not mean forgetting or absolving; it means transforming memory into responsibility. It invites societies to pursue transitional justice, truthful education, and material repair, while simultaneously cultivating democratic culture, ethical leadership, and civic courage. It asks citizens to stop outsourcing accountability, neither romanticizing the precolonial nor fixating on the colonial, so they can build institutions that serve the public good. It urges an end to zero-sum power struggles inflamed by arbitrary borders, and a turn toward dialogue, regional solidarity, and inclusive economies.

For Maathai, the environmental dimension is central. Colonial extraction scarred landscapes and social bonds; restoration, planting trees, empowering communities, especially women, heals both. Reclaiming degraded land becomes a metaphor for reclaiming agency: small, steady acts that accumulate into peace and dignity. Moving away also recognizes global structures that reproduce inequality, from debt regimes to unfair trade, and combines principled advocacy for reform with relentless internal reform.

There is moral maturity in refusing fatalism. Naming the wound is necessary; allowing it to script the future is not. The measure of freedom is the capacity to imagine and enact futures not dictated by injury. Maathai’s message is pragmatic hope: remember clearly, repair concretely, and then outgrow the frameworks of grievance by building communities, institutions, and ecologies strong enough to make new conflicts unnecessary.