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SELECTED ESSAYS AND IDEAS - September - December 2004 ________________________________________________________________
CONSOLIDATING
WHAT UNITE AND
OVERCOMING WHAT DIVIDE: AFRICAN
LITERATURE AND BORDER ISSUES By Chimdi
Maduagwu, (PhD) chimdi_maduagwu@us-alf.org Department
of English, University of Lagos Introduction Literature
conceptualizes situations that make for deeper understanding of people and
societies. African Literature, drawing upon this quality, creates, recreates and
adapts situations that identify and discuss lines and borders in Africa. African
Literature, in this paper, lays claim to all literary works, oral and written,
natural and adapted, types and archetypes, realistic and romantic, mythic and
time bound stories including documentaries, which are of Africa, by Africans and
non-Africans alike, and have emerged from Africa and from Africans in Diaspora.
The specific direction to which the literatures of Africa can make meaningful
contributions to actualizing a truly united Africa (without boundaries) is
conceived to be in as much as they project and consolidate ‘what unite’ and
help Africans overcome ‘what divide’. ‘What unite’,
in this paper, are issues of common interest to the people of Africa, especially
those that are capable of cementing African unity. These are mostly integral to
interpersonal and group relationships, practices, belief systems, behaviors,
etc. On the other hand, ‘what divide’ also consist of issues related to
those that unite but in varying degrees of disparities and non-agreement,
undermine common interest and unity in Africa. In addition to these are also
natural phenomena and land marks. They generally form lines and divides commonly
acknowledged as boundaries. Boundaries,
borders and lines (of demarcation) exist at two major levels of human
interaction, namely; the visible and the invisible. The visible is the physical
or geographical boundary, which literature captures through the artistic
technique of setting, and then the invisible is the non-physical boundary,
depicted in themes, attitudes of characters and atmosphere (as setting). Both
levels of projection of boundaries have functional ways of highlighting ‘the
otherness’ or differences. At the physical level, this shows in landscapes,
locales, persons and groups of persons, while at the non-physical level,
‘otherness’ manifests in actions, attitudes and manners of characters, among
other issues. The physical and non-physical are basically different in
appearance. While the former is concrete, like brick walls, mountains, hills,
seas, lakes rivers valleys etc, and can thus appeal directly to human senses
with which the human being interacts with external world; the later is more or
less abstract like thought, imagination, race, language color, (to a lesser
extent) belief systems, culture etc and appeals more to deep feeling of the
human being. While the former can be rationally discerned, the later is more
emotionally discerned. Also the former can be erected or demolished at times and
within terms agreed upon by persons or parties concerned, the later, like all
emotional issues, is much more difficult to grapple with because elements of
‘the otherness’ are buried deep inside the consciousness and psyche of the
persons or parties concerned. As the world
moves towards greater co-operation and tolerance, new options are opening up in
relation to boundary management, whether at the visible or invisible level.
Creative African literature is capable of making significant positive
contributions to boundary issues in Africa. By highlighting: ‘Consolidating
what unite and overcoming what divide’ (1). Africa has passed
through some peculiar experiences beginning from a supposed savage and barbarian
culture, through the first contacts with aliens that resulted in both trans
Saharan and trans Atlantic slave trades, colonialism, struggles for independence
and the subsequent political independence of African states to the
post-independent dependence of African states on Europe and America. At every
point of these unique African experiences, a number of issues have generated
lines and divides, in form of boundaries, at two main levels already noted above
(physical and non-physical). The Beginnings It is no longer a
matter for debate or proof that Africa had a past and according to Chinua Achebe
(1975), the past is not one long night of savagery, neither is it like what
Negritude writers (2) projected to the world, a long stretch of Edenic bliss,
where everything was perfect. Whether or not the past was blissful, non-existent
or barbaric may not constitute an issue of debate now, but one thing is clear;
this past paraded a folk tradition. Like all folk cultures, the typical African
society was a folk community and was characterized by native simplicity, more or
less enclosed, lacking in modern sophistication and with minimal external
contacts. (Chimdi Maduagwu, 1997) This might send out a signal that Africa was a
monolithic society or on the other hand that Africa consisted of communities
that were distinct and independent from one another, with ‘minimal
contacts’. That is not the case. The traditional Africa communities were made
up of people who knew themselves and accepted each other as part of single,
unified large families, who in turn interacted with other similar units. In the folk
tradition, all human endeavors and activities are marked by native simplicity.
These also include thoughts and impressions of boundaries both at the physical
and non-physical levels. There has always been the natural tendency in the
African, as in all men, to identify and guide what belongs to him, thus there
were, in the remote past, ‘lines and divides’, but these lines and divides
were very thin and friendly. For instance, families, kindred, clans, tribes were
identified with special physical and non-physical traits from stature,
complexion (physical), manners, occupations, (non-physical) to residential
portions they occupy and farm lands they till etc. Quite often, different folks
appropriated natural phenomena as authentic landmarks, which provided reasonable
boundaries at the physical level. The most prominent natural occurrences that
enhanced boundary erections were rivers and seas, hills and mountains,
remarkable forests and trees, valleys and caves etc. Although these
‘natural boundaries’ appear integral to human existence, they however
predate human life in areas where they are found. Virtually, all myths of
creation attest to this. The Judeo-Christian myth posits that the Hebrew God,
Elohim, created the heaven and earth; imposed order on the earth, separated
water from dry land and causing to come into existence level lands and
highlands, valleys and caves, rivers lakes and seas etc (The Bible, Gen:
1). It was after all these that life was founded. This popular myth underscores
the fact that neither God nor nature and super nature erected boundaries per se.
Rather, the human intellect, acting on behalf of God’s wisdom restructures
creation and recreates a parallel order to the divine order. The new human order
admits boundaries and while it does so, it utilizes the natural landmarks. An African
writer, Ngugi Wa Thiong’O, in his novel, The River Between (1965), draws
upon oral tradition (myth), to demonstrate how physical structures, of course
natural phenomena, existed before they eventually become strong boundaries which
transcend physical structures to initiate a deep emotional divide:
The two ridges lay side by side. One was Kameno, the other was Makuyu. Between them was a valley. It was called the valley of life. Behind Kameno and Makuyu were many more valleys and ridges, lying without any discernible plan. They were like many sleeping lions which never woke. They just slept the deep sleep of their creator. ( p.1) In Ngugi’s
artistic consciousness, the valley between Kameno and Makuyu (physical) has been
appropriated by the indigenes to serve as a boundary. Being separated therefore,
by this valley, the two ridges mark out two distinct communities who develop
disparate socio-cultural qualities at the non-physical level. The major element
of divide, in the socio-cultural lives of these communities in Ngugi’s Kenya
is belief system, drawn upon different religions – Christianity and
traditional African worship. Religion is a
major element, which creates boundaries (at the non-physical level) in Africa.
While Ngugi’s artistic impulse reveals how Christianity, a foreign religion,
clashes with traditional belief system to create a gulf in communities that
hitherto existed in co operation and tolerance, other writers broach the issue
of religion in border determination from some other perspectives. The mythic
consciousness of the Nigeria writer, Wole Soyinka (1965, 1967) establishes a
functional relationship between deities (gods) and human beings but maintains a
‘boundary’. This is another approach to boundary issues. Soyinka is a mythic
symbolist and uses deities to symbolize a class of human beings who wield power
and authority over others. The deities live in ‘Idanre hills’ (3), a unique
natural landscape akin to the classical Greek mount Olympus, the abode of gods.
Like their ancient Greek counterparts, Soyinka’s Yoruba deities also appear to
have been created by human beings. The
different environments in which they dwell suggest there is a boundary between
them and human beings. However, if Soyinka’s symbolism is stretched out,
Idanre creatures (deities) represent the all powerful and domineering human
beings, who occupy the upper echelon of the societies (the powers that be).
Thus, while at the symbolic level we are faced with a case of a boundary between
deities and human beings, the literal reality is a functional boundary between
human beings (of a kind) and human beings (of another kind) in the same society.
In other words, strong beliefs, supported by some perceived supernatural forces
reinforce boundaries. African Writers,
who consciously or unconsciously engage Literature in addressing boundary
issues, speak of the validity of their own experiences (culture) thus they write
with a high flavor of Anthropology and Social History. According to Boehmer
(1995), ‘they cast their meaning across a wide textual spectrum, producing
anthropological studies, social history and journalism as well as poetry and
fiction to promote their cause’ (p.100). A general look at their works reveal
that they have common experiences and thus seem to project the same messages,
all of which are deeply anthropological and historical or one may say, cultural.
So African writers explore and adapt their unique experiences in broaching
unique boundary issues. This initiative unravels essential parts of ‘what
unite’ and ‘what divide’. Writers engage subjects and themes, which reveal
different African experiences, for instance, experiences of common history of
slavery, colonization, independence and post-independent dependence (on Europe
and America). Disintegration. For over
200years, Africa has been under various forms of exploitation by Europe and
later, other developed nations of the world. Particularly, European activities
in African have left deep and painful ‘marks’ on the entire continent and
her people. The most gruesome and traumatic experience is the obnoxious
trans-Atlantic slave trade. All Africa came under this irreverent human ordeal.
Although, Africa had earlier battled with the incursion of Arabs who were
equally slave dealers, but the magnitude of trans-Atlantic experience made a
mockery of the Arabs’ Tran Saharan adventure. Africa is still nursing the
wounds of slavery. Consider this:
IN THE EVERLASTING MEMORY OF OUR ANGUISHED ANCESTORS May those who died rest in peace May those who returned find their roots May humanity never again perpetrate Such injustice against humanity We, the living, vow to uphold this.
(Inscription at Elmina Castle)
Slave trade
created the biggest gulf among Africans (what divide), by uprooting and carting
away hundreds of thousands of simple Africans to distant places of America, the
West Indies and Europe. The present generation of Africans, in Diaspora, are
separated from the rest of Africans at home, both at the physical and
non-physical levels. While the physical gulf is obvious, the non-physical is
often not easy to identify. Many writers have laid bare the problems of
boundaries that came about as a result of this and have also, through creative
literature, proffered solutions to such problems. In her play, The Dilemma of
a Ghost, the Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo, highlights the gulf between the
Africans, outside Africa and those within the continent. The hero (or anti-hero)
of the play, Ato Yawson, a full-bred African, migrates willingly to America to
acquire Western education. While there, he marries Eulalie Rush, an African
American, who is African, only by identification (race and color). This
co-operation is achieved outside Africa and when they return home to Africa, it
is discovered that Eulalie is unable to integrate into the society. She is a
symbol of the splinter of DISINTEGRATED Africa, separated from other homeland
Africans. Eulalie’s values (as an African-American) are at par with indigenous
African values. For instance, respect for elders, the position of the wife as
subservient to her husband, unequivocal submission of the wife to both her
direct husband and the members of her husband’s family and most of all, child
bearing, are not extremely serious issues for the African American, while they
are the utmost determinant of womanhood for the indigenous African woman.
Eulalie is to learn the indigenous values and cross the boundary created by
slavery hundreds of years before her generation in a marriage with Ato. Ato is
equally to help in constructing an enabling atmosphere for the integration.
Slavery resulted
in the disintegration of Africa and has created a formidable boundary between
the African American and the home based African. But through literary art, Aidoo
brings them together in order to work out the much-needed co-operation and
understanding for a necessary and lasting zero-boundary situation, between the
African American and the home based African. Other writers
like Tchicaya u’Tamsi, Syl Cheney Coker and Bode Sowande have variously drawn
upon the theme of slavery in relation to boundaries in and among Africans. The slave trade
(and perhaps other trades) opened the door for a deep but dubious interaction
between Europe and Africa. This interaction graduated to colonialism.
Colonialism in Africa was as debilitating as slavery. Both, hand in hand,
resulted in complete disintegration of Africa. The first permanent settlement of
aliens at the cape (one end of Africa) was established by the Dutch in 1652. (5)
Later, real and sustained presence of Europe became obvious. Many European
countries settled in Africa with their cultures and ways of life because Africa
held multiple promises for them. Some of the promises were provision of land for
the fast growing ‘landless generation’ and for farming, source of raw
materials for their fast growing machine-based economy and market for the
finished products. The immense benefits of ‘owning’ territories in Africa
ignited the fire of scrambling for them in Africa by European powers. The
scramble was very ruthless and eventually culminated in a conference held in
Berlin between 1884 and 1885. (6) The Berlin conference gave a political stamp
to the entire experience, which has left the greatest impact on Africa today.
Berlin reshaped Africa, creating new political units/countries, at the
administrative level, and imposing a new cartography on the original Africa, at
the bare physical level (the major modern dividing marks). Original African
nations were not given consideration to, in the process of the European
partitioning of Africa and it did not matter who were shuffled about. The most
important consideration was how the arrangement benefited the interested
European nations. Eventually, physical boundaries became artificial in Africa
and this is sustained till date to a large extent. As a result of
this, Africa assumed an appearance of the ad hoc, and was considered along the
lines of her usefulness to the contending European powers. The eventual
partitioning resulted in the establishment of areas of colonial influence. These
areas became fragments of the hitherto whole entities. Cultural affiliations
were subsequently unsettled and new units emerged but without cohesion.
Boundaries automatically came up, breaking ethnic groups up and randomly placing
them in new geo-political formats. Native Africans were given new orientations
in the direction of the ideologies of their ‘colonial masters’. For
instance, the Yoruba nation became fractured and her fragments are in present
day Nigeria, Togo, Benin, the first received British orientation while the last
two were doctored in French culture; so also are the Hausa and Fulani who are in
Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon etc. Rather than be bound by their ethnic
lineages, they eventually submit to the new colonial arrangement of supposed
city-states and nations. The greatest
negative impact of the Berlin conference is in the disintegration of cultural
affiliations on one side and, its attempt to force into uncomfortable mergers,
distinct, autonomous but closely related cultures on the other hand. Westerners
did not understand the thin and co operating lines which marked out and
decorated the diverse African peoples and cultures before their arrival, so they
assumed that Africa was one large village, made up of insensitive beings that
could be pushed about. Colonialism in
Africa was, in this case, different from that in other areas, especially the
colonized white territories. In the process of colonialism, Africa did not have
to battle, like Australia, ‘to give shape to an every day reality in
resistance to images of the beautiful and the normal transmitted by colonial
literature’ (Boehmer.p.109). The reverse is the case here; writings from
Africa struggled to reconstruct the original image of Africa brutally distorted
by colonialism, to bring about a reintegration of the fragments of the fractured
mother Africa as a result of colonial incursion and to carefully untwine,
through some cultural surgery, the abnormal twins and triplets etc forcefully
given birth to by colonialism. However, like Australians, Africans needed to
reinvent their cultural art and appropriate literary forms for authentic African
expressions. That, at least, will help to pull forces together in fighting a
common course. African writing thus had the uphill tasks of bringing all Africans together and dismantling negative representations and sustaining themes, which express cultural pride. The early African writers faced these challenges. Aimee Cesaire, Leopold Sedar Senghor, Birago Diop, David Diop, etc approached the challenges from the cultural perspectives, developing and pursuing the literary philosophy of negritude. (7) They excavated the rich cultural treasures of Africa, and used that as a rallying point for all blacks and Africans, inadvertently confirming ‘what unite’ in the universally acknowledged beauty, nobility and permanence of BLACK. Their works generally depicted black and Africa as blissful and exotic, even though her images have been very much distorted and fragmented by ignorant and prejudiced colonial writers. In addition to
the obvious exponents of negritude, whose works paraded themes that express
unity of Africa through her cultural pride, other African writers have produced
works that are spiced with African culture and tradition. These writers equally
domesticate literature as a medium that is capable of projecting ‘what unite
and overcoming what divide’. Chinua Achebe of Nigeria and Ngugi Wa Thiong’O
of Kenya are prominent in this second category. Achebe’s novel, Thing Fall
Apart (1958), present a relatively straight forward and unprejudiced
pictures and images of a typical African locale. There are virtually no
indications of serious cultural and geographical ‘divides’ in the setting of
the novel. From all indications, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God
(1964), another novel by Achebe, traverse the entirety of African tradition in
symbolic terms. These works show that traditional Africa parade a complete human
system with definite social pattern, economic structure, political frame that
includes democratic justice, and religious worship. All these aspects of human
existence bind the people together. Of particular
significance in terms of examples of African unity is in Arrow of God,
where Achebe narrates how eight clans decided to come together to found a god,
Ulu, who would be their protector and a symbol of unity among them. This
religious bond affected the totality of their lives. The reverence for, and
worship of Ulu further translated into reverence for all social norms and values
associated with Ulu and hence the people. Ulu determined the seasons (planting
and harvest), rites and observances, leadership hierarchy, dispensation of
justice as well as punishments for offences. The unity and bliss (under the
deity, Ulu) continued until fractured by the forces of colonialism and
Christianity. Achebe’s works of cultural and anthropological flavors have
largely been accepted by (the external world) as authentic pictures of Africa,
thus demonstrating how creative literature can consolidate, through its thematic
preoccupation, ‘what unite’. So these initial endeavors to reintegrate
fragments of battered African culture and reposition them for public consumption
serve as a pillar of unity especially during the colonial period. One major point
of unity amongst Africans in the colonial era was the rather unconscious
submission to Boehmer’s suggestion in ‘moving away from colonial
definitions, transgressing the boundaries of colonial discourse… borrowing,
taking over, or appropriating the ideological, linguistic, and textual forms of
the colonial power’. (Pp. 105-106). The early intellectuals achieve a movement
away from colonial definitions. Not just Achebe, but several other writers like
Senghor, Soyinka, Ngugi, Aidoo, Utamsi etc in very special ways challenge
colonial positions on Africa history, culture and tradition. While in the
process of redefinition, they also appropriate both linguistic and textual forms
of the colonial power. This is achieved through general education. In this area,
imperialism inadvertently yields to poetic justice to a certain degree. It
provides the necessary infrastructure – education - for articulation of
self-representation by its subjects. Through this, subjects are able to
encourage themselves unto unity and to subsequently resist unto freedom, from
the obnoxious grips of colonial cruelty. Literary artists like Peter Abraham (Tell
Freedom), Achebe (No Longer At Ease), Ngugi (Weep Not, Child; The
River Between) etc, depict this. In their works, characters like Lee (Tell
Freedom); Njoroge (Weep Not, Child); Waiyaki (The River Between);
Obi Okonkwo (No Longer at Ease) all pass through peculiar traumas. Their
anguish emanates from colonial subjugation. However, it is somehow punctuated by
a glimmer of hope, hope given substance by the possible acquisition of education
and modern skills by few natives. Lee goes to school and eventually becomes a
writer, who volunteers information on the actual condition of Africans under
colonial (apartheid) South Africa. Both Njoroge and Waiyaki battle through
difficulties and while at school, they seek ways of reintegration among Africans
who have been forcefully separated by colonialism. Obi Okonkwo is sponsored to
go and acquire education for community development but he decides to channel his
experience towards overcoming what divides, as he attempts to consolidate a
relationship with Elsie who belongs to another class (of the untouchables or
Outcaste) in the society. Colonial
education, more than any thing else, introduce complications to boundary issues
in Africa. On one hand, it imposes on Africa, new foreign languages like
English, French, Portuguese, Spanish etc which create boundaries; but on the
other hand, these new alien languages become veritable instruments for boundary
crossing in that they eventually gain ascendancy over the native African
languages and are used across many communities today. Africans become conscious
of lingua franca. Obi Wali (1963), Fafunwa (1986), Ngugi (1986), Oyegoke (1988)
and many other exponents and defenders of a return to indigenous and native
languages may not easily admit this. But through the acquired colonial
languages, there have been massive cross-cultural exchanges and agreements, and
these have also largely been made possible by creative literature. Achebe’s
novels, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God have unearthed and
explained the culture and tradition of Igbo people of eastern Nigeria more than
any systematic course in Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, Religion or
History could do. Creative literature has literally demolished the partitions
between diverse African cultural groups by making details of norms and forms
obtainable in one culture available to others. Today, Achebe’s Igbo,
Soyinka’s Yoruba, Ngugi’s Gikuyu, Camara Laye’s Mandinka, Dangarembga
TsiTsi’s Shona, Miriama Ba’s Wolof / Toucoleur, Kunene’s Zulu, Okara and
J.P. Clark’s Ijaw etc have become fluid and like tributaries, flow into one
big universal pool of African culture. Reintegration African
literature has played and is still playing a major role in identifying and
consolidating WHAT UNITE as its contribution to border issues and Pan-Africanism.
In a very emotional story, Ngugi, in The River Between, presents how
literature can consolidate unity. He creates a set of young characters and
pitches them against an older set; all caught in the web of colonialism and its
strong element, Christian religion, which has introduced a big gulf among people
of similar origin. The young characters, Waiyaki, Nyambura and Muthoni, somehow
discover that they belong to a new generation that needs to distinguish itself
from the previous generation of their parents. In order to do so, they need to
initiate new ideals and concepts, which can functionally address the problems of
their generation. While they appreciate the features of the generation of their
parents, the strong emotional attachments involved and are not willing to betray
them, they somehow realize that the standards of that generation are incapable
of providing adequate solutions to the fresh challenges and problems of the new
generation. According to Fanon (1961), ‘each generation, must out of relative
obscurity, discover its aim, fulfill it or betray it’. Waiyaki finds
himself in the camp of traditionalist, while Muthoni and Nyambura are in the
opposite camp of the Christians. The boundary between them is a valley. However,
they meet because both of them have tasted western education provided by the
Christians (what is capable of uniting). In a very dramatic development, the
need for a close relationship between the two disparate ridges that the young
people represent arises when Muthoni, a daughter of the Christian leader,
Joshua, decides to attain tribal purity by registering for the ritual of
initiation, against the faith and belief that her father acquired and
transferred to her. Unfortunately, her bid to return to ‘tribal purity’
becomes sacrificial. She loses her life. The loss draws Waiyaki and Nyambura
close, into a firm conjugal relationship with a strength that erases the lines,
which divide the opposing ridges. So Muthoni’s selfless act constructs a
bridge across the valley and this is reinforced by her sister, Nyambura, and
friend Waiyaki, showing that… ‘What divide can be overcome and what unite
can be consolidated’. Ngugi’s
characters in The River Between can be contracted with Achebe’s
characters in No Longer at Ease. Obi and Clara are two major modern
characters that first meet outside Africa and again reunite when they return to
Africa. Obi is shocked to discover that he is unable to marry Clara because of
some lines of division between them. They belong to different sects within the
same tradition. Like Waiyaki, Obi and Clara are reasonably equipped to address
the nagging boundary problem before them with a combination of native wisdom and
acquired modern knowledge. Unlike Waiyaki, Muthoni and Nyambura, Obi and Clara
fail to effect positive changes. They thus symbolize the group of Africans who,
at the point of discovering the aim of their generation, betray it, while
Waiyaki, Muthoni and Nyambura, on the other hand, represent those who discover
the aim of their generation and fulfill it. The actions,
reactions and inactions of these two opposite characters illuminate the two
opposite approaches presented by literature to border issues. In No Longer at
Ease, Obi’s weak action and Clara’s inaction are incapable of
confronting and overcoming ‘what divide’. In The River Between
Muthoni’s action, Waiyaki’s reaction and Nyambura’s inaction or better
still support, provide a rounded joint attack on ‘what divide’ in order to
emphasize ‘unity’. They succeed in redefining purity and togetherness. Their
action, reaction and inaction sum up to project a realistic self discovery and
functional reintegration of values which are capable of sustaining a new Africa
of diverse values – inherent and acquired – yet without lines and divides.
1. The topic is taken from a conference of Africa people that held in
Bulawayo Zimbabwe in 2000.
2. Negritude is a popular literary movement, philosophy and ideology
which served as a rallying point for major African intellectuals and writers in
Paris, France, in the 1930’s. The greatest exponents are Leopold Sedar Senghor
and Aimee Cessaire.
3. Wole Soyinka, Art, Dialogue and Outrage. Ibadan: New Horn
Press, 1989.
4. Bob Marley and the Wailers as well as other Jamaican songwriters and
composers believed in the possibility of mass exodus of all blacks to Africa as
a true accomplishment of the return to homeland.
5. The Dutch were the first white settlers in Africa (South) at about
1652. They took over complete control after overthrowing the Dingiswayo dynasty
headed by Shaka the Zulu. Their presence eventually developed into the obnoxious
apartheid system in South Africa.
6. Berlin conference was convened by the Europeans powers to address the
scrambling for land by Europeans nations in Africa. It resulted in the partition
of Africa into political units and authentication of these units as properties
of European countries based on effective occupation of the lands by the European
countries. African communities thereafter became ‘protectorates’ of European
nations.
7. Negritude focused on
themes, which brought out African beauty and strength, extolling the virtues of
African heroes and heroines. It placed high value on the past, and the dead –
the ancestors.
References:
Achebe , Chinua. Things
Fall Apart. London:Heinemann,1958 ---------------
No Longer at Ease. london: Heinemann, 1960 ---------------
Arrow of God. London:
Heinemann, 1964 ________
Morning Yet On Creation Day: Essays. Garden
City, NY: Anchor, 1975. Aidoo, Ama Ata.
The Dilemma of a Ghost. New York: Pearson
Education, 1995 Amadi, Elechi.
The Concubine. London: Heinemann, 1971
Ba, Miriama. So
long A Letter. London: Heinemann, 1982 Boehmer, Elleke.
Colonial and Postcolonial Literature. Oxford:
OUP.1995.
Cary, Joyce. Mister
Johnson. New York: Harper,1951. Cheney-Coker, Syl.
The Graveyard Also Has Teeth. London:
Heinemann,1980
Conrad, Joseph. Heart
of Darkness. New York: Norton,1971. Dangarembga,
Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions: a novel. Seattle, WA
Seal Press, 1989. Fafunwa, Babs.
‘Local Language, Only Way to Promised Land’
Sunday Times, 2 Nov. 1986, Nig. Ed. Fanon, Frantz.
The Wretched of the Earth. New York:1965.
Reprint of Les dames de la Lerre. Paris: 1961
Ngugi wa
Thiong’o. Weep Not, Child. London: Heinemann, 1964 __________
The River Between. London: Heinemann, 1965 __________
‘Language and Literature’. In Ernest Emenyonu
(Ed.), Literature and Society: Selected Essays
on African Literature. Oguta: Zim Pan
African Press,1986. Nwapa, Flora.
Efuru. London: Heinemann, 1966 Maduagwu, Chimdi.
Mythic visions of William Blake and Wole
Soyinka.
Lagos: Unilag. Unpl. Ph.D. 1997 Satre, Jean Paul.
Orpheus Noire. Paris: 1948 Senghor, Leopold.
Liberte1: Negritude et Humanism. Edition du
Seuil. Paris: 1964 Soyinka, Wole.
Idanre and Other Poems. London: Metheun, 1967 _________
The Interpreters. London: Fontana, 1965 __________
Art, Dialogue and Outrage. Ibadan: New Horn
Press, 1989 Sowande, Bode. Tornado
Full of Dreams. Lagos: Malthouse, 1992. Utamsi, Tchicaya.
Selected Poems. London: Heinemann, 1972
_______________________________The Swedish Academy, the Politics of the Nobel Prize and My Africa Osita
Ezeliora, School
of Literature and Language Studies, University
of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South
Africa. Email:noezeliora@yahoo.com. May I resume this simple, innocent statement with a brief remark on the general misconceptions that have come to define Western perceptions of Africa and her children. Some of us had believed, uncritically, that contemporary global advancement in technology, particularly the developments in the audio-visual techniques in telecommunications and television would lead to a better understanding of our common humanity. Evidence abound, however, that commercialism, deliberate governmental propagandas and the irresistible urge to re-colonize the world through military engagements, and the cultural modes of films, radio and the whole tribe of the media department has continued to produce a greater number of “illiterates” across the world. You only need to listen to a typical American television talk show to observe how uninformed the average American is about anything else outside his immediate milieu. To him, his house is ‘the best in the world’, his army is ‘the best in the world’, his cottage is ‘the best in the world’, his backyard is ‘the best in the world’, his wrestler is ‘the strongest man in the world’, his food is ‘the sweetest in the world’, his city is ‘the most beautiful in the world’, and so, we might conveniently add, his stupidity is ‘the most profound in the world’. The Igbo have a saying: it is the child who has never visited another man’s farm that beats his chest every morning to proclaim that his father’s farm is the largest in the world. This simple proverbial assertion leads ultimately to an understanding of the psychology of the Igbo in their quest for knowledge, adventure, and the sheer competitiveness for success that has come to mark him out, many observers and analysts say, as the most entrepreneurial and inquisitive of the black race. Thus the average Igbo would often remind his neighbour that ‘a widely travelled child has more wisdom that the grey- haired old man sleeping at home all his life’. Why have I chosen to go this route? It is clear to me that the long history of the relationship that had existed between Africa and Europe has not diminished the jaundiced perception which most Europeans had, and still have of Africa since the middle ages: the patterns of ethnographic categorizations which had classified human intelligence on the basis of pigmentation appear, though, to be waning out in recent time: after all, mega-media structures in the likes of the CNN and the BBC acknowledged the ingenuity of an Igbo child-soldier of the Nigeria-Biafra war, Philip Emeagwali, whose resilience and resourcefulness has made available to the world the facilities of the International Network. What many Africans never imagined thus happened: the CNN acknowledging a black man as ‘Father of the Internet’. The world celebrated it; the American parliament honoured him; the presidency represented by the nation’s chief executive at the time, Bill Clinton, eulogised his accomplishments. For a while, we believed that pigmentation no longer matter, ¾ many of us still do: after all, the acceptance of the subalterns in areas previously preserved for the ‘untouchables’ is increasing geometrically; even inter-racial marriages is now taken for granted, given that it is not only very fashionable in some quarters, but also because such conjugal relationships have produced some of the most beautiful specie of humanity. Many white women, today, openly declare that black men make better husbands, ¾ a statement that would have raised eyebrows once upon a time. When, recently, news came that Professor Esogbue, another Nigerian scientist of Igbo extraction played very prominent role as part of the team of scientists that designed the un-manned space ship at NASA, it was jubilation galore all over the African continent. “At last”, many screamed, “they are beginning to give us the opportunity to prove our mettle”. This brings me to the ultimate question: where is the place of SWEDEN in the recent efforts by world powers to demonstrate their humanity to the so-called third world countries? I am particularly concerned, here, with the Swedish connection with the many peoples of Africa? I’d like, at this point, to remind you that not many people in Africa, obviously for some slight phonological reason, know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland. You might guess why: there is a ‘SWI’ in Sweden, and a ‘SWI’ in Switzerland. Again, as the Igbo would say, ‘because all lizards lie prostrate, it is difficult to tell which of them suffers from stomach-ache’. But while many people do not know the difference between Sweden and Switzerland, a lot of Africans do know, however, that one of the two countries is notorious for encouraging African dictators, avaricious criminals and sundry rogues to defraud their nations and to loot their national treasuries. A lot of Africans know that the recurrent cycle of poverty that appear insurmountable in the continent is largely a making of one of the two countries, which also provide banking facilities for the looted funds from Africa. Are you then surprised that a large segment of the Western media would confine itself to feeding you only with information about famine in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, war in Uganda, Liberia and Sierra Leone, HIV/AIDS in the Southern African sub-region and, of course, the spectacular news about rape and crimes of all sorts in South Africa? The Western media might not necessarily be wrong in all of these negative images painted of Africa. Where we are worried is that the same media hardly remind their privileged audience that many Euro-American nations are accomplices in the continued perpetuation of crime, disease, structured patterns of impoverishment and, consequently, the continuing decimation of the African humanity. I do hope that Sweden is not the ‘SWI’ country that has brought so much pain to the people of Africa. Somehow, believe it or not, I feel quite persuaded that Sweden and Switzerland are two separate countries. Like many of my friends and colleagues, we have come to venerate this Scandinavian nation for the visions, insights and cultural prognostications of one of her great leaders, Gustaf 111 who, way back in 1786, established the ‘Swedish Academy’ with the sublime goal of propagating and projecting the ‘purity, vigour and majesty of the Swedish language’ so as to ensure its ‘clarity, expressiveness and prestige’. In spite of the many problems she encountered at the beginnings, the Academy has survived for over two hundred years with eminent secretaries and administrators that include Nils Von Rosenstein (1786-1824), Bernhard von Beskow (1834-1868), Carl David of Wirsen (1884-1912), Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1913-31), Anders Osterling (1941-64), amongst others. If any cultural engagement ever sold Sweden to the world, it is precisely the prestigious award of the Nobel Prize, especially for Literature that got included in the many functions of the Academy since the beginning of the 20th century. Within this period, over 90 writers have won the Prize in Literature, some of whom are Sully Prudhomme, Theodor Mommsen, Rudyard Kipling, Anatole France, Romain Rolland, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Mann, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neil, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, Samuel Becket, Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee and the many other accomplished writers that, for reasons of space, would not be accommodated in this short essay. These awards, I believe, are well deserved, and the winners have all contributed immensely to the global understanding of our universal humanity in varying virtuosities. But many observers have often wondered whether fairness is part of the game in the award of the Nobel Prize. This suspicion arises in discussions of the mentalities of the Swedish Academy in its relationship with Africans, especially in its perception of black African writers. A widely held view is that the Swedish Academy is not synonymous with the United Nations or the World Bank and that the issue of fairness does not arise. The Academy, it is argued, is an organization founded on the goodwill of a Swedish patriot and visionary who was determined to market the linguistic and cultural elegance of his people. To this end, no one has the right to interrogate the propriety of its decisions in matters of awarding laureates to whomever it chooses. It could decide to award the Nobel Prize to whoever dances to the tune of Europe’s intrigues and political calling. In recent time, however, even this view could be challenged: the world is aware of the refusal of Sweden to join the clamour for a European common currency, and we watched with dismay as one of her very charming daughters got assassinated recently for what appears obviously to be for her political beliefs. The world watched, surprised, because it is often taken for granted that such pattern of killings is only associated with the so-called third world countries of Africa. A more commonly held view, however, is that as deserving as they are of the Nobel Prize, many black African writers might never win it because of their unrepentant attack on the European notion of superiority. Sometime in 1998, a renowned Polish-American scholar of African and English Literatures, Professor Bernth Lindfors during his occasional visits to Nigeria, had spoken frankly to an assembly of students at Ogun State University, Ago-Iwoye, on how he has often looked forward to Chinua Achebe winning the Nobel Prize for Literature at the turn of each year, and had prayed: “I hope he gets it in his life time”. He had probably read the minds of the thousands of students who were eager to ask him basic questions on the politics of such awards and, somehow, he was strongly of the position that if anyone actually deserves such an award in Africa, from Cape to Cairo, Chinua Achebe has to be the one. This does not imply, of course, that Achebe is the only African writer so deserving of the award. Indeed, while Achebe rightly occupies a foremost seat for consideration, the Kenyan novelist, Ngugi wa Thiongo stands quite close to him, as does the Ghanaian Ayi kwei Armah and Nigeria’s Buchi Emecheta. But why has nearly all commentators on the politics of the Nobel Prize often hammered on Chinua Achebe as the most acceptable choice? It does seem that Achebe’s brutal frankness in matters of race relations, which, many claim, must have infuriated many Europeans, will always come into play. Achebe has never argued for a superior African black pigmentation just as he has never accepted its inferiority to anyone anywhere in the world. In an interesting essay he wrote in the late 1970s, ‘Impediments to Dialogue Between North and South’, he had averred: “Many Europeans have made enormous contributions towards the understanding of Africa in Europe. Some of them have even helped us to see ourselves anew in the freshness of an itinerant perspective” (1988:16). Achebe, in this reaction to the many centuries of Europe’s refusal to listen to the subaltern, had cited the instance of a former British Governor of Rhodesia (Southern Africa) in the 1950s who, when asked to explain the “partnership” between black and white in his territory, had no hesitation in defining such partnership as the one that exists “between the horse and its rider!” (15). For the British colonialist, the African would always be a horse! But is this position also true of the Swedish? I dare not take a position on this last question, for, after all, the Swedish do not have the odious reputation of being colonizers, ¾ at least, not in my Africa. But the central point has been made: Europe’s audition to the African predicament through the course of history has been defective and selective; her vision is equally selective; Europe’s memory of Africa is selective just as her amnesia remains selective. It took a Chinua Achebe at the Belgium lecture to address this frustration on the part of Africans in their dealings with their white over-lords: “I realize that all white people cannot be exactly of one mind or equally guilty of too much transmission and too little reception; I realize that all Europeans did not participate to the same degree in the events of modern African history. But despite local qualifications that would be made here and there, I believe that the major outline of my thesis is correct” (1988: 16). Achebe’s thesis, which runs through his numerous imaginative writings and profound scholarship rests on the need for a common and universal humanity; it resides on the premise that pre-colonial Africa, with all its imperfection, did not hear of culture for the first time from Europe. In Things Fall Apart, a novel that has been translated into over forty languages, with over fifteen million copies sold, Achebe imaginatively recreated a pre-colonial African society with a robust sense of values: a society that exemplifies the ingenuity of the often talked-about traditional African through an admirable sense of productive craft. Awka, one of the many towns East of the Niger, archaeologists have discovered, was notable for iron-smiting and was involved in magnificent technological inventions prior to the incursion of Western civilization. The hoes and machetes used for agricultural purposes, and the weaponries used for the occasional wars that erupted in many of these societies were said to have been invented by these so-called traditional technologists. The culture of ‘gun salutes’ during the burial of ozo-titled men and other people of great accomplishments were part of a bourgeoning tradition that was in existence prior to the advent of Europeans to Africa. The design and invention of the nkpo-ani, the traditional ‘gun’ used during such festivities remains a historical fact. The immense archaeological findings in Eastern Nigeria especially at the sites in Igbo-Ukwu and the neighbouring towns of Ora-Eri, Amichi, Nnobi, amongst others, attest to a memory of productiveness that lasted over twenty centuries before the arrival of Western merchants, missionaries, and colonialist mercenaries. This epochal sense of inventiveness is evident in Achebe’s novels of pre-colonial Africa. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe also presents a traditional society with a fine sense of entertainment that subsumes wrestling contests, poetry, dance and music; a democratic society where the young is trained from childhood to “wash his hands properly” so as to be able to “dine with elders”; a society where agriculture enjoyed a pride of place and every member of the community, male and female, desired to be a champion of the farm, be it in yam, cassava, or cocoyam production. Achebe successfully presents Umuofia an archetypal Igbo and, indeed, an African community with a profound sense of justice where “ there are no lawyers and there are no liars”. To a European reader-audience unfamiliar with aspects of African cosmological discourse that necessitates the supremacy of truth and honour in the absence of the Western-type legalistic structures, the system would always be fascinating, if only such a person is prepared to listen. Whether it is in his Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, Chike and the River, Girls at War, Anthills of the Savannah, Beware Soul Brother, Morning Yet On Creation Day, The Trouble With Nigeria, Hopes and Impediments, Home and Exile, or in his other numerous short stories, poetry, and essays scattered everywhere in Literary magazines, the search for justice, racial equality and the economic emancipation of mankind has always been the preoccupation of Chinua Achebe. Till date, Achebe remains the most venerated African novelist, dead or alive. This is an accomplishment that came with the long years of struggle, of resilience, and absorption of all kinds of criticism, be it constructive or otherwise. There is hardly any novelist-scholar who has inspired the over 500 million African audience and the rest of the world more than Chinua Achebe with respect to the propagation and projection of Africa’s cultural identity and racial equality. It is instructive that even Ngugi wa Thiongo,¾ himself a worthy son of Africa and a deserving candidate for any literary award that has any claim to integrity¾ would pronounce Chinua Achebe as a major influence on him as a writer. The young Ngugi had not only read Achebe as an undergraduate during which period he says he has “a sense of the Igbo”, but also he had the privilege of meeting him in person during a seminar organised by Ezekiel Mphahlele’s English Department at the Makerere University, Uganda, in 1962. “Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the two American presidents to have visited Nigeria while they were in office”, writes Prof. Harry Garuba, “each had course to refer to Chinua Achebe’s works when making policy statements to their Nigerian audiences” (2003:276). Such is the veneration Achebe commands that practically every university that matters, as well as most African governments ¾ from Nigeria to South Africa¾ have had to honour themselves in honouring him. One recalls that about ten years after Achebe’s insistence that Europe should learn to listen, if there must be proper dialogue between North and South, another leading African novelist from South Africa, Nadine Gordimer, in ‘Living In The Interregnum’, echoed a similar request when she asserts that the white in South Africa “has become highly conscious of a dependency on distorted vision induced since childhood”, and suggests that “the way to begin entering history out of a dying white regime is through setbacks, encouragements and rebuffs from others, and frequent disappointment in oneself. A necessary learning process....” Gordimer, of course, herself a Jewish white, is convinced that Africans never really slept in history per se, and so all superficial efforts to write the African off history would fail. So, she had suggested to the white world: “There is no forgetting how we could live if only we could find the way. We must continue to be tormented by the ideal.... Without the will to tramp toward that possibility, no relations of whites, of the West, with the West’s formerly subject peoples can ever be free of the past, because the past, for them, was the jungle of Western capitalism, not the light the missionaries thought they brought with them” (209-225). The experience of South Africa is a matter of recent history, and, as I am writing this piece, South Africa is celebrating her 10th Anniversary of democratic dispensation. Do we need to over-flog the beauty of listening instead of only transmitting, which Achebe had so much decried? As the founding editor of William Heinemann’s ‘African Writers’ Series’, Chinua Achebe applied himself into editing the first one hundred titles of that series without charging a cent from the Heinemann’s publishing outfit; at the end of the Nigeria-Biafra war, he founded at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, OKIKE: An African Journal of New Writing, a fine literary journal of creative writing and criticism that provided voice for the emerging African literary intelligentsia, and it is worthy of note that most of the major scholars and writers from Africa and beyond got their earlier endeavours published by OKIKE. Major contributors to African literary scholarship such as Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, Ihechukwu Madubuike, Charles Nnolim, Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan, Romanus Egudu, Emmanuel Obiechina, Donatus Nwoga, Theo Vincent, Clement Okafor, Niyi Osundare, Juliet Okonkwo, Patrick Wilmot, Ossie Enekwe, amongst others, all appeared in OKIKE. Achebe was also instrumental to the founding of the United States’- based African Commentary. The list is actually endless, and the obvious question is: who has done more towards the growth and development of African Literature? Who has inspired the emerging African writers more than the founding editor of the ‘African Writers’ Series’? Who has provided the finest space, within Africa, to the young scholars of African literature and culture more than the founding editor of OKIKE? Who has inspired young Nigerian writers more than the founding President of the Association of Nigeria Authors (ANA)? Professors Emmanuel Obiechina, Eustace Palmer, Ernest Emenyonu, Dan Izevbaye, Bernth Lindfors, Wole Soyinka (a Nobel laureate), Oladele Taiwo, G.D. Killam, C.L. Innes, Simon Gikandi, Ali Mazrui, Biodun Jeyifo, Samuel Asein, Harry Garuba, Kalu Ogba, Theo Vincent, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Njabulo Ndebele, and the Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, just to mention a few, have all honoured Chinua Achebe in very percipient essays and speeches that would challenge not only the visually impaired, but also even any literary magistrate caught in the web of selective and afflicted audition. The world has since begun to acknowledge individual achievements without recourse to racial pigmentation. In spite of the general perception of American arrogance and what some see as her stupidity, that country will be atop the world for several years to come,¾ and I wish her well. She deserves every bit of the progress she has made so far in ensuring her pride of place in scientific and technological advancement: she is there because she has recognized the beauty of our common humanity and has been able to bring out the best in the likes of Professors Emeagwali, Esogbue, Nnaji, and Oyibo. But will Sweden and the Swedish Academy ever concede to the theory of a common humanity? I feel reluctant to risk a response to this question, which, I believe, only the named institutions can. But I also feel tempted to respond in the affirmative; after all, there is one black man, Wole Soyinka, in the list of the Swedish Academicians. And as the Igbo would say, “ikwu amaghi, ibe ezi ya”(it is the duty of neighbours and relatives to advise an erring and confused brother). The Swedish Academy has done well by extending the frontiers of what was originally meant to be a project for the advancement of Swedish language and culture to writers all over Europe and beyond. The Academy deserves to be commended by anyone genuinely interested/trained in literature and criticism. In extending its frontiers beyond Sweden, however, its engagements might at a point in time, with good reasons, be seen as very political. Nothing probably suggests this widely held view than the Academy’s continued exclusion of black African writers whose literary accomplishments, many insist, outweigh those of many of the previous winners. Chinua Achebe and his “son”¾ Ngugi ¾ have done excellently well in this regard. Given my encounter with the works of many of the previous winners of the Nobel Prize, I believe that the Swedish Academy is an institution of profound honour. But it can no longer afford the luxury of subjecting this positive testimony of its integrity to suspicion. We are living in the African century, and there is no greater honour the Academy could do to itself as an institution than to honour the most revered African novelist(s). It’s time the Academy dropped the decadent mantle of Euro-modernism to embrace the classical imaginative output of black African writers, and, especially my Africa. Works Cited: | |||||||||
