Recently I strayed upon Lewis Nkosi’s very thought-provoking views on African literature. The South African writer and academic has inspired and inspiring thoughts that led me to want to randomly revisit observations made by writers and scholars on aspects of African Literature and African writers.
“The African novel in the European languages is sometimes damned for its double ancestry which is both African and European,” begins Lewis Nkosi in one of his essays.
He proceeds and says that the African novel is “the bastard child of many cultures and genres, the accumulator of many styles and traditions… and that the African novel therefore, cannot properly reflect African reality.” Quite a mouthful.
It is in this context that the debate on the appropriate language of African literature alone is interesting. Cyprian Ekwensi, another great African writer, makes very interesting comments about this matter and others. Speaking to Bernth Lindfors way back in 1973, Ekwensi says that “the Igbo writer has the unfortunate heritage of finding himself in an atmosphere of controversy…because today the authorised form of Igbo is spoken seldom, if at all. I am free to tell a story in Igbo to my parents or my friends, but if I wrote that same story, it would not be acceptable as standard Igbo…”Ekwensi says that for that reason alone.
Many of his earliest works are in English and not his Igbo language. “My original folk tales are in Igbo but they were not acceptable without proper editing by the authorities who controlled written Igbo.” In Cyprian Ekwensi’s great English novel, Burning Grass, there is a delicious and delicate use of the supernatural called the sokugo or the wandering charm.
The story revolves around a series of adventures involving the Fulani in the Sunsaye family, particularly Mai Sunsaye, head of the household and chief of Dokan Toro.
Cyprian Ekwensi grew up in the northern part of Nigeria and as a result of his contact with the Fulani, he was able to appreciate their culture which he portrays through his first novel titled Burning Grass, one of his best novels. It was published in 1962 in the African writer’s Series Collection.
Asked on the African writer’s dilemma of trying to reach a wider audience versus the need to write in African languages, prominent Ghanaian author, Ama Ata Aidoo says that she worries a lot about writing in English, a language “that is not accessible to our people.”
Aidoo continues and says that she is, however, acutely aware that “writing in English makes it possible for me or any African writer to communicate with other people throughout the continent who share their colonial language….I have not pretended to myself that I have an answer. I have also thought that, whilst one is aware of the language issue as big, it is better for a writer to write in English, than not to write at all.”
The debate over the language of African literature has continued to generate significant interest ever since the emergence of African literary writing in European languages. The writers and critics who gathered at Makerere in Uganda in June 1962 at a conference called: “A Conference of African Writers of English Expression” faced the fundamental question of determining who qualified as an African writer and what qualified as African writing.
Was it literature produced in Africa or about Africa? Could African literature be on any subject, or must it have an African theme? Should it embrace the whole continent or South of the Sahara, or just black Africa? And then the question of language. Should it be in indigenous African languages or should it include Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, and so on?
A year later, a Nigerian critic, Obi Wali, writing in the famous essay “The Dead End of African Literature” in Transition 10 said:
“Perhaps the most important achievement of the conference … is that African literature as now defined and understood leads nowhere.”
He declared that the literature written in European languages did not qualify as African literature. He further pointed out that until African writers accept the fact that any true African literature must be written in African languages, they would be merely pursuing a dead end.
Although Chinua Achebe countered Wali’s position, Ngugi wa Thiongo embraced it, transforming the call for a return to African languages into a critical crusade that has lasted for more than three decades.
Achebe’s argument is as follows:
“Those of us who have inherited the English language may not be in a position to appreciate the value of the inheritance. Or we may go on resenting it because it came as part of a package deal which included many other items of doubtful value and the pos¬itive atrocity of racial arrogance and prejudice, which may yet set the world on fire. But let us not in rejecting the evil, throw out the good with it.”
However, in his book of essays called “Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature,” Ngugi describes the damaging effects of colonialism on African literature, education, and culture. Ngugi describes the conflict between the economic effects of imperialism, still present in Africa, and the need for economic and cultural independence for African people. Ngugi views language and literature as playing a central role in this struggle. He asserts that language is essential to people’s self-perception and to their view of the universe.
He laments that despite his former status as only a student with one major publication, at the time of the Makerere meeting, he was invited while all the prominent Gikuyu writers were not. He describes the ways in which the colonial education system changed African perceptions of their language, and by extension, of themselves. He recounts the divide that he and other African children experienced between the languages of their home and the language of schooling. He retells his experiences of severe punishments that were inflicted on African children for speaking their native tongues in school. Some of the most brutal instances, which Ngugi recounts, include corporal punishment, humiliation, and fines. As a result, Ngugi declared that he would return to writing only in Gikuyu.
It is often stated that the Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo Marechera looked down upon his mother tongue, Shona. On 6 May, 1982, it appears as if Marechera put his so-called diatribe against Shona into context. He is quoted by Veit Wild in 2004 as having said at a gathering:
“In Zimbabwe,” he declared, “we have these two great indigenous languages, ChiShona and SiNdebele”…”Who wants us to keep writing these ShitShona and ShitNdebele languages, this missionary chickenshit? Who else but the imperialists?”
Marechera could have been putting forward the argument that the kind of Shona and Ndebele narratives churned out from the 1950’s to 1980, were heavily manipulated by the establishment through the Southern Rhodesian Literature Bureau. A thorough study on this matter reveals that the Bureau was created in 1956 as part of the Ministry of Information. Its salient objective was to direct the novel along “the path of least ideological resistance to the Rhodesian government.”
Its founding director, a Mr. Krog, set out to search for subversive material in every manuscript before it was published. This was counterproductive to the development of the novel in Shona and Ndebele rendering it generally ‘silent on contemporary socio-political crises’ and having characters who are ‘neutral on colonial economic policies.’ It is also argued that this saw the development of fiction ‘dabbling in stereotypes based on idealistic morality and caused ‘a dearth of exploratory historical fiction.’
As a result of these influences, the Shona novel is torn between protesting against colonialism and, ironically, persuading the reader that colonialism delivered the black folk into modernity and a higher plane of existence.
The new urban setting is portrayed as destroying the Shona people’s well being, their harmony and decency. Patrick Chakaipa’s Garandichauya (1963), for example, operates in the same mode. In this novel, the rise of the urban centre is the rise of wildness and immorality.
However, the veiled suggestion (in such works) that the black people should remain in the tribal trust lands, if they are going to make real sense of their lives, is rather startling.
Asked on what he thinks is the role of the African writer and African literature itself, Cyprian Ekwensi says, “I believe that the role of the writer is dictated by the social and political atmosphere in his country. If all the writers were locked up…they would find it difficult to do anything. But if writers were listened to as a voice, the warning voice or the voice of the prophet, Africa might benefit.”
This is more or less in line with Chinua Achebe’s views on the role of a writer in society. Achebe considered himself a teacher and lawgiver. He was aware that he was not just an artist but a cultural activist too. He felt deeply about the way Africans were looked down upon. He always hoped that maybe his books could straighten that up.
Achebe’s actual words are:
“The (African) writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of re-education and regeneration that must be done. In fact he should march right in front . . . I for one would not wish to be excused. I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones set in the past: Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God) did no more than teach my readers that their past – with all its imperfections – was not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God’s behalf delivered them. Perhaps what I write is applied art as distinct from pure art. But who cares? Art is important but so is education of the kind I have in mind. And I don’t see that the two need be mutually exclusive…”
Kenyan writer Micere Mugo makes very critical observations on certain issues in African Literature. Through her scholarship and poetry, you quickly see that Micere Githae Mugo is an avowed Marxist, feminist and nationalist. Her position is informed by a nuanced understanding of African women in the context of history.
Talking to Adeola James in 1986, she says, “The kind of writer that I have a lot of time and respect for is a writer like Alex La Guma. I admire the fact that his writing was not only talking about struggle, but he was part and parcel of the struggle in South Africa. I admire somebody like Ngugi wa Thiongo, whose example and position in life has demonstrated his commitment to the struggle of the Kenyan people. This kind of writer I want to identify with.”
About women and feminism, Mugo says, “The African woman occupies the lowest rung of the ladder.” She clearly states that women in Africa are oppressed by both African patriarchy and colonialism. To her, they bear the double yoke. Mugo says that as feminists, we must know that not all women are oppressed because some women are part of the oppressive capitalist class because of their own historical positions and race. More specifically, Mugo says, “There is nothing wrong in singing about women but I think we must be careful to define and specify which women we are singing about…”
On the question of whether the African woman writer is muted or not, Ama Ata Aidoo says that the question of the African woman writer being muted has to do with the position of women in society in general.
She feels that African women writers are just receiving the general neglect and disregard that women in the larger society receives. Aidoo says she understands the concern that in African Literature maybe there is no woman writer who has risen to the stature of Achebe or Ngugi or Soyinka.
She indicates that this could be because the assessment of a writer’s work is in the hands of critics and it is they who put writers on pedestals or seep them under the carpet.
There are so many key issues to be dealt with; beginning with simply defining African Literature itself, there is the unresolved issue of which language to use and even on the direction that African literature ought to take. All these random observations could be useful to students of African Literature.
Memory Chirere
News1 month ago
Sports4 weeks ago
Business2 months ago
News1 month ago
News2 weeks ago
Business1 month ago
Business1 month ago