David Kaiza
2 November 2008
opinion
FROM THE BOLSHEVIKS OF the Soviet Union to the Communists of China, the printed word has been used as a tool to confront the oppressor.
Those involved in social struggle have embraced the oral medium, newspapers, books and other forms of communication to rally people to their cause and develop revolutionary theory, ideology and practice.
The African novelist has used the genre to shout from the rooftops against repression and negative stereotyping of the African.
It was, therefore, refreshing to read the article, "1,000 Years of the Novel" by David Kaiza (The EastAfrican, October 20-26). The writer was spot on in most cases. However, when it came to the African novel, he floundered, and even stumbled; missing a few points.
He wrote that, when it comes to the African novel, "The central problem seems to be how to re-establish the primacy of the continent's people -- to produce 'characters' rather than 'African characters'."
He also charged that the African novel had failed "to propose a larger narrative (the destiny of mankind, for instance)..."
Unlike their Western counterparts, African novelists have, till recently, been struggling with issues of African identity in a world full of negative stereotyping. Therefore, Kaiza's insistence on the African novel failing "to propose a larger narrative" was surprising, to say the least.
From Africa's first major novel, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe to The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the African novel has been a discourse about the place of the African in his country and the world at large.
Chinua Achebe recounts that while at University College, Ibadan, he read and was angered by the novel, Mister Johnson by the Anglo-Irish writer Joyce Cary, who had worked as a colonial officer in Nigeria. Achebe could hardly recognise the Nigeria he loved in that novel.
In Cary's novel, Nigerians are, "jealous savages... live like mice or rats in a palace floor;" dancers are, "grinning, shrieking, scowling or with faces which seemed entirely dislocated, senseless and unhuman, like twisted bags of lard."
When Achebe read this, he says, "It began to dawn on me that although fiction was undoubtedly fictitious, it could also be true or false, not with the truth or falsehood of a news item but as to its disinterestedness, its intention, its integrity."
AS SOMEONE LATER WROTE, "It was the image of blacks as 'unhuman,' a standard trope of colonial literature, that Achebe recognised as particularly dangerous."
Someone needed to write a different story. In the words of a veteran publisher, Briton James Currey (from his latest title - Africa Writes Back), someone needed to "write back" and answer the charges of bigoted writers.
Someone needed to correct the false impression that Africans are dumb savages; always eager to cut each other's throats -- a stereotype that still exists in the West, especially in the way the Western media reports on African matters.
So Chinua Achebe set out to write Things Fall Apart.
His mission was not only to correct the damage done by negative portrayals of the African in previous works by predominantly white writers but also to give a new narrative that Africans were actually organised, peace-loving and civil.
There was too much at stake for Chinua Achebe and other early colonial-era writers to think of "larger narratives."
The task at hand was already daunting enough.
Achebe narrates controversial ancestral beliefs with dignified grace without demonising them, as a white writer would most certainly have done.
As a critic wrote, "The whole idea is that "Achebe brought forth the complex norms of the African culture and dispelled the stereotypical imagery of the primitive Africa."
The colonial writer was clearly confounded by Africans' complex culture, so what he did not understand, he demonised as "black" and "evil." The African writer, on the other hand, set out to clarify what many people did not understand about the African.
To do this, however, the African writer had to use "African characters" and hence, David Kaiza's indictment that the African writer has failed to use "characters other than African characters" doesn't hold water. The African writer needed to use "African characters." The situation at hand required heroes and heroines who were African.
The other reason why the African novel is yet "to propose a larger narrative" is the fact that to be relevant, the African novelist had to confront hot-button issues of his time.
There was no need to veer off the path when the pressing issue of the moment was the dehumanising condition of the African under the colonial yoke. And so, Ngugi wa Thiong'o had to write stories that addressed the oppressor, rebuking, ridiculing and asking hard questions.
It should always be remembered that the writer doesn't live in a vacuum but within a society that has pressing issues. For instance, in the late 1950s, the apartheid South African government ordered the razing of artistically flourishing Sophiatown, a suburb of Johannesburg.
World-renowned jazz stars Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba and several famous writers had cut their teeth in its illegal taverns.
The authorities felt threatened by its growing outlets for free speech and vowed to finish it off for good; 2,000 police armed with guns and clubs, moved into its crowded streets accompanied by bulldozers and wiped the town off the map.
This prompted Can Themba, Drum's wiliest and most mischievous journalist, to write an emotional book, Requiem for Sophiatown, a lament for the city once called the "Chicago of South Africa."
Had the government not razed Sophiatown, Requiem for Sophiatown wouldn't have been written. Lucia Mauro says Themba wrote the book "so that future generations would remember how art could thrive, if only for a short while, amid sanctioned oppression."
Also, when the Biafran War broke out in Nigeria, Achebe devoted himself fully to the Biafran cause and for a time, he stopped writing other genres, taking up poetry. He says he wanted "something short, intense, more in keeping with my mood."
During the Biafran War, there was simply no greater narrative than the war if writers were to be relevant to their society. Among the books written were Girls at War and Other Stories (Chinua Achebe), Sunset in Biafra (Elechi Amadi), Out of Nigeria (J. L Brandler), Divided We Stand (Cyprian Ekwensi), Sunset at Dawn (Chukwuemeka Ike), A Tragedy Without Heroes (Hilary Njoku) and Biafra Testament (Kalu Okpi).
IN THE SAME WAY, DURING THE apartheid regime in South Africa, most writers couldn't find a greater and more pressing theme than apartheid. South African writers like Mongane Wally Serote, Mazisi Kunene, Njabulo S. Ndebele, Alan Paton, Ezekiel Mphahlele, Sindiwe Magona, Thomas Mofolo and others featured it in their writing.
After the apartheid regime, a new generation of writers are now "changing the subject." One of the most interesting new South African writers is Zukiswa Wanner whose debut novel, The Madams (2006), "deals wittily with post-apartheid racial role-reversal in the domestic sphere."
A black madam employs a white domestic servant. This may not have been possible to even imagine at the height of apartheid; at least the author would not have written it without the fear of harassment or imprisonment.
The African novelist, is not therefore, wholly to blame if he was not able to propose a larger narrative; he had too much at hand to address. There are encouraging signs, however, that the discourse is going beyond colonial and neo-colonial repression to new, emerging topics in the African novel.
The writer is the publishing manager of Macmillan Kenya Publishers.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The East African. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
