Themes and Attitudes in

MODERN AFRICAN WRITING

By NADINE GORDIMER

HERE are two kinds of writers in relates so closely to Africa in its present state Africa: the testifiers and those who are of transition. Elsewhere, people who are ill­ T actually creating a modem African lit~ equipped creatively write out of vanity or be­ erature. But perhaps I ought first to explain cause there is a profitable reading public for a little more fully on what criteria I base the the third-rate. In Africa, a literature is still distinction between the testifiers and the cre­ seen largely as a function of the benefits of ative writers. The testifiers supply some fas­ education, automatically conferred upon a so­ cinating folklore and a lot of useful informa­ ciety which has a quota of Western-educated tion about the organization of traditional Af­ people. The West African pidgin-English rican life, and the facts of social change in concept "to know book" goes further than it Africa. Like their counterparts, lesser writers may appear; many school teachers, clerks, all over the world, they take stock-in-trade and other white-collar workers seem to write abstractions of human behavior and look a novel almost as a matter of duty. The prin­ about for a dummy to dress in them, a dummy ciple is strongly reinforced, of course, by the put together out of prototypes in other peo~ fact that the shortage of Western-educated pIe's books rather than from observation of people means that Africa's real writers all, I living people. They set these dummies in ac­ think, without exception, have to perform tion, and you watch till they run down; there some other function in addition to their vo­ is no attempt to uncover human motivation, cation-from Africa's greatest poet, Leopold whether of temperament, from within, or so­ Sedar Senghor, who is also the President of cial situation, from without. Such writers do Senegal, to T. M. Aluko, a fine Nigerian not understand the forces which lie behind the novelist, who is director of public works. human phenomena they observe and are But this is by the way. Let me give some moved to write about. examples of the work of writers whose fac­ In passing, there is one difference between tual material is interesting but whose ability these writers in Africa and their European falls short of that material. The would-be counterparts which is interesting because it writer says to himself: all over Africa village boys have become Prime Ministers and Pres­ idents: Kenyatta, Obote, Toure, Banda, MISS GORDIMER has always lived in South Africa, where she was born. She has published Kaunda; I will write a book about a village four collections of short stories and four novels, boy who, like them, leaves home, struggles all widely translated. A new novel, A Guest ot for an education, forms a political party, re­ Honour, will appear this month, and a fifth book sists the colonial authorities, wins over the of stories is underway. In 1961, she won a British people, and moves into Government House. award for the most distinguished contribution to Commonwealth literature. She was a Ford Foun­ Another would-be writer, aware of the move dation Visiting Professor to the United States, to re-establish the validity of the African also in 1961. In 1969, she lectured at Harvard, way of life, says to herself, it is one of the Princeton, and Northwestern; in 1970, at Western customs of my country for the husband of a Michigan and The University of Michigan. Two of her novels-A World ot Strangers and The childless woman to take another wife: I will Late Bourgeois World are banned in South Af­ write about a childless woman whose hus­ rica, as is South African Writing Today, co-edited band takes another wife. The result is, at with Lionel Abrahams. best, something like the Sierra Leonian, Wil- 221 222 THE MICIDGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW liam Conton's The African, and the Nige­ social? The answer is yes, but Bora Nwapa, rian, Bora Nwapa's Efuru. While Conton's the author, only dimly senses the theme of hero, Kisimi Kamara, progresses from vil­ her novel; all she has seen is the somewhat lage bright boy through the care of gin-tip­ disparate series of events in the life of Efuru. pling missionary ladies to Cambridge certifi­ Perhaps you remember E. M. Forster's fa­ cate, England, lodgings, urban poverty and mous definition of the difference between midnight oil, enlivened by boyish plans for story and plot. "The king died and then the African liberation, he has a certain autobio­ queen died": that is a story, a series of graphical veracity behind him. When he re­ events arranged in their time-sequence. "The turns to his country and becomes a public, king died and then the queen died of grief": less subjective figure, his author, lacking the that is a plot; the time-sequence is preserved creative insight into the complex motivation but the emphasis is on causality. If I carry -psychological, political, and historical­ the definition one step further and suppose needed to give his hero substance in this sit­ the author sets out to explore the questions, uation, resorts to sudden bald statements to "What sort of woman is it who dies of grief be taken on trust by the reader-"Six and what sort of social and historical context months later I was Prime Minister"-and shaped her?"-we reach a definition of finally turns in desperation (and wild defi­ theme, the third dimension of the novel, and ance of the political facts of life) to having the one where it fulfils art's function of eter­ Kamara resign office, buy an airline ticket, nally pushing back the barriers of under­ and land in South Africa to organise a boy­ standing in order to apprehend and make cott to bring down Apartheid. sense of life. Bora Nwapa's Efuru is a childless woman Bora Nwapa is one among the many Afri­ whose bewilderment and frustration are can writers who are not able to do this for stated and left unexplored. Again, not know­ African life because she is not capable of ing enough about her own creation, the au­ dealing with theme. But she is a country­ thor has to resort to something to fill the woman of one of the few African writers vacuum. She uses rambling details of daily whose name already belongs to world litera­ life, mildly interesting but largely irrelevant. ture-Chinua Achebe. He handles the domi­ Among them the key to the objective reality nant themes of African writing, commanding of Efuru lies half buried and less than half un­ all the resources of a brilliant creative imagi­ derstood. Efuru is presented as beautiful, nation from a classical sense of tragedy to clever, a successful trader, and she performs ironic wit. In his first novel, Things Fall all the rites and neighbourly duties without Apart, he shows at once a comprehensive in­ which these attributes would not be valid in sight into his character~. Their psychological a tribal society, but she has had two unsuc­ make-up is never seen in isolation, as a neu­ cessful marriages and seen her only child rotic phenomenon; his historical sense sets die. In a somewhat off-stage incident, a sage them at the axis of their time and place. He diagnoses that a river goddess has chosen knows who they are, and why they are as Efuru as her honoured worshipper; it seems they are; he shows them as stemming from that other women chosen by the river goddess the past, engaged with the forces of the pres­ have been childless, too. Are we then being ent, and relevant to a future. He chooses as shown, through the life of an individual, how his hero what Hegel calls a world-historical sublimation of frustrated natural instincts figure, a man who, though not obscure is not takes place in a woman of a particular type, a king, not a history-maker in the obvious and how an African society invents or em­ sense, but someone through whose individ­ ploys religious or mystical conventions to ual life the forces of his time can be seen to reconcile her to her lot and give her a place interact. Okonkwo is a person of authority within the society despite the fact that she and achievement in his Eastern Nigerian vil­ cannot fulfil the conventional one? Is this lage. He was born the son of a failure and is novel really about an interesting form of self-made; by his own efforts he has a repu­ compensation, not merely personal, but also tation as a fine wrestler, has distinguished MODERN AFRICAN WRITING 223 himself in tribal wars, has an excellent yam judges cases "in ignorance" of African law; crop, two tribal titles, and can afford three and a· store has been opened where for the wives. A hostage of a tribal skirmish, a first time palm-oil and kernel have become young boy, Ikemefuna, is given into his care "things of great price." Okonkwo's son, until the council of tribal elders decides the Nwoye, has become a Christian convert, and boy's fate. Ikemefuna becomes so much a disowns his father. Okonkwo, whose exile member of Okonkwo's family that he often has cost him his position of authority in the has the honor of carrying Okonkwo's stool; clan-"The clan was like a lizard; if it lost yet when the elders decide Ikemefuna must its tail it soon grew another"-regains au­ die, Okonkwo is expected to be present when thority when, on his advice, the church is the deed is done, and, indeed to despatch him burned down because an egwugwu (an an­ in his final agony. Okonkwo tries to put the cestral spirit impersonated by a clansman) dead boy out of his mind. Then later, at the has been unmasked and desecrated by a funeral rites for an old man, the gun with Christian convert. As a result, Okonkwo and which Okonkwo is to fire a salute explodes five other leaders are summoned by the Dis­ and fatally wounds another young boy. It is trict Commissioner for a discussion and are a crime to kill a clansman, and so Okonkwo then arrested and held hostage for a fine to is exiled from the village for seven years. be paid by the villagers. Lashed and humili­ These are the disparate facts of the narra­ ated by underlings of his own race while he tive; in Achebe's hands they grow out of one was in prison, Okonkwo decides that if the another with the surging inevitability of a clan will not fight to drive the white man Greek tragedy. Okonkwo's own son, Nwoye, away, he will avenge himself alone. At a was a disappointment; Ikemefuna had come meeting of the clan, he kills a government to stand in his place. Yet when Ikemefuna messenger who comes to declare the meeting received his death-blow and turned to Ok­ illegal. Before the D.C. arrives with soldiers onkwo, calling out "My father, they have to arrest him, he hangs himself. killed me!" Okonkwo, afraid of being Again, the train of events falls into a more thought weak, drew his matchet and cut him profoundly meaningful arrangement than down .... The curse of Okonkwo's guilt that of causality when Achebe's deep under­ over Ikemefuna hangs over subsequent standing of the nature of the white man's im­ events; the man at whose funeral Okonkwo pact on Africa is brought to bear on them. . inadvertently killed a young clansman was Okonkwo kills himself because the authority I Ezuedu, the same old man who had said to he takes up again is already a broken thing; Okonkwo at the time of Ikemefuna's killing, there can be no real return to the clan, for "That boy calls you father. Bear no hand in him, because the African ethos that held it his death." So ends the first part of the together has faltered before the attraction-re­ novel. In it we have seen the personal psy­ pulsion of the white man's ethos. When Ok­ chological make-up of Okonkwo stemming onkwo kills the government messenger: from his private situation and background: The waiting backcloth jumped into tumultous the forces of the past which have combined life and the meeting was stopped. Okonkwo to make him the man he is. stood looking at the dead man. He knew that The second half brings the man into en­ Umofia would not go to war. He knew because gagement with the specific politico-historical they had let the other messengers escape. They situation of his time. The seven years of Ok­ had broken into tumult instead of action. onkwo's exile coincide with the infiltration of The white man's gods more than the white white missionaries and the colonial adminis­ man's guns-Achebe shows how, above all, tration that follows, the flag close behind the these were what no one was armed against, cross. When Okonkwo returns to his village, at this stage in Africa's history. his crime against the clan expiated, he finds that the white man's religion has come and "led many of the people astray"; the white Tumult instead of action: No Longer At man's government has built a court where he Ease, the title of Achebe's second novel, at 224 THE MICIDGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW

once takes up the theme of the era for which and the African ethos intact, a positive the scene was set at the close of Things Fall value not yet brought into question by oth­ Apart. No Longer At Ease begins in a court­ ers. It is signficant that whereas Okonkwo room in Lagos where Obi Okonkwo (I don't loses his son as a convert to Christianity, Ez­ know whether the suggestion is that he is a eulu in Arrow of God sends his son to the later generation of the dead Okonkwo's fam­ mssion school in cold calculation that it is ily) is on trial for taking bribes. The time is useful and necessary to acquire the white still pre-Nigerian independence. Obi is a man's magic-his skills. Although the threat been-to, a civil servant educated in England, of the white man's presence hangs over these personable, with a taste for poetry and people, they have not yet realized that they scotch, and a car. Friends, white administra­ could ever be anything but masters of their tors-all discuss his downfall: "Everyone own destiny. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe's wondered why." The book explores the purpose was to show traditional life dis­ irony of the statement, working back to it integrating; in Arrow of God his purpose is through the conflict of social pressures that above all to reinstate the validity of life with­ have made this courtroom almost a pre-des­ out the white man. He examines, through the tination for young Obi. When he returned ordinary devices of the psychological novel, from England, full of enthusiasm for the new the stresses and emotion problems of that Africa his generation is going to build, and life and the social order created to contain determined to set an example of dedication, them. They are presented in themselves, in honesty, and disinterest in the Africanized the tension of their own order, rather than in Civil Service, he was at once burdened with conflict with another. Although the actions two incompatible sets of obligations: on the of colonial administrators precipitate events one hand, to pay back to his village the in the novel, it is the events themselves and money advanced for his overseas education the Africans who deal with them who take and the necessity to assist his family; on the up the foreground-the white men, promi­ other, to live in a European style befitting his nent in Achebe's other books, this time re­ position as a civil servant. With a terse ironic main curiously unimportant and remote. touch, Achebe places him not between some The scene is a complex of villages in East­ sweeping abstraction of "natural" forces of ern Nigeria and the people are lbo. Ezeulu, past and future, but between social stress­ Chief Priest of Ulu, local deity of the Um­ es, as he extends himself docilely on the rack uaro people, is the protagonist. The central of the bourgeois values his society has taken narrative is his double struggle: against ri­ over from the white man, values totally un­ valry among his own tribesmen, and the in­ real in the economic and social conditions of comprehensible demands (scarcely recog­ that society. It is not that Obi cannot do his nised as authority, yet) of the district officers work efficiently, but that he accepts the ne­ and missionaries. This story-line is so richly cessity for the trappings of a European bour­ overlaid with the intrigues, counter-intrigues, geois life that, during a European adminis­ ceremonies, customs, feasts and legends of tration, went along with it. Even the obliga­ the Umuaro, not to mention character stud­ tion to support hii family is not measured in ies of Ezeulu's wives, children, inlaws, and accordance with their actual needs, but with friends, and the brilliantly observed relations what is thought to befit the family of a man between them all, that it comes as something who lives according to European white-col­ of a shock, in the last chapter or two, to real­ lar values. ize that while this abundance of life has been In his third novel, Arrow of God, Achebe occupying one's mind, Ezeulu has been mov­ turns back to the early colonial era, pre­ ing toward one of those Lear-like destinies dating that of Things Fall Apart. There are of defeat before social change that Achebe similarities between the first and the third; understands so well. This novel attempts the hut, in the first, the conflict between the complete evocation of African life--not an white man and Africa is overt, whereas in exoticist exploitation of local colour and the third, African confidence is still unshaken strange customs, but the total logic of a par- MODERN AFRICAN WRITING 225 ticular way of life. Only The Dark Child, an destiny. His father is a descendent of the autobiographical novel by the French Afri­ seer and believes that his son is the chosen can writer, Camara Laye, can compare with one whom it was also predicted would come it, and then only as an exquisite detail can be from the hills to save the Gikuyu. The feud compared with the superbly realized com­ between the mission and the clan finds its plete canvas. For Achebe has succeeded su­ martyr in Muthoni, daughter of the convert perbly, even though he has perhaps not pastor, Joshua. The issue is, not surprisingly, solved all the technical problems of fitting her circumcision-white condemnation of this particular theme into the form of the female circumcision coming second only to conventional modem novel. the settler appropriation of the White High­ In his latest novel, A Man of The People, lands, in the canon of Gikuyu resentment of he turns to comic irony as the best approach colonial rule. Muthoni is a devout Christian, to the theme of political corruption in an in­ but she cannot accept the Christian edict dependent African State-and he is almost against a rite without which she will not be­ the only English-writing African able to use long, in the true sense, to her people. She it. Again, so far, one has to look to French says "I want to be a woman made beautiful I African writers for comparison-the rather in the manner of the tribe." Waiyuki realises clumsy satire of Mongo Beti's attack on the that Muthoni "had the courage to attempt a Catholic Church in King Lazarus, and the reconciliation of the many forces that wanted immensely stylish, sophisticated bite of Fer­ to control her" from the tribal past and the dinand Oyono's Houseboy, written in the westernised future. She dies of the operation: , form of a diary which records the servant's­ to the tribe, a saint; to the mission, a pagan eye view of the private life and loves of the punished for her sins. Waiyuki, while he fol­ white master-race. lows his father's admonition to remain true James Ngugi of Kenya is another novelist to his people and the ancient rites, becomes who attempts important African themes on a a teacher and believes that the salvation of I scale of complexity and depth, although he the people before the threat of annihilation . does not always manage to bring them off by the white man's ethos lies in western edu­ with the skill of an Achebe. He attempts to cation, the organization of the Gikuyu inde­ relate the African past-not just historical pendent schools movement. He joins the Ki­ but also mythological-to the present-day ama at its inception, when it is chiefly a soci­ life of the Gikuyu people. The period of his ety to keep Gikuyu cultural traditions alive, novel, The River Between, is immediately but resigns when it takes on a more militant pre-Mau-Mau--or pre-Kiama, to give the character, putting off the political mission movement its proper name. The approach is that he sees is necessary: to unite the people, that of an exploration of the background of both Christian and tribal, in a common pur- i social and historical forces that led to the pose of liberation from white rule. Later he formation of a liberation movement. The rejoins the Kiama but fails to commit him­ novel begins with a scene-setting in which self fully to leadership. Finally, he is ex- • the mythological origin of the Gikuyu-their pelled when he goes to warn the mission of Adam-and-Eve story-is invoked, and the an impending attack by the Kiama. The con- • prophesy of an ancient Gikuyu seer is re­ flict is now between Waiyuki and the tribe; • called: "There shall come a people with like other saviours before him he is threat­ clothes like butterflies." Now they have ened with crucifixion at the hands of those ; come; the familiar struggle is on between he has come to save. He understands at last : the clanspeople who remain within tribal that no evasion is possible-"the new aware­ disciplines and the white missionaries and ness of the people wanted expression at a their black converts. The young boy Wai­ politicallevel"-and no other would do. yuki, like Ezeulu's son in Arrow of God, This over-long and clumsy novel does an­ goes to the mission school to learn the se­ alyze with considerable insight the spiritual crets of the white man; but for Waiyuki this conflict between the values of tribal life and is seen as part of the fulfilment of a political those imposed by white conquest. N gugi cre- 226 THE MICmGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW ates a world-historical figure. The man who perhaps still thinks of as a reversion to prim­ seeks to go beyond the either-or and believes itive savagery (as opposed, no doubt, to civi­ that a new synthesis is necessary if Africa is lized savagery in Nazi Germany) is shown to to take her place in the modem world be­ be a guerilla war in which freedom was won, comes a victim of the force of nationalism. and which brought with its accomplishment Waiyuki is seen as a failure because he can­ a high price for the people who waged it. not fulfil the demands of his time; Ngugi un­ Wale Soyinka, another Nigerian, made his derstands the forces of that time and places name as a poet and Africa's finest play­ him squarely in it. wright. He deals with a post-independence A Grain of Wheat, James Ngugi's latest Africa in an extraordinary first novel, The novel, is an extremely interesting piece of Interpreters. Sagoe the journalist, Sekoni the work because it brings a new theme to Afri­ engineer, Lasunwon the lawyer, Egbo the can literature-the effects on a people of the aristocrat working in the Foreign Office, changes brought about in themselves by the Bandele the academic-these are the friends demands of a bloody and bitter struggle for that the painter Kola is using as models for independence. How fit is one for peace, the pantheon of Nigerian gods in an ambi­ when one has made revolution one's life? Set tious canvas. These contemporary Africans in the immediate post-Mau-Mau period the are interpreting through their lives, modem novel looks back to the personal tragedies of Africa, and the painter is interpreting the old a number of people who were active in Mau­ godhead anew, through them. These men are Mau, and examines how the experience now Western-educated, but they are certainly not shapes their lives. In the uneasy peace, they Been-tos-far from being precariously ex­ have to come to terms with one another, but tended between two worlds (African life and their relationships are determined by the ex­ the cities of Europe), they have reached the perience that has put all human relationships synthesis of both which many Africans writ­ through the test of fire-the guerilla revolu­ ing before Soyinka have seen as the ideal so­ tion itself. Here are the wild-looking bearded lution to the problem of modem African men who lived in the Aberdares for years, identity. But it is a critical synthesis: it turns emerging after the revolution with almost all out that the spiritual inadequacies of both their instincts for normal life lost; brave men worlds become clear to those who, at long half-broken by the experience; and men ac­ last, have come into the heritage of the two cepted as brave men who must live the rest as one. The journalist Sagoe's scatalogical of their lives with the secret knowledge that philosophy of Voidancy-"the most indi­ they were traitors. Mugo, a local small vidual function of man"-a lavatory philoso­ farmer, is such a man. He has betrayed a fel­ phy with the smallest room in the house as low Gikuyu to the British; as a result of vari­ its temple of meditation-is a send-up of ous events whi,h enmesh him in the sense of Negritude along with the hair-splitting of or­ his own guilt, he brings his own world crash­ thodoxy and revisionism in the fad philoso­ ing down around his head by confession, and phies of East and West. Sekoni, the engineer, the words of one of the Mau-Mau veterans has a nervous breakdown (the first one I've who are his judges at a private trial sum up come across in African writing) when a the light in which Ngugi presents him: "Your power station he has built is never used be­ deeds alone will condemn you. No one will cause of some piece of political finaglery. Dr. ever escape from his own actions." It is the Faseyi has problems with his English wife, measure of James Ngugi's development as a not because she is not acceptable to his fam­ writer that none of the protagonists in this ily, but because she forgets her white gloves novel is marred by the pseudo-nobility of and asks for palm wine instead of a cocktail some of the characters in his earlier work, at an embassy reception, behaving, he says, and yet he succeeds in placing the so-called "like a bush-Cockney." Egbo, taking his Mau-Mau movement in the historical, politi­ friends on a visit to his ancestral home, cal, and sociological context of the African where his family is still a great one, casts a continental revolution. What the white world cold eye on both his grandfather's feudal MODERN AFRICAN WRITING 227 dignity and his own sycophantic life at the Ezekiel Mphahlele, the South African Foreign Office: "What is my grandfather writer, maintains that the cultured elite of but a glorified bandit? Only that doesn't help black Africa is becoming middle class be­ either. Sooner a glorified bandit than a loud­ cause the diplomas of its members give them mouthed slave." And Sagoe, watching a La­ access to positions of responsibility, whereas gos crowd in pursuit of a wretched young in South Africa the Negro intellectual is still pickpocket, says to himself, "Run, you little a member of the proletariat because racial thief, or the bigger thieves will pass a law segregation prevents his obtaining white­ against your existence as a menace to society collar jobs and privileges reserved for whites. . . . run from the same crowd which will re­ This applies to African literature and writ­ form tomorrow and cheer the larger thief re­ ers, too, of course; he implies that there is no turning from his twentieth Economic Mis­ proletarian literature in black Africa, only in sion, and pluck his train from the mud, dog­ South Africa. If he has in mind an urban wise, in its teeth." proletariat, what he says is true; apart from Nothing is what is seemed-what it Cyprian Ekwensi's Jagua Nana, the story of seemed it would be before African emanci­ a Nigerian prostitute, and perhaps one or pation; even the prophet of a new Christian two others, the literature of black Africa, sect in Lagos, a Lazarus claiming to have where it deals with urban life, deals with the risen from the dead, turns out to have as his African middle class. But novels dealing disciples a gang of thieves. Does Soyinka see with rural life, such as John Munonye's The him as the symbol of the new African soci­ Only Son, Ekwensi's Burning Grass, Ghan­ ety? Perhaps. But this magnificent novel, aian S. A. Konadu's A Woman In Her Prime, with its poet's command of the torrents of and James Ngugi's novels as well as language, its wit both fiery and laconic, is Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arrow ot not defeatist. One cannot do justice to its God-if subject and theme, and not the complexity in a brief summary and discus­ manner of life of the author, are the criteria, sion; but it is significant that episodes most then surely this is the literature of an agrar­ meaningful-whether as fulfilment or disil­ ian proletariat? lusion-to the protagonists are often those Apart from a very few notable exceptions rooted in Africanness, in the subsoil of the (Mofolo's Chaka, Abraham's historical new society. novel, Wild Conquest) imaginative African It is interesting to compare for a moment writing in South Africa is overwhelmingly a the total involvement-in both Europe and proletarian literature in a society where col­ Africa-of Wole Soyinka's people with the our and class are identified. It ranges from i almost total disengagement of Doumbe in a Peter Abrahams's countryman-comes-to- I novel called A Few Nights & Days by the town story, Mine Boy with its view of the vi- ~ Cameroonian, Mbella Sonne Dipoko. olent baptism of a mineworker into city life i Doumbe is just another one of the deraci­ seen through the saving grace of individuals f nated young everywhere, moving through and individual racial attitudes, to Alex La the cafes, dance-halls, and beds of Paris. To Guma's A Walk In The Night in which the him, the moment, privately tangible, is all debasement of life on the wrong side of the , that matters; so that one might take him as color bar hangs a pall of degradation over ' an example of the African depersonalised by every human activity, so that every relation­ the West. In traditional African societies, the ship is demeaned in the generalization of an welfare of the tribe is the concept of ultimate overwhelming inhumanity: the color bar it­ concern, and the constant presence of the self. Alex La Guma's protagonists in District spirits of the ancestors, influencing daily life, Six do not talk about inequality; they bear its makes the Western division of life into secu­ weals. In this novel, Michael Adonis is a col­ lar and spiritual a meaningless concept. Soy­ ored boy who has just lost his job in a soci­ inka's sophisticated protagonists are fully en­ ety where his ambitions are limited by job gaged in attempting to interpret this concept reservations and his security as a worker is in modem terms. not ensured by a trade union. He wanders 228 THE MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW

the streets around his Cape Town tenement courage to act. Throughout South Mrican room, and in an atmosphere of cheap wine, black literature-in the autobiographical sex, and the meaningless agression of frus­ writings of Mphahlele and Lewis Nkosi, trated human beings, unintentionally kills a Bloke Modisane, and others, as well as in decrepit old white man who has sunk too fiction-it is these protagonists and these low for acceptance among whites. Adonis's qualities that are taken to represent the only moral dissolution culminates when he lets his true values for a dispossessed proletariat. friend, Willieboy, be blamed for the crime, What are the most striking features of the while Adonis himself joins a gang of thugs. way Africa sees itself and its relation to the In his short stories, Alex La Guma shows rest of the world, emerging from African lit­ the same ability to convey the sight, sound, erature in English? Well, to begin with, some and smell of poverty and misery, so that the attitudes that are likely to be surprising to flesh-and-blood meaning of the color bar be­ the white world. The way Africa sees the comes a shocking, sensuous impact. His sto­ role of Christianity in Mrica's history, for ries are set in prisons, cheap cafes, back­ example. The general view of Christianity is yards, yet eschew the cliche situations of as intrinsically alien and destructive. apartheid-the confrontations of black and Whether Christian values did or did not offer white in the context of the immorality act or any spiritual advance on those of African re­ liquor raids, which are done to death by ligions is not seen as the issue; the church is lesser writers. He is able to make a subtle evil because it lures the people away from piece of social comment, in his slight story their own gods. When the missionaries "Nocturne," out of a colored delinquent at­ brought the gospel to Africa, so far as tradi­ tracted upstairs into a white house by the tional African society was concerned they sound of music he has never heard before. were the devil's disciples: to be a convert James Matthews, in the same story collec­ was to be damned, not saved-an attitude tion, Quartet, shows the other face of depri­ that sets on its head the traditional white vation in a brilliantly observed story "The view of Christianity, leading the dark conti­ Portable Radio," in which the black man's nent into the light. Well, one's own god is desire for material possessions, cynically fos­ always the true one; the other man's is the tered across the color bar by the white man, pagan idol. Of course, one also sees how the becomes yet another fake foisted upon the African view of Christianity was conditioned black man in place of the self-respect dis­ first by the slave trade, when certain bishops crimination denies him. Both these stories were zealous in baptising slaves before they convey more about the particular social sit­ were shipped off, and then later-when mis­ uation in which they occur than the too obvi­ sionaries like Livingstone had influenced the ous allegory of a story like Richard Rive's white world to outlaw slavery, and had version of the nativity in color-bar-dress, brought white administrators in their train with a white village hotel owner, and Mary instead-by resentment against the interlop­ and Joseph as black laborers. When James ers for whom the white man's religion had Matthews deals with political action, as in opened the way. On the other hand, where his bus-boycott story "Azikwela" ("We Will Islam enters. African literature it is not pre­ Not Ride"), he shows not generalized heroic sented as a foreign religion at all, so easily, or saintly figures, but ordinary, frightened it seems, it was assimilated. And the fact men, driven to find themselves through expe­ that Arabs bought and sold Africans both riences they half-shrink from, tempted to before the whites began and after the whites prefer deprived life to the danger of risking had ceased to do so, brings no trace of re­ what little they have in the hope of attaining sentment into acceptance of the Arab's something better; coming slowly to the dis­ Mohammedanism. What is striking is the re­ covery that it is the intangibles, a sense of ligious fatalism that pervades the protago­ one's innate dignity and an indentification nists in novels about arabised Africans­ with the hopes of one's fellows, which be­ Ekwensi's Burning Grass, for example-and come both means and end, and give one the the submissiveness of the woman portrayed, MODERN AFRICAN WRITING 229

in contrast with the vigour and initiative of but to re-establish the African past as some­ those remarkable women who often domi­ thing contiguous with the drastic, profound, nate fiction about societies which still wor­ and necessary change of the present. ship their ancestors. What main trend does African English lit­ The African view of white colonial admin­ erature show in its development? George Lu­ istrators-apart from the missionaries, Afri­ kacs, the Hungarian philosopher and one of ca's entire experience of the white world for the two or three. important literary critics of several decades-is seen to change, from the our time, discerns three main trends in mod­ monstrous bad-man figures of some African em world literature in his The Meaning of writers, through the figures of fun drawn by Contemporary Realism: first, the literature others, to the picture being presented in of the avant Rarde--experimental Modern­ post-Independence literature of the white ad­ ism from Kafka and Joyce to Beckett and ministrator as a man who, although he may Faulkner, which he condemns for its subjec­ have had a genuine wish to be useful in Af­ tivism, its static view of the human condi­ rica, an integrity of purpose fully granted, is tion, its dissolution of character, its obses­ completely unable to make real contact with sion with pathological states and its lack of a African life. It is as if the man who for so sense of history; and second, Socialist Real­ long claimed to "know the African" can now ism, which he criticizes for its oversimplifica­ never hope to get to know him in any mean­ tion, its failure to see the contradictions in ingful way. As for the white liberal, in the the everyday life of society, and its view of main he or she appears in African fiction in history-"Utopia is already with us" under the role summed up by the South African communism-a view he finds no less static political thinker, Majeke, as "conciliator be­ than that of the Western avant garde. He tween the oppressor and the oppressed."1 A contrasts with these two systems of artistic notable exception is Lois, the Englishwoman dogmatism the trend of critical realism­ in Peter Abrahams's "Wreath for Udomo"; work in which the social changes that char­ he makes a heroine of her. acterize our era are most truly reflected, But then writing from black South Africa character is not sacrificed to artistic pattern, is different from that of any other part of the the human condition is understood dynami­ continent. As Wole Soyinka said recently. cally, in an historical context, and the patho­ "The experience of the South African writer logical aspects of modem life are placed in a is approached by that of other Africans only critical perspective. George Lukacs sees the remotely by the experience of colonial re­ critical realists as the true heirs, through pression." The difference in experience is re­ writers such as Thomas Mann and Conrad, flected in the picture of the African that of the great realists of the 19th century, Bal­ emerges from South African black literature, zac, Stendhal, and Tolstoy, and critical real­ compared with that of the rest of the En­ ism as not only the link with the great litera­ glish-writing continent. It is as a dispos­ ture of the past, but also the literature that sessed proletariat that the Africans emerge points to the future. There seems to me no in black South African literature, a people doubt that African English literature's best struggling under the triple burden of indus­ writers are critical realists, and that this is trialization, color, and class discrimination, the direction in which African literature is in a capitalist economy which orders their developing. lives as if they were still living in a feudal BIBLIOGRAPHY age. It is as a people dealing with the prob­ William Conton (Sierra Leone), The African. lems of power that the rest are shown, exer­ Flora Nwapa (Nigeria). Efuru. cising the right even to misgovern themselves T. M. Aluko (Nigeria). and struggling not to live an anachronism, Leopold Sedar Senghor (Senegal). Chinua Achebe (Nigeria). Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, A Man of The People. 1 Nosipho Majeke, "The Role of the Mission­ James Ngugi (Kenya), The River Between, A aries in Conquest." Grain of Wheat. 230 THE MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW

Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), The Interpreters. Wreath for Udomo. Mbella Sonne Dipoko (Cameroons), A Few Alex La Guma (South Africa), A Walk in The Nights & Days. Night. Ezekiel Mphahlele (South Africa). James Matthews (South Africa), The Portable Cyprian Ekwensi (Nigeria), Jagua Nana, Burning Radio, Azikwela. Grass. Richard Rive (South Africa), No Room At S. A. Konadu (Ghana), A Woman in Her Prime. Solitaire. Peter Abrahams (South Africa), Mine Boy, A Lewis Nkosi (South Africa), Home and Exile. Bloke Modisane.

Reprinted from :.vIICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW Vol. IX, No, ~. Fall, 1970