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(20) Ui Art Olorunyomi Africa 2014 African Notes Vol. 38 No. 2 2014, pp. 71-77 Africa and the Literature of Unfreedom Sola Olorunyomi University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria Introduction forebears found allies in other genres for When I grow up I’d like to be a dog... creative expressivity. For instance, by playing (A little girl in a Warsaw Ghetto) the codifier, through speech surrogacy, music became a viable nest for treasured information, The muse as'endangeredspecie and hidden critique. The early jester, In their book, Extreme Situations. ■.. David Craig “remembrancer” and court poet all comingled, and Michael Egan write, detailing the behaviour yet finding a little space to get at the Genre. of literature in the interwar years: “In the ghetto Even great minds in history will eventually in Warsaw in 1914, Ludwik Hirszfeld asked a want the poet banned from the Republic; and little girl, ‘What would you like to be.’ She over the period, they did get banned, even answered, ‘A dog, because the sentries like harmed in ways too shameful to recount to dogs’.” contemporary civilsation. And it was not a Literature continues to recount and habit contained by the diversity of our transform experience, such as has been geographies ... just wherever power relations described above. No doubt, literature has over felt threatened sufficiently enough. And the the ages b^emg^onstantly affronted, largely infamous apartheid system of South Africa was because it stokes the imagination. Imagination yet one such case in point. continues to serve as a cypher for a universal A bit of the anti-apartheid literature got language; and, in a way, it is'not particularly smuggled out and the rest of the continent held suprising that workers of the imaginative its breath, reading lines written in blood, enterprise UNIVERSITYhave hlso had to contend, OF IBADANdescribing sanguine LIBRARY tales of horror, in lonely, simultaneously, with a universal.language of lonsome cells - homes of the extra-judicial applause and censorship. killings of that era, etc. And. then, Chinua Long before the age of writing, our Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, will occasionally 72 Sola Dlorunyomi cross the wall of the divide, and bring down Regional Cultural Forms the prison’walls for the Madiba, Nelson Braude Mandela. Tell Freedom, Mine Boy, Children of Soweto, also from the South, fired the The major player in organising writers now is imagination of the African youth across the the Congress of South African Writers continent. And it became clear, suppress as you (COSAW), which has regional groups may, the imagination has ultimate triumph. I throughout the country and. is organised thought we could go through all this and nationally. Then you have an affiliate publishing capture this rare era in the literary history, as house called The COSAW Publishing which well as the conceptual-theoretical impulse of actively looks for contemporary and primarily Africa’s response. An initial draft with writers black writers. They come out probably with m exile from apartheid, especially after the about five titles a year and that includes all the Soweto uprising of 1976, could no longer be genres. They also run essay and short story found, so I itemised five broad thematic areas competitions. * and went on field in 1994, to assist in the reconstruction of our history, albeit literary and Lupenga existential, and projections on the future of Malawi was a pioneer in the establishment of literature,on the continent and South Africa a forum for writers. They started the Malawi particularly. One after the other from .their Writers Group in 1961, which then became a different venues of presentation, I got the model for several others in the region and writers to respond to those similar themes the Africa. The pioneer members were made up African Literature Association (ALA) of Malawian writers and many other writers conference of the same year, held in Accra, from different parts of Africa such as Sudan j Ghana. The areas of emphases were regional and Nigeria. cultural forms, exile, repression and writing, I had-the honour of being part of that effort.. publishing and national literature and post­ This organisation had functioned very well, but apartheid literature; and the writers were because of the very oppressive regime of Mmbulelo Mzamane (South African), Lupenga Banda, it had to adopt specific tactics of Mphande (Malawian), Claudia Braude (South survival. This specific contexts therefore bore African), Lokangaka Losambe (Zairean) and on the form of the poetry, short stories and Odia Ofeimun (Nigerian). I am indebted to drama that emerged; it 'is indeed a credit to their sharing of their time, this rare archival that form that we survived till date. A lot of us experience and insight which, hopefully, will got into trouble of imprisonment and banning; be of benefit to the researcher on literature some had to leave - including Frank Chipasula under repression,UNIVERSITY and the capacity ofOF the IBADANwho left immediately LIBRARY he was released. I and hu^man.agency. Jack [Mapanje] stayed on for a while until he Africa and the Literature of Unfreedom 73 was picked and locked* up for'four years; a Exile, Repression and Writing similar fate I suffered. Losamba , These are symbols or resistance which I ( 9 think are very commendable for the writer in It has been a problem in Zaire, arid that problem has not been solved. Gradually, people are now Africa. These writers owe a lot to the writers’ able to criticise in journal articles and some group; this is the forum through which they, expressed themselves when Banda deliberately other media, unlike in the mid-seventies. » , Emasculated opinions are reemerging due to a trampled on them. * certain kind of liberalisation that has been forced by democratic movements. Even in Mzamane Malawi, this shift is evident. We must remember that the South African I am at the moment putting up a collection, regime has been hostile to the movement of which I have not yet found a title for. It’s a progressive forces in and out of South Africa, long epic poem on the Zairean history, so there has not been a possibility at all by the recording the history from pre-colonial times simple experience of refusing people passport to the present. I am also collaborating on a of moving and interacting regionally. Therefore, project on African writings and the discourse of you may not, owing to this fact, have a regional Other; tracing all the shades of that discourse in association as such. But there are regional African literamre right from its inception. associations at anothor level economically speaking, one of which is the South African Mzamane , Development Coordinating Commission t 9 (SADCC). It has been a very viable I am not sure it is very easy to describe how configuration of various countries as well. In the exile situation has affected intellectual other words, there is something on the ground, output because, for me, it is like asking one if already of a regional nature. Now that South they burnt more effectively inside an oven or Africa is poised to join and become part and on top of the stove. For me, burning is burning. parcel of that region, it stands to gain and and The responses in these situations are contribute very significantly to that process. contiguous with survival and you don’t have One can assume definitely that what you are much time for anything else but that. I have going to see at other levels: economic, political, had to work in most parts of the African cultural and academic will also rub on the continent. I never had the luxury to be in any writers themselves. The most recent issue of one place in a rooted sort of way: I was not the Staffrider, which has been most just an exile, I was also an expatriate.-My representativeUNIVERSITY of writers in South Africa, isOF in IBADANchildren too had toLIBRARY take that particular impact fact a Southern African issue with writers from so that my youngest daughter by the time she Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia - had spent nine years in school, had been to as the entire South being very, prominently many as nine different schools. represented there. I am not saying all has been negative; people 74 Sola Olorunyomi have raised the negative sides of exile. W hen I have been made by Banda, so we are going to' think of it now, I obviously garnered a great have elections in May. deal of experience, and I use that word as an But having said that, the situation for the all-encompassing sort of theme. My, eyes were writer hasn’t changed very much, even if it is opened to many situations which otherwise true that the room for self expression has may not have been the case. I think from the widened. There are newspapers now, unlike in perspective of the writer I can only think, of the past when there was only one newspaper Pasheley’s metaphor about how when you which belonged to Banda. The danger that the really want to see a tree you move back a little Malawian writer faces goes beyond Banda. The and then you can take in the whole tree, but writer still faces harsh conditions largely that may also mean that you cannot touch it, because of the imposition of the Structural you cannot smell it; then you move closer and Adjustment Programme (SAP) by the • then you are able to exercise those senses. It International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the has been both processes, I think I have been World Bank. This has really sapped the energy able to cultivate an objective perspective, but of the Malawian writer because it is very simultaneously I’ve lost that kind of intimacy.' difficult to find newsprint; it is therefore difficult to buy books.
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