PETER NAZARETH / UGANDA

The Social Responsibility of the East African Writer

on the of writing in East Africa at the University of

Speaking development
He, Nigeria, in 1968, David Rubadiri said that the colonial experience en

veloped everything and almost stifled any indigenous attempt at expression

the If one a
through newly acquired language. passed through secondary
school in East Africa, he said, the best one came out with was an ability to
write a composition or a letter in the best basic and the best gram
English
mar. Rubadiri noted that when the East African writer started to write
poems, his whole literary tradition had molded him to try to emulate the
only literature he had come into contact with. "So wrote like Keats
people
and Wordsworth?on roses and sunsets and moonshine, and this sort of sub
ject, all on a very personal and individual sort of basis," he said, adding,
"They received encouragement from expatriate teachers, and even non-ex
patriate teachers, because this was the kind of literary tradition with
only
which all the people had been
brought up."
However, there was a tradition which contradicted this colonial cultural
oppression. wa says that in African
Ngugi Thiongo (James Ngugi) society,

art was functional; it was not, as it is in modern Europe, severed from

the physical, social and religious needs of the community. Song, dance
and music were an integral part of a community's wrestling with its en
vironment, part and parcel of the needs and aspirations of the ordinary
man. There was never, in any African the cult of the artist with
society,
its bohemian the banks of Seine or Thames. the
priests along Today
artist in Europe sees himself as an outsider, in a kind of individ
living
ual culture, and obeying only the laws of his imagination . . .African
Art, we can say, used to be oriented to the And
generally community.
because of its public nature, culture, in its broad as well as in the nar
row sense,
helped to weld society together.

Rubadiri and Ngugi have pinned down two elements that help explain the
form and nature of modern East African literature. Ngugi himself was one
of the earliest East African writers to
struggle against the cultural-mental
colonialism identified
by Rubadiri. His first major work was The Black
Hermit, & with an international student cast for Uganda's in
play produced
celebrations in 1962. Remi, the protagonist, is an educated Afri
dependence
can from a small tribe who refuses to return to the village from the city.
249

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 to
The people of the village need him back their battles,
fight especially
against domination from the bigger tribes. The village elders go to the city
to fetch him back, after saying a prayer to the gods. The pastor is also per
suaded to fetch Remi back by his mother. Remi does not agree at first to
be persuaded by either kind of tradition, religion and value system. Besides,
he has an English lover in the city. He tells her that he is married;
suddenly
he has been married by tribal law to Thoni, his brother's widow. He used to
love Thoni but she seemed to love his brother; so his was not to
marriage
his he does return, with a friend from another tribe, to
liking. Eventually,
bring the message of cooperative, non-tribalist living. In the process of mak
ing his public he insults Thoni, who runs away and commits sui
speech,
cide. Too late, Remi realizes that Thoni had always loved him.
It is easy to fault The Black Hermit. There is a touch of melodrama in the
a love affair that the lovers do not talk to each
ending: goes wrong because
other, suicide, a letter which explains everything too late. Ngugi himself has
said that he thought at the time of the first that the biggest
performance
the new East African countries was tribalism, but now he
problem besetting
realizes that the problem is which took the
really monopoly capitalism,
form of first imperialism and now neocolonialism. attempts to inject
Ngugi
his later into the version of the play by getting
understanding published
one of the characters to talk about the of trade unions by the
muzzling
new African and to question whether the land, the banks and
government
the oil companies will be nationalized. These ideas are not fully developed
in the Still, the has considerable merits. it, Ngugi has
play. play Through
brought the village onto the stage on which previously only European plays
used to be performed, giving validity to
precisely that portion of the East
African experience that the writers had been almost forced to forget. The
a at the point of de
play presents "total" picture of modern East Africa
colonization. Ngugi gives validity to life in the city and the village by using
prose with jazzy rhythms for the city, and verse for the scenes. The
village
verse a sense of the ritualistic, "rooted" of life in the village,
gives quality
contrasted with the rootlessness of the city. The villagers use
earthy imag
ery, such as,

Remi left a young wife.

And she, like a sapling in a
drought-stricken land,
Will also dry up in the heat of desolation.

In The Black Hermit, we see Ngugi's deep

sense of social
responsibility
to East Africa and Africa as a whole. The play asks fundamental questions:
What do we expect of our leaders? Can we ignore our past and cut our
selves off from it?What happens when leaders come out with large solu
their own individual
tions but forget failings? What happens when they ig
250
 nore human is the to so
relationships? What relationship of the individual
ciety in modern Africa?
was to deal with these in more in his novels. The
Ngugi questions depth
first of these was originally entitled The Black Messiah and was subsequent
in 1965 as The River Between. In this novel, Ngugi deals with
ly published
what the Nigerian critic Omalara Leslie calls the soft paw of colonialism:
the division brought about by Christianity acting sometimes unconsciously
but usually consciously in tandem with colonialism.
European Christianity
softened the people so that the could rule with minimal
imperial powers
resistance. It did so by persuading the colonized people that they were cul
tural and religious savages before the coming of the white colonizer and by

making the people feel that they had to accept the status quo as God's will
for man. was also linked up with education, for which there de
Christianity
a tries to acquire an education which he
veloped hunger in Africa. Waiyaki
can use to
help his people, but the division brought by colonialism proves
too great for him to a moral fable. In
bridge. The novel has the quality of
Weep Not Child, which was published earlier, Ngugi goes further in ex
ploring the colonial history of Kenya by dealing with the Mau Mau move
ment, a movement that did not have a in or Tan
guerrilla parallel Uganda
ganyika. Robert Ruark had characterized the Mau Mau movement in his
novel Something of Value as savage and atavistic. reverses this char
Ngugi
acterization and shows us the historical behind the movement.
rationality
He shows us that the white man stole the land from the Gikuyu, who had
not only an economic but also a to the land going back
spiritual attachment
to the of time. We see all the to get back the
beginning peaceful attempts
land, failure, and then no alternative but guerrilla fighting. Although
us to the Mau Mau movement, he also presents a
Ngugi makes sympathetic
fair of the white settlers whose interests were threatened. For ex
picture
us an even when
ample, he gives insight into Mr. Howlands, the settler tor
tures the real owner of the land. writes from the
Ngotho, Ngugi essentially
of a young The suits the a
viewpoint Njoroge, boy. style subject, having
Biblical simplicity for which Ngugi has been noted. This has the limi
style
tation that it cannot show us the or
ideology of the Mau Mau movement
point the way ahead for Kenya, but it has the of illustrating that
advantage
one has to be to or to
taught exploit accept exploitation.
Ngugi's third novel, A Grain of Wheat, has received recognition as one of
the best novels to emerge from Africa. wrote it while he was in
Ngugi Eng
land, while he could see the mother country from close quarters and acquire
the perspective to crystallize his understanding of colonialism. This novel
on the eve of and moves backwards and forwards in
begins independence
time because Ngugi is with very complex questions. Not does
dealing only
he want to show how Kenya gained its also he wants to find
independence;
out what to the souls of the and to
happened people suggest that real inde
251
pendence will be attained through another process in which the scarred
souls regain their wholeness. Thus the novel has not a historical set
only
but also a sub-text. has been noted for a
ting psychological Ngugi being
messianic writer, and nearly all the characters in this novel, the
including
colonial are motivated of some kind or other. This
officer, by idealism
idealism leads to betrayal. One of the men is the executed leader
betrayed
Kihika. Kihika explains the ideology of Mau Mau to Mugo: "We do not kill
. . We
. are not murderers. We are not Robson
just anybody hangmen?like
men and women without cause or purpose . . We
. hit back.
?killing only
You are struck on the left cheek. You turn the right cheek. One, two, three
?sixty years. Then suddenly, it is always sudden, you say: I am not
turning
the other cheek any more ... a few shall die that the live."
many may
But the people are betrayed by what Frantz Fanon calls the new under
middle class, willing to serve the outside masters as as
developed long they
A Grain of Wheat, as the
get dividends. title suggests, implies that the way
out is a peasant revolution, a continuation of the aborted Mau Mau move
ment. Thus no character in the novel is more important than the others and
there is no hero, no hermit or messiah. It is the masses who are important,
and in his radio play This Time Tomorrow, a of the
Ngugi gives picture
victims of neocolonialism. The play is about slum clearance in Nairobi. The
those who had fought for independence as Mau Mau, are
people, including
kicked out of their homes, which are then As the neocolonial re
destroyed.
has and time itself seems to stand still,
ality deepened Ngugi's style has
evolved away from Biblical simplicity. A recent story, A Mercedes Funeral,
resembles the fiction of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in its "marvellous"
reality,
its gigantic exaggeration, and its black humor.
At independence, there appeared to be a convergence between what was
said by the political leaders, the people and the writers. The writers have
used these early ideals to express, on behalf of the people, a
feeling of be
over what should have happened. In doing this, all East African
trayal
writers face some problems. The first concerns language. There are several
in East Africa, but most of these languages are
languages spoken and under
stood by only a small group within the nation?a least, in Kenya and Uganda
?and not the nation as a whole. So the writer may discover that he has no
choice but to use the language imposed by the colonizer, English. His next
is how he is to transmute his experience in order to make it rele
problem
vant to the nation as a whole. The imperial powers had
arbitrarily drawn
on the map and thus
borders lumped diverse groups of people together;
how is the writer to deal with the ethnic group or race of his origin and yet
be relevant to the nation as a whole? And in a foreign
language which
seems to be restrictive?
Okot p'Bitek took the form of the Acholi song and developed it into a
tool he used to describe Acholi life and to a per
simultaneously provide
252
 for criticizing the post-independence In
spective period. Song of Lawino,
which he wrote first in Lwo and then in English, he uses the device of a
woman
"simple" village railing against her politician husband for blindly
the artifacts of modern western life while his
embracing denying spiritual
and cultural roots:

If you stay
In my husband's house long,
The ghosts of the dead men
That people this dark forest,
The ghosts of the many white men
And white women
That scream whenever you touch any book,
The deadly vengeance
ghosts
Of the writers
Will capture your head,
And like my husband
You will become
A ...
walking corpse
For all our young men
Were finished in the forest,
Their manhood was finished
In the classrooms,
Their testicles
Were smashed
With large books!

Lawino is not calling here for a return to the past. Neither is

physical
Lawino's voice identical with Okot's, though much of what she says has the
endorsement of the author. Lawino recognizes the validity of cultural rela
tivism, but her husband has a self-hatred induced by colonialism. She knows
that if a person does not have roots, he cannot have else of value.
anything
Her criticism of her husband is that of the African
betrayed peasantry:

Someone said
Independence falls like a buffalo
And the hunters
Rush to itwith drawn knives,

Sharp, shining knives,

For carving the carcass.
And if your chest
Is small, bony and weak

They push you off

253
 And if your knife is blunt
You get the dung on your elbow
But come home empty-handed
And the dogs bark at you.

But Okot is doing more than just dealing with colonial/neocolonial ex

on the level of ideas. He also tackles the chains of language,
ploitation
and time imposed by the colonizers. Lawino says,
Christianity

Ocol tells me

Things I cannot understand,

He talks
About a certain man,

Jesus.
He says
The man was born
Long ago
In the country of white men.
He says
When was born
Jesus
White men
began
To count years:
From one, then it became ten,
Then one hundred
Then one thousand
And now it is
One thousand
Nine hundred
And sixty-six.

My husband says
Before this man was born
White men counted years backwards
Then it became
One thousand
Then one hundred
Then ten,
And when it became one
Then Jesus was born.

I cannot understand all this

I do not understand it at all!

254
 By using the form of the Acholi song and the device of a "simple" woman
Okot makes a of the colonizer's
using "village" imagery, complete mockery
of time and religion. He has created a way of using
concepts non-English
to break the cultural chains of colonialism. It is not surprising that
English
Song of Lawino struck a chord in the hearts of many East Africans, and peo
could be heard Lawino even in bars. Okello Oculi said that
ple discussing
he was inspired by Okot to write his Orphan and Prostitute, both of which
draw from his own Langi traditions. Oculi often invents English phrases
and word-clusters by translating from his own language, while being more
it is clear that Oculi is a
political than Okot: calling through his works for
revolution. This is the that faces his and
complete peasant challenge orphan
the prostitute, both of whom are at the crossroads.
Okot, we are still haunted by ghosts. Much of the new writing
Despite
emerging from East Africa is still written under the influence of the invis
the writers cannot
ible colonial teachers. When forget these teachers, their
as non-dramatic, static, dead. For example, in
prose emerges explanatory,
Mike Mwaura's novel, The when the old man Ruhara is
Renegade, explain
case son to the
ing his against his village court, he says,

Family problems should not be exposed; exposing them is like exposing

nakedness. But when a man finds himself neglected by
a son, and one
he has toiled to raise at that, you can take it from me that there seems no
But then, if there are other souls to care for,
refuge other than death.
one cannot resort to the rope so readily. Instead one lies prostrate on the
horns of a dilemma and, as it were, the impaling points prick him more
if he tries to turn. The prevalent question in his mind becomes: should
I remain passive and leave everything on the hands of
unpredictable
destiny?

One cannot take issue here with the sentiments expressed by the old
man, but one can say that the speech is long-winded and full of "correct"

English expressions like "at that," "You can take it from me," "the horns of
a dilemma," "as it were," and "the prevalent question." Mwaura is
writing
almost perfect English for that invisible English teacher and the effect is to
slow the action to look at decorative images. But Mwaura's strong social
concern breaks through this barrier. The novel deals with the hopes of a

peasant who makes sacrifices to send his son to school in the

hope that the
son will then himself and the whole family. After all, the colonial
help uplift
authorities held out education as bait. is un
always Unfortunately, Kunjuga
able to make headway because the reality in Africa today is that school
leavers have great expectations but usually cannot find employment. When
a very low
he eventually gets job in the city, he falls into "bad company"
255
because it is inevitable that somebody with high expectations should try to
live the good life. Kunjuga is betrayed almost and is unable
by everybody
to help his all of whom end up in trouble. His father decides to
family,
a case in humiliation all The
bring against him, which ends for concerned.
a use of
ending of the novel reflects powerful language in contrast with the
earlier example:

Now, as Ruhara continued his swollen of pain

massaging leg, tingles
creeping up his body every time he pressed it, he wondered why life
had cheated him so, why he had tendered so much and reaped noth
not rewarded him for never
ing, why life had shirking any of the many
challenges that had confronted him, why ...?
As if to answer him, a wind came
sweeping downhill, dust and
withered leaves rising in its wake, its mad rush spelling nothing but
famine. And up above, the sun continued its relentless march across the
on the
sky, its red-hot lips emitting nothing but fire panting earth.

In this passage, the description of nature reflects the physical and emo
tional state of Ruhara, a the wind, withered leaves and
peasant; scorching
sun us a a wasteland for rain, of a people waiting
give picture of waiting
for nourishment. Mike Mwaura may not clearly understand the reason why
have gone wrong but he performs the role of the African novelist
things
Ekwensi "Now if the writer were ac
described by Cyprian Ekwensi. says,
cepted in African society he would be rather like the bird in the folk-tale
that always appears on the wall and pipes a particular tune. When you hear
that tune you know that there is tragedy somewhere; someone has died or
serious is happening. The bird disappears and within a mo
something quite
ment you get the illumination of the bird's visit." Mike Mwaura is this kind
of bird. So is Meja Mwangi, who, like Mwaura, deals with the dispossessed
in a modern African city in his novel Kill Me Quick.
also falls victim to the invisible teachers in some of his
John Ruganda
but in The Burdens he overcomes the burden of linguistic colonial
plays,
ism. The play is tightly constructed: it has only four characters and is in a

very spare and taut language. In this play, post-independence society has
to which at the top, has now infected
begun disintegrate; corruption, began
the whole society:

Tinka: The other day at the bus park.

Kaija: Yes?
Tinka: Two of them snatched a suitcase from a girl in high heels and
Do you know what they found in it?
sunglasses.
Kaija: Her shopping?
Tinka: The cold corpse of an infant.

256
 Katja: In a suitcase?
She was to the father. A salesman in some oil com
Tinka: taking it
pany, she said. The crowd killed the two kondos on the spot.
Kaija: Served them right.

Here we can see a microcosm of the whole see that the peo
society. We
no that they will receive justice from the machinery of
ple longer believe
the law, and they take the law into their own hands to mete out as
justice
see fit. We see the
"embourgeoisement" of the new elite; the detail of
they
the oil company is for this middle class is only a middleman be
significant,
tween the and the external corporations. The corpse of an infant in
people
a suitcase
suggests
an
image of
a stillborn nation?or, rather, a nation that
has been strangled at birth?in which cynicism has reached such a point that
one can is using language
greet murder with "Served them right." Ruganda
not to draw attention to the language but to give us the illusion that we are
at the grim
looking directly reality.
East Africans are best able to write short plays in which the language
must of necessity have punch. One of the most prolific of these is Kuldip
Sondhi, an engineer by training. Encounter is a play about the Mau Mau
movement which presents a case for the guerrillas by showing the necessity
for such a movement in the freedom fight. In With Strings, Sondhi explores
the implications of the Asian, i.e., Indian, presence in East Africa. The
play
deals with the problems raised when an Indian decides to marry an African.
Both parties are upset. Mohan's father says, "With this kind of union you are
never be are an Indian and
breaking the laws of society. You will happy. You
an . . .
you must marry Indian The multi-racialism you talk of exists only in
clubs. In real life the Indians, the Africans and Europeans are three differ
ent races . . . Inter-racial marriages may be things of the future, but at the
moment in the simplest communal
people have hardly succeeded breaking
and religious barriers." The play ends with Mohan and Cynthia all alone on
the stage, with the suggestion that they will get married and be all alone for
some time. In a radio
play, Sunil's Dilemma, Sondhi reverses the sexual re
he attacks the sexual taboo a liaison between an
lationship: by suggesting
African man and an Indian woman. Sunil, a mechanic, is a citizen
Kenyan
who loves the country and does not want to leave, while his wife, Devi,
wants to leave because it is not safe for Asians in Kenya. Into their lives one
come two Africans, Kamau and Rashid, who claim to be policemen
night
that their car has broken down and
chasing thieves; they say they need
Sunil's help. While Sunil is repairing the car, Rashid plants doubts in his
mind as to whether Kamau, a womanizer, is sexual intercourse with
having
his wife back in the house. On Sunil's return to the house, he feels that his
wife is no longer anxious to leave the country. The play is ambiguous right
to the very end. Sondhi's purpose is to attack the sexual taboo
imposed by
257
 colonialism
prohibiting
sexual relations between the men of the "lower" (i.e..
race and women of the "higher" race. Since this taboo was im
conquered)
posed by colonialism, the play really attacks a whole series of colonial rela

tionships.
Two other radio plays also deal with the Asian presence in East Africa.
The first is Laban Erapu's Beyond the Line. Will Dr. Baasa, a cabinet min
ister, be willing to let his daughter a Goan? No, he is not,
Jenny marry Silva,
but, he says, is Suva's sister Brenda willing to marry his son? She is not.
Within this framework, Erapu discusses other "Asian" problems. Dr. Baasa
says that Brenda's father remained a British citizen until a year earlier;
Brenda says that this was because he refused to bribe the officials. She also
criticizes the government authorities for classing her as "Asian by race" in her
papers. Dr. Baasa's answer is that there will always be cause for
citizenship
is is
discrimination. Although he well-meaning, clearly Dr. Baasa bankrupt
of any ideals or even ideas as to how the inherited from the colonial
system
rulers can be changed.
In Jagjit Singh's Sweet Scum of Freedom, Keval, a young Indian, comes
to see Anna, a prostitute, for the last time, because he is leaving for Eng
land for higher studies. Why, Anna asks; after all, Keval's father is a citizen.
his father is a third-class citizen. Keval
Keval laughs bitterly. Yes, he says,
himself has applied for citizenship three times but his applications have not
been approved, while the minister keeps making public pronouncements
that Asians must become citizens. Furthermore, first preference for admis
sion into the medical school at the university is given to Africans. So he is
to England to study medicine, because his father wants him to study
going
something that will help the family. But he would like to be a writer. When
asked by Anna what he will write in his stories, he says,

About . .. and about

the wretchedness of being an Indian in Africa
you
man
today. Always being the brown out, the odd man, the foreigner, the
Wahindi . . . Little fishes, in water
frightened swimming frantically
made dirty by our commerce and trade; always afraid the big black
minister will pull us out of the fishing pond and throw us away, far, far
away to die without our dear commerce and trade. Yes, I'll write about
how wretched and frightened we are today . . .The British brought us
here to trade and build railways because Africans couldn't do it. Dirt
carriers we were of the British.

In reply, Anna says that it is the same for people like herself. Jagjit Singh
is drawing a link between the prostitute and the Asian. Both are regarded
as but are the scapegoats for the real exploiters
exploiters, actually they
who want to find an excuse for the lack of egalitarian development in the
country.

258
 David Rubadiri has dealt with these ideas in his novel No Bride Price.
Rubadiri's novel deals with the inevitable consequences of phony decoloni
zation. The corruption of the greedy new bourgeoisie leads to a coup, sig
nalled by European martial music. Like Singh, Rubadiri writes about pros
titutes to draw attention to the real Rubadiri is an internation
exploiters.
ally renowned poet, most famous for his much poem about the
anthologized
coming of colonialism to Uganda, Meets Mutesa." his
"Stanley Although
novel has a surface realism, it is actually a poetic full of
puzzle symbols,
metaphors and questions that the reader must work out. What is the
image
of twins running
through the novel? What is the
phoenix everyone keeps
to? What is the of the scene in which Miria
referring significance early
tears off the new clothes Lombe has been so
wearing proudly? One of the
things the novel suggests is that Africans and Indians can
pool together
their similar communal experience and history of colonial to
exploitation
build for the future. I have taken up this theme in my novel, In a Brown
Mantle, which deals with the Asian and, specifically, the Goan presence in
East Africa and asks how the history of is to be ended. Like
exploitation
Rubadiri's novel, In a Brown Mantle has a surface realism but
actually
presents the reader with a series of riddles to be solved.
As the neocolonial reality has become grimmer under military dictator
ship, so has Rubadiri's writing:

Tear it down
said the Messiah
Tear it down
it is an eye sore
tear it down
And plan it properly.

The reference here is to the decision to tear up the main street and
broaden it for tanks to celebrate the anniversary of the coup. The poet goes
on to make a bitter on the
general comment significance of sxkch military
leaders:

It stood disgustingly ugly

this unsightly mound of earth
called AFRICA.
Like a sore thumb

they said
for everyone to see
as
they circled
around moon rocks.

259
 The demolition squad arrived,
lifted the old smelly hut,
and neatly dumped it again
into the Atlantic
sure now
making
it was not across it,
dumped
itmight rise again
like a cancerous growth.

Rubadiri took the title of his novel from a poem by Henry

Barlow, "My
Newest Bride," which talks about as like that
the fight for independence
for a bride for whom a great bride price must be paid. Barlow does not ro
manticize While he was a high official in the government
independence.
and the slogan "building a nation" was being used, he wrote an ironic poem
called "Building a Nation." In this poem, a permanent secretary and his
chauffeur feel stomach pains, the former as a result of eating too much and
the latter as a result of eating too little:

So two nation builders

Arrived home this evening
With terrible stomach pains
The result of building the nation
Different ways.

There is the same wry in a poem, "The Pauper,"

irony by another Ugan
dan poet, Richard Ntiru:

in beautiful verandas
Pauper, pauper, crouching
Of beautiful cities and beautiful people,
Tourists and I will take your snapshots
And your M.P. with a shining bald and triple chin
Will mourn your fate in a supplementary question at Question Time.

a but no literary
Because reality has become
the social nightmare censor
Ntiru does not have the inclination to write
ship has been imposed, poems
with echoes of Blake. Instead, we read,

are a
Identification parades tricky affair
where all the upturned faces smell of guilt.
Built around each profile is a halo of anonymous innocence
intense but slowly dissolving into the smell of violent death.

Death: our last ritual blanket that some offer as casual presents

260
 resents abuse and denial by her agents. Silent rage,
age and wisdom convulse this face like ridges on the Rwenzori Range
?Sage, what violence in a withered arm? Why the hell
smell of death on your cotton head then? Or maybe Father
fathered the Giant that ordered the blood flood?

Blood is cheaper than water. The Nile smells of guilt

?guilt of knowledge of this proverb from source to mouth.

The Nile has been revered as the source of life but here it is seen as the

accomplice of death.
One way of escaping the stranglehold of English is not to write in
English
at all. This is open to Tanzania, where one can write in Swahili
option only
and still speak to the nation at large. Ebrahim Hussein has chosen the path
of a Swahili dramatist, probably following the example of President Nyer
ere, who has translated Shakespeare's Julius Caesar into Swahili. Hussein
has published two Swahili plays, both of which are political, Kinjeketile
and Mashetani. Kinjeketile deals with the famous Maji Maji uprising
against the German colonialists at the of the century. Kinjeketile
beginning
is a seer who told the
people that they would be protected by the water he
was to with. He knows that the water does not
going "baptize" them really
have powers but believes that the people are once
protective all-powerful
are united. However, out of hand. come to believe
they things get People
that the water will really protect them from German bullets. Kinjeketile
wants them to wait until they are ready, but he fails. The uprising takes
and the Africans lose. A German officer tries to the seer to
place persuade
"recant," but he refuses; he becomes a true seer and says that a word has
been born which will be passed on for generations until the word will be
made a reality.
Mashetani is set between the Zanzibar revolution of 1964 and the socialist
Arusha Declaration on the mainland of 1967. Juma and Kitaru are friends.
One comes fromthe overthrown and now impoverished elite of Zanzibar
and the other from the up-and-coming nouveaux riche of the mainland.
Their friendship cannot be maintained because of political tension, which
works its way through the medium of traditional Swahili beliefs in witch
craft and evil eye blended with modern psychology and the theories of so
cialism versus capitalism. While there is a tradition of political and patriotic
Swahili epic verse, this play is a breakthrough in that it examines
large
is
sues in the lives and of real individuals.
personal feelings
The socialist aspirations of Tanzania have had a literary influence on a
well-known Ghanian novelist who has lived there for several years, Ayi
Kwei Armah. He has published his fourth novel, Two Thousand Seasons, in
East Africa. It is a story told in the collective voice, not "I" but "We":
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 are not a sea
We people of yesterday. Do they ask how many single
sons we have flowed from our till now? We shall point them
beginnings
to the proper beginning of their counting. On a clear night when the
of the moon has the ancient woman and her seven chil
light blighted
dren, on such a night tell them to go alone into the world. There, have
them count first the one, then the seven, and after the seven all the
other stars visible to their eyes alone.

This is the story of the whole black race, told with an African concept of
time and communalism and bearing out the research of Chancellor Williams
in The Destruction of Black Civilization. The people are determined to sur
vive their betrayal by their leaders and the various imperialisms as a
people.

I do not want to suggest that the social responsibility felt by nearly all
East African writersleads to uniformity of style or grimness. Here is Maria
Ssentamu of the village of Kalasanda, written about by Barbara Kimenye
in two interlinked volumes of short stories:

is the tin-roofed
[The Happy Bar] dwelling where Maria Ssentamu's
curves shake as she serves warm beer in thick, greasy
sumptuous glasses
to the over fourteen stone. Nev
thirsty locals. Maria must surely weigh
ertheless, she is by far the most seductive woman in the village, and she
has a number of children to prove it.

Then there is Charles Mangua, whose rebellion took the following form:

Son of woman, that's me. I am a louse, a blinking louse and I am the

in your toe. I am a and I like to bite. I like to bite
jigger hungry jigger
women?beautiful women. Women with tits that bounce. If you do not
like the idea you are the type I am least interested in.

This is Dodge Kiunyu telling his erotic story in Son of Woman in the
a
kind of "American slang" that would give those English teachers fit! No
wonder this work of fiction was one of the best-selling East African books.

Although it appears to have no sense of social responsibility, in fact Son of

Woman is the story of a man who will not the rules of "respect
play by
able," i.e., bourgeois society because it is selfish and inhuman.
And, of course, we cannot leave out Taban lo Liyong, one of the most
of East African writers. Taban entered the East African
prolific literary
scene from the U.S. a decade ago, just before coming to The of
University
Iowa to do an M.F.A. He wrote a humorous, playful but serious lament of
East Africa's literary barrenness:

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 Ezekiel, you saw the wheel:
Ezekiel, in the middle of the air. Will
you help, Ezekiel, to resurrect our to see the wheel of
manly spirits
thought and imagination? Ezekiel Mphahlele (it sounds poetic: Mpha
hlele Ezekiel) teach us to write. Open our mouths. Else we choke with
we go in search of inspiration to Mbari.
lumps of thought. Else migrating
Else we cut Ulli Beier into two and leave Nigeria with the legs.
We want more. But we do not even have any yet. Could we find an
alchemist? An alchemist to
change Moore, Gerald Moore, into a tribes
man to us another Mbari? Moore, will you teach us com
give only to
ment?

No can Taban or anyone else call East Africa barren in literature.

longer
The driving force behind the birth of its literature has been identified by
are
Ngugi. He says, "Now there only two tribes left in Africa: the 'haves'
and the 'have-nots.' What goes for tribalism in Africa is really a form of civil
war among the Tiaves,' for crumbs from the masters' tables. The
struggling
masters sit in New York, London, Brussels, Paris, Bonn and Copenhagen;
are the owners of the oil companies, the mines, the banks, the brewer
they
ies, the insurance institutions?all the moving levers of the economy. It is
this situation that has given us A Man of the People, Song of Lawino,
Voices in the Dark. It is this that is behind the critical self-appraisal and
the despair in much of the current African literature." The struggle con
tinues in life as in East African literature.

JOUNG HYUN-JONG / KOREA

Poetry as a Possibility of Life

Contemporary poetry has introduced freedom in the very body of the

a as a
language. As result, poetry appears phenomenon of freedom.
?Gaston Bachelard

Many Korean poets and critics agree that the traditional and remarkable
is what we call in Korean han. The
quality of Korean poetry meaning of
the word han is so complex that it can hardly be translated into one

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