I spent a number of years in Zambia, in the early seventies, the mid-seventies and the early nineties, teaching the English language and literature in English to school students in their early and late teens. They were preparing for public examinations including GCE overseas certificate organised by Cambridge University. It was called Literature in English because novels and nonfictional biographies by modern African authors were among the set texts in addition to Shakespeare and novels by George Orwell and Thomas Hardy.
Here is a list of texts I had the pleasure of reading and discussing with my classes. Some of them were written originally in French by writers resident in French-speaking countries of West Africa and translated into English for the benefit of readers elsewhere who could not read French. The year of first publication is given.
All of these were published in the UK Heinemann Modern African Writers series. Visit their website for many more titles.
Cry the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton (1948)
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe (1958)
No Longer at Ease, by Chinua Achebe (1960)
The African Child, by Camara Laye (1953)
Houseboy, by Ferdinand Oyono (1956)
The River Between, by James Ngugi (1965)
Mine Boy, by Peter Abrahams (1946)
Down Second Avenue, by Ezekiel Mphahlele (1959) autobiography
In Corner B & Other Stories, by Ezekiel Mphalele (1967) short stories
Return to the Shadows, by Robert Serumaga (1969)
Mission to Kala, by Mongo Beti (1957)
Alan Paton was a white South African Christian, probably an Anglican, who was opposed to racial discrimination. Today he might be termed a white liberal. His novel Cry the Beloved Country portrays rural and urban society just before the race laws were passed by the all-white parliament implementing the ideology of Apartheid (so-called separate development). The novel portrays a black village priest and a white farmer who must deal with news of a murder. A Zulu priest, Stephen Kumalo, receives a message that his daughter Gertrude is ill in Johannesburg. Kumalo visits the distant city for the first time and discovers that Gertrude has taken to living from selling illicit alcohol and prostitution. His son Absalom has murdered a white man during a botched burglary. The murdered man had multicultural sympathies and was the son of a white farmer near Kumalo’s simple residence. Other characters appear throughout the novel, which is well-crafted and full of symbolism.
I read this novel with teenage African students in Livingston, Zambia in 1992-93 just as Nelson Mandela was released from twenty-seven years detention in the notorious Robben Island and was happy to remark that the warped world portrayed in Alan Paton’s text was ending.
Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart (borrowing from a poem by Yeats) by Nigerian Chinua Achebe achieved worldwide fame and was translated into many languages. It describes the traditional village life of Okonkwo before colonial forces brought changes that Okonkwo could not cope with. Ultimately his anomie drives him to suicide. In many ways the personality of Okonkwo is unappealing to the modern reader – he is patriarchal and hidebound by customs which are a barrier to social progress. It recalls in a different context of Peig Sayers and her anti-modern idealisation of life on the Great Blasket Island.
In my opinion a far more satisfactory novel by Achebe is No longer at Ease (from a poem by T.S.Eliot) which looks at newly-independent Nigeria and the financial pressures that tribal loyalty exert on the main character, who yields to the temptation of bribe taking in exchange for doing favours. Achebe incidentally published a short collection of essays entitled The Trouble with Nigeria, which deals with corruption, tribalism, militarism and religious-regional tensions. Presidentialism – the cult of the President – is another peeve. He contrasts it with an occasion when he attended a cultural event in Dublin and President Patrick Hillery accompanied by his aide-de-camp arrived and took a seat without anybody in the audience rising to salute him – unthinkable in Nigeria.
Camara Laye from French-speaking West Africa published his autobiographical narrative about simple village life entitled L’Enfant Noir. I read the English version with students in a rural school preparing for the Form Three exam, the equivalent of the Junior Cert. I wouldn’t describe it as an outstanding work. It is rather sentimental and unreflective in parts. But my students enjoyed reading it.
Ferdinand Oyono’s short novel was published in French in 1956 and translated into English. The houseboy performs cleaning and simple cooking chores for the Governor of a West African state during colonial times. It is narrated in diary form, two exercise notebooks such as might be used in a school. The town cemetery has an African section and a European section. A few of the European graves contain the remains of inter-racial children that their white fathers acknowledged. The houseboy learns French taking a peek at Parisian newspapers. His interesting situation becomes dangerous in the second notebook when the Governor’s wife goes on holiday to France and he begins an affair with a white mistress. The houseboy sees too much and… there are consequences. It is a brilliant little novel.
From Kenya
From Kenya in the early twentieth century comes, The River Between by James Ngugi was written while he was studying abroad. It deals with the collision between African culture and foreign Christian missionaries who suspect ‘pagan practices’. On the ridges where members of the Kikuyu tribe dwell many miles north of Nairobi a teenage boy and his sweetheart, Waiyaki and Muthoni, are Christians, but nonetheless want to proceed with the coming-of-age male and female circumcision ceremonies. (In those days female circumcision was not identified as a patriarchal control of female sexual freedom – Ngugi uses it as a symbol of African authenticity.) Tribal rivalries and personal animosity bring matters to the boil. Muthoni says she is a Christian but also wants “to be beautiful in the tribe” through circumcision. My students in Zambia were not familiar with circumcision rites as the male form is practised only in one small area, but they enjoyed this novel, which sold well.
The writer became a cultural nationalist and changed his name to Ngugi wa Thiongo. He wrote many books and essays in Kiswahili, now the second official language of Kenya after English. He taught courses in literature in the UK, the USA and other regions of Africa. He got into deep trouble with Kenyan politicians because he thought they were neo-colonial stooges.
Mine Boy by Peter Abrahams is a sort of coming-of-age novel that describes a migrant worker’s experiences of encountering the big city in South Africa. The village boy sees young city women selling distilled liquor and fighting over their pitches. He sees loose morals everywhere and asks naively Are there any customs here? Abrahams has been faulted in not tackling the racial discrimination in this novel.
A more interesting later novel in which Abrahams draws on personal experiences of studying in the UK is entitled A Wreath for Udomo. After graduating in the UK, Udomo returns to an imaginary country called Panafrica, struggles for independence and becomes Prime Minister. A concatenation of personal and tribal antagonisms destroys freedom ideals and … read this very realistic novel. This work was not on the schools syllabus but copies could be borrowed from school libraries.
Ezekiel Mphalele
Life growing up in a shanty suburb in South Africa is graphically described by Ezekiel Mphalele. We read this set text for GCE certificate in a Livingstone school. In 1993 Zeke Mphalele was an honoured guest at the University of Zambia in Lusaka. It coincided with school holidays and I travelled to a reading and discussion with the writer hosted by secondary school teachers. He was asked why so many writers emerged in West and East Africa and South Africa, but not in Zambia, and answered that intense struggles against colonial and racial situations impel autobiographical and fictive writing. A similar intensity did not exist in Northern Rhodesia before it changed its name to Zambia in 1964.
Mphalele did not become a novelist. He wrote short stories and essays and had a most successful teaching career in USA universities. In Corner B & Other Stories, by Ezekiel Mphalele (1967) published by East Africa Publishing House (Nairobi) was not on the Zambia exam syllabus. I can recommend it for the curious.
Return to the Shadows was written by Robert Serumaga, who studied at Trinity College Dublin before returning to Uganda. The novel is set in the aftermath of a military coup in a country called Adnagu (Uganda spelled backwards) and seems to presage the terrible years of Idi Amin.
Finally, there is the humorous novel of French-speaking author Mongo Beti from West Africa, Mission to Kala, which portrays mischievous intrigue by a chief and his associates when a young city man who failed the baccalaureate is sent on a ‘mission’.
*Books about life in Africa have been written by white writers with British and other backgrounds. Elspeth Huxley, Joyce Carey (Anglo-Irish) and Doris Lessing come to mind. Africa-based writers of different ethnic orientation have published in different languages about many themes. The human condition in all its cultural and geographical variations is worth writing about. One point I wish to make here is that efforts should be made to establish financially viable Africa-based publishing companies. Metropolitan London and Paris with large Afro-populations dominate the Africa publishing scene.
Feature Image: Zambia National Assembly building in Lusaka
