Here, we may see the influence of the Ubuntu, a Bantu philosophy that can be summarized in the formula umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, “I am a man because you consider me a man.” Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize winner of 1984, developed this thought: “A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened by the fact that others are capable and good, for he or she has self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs to a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished.” The apostles of Ubuntu believe that the individual is a force that has a calling to grow. This force is such that it is not impoverished as it exerts itself. We can move together towards a common humanity. As it was said during the time of Hampaté Ba, speech circulates as life circulates. In the exchange of words, there is a surplus of vitality that enriches the community.
The theme of this volume of Imagine Africa is “revolution.” The distinguished historian Joseph Ki-Zerbo, when asked in 2003 about the role of revolution in his conception of history, responded: “Revolution is the structural process that makes things advance, in an invisible way, right up to the moment when the pregnancy of these structures is such that it necessitates a qualitative leap. Once again, I take the case of African unity. Suppose that we remain without unity for another fifty years and that problems become more serious so far as epidemics, illiteracy, employment, etc. are concerned. I am sure that ever more numerous groups in civil society will say one day: This is not possible, enough is enough, that’s it! and they will establish the General Assembly of the African continent.”
God knows, Africa has no lack of reasons to revolt. The 20th century began with the genocide of the Hereros in Namibia and came to an end with the Rwandan genocide. Civil wars reap thousands of victims. While I was writing up a report in Somalia in 1986, an informant proudly told me: “We are the only African country with a single people, a single language, and a single religion.” Not long afterwards, the country plunged into thirty years of bloody struggles of which no end is in sight. We remember the terrible question posed by the assassins in Liberia and in Sierra Leone: “short sleeve or long sleeve?” As was the case in Bosnia twenty years ago, rape is used as a weapon of war. In a continent where children were once cosseted, now they are abused by the thousands in the militias. Who can affirm that prisons are free of torture? Malaria, AIDS and onchocerciasis are wreaking havoc, aggravated by malnutrition. Bissau is the capital of a narco-dependent state, Bangui of an inexistent state, Banjul of a dictatorial state. Foreign economic powers ogle the continent’s agricultural, fishing, and mining riches.
What revolution are we speaking about?
Is it a matter of tearing off the last rags of a colonial past? “Africa has never been dominated,” claims the philosopher V.Y. Mudimbé, “because she has done nothing but suffer experiences of domination.” Traumas inflicted by the slave trade weigh heavy in the Americas. The island of Gorée in Senegal or the castle of Cape Coast in Ghana remind us of this crime against humanity, with a trace of rage at the idea of complicity between coastal chiefs and European slave-traders.
In his noteworthy book about the Congo, the Flemish writer David Van Rey-brouck recalled the horrors linked to the forced production of latex, denounced from the beginning of the 20th century. In the multi-millennial history of the continent, how will African historians of tomorrow judge the years 1900-1960, three generations of colonial exploitation? The massacres of Sétif, of Madagascar, of the Mau-Mau, amongst many others, remain deep wounds. Today’s poets, like Ali Jimale Ahmed, contemplate this with perplexity.
Too difficult to make out the
Inscription on the ceramic ladle.
I dream of a great Truth and Reconciliation Committee. If slavery, an ancient global practice, laboriously abolished, has proved to be a subject too vast to deal with, we must content ourselves with an in-depth exchange between Europe and Africa upon this second colonial period, without waiting for the bicentenary of the Berlin conference in 2085. It would make good sense to clarify all this in order to create healthier relations between the two continents.
The expression “agrarian revolution” has aroused hopes of banishing the spectre of famine for good. Learning to harness water will enable us to halt the advancing desert, and who knows, to look forward, perhaps, to seeing the Sahara, the Danakil, and the Kalahari green once more.
Africa has seized the opportunity of the digital revolution. Suddenly propelled into cell phone culture, it has the world at its fingertips. Cyber-cafés are appearing in the most improbable corners.
Will the revolution be social? Breyten Breytenbach proposes justice for the impoverished as the battle site.
for the real truth my hands are grenades
hurrah for the upheaval
conquered for the poor with dawn.
In African communities there is a powerful demand for equality. In rural societies, to raise yourself too high above others arouses disapproval. African literature is rife with accounts of ambitious individuals thwarted by the group. With urbanization the income gap has grown, widening scandalously under authoritarian regimes. Not without irony, V. Y. Mudimbé noted: “It might seem surprising to rediscover the famous motto liberty, equality, fraternity at the heart of African society. Nothing astonishing about that if one dreams that for Europe this motto is for a cry of revolution, that is to say, a questioning of the very foundations of society.” Faced with this outcry, with the forced march from survival to development, thinkers and poets will need to deploy all their talents so that the growth doesn’t leave behind whole swaths of the human community.
For all Africa, take-off is imminent. The phenomenon will not be synchronized. Some countries will leapfrog forward. Others will take longer to live in peace along the borders carved with machetes by a handful of Europeans.
Statisticians frequently give us figures charged with hope. All over the map, green blinkers signal economic success. We remember an Ethiopia menaced by famine under the terror of the Red Negus – and how the singers mobilized, raising funds by making records. It was the period of the occupation of Eritrea and the displacement of entire populations. Today, now that the country has almost 100 million inhabitants, international bodies are praising its growth rate. By an unexpected reversal of the situation, Eritrean leaders, incapable of establishing freedom in their own country, look now like outdated soldiers. The tsunami provoked by the global financial crisis has not submerged Africa. The continent has shrugged it off and is binding itself more and more tightly in planetary exchanges. African merchants are doing business with Dubai, negotiating in Sao Paulo, and are squarely installing themselves in Canton.
Now that suicide bombings have plunged North Africa into mourning and gone on to affect Nigeria and Kenya, the proverb “The ink of the wise is better than the blood of martyrs” has become more meaningful than ever. What benefit does one gain from demolishing the tombs of the holy men of Timbuktu classified as part of the global heritage of UNESCO? African writers are not sparing their ink. We can see them at the forefront of movements of indignation denouncing the scourges of the continent. Many have denounced the use of child-soldiers, at times at the price of their lives, as was the case of Ken Saro-Wiwa. They were outspoken in their denunciation of the Rwandan genocide. Their creative liberty is not just a matter of survival – “We ran faster than lightening to keep fear from catching us,” writes Scholastique Mukasonga – but a pre-condition for taking off.
We all come from Africa – let’s open our ears to the voices clamouring from the mother-continent and follow the advice of Birago Diop:
Listen in the wind
to the sobbing bush:
It is the breath of the ancestors
Let’s listen to the generations who, century after century, have crossed the continent, then the whole world. Let’s slip into their shoes. Let’s admire their inventiveness. Let’s speak with the living. More than any other literatures, those of Africa proclaim t
hat what is at stake is a matter of life or death. In a continent that has a sense of duration, its inhabitants also have a sense of urgency: two billion voices will be heard. Loud and clear.
FRANKÉTIENNE
translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover
from Ready to Burst (Mûr à crever)
Considered by many to be the ‘father of Haitian letters,’ FRANKÉTIENNE is a prolific poet, novelist, visual artist, playwright, and musician. He writes in both French and Haitian Creole and often juggles the two. His paintings have been exhibited internationally. An outspoken challenger of political oppression, Frankétienne was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009 and, in 2010, was named a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
KAIAMA L. GLOVER received a B.A. in French History and Literature and Afro-American Studies from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in French and Romance Philology from Columbia University. She is now an associate professor of French at Barnard College. Her book, Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, explores the Haitian Spiralist movement.
Chaque jour, j’emploie le dialecte des cyclones fous.
Je dis la folie des vents contraires.
Chaque soir, j’utilise le patois des pluies furieuses.
Je dis la furie des eaux en débordement.
Chaque nuit, je parle aux îles des Caraïbes le langage des tempêtes hystériques. Je dis l’hystérie de la mer en rut.
Dialecte des cyclones. Patois des pluies. Langage des tempêtes. Déroulement de la vie en spirale.
Fondamentalement la vie est tension. Vers quelque chose. Vers quelqu’un. Vers soi-même.
Vers le point de maturité où se dénouent l’ancien et le nouveau, la mort et la naissance. Et tout être se réalise en partie dans la recherche de son double, recherche qui se confond à la limite avec l’intensité d’un besoin, d’un désir et d’une quête infinie.
Des chiens passent – j’ai toujours eu l’obsession des chiens errants – ils jappent après la silhouette de la femme que je poursuis. Après l’image de l’homme que je cherche. Après mon double. Après la rumeur des voix en fuite. Depuis tant d’années. On dirait trente siècles.
La femme est partie, sans tambour ni trompette, avec mon coeur désaccordé.
L’homme ne m’a point tendu la main.
Mon double est toujours en avance sur moi.
Et les gorges déboulonnées des chiens nocturnes hurlent effroyablement avec un bruit d’accordéon brisé.
C’est alors que je deviens orage de mots crevant l’hypocrisie des nuages et la fausseté du silence.
Fleuves. Tempêtes. Éclairs. Montagnes. Arbres. sauvages. Emportez-moi dans la moelle frénétique de vos articulations. Emportez-moi. Il suffit d’un soupçon de clarté pour que je naisse viable. Pour que j’accepte la vie. La tension. L’inexorable loi de la maturation. L’osmose et la symbiose. Emportez-moi. Il suffit d’un bruit de pas, d’un regard, d’une voix émue, pour que je vive heureux de l’espoir que le réveil est possible parmi les hommes. Emportez-moi.
Car il suffit d’un rien pour que je dise la sève qui circule dans la moelle des articulations cosmiques.
Dialecte des cyclones. Patois des pluies. Langages des tempêtes. Je dis le déroulement de la vie en spirale.
Every day, I employ the dialect of untamed hurricanes.
I speak the madness of opposing winds.
Every evening, I use the patois of furious rains.
I speak the rage of overflowing waters.
Every night, I speak to the islands of the Caribbean in the language of hysterical storms. I speak the madness of the sea in heat.
Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. Unfolding of life in a spiral.
In its essence, life is tension. Toward something. Toward someone. Toward oneself.
Toward the point of maturation where the ancient and the new unravel. Death and birth. And every being finds itself – in part – in pursuit of its double. A pursuit that might even seem to bear the intensity of need, of desire, and of infinite quest.
Dogs pass by (I’ve always been obsessed with stray dogs). They yap at the silhouette of the woman I’m chasing. At the image of the man I’m seeking out. At my double. At the murmurings of fleeting voices. For so many years now. It feels like thirty centuries.
The woman has left. Without fanfare. Left my heart out of tune.
The man never held out his hand to me.
My double is always just a step ahead of me. And the unhinged throats of nocturnal dogs let loose terrifying howls, making the sound of a broken accordion.
It is then that I become a tempest of words, bursting open the hypocrisy of clouds and the deceitfulness of silence.
Rivers. Storms. Flashes of lightning. Mountains. Lumières. Pluies. Océans Trees. Lights. Rains. Untamed oceans. Take me away in the frenzied marrow of your joints. Take me away! It would only take a hint of clarity for me to be born with nine lives. For me to accept life. Tension. The inexorable law of maturation. Osmosis and symbiosis. Take me away! It would only take the sound of a footstep, a glance, a tender voice, for me to live happily in the hope that Man is capable of awakening. Take me away!
For it would take so little for me to speak of the sap that circulates in the marrow of cosmic joints.
Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. I speak the unfolding of life in a spiral.
AKINWUMI ISOLA
Translated from the Yoruba by AKINLOYE OJO
AKINWUMI ISOLA was born in Ibadan, Nigeria. He is a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and has received the Nigerian National Order of Merit. He is the author of five plays and three novels, including Madame Tinubu, and translator of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and Aké: The Years of Childhood into Yoruba.
AKINLOYE OJO is an associate professor in the department of Comparative Literature and Director of the African Studies Institute at the University of Georgia. In 2005, his co-edited book, Ìlò-Èdè àti Èdá Ède Yorùbá (Yoruba Linguistics and Language Use) was published by Africa World Press. His collection of poems, In Flight, was released in in 2000 with Kraft Press.
Àfàimọ̀
Unwittingly
Akọ́kọ́ dáyé, mo se báyé gun:
In my infancy, I thought the World was straight:
Ma rìn fàlàlà,
I walked freely,
Mo sọ̀rọ̀ gbẹ̀dẹ̀,
I spoke without care,
Ma gbẹ́sẹ̀ sókè,
I raised my legs,
Ma tàpà làlà
I kicked far and near
Ma jeun tán
I finished eating,
Ma ṣéwe wọnnle
I rested with a full belly
À fọ̀rẹ́ ni mo mọ̀
I only knew friends,
N ò mọ̀tà.
I didn’t know enemies.
Gbogbo ayé a dàbíi baba ẹni
All the World seemed so paternal
Kò pẹ́ kò jinnà
Not long after,
Wọ́n ní mo ti n gbọ́n.
They said I was maturing.
BÍ mo rẹ́rìnín pύpọ̀.
If I laughed a lot,
Ma jẹ̀kó.
I received a knock on the cranium.
BÍ mo sọ’un tí mo rí.
If I spoke about what I saw,
Wọn a gbá mi lẹ́nu.
They slapped my mouth.
Àdàbà wà nijù,
The dove is in the forest,
Ó nàyẹ̀ sá
It spreads its wings
Bó dénú ilé tán,
But when it gets domesticated,
A máa mumi inú agolo.
It drinks water inside a can.
Ọ̀rọ̀ ilé-ayé, ẹ́kẹ́ẹ̀dẹ!
Matters of this World, puzzling!
Àkùkọ fò lórùlé,
The rooster jumps on the roof,
Ó kọ lálá
.
It crows loudly.
Bó ti n sọ̀ la tùyẹ́ apà, tùréèdí.
As it descends, we remove its wing feathers, completely.
Ó wáá dẹni tí n kọrin l’àbẹ́ igi.
It then becomes a bird that sings under the tree.
Ayé ò fẹ́ràn gólóbà bí òpípì.
The world does not like the rooster as much as the fowl.
Arúgbó gbékun lémú,
An elder had a dirty nose,
Mo wí, mo jọrẹ́.
I mentioned it, I got whipped.
Aròbó tp sọ́bẹ́,
An infant urinated in the soup pot,
Mo sọ̀rọ̀, mo tẹ́nà ìyà.
I spoke up, I entreated punishment.
Mo ní ‘Bá a bá rí, ká wí.
I say, “We should call it as we see it,”
Ayé ní Bójúrí, ẹnu a dákẹ́
The World says, if the eyes see, the mouth must be silent
À bẹ̀ ò ráyé lode?
Can’t you see the World exposed?
Àfàìmọ̀,
Unwittingly,
Káye má payè mọ̀’nú ẹni?
The World might destroy the core wisdom in one
Àfàìmọ̀.
Unwittingly.