Research - Criticisms  on African Writing

Song of the Season: Osundare's Lamentation for the Dead and Living by Kola Eke

COLLEGE students who occasionally open an anthology of poetry are familiar with his name and with one or two of his poems. Some are familiar with such collections as: Songs of the Market Place (1983), Village Voices (1984), A Nib in the Pond (1986), The Eye of the Earth (1986), Moon Songs (1988), and Waiting Laughters (1990). However, this study will be entirely focused on Songs of the Season (1990). This is because of the conspicuous development of Osundare's skill in elegiac poetry. Osundare's critics have more frequently affirmed no impression than that of the fullness of the poet's participation in the socio-political affairs of his country. It has been asserted that the themes that preoccupy him are "social and political corruption, maladministration and mismanagement, deprivations and oppression suffered by the masses and concern with Third World situations" (Bamikunle 121). Another critic is of the opinion that Osundare has devoted his "poetic energies to the service of the exploited African peasantry (Ngara 177). It has also been pointed out that in Osundare's poetry one confronts "poetry of revolution and revolutionary poetry" (Jeyifo 320).

An aspect of Osundare's poetry scarcely mentioned by critics, but which is the subject of some remarkable poems and of central importance in Songs of the Season. Call him what you will, tragic poet, poet of the masses; the point is that a careful reader cannot miss the elegiac tone of a number of poems in this collection. Surprisingly enough, critics seem to lose sight of the lament quality of his poems, though this is a subject worthy of careful study. In Songs of the Season, some poems do share enough features to make them worth discussing together, and these poems can be grouped under the common elegy. Therefore, one makes bold to say that the lament over the dead and the living is no chance interest but one of his central concerns in Songs of the Season.

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Remembering the Past: Conflict and War in Nadine Gordimer's None to Accompany Me, Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins and Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra
by Sarah Anyang Agbor


NADINE Gordimer's None to Accompany Me, Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins and Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra transmit a vivid picture of the reality of war and offer an insight into its various aspects. Some aspects of the novels depict the fear and anxiety of the paralyzing violence of war in the various spheres of ordinary life: those of work and intellectual activity, private and social life. How does the majority of the people in the representative societies of the chosen texts suffer and endure their effects and search for a means of survival? The interesting question is to what extent do their common experiences of that reality bring African women writers from different ideological and social camps closer together? Do these experiences create a common ground for them, one which allows them to transcend their ideological barriers and meet for a constructive recognition of one another? How do the different races in Southern Africa and ethnic groups in Zimbabwe and Nigeria perceive the conflict and in what ways are the various spheres of their lives, their attitudes, and visions affected by it? This approach is based on the premise that conflicts and wars are not carried out in abstract political, economic, or social systems, but in the concrete lives of people because they are the perpetrators and/or victims, and it is in their bodies and souls that the most devastating effects of such conflicts are to be found.
War is one of the recurring absurdities of postcolonial African societies and the world all over. Although war is ugly enterprise, it remains central to human history and social change. One of the significance of the African literary imagination has been its capacity for a compelling recollection of colonial, civil and ethnic (tribal) wars. Civil wars have been fought in some African societies such as Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Sierra-Leone, Somali, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Zaire. The effect of war on human characters is quite revealing in the novels of Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Nurrudin Farah, Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Zakes Mda, Buchi Emecheta, Yvonne Vera, and Lesego Malepe amongst others. Using the New Historicists theory, the cultural and sociopolitical degradation which war brings and how it affects the identity of characters in Nadine Gordimer's None to Accompany Me, Yvonne Vera's The Stone Virgins and Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra are the general foci of this study.

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JAL No.5
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Onuora Ossie Enekwe
CS (A)2
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“I Too Sing Zimbabwe”: The Conflict of Ethnicity in Popular Zimbabwean Music   by Joseph Chikowero


Introduction
THIS paper discusses how selected Zimbabwean popular musical artistes contest some official and popular images of “foreigners” in Zimbabwe through their music. Second and third generation Zimbabweans of Malawian, Zambian and Mozambican origins are commonly denigrated through various images and designations that are designed to mark their Other-ness. Zimbabweans of Malawian ancestry are referred as “MaNyasarandi or “Mabwidi” while those of Mozambican ancestry are called “MaMoskeni” or “MaChikunda.” Those who originate from both Malawi and Zambia are also called “MaChawa.” It has been argued that these people are Zimbabweans by naturalization as they have lived in Zimbabwe from the 1950s although, for political expediency, their legitimate status is now being questioned by the establishment . The establishment's notion of “super-patriotism” belies a desire to marginalize minorities in a manner that is antithetical to the national reconciliation policy. While acknowledging that some indigenous musicians reinforced official and popular images of “foreigners” as undesirable outsiders, some musicians who themselves trace their roots to some of the three countries mentioned above question the legitimacy of such negative designations within the broader matrix of nationalism and its claims of inclusivity.
Zimbabwean music is often conscripted into “popular” garrisons, foreclosing possibilities of reading the power of music beyond mere entertainment. This paper attempts a critical thematic analysis of music by selected Zimbabwean musicians of foreign origin to illustrate their contestation of political and popular constructions of Zimbabwean identities. While the two musicians whose lyrics are examined here do not question their foreign origin, they challenge narrow, nativist constructions of Zimbabwean postcolonial identities that exclude citizens such as themselves who are, after all, not immigrants but are only descendants of colonial migrant workers. By challenging narrow, exclusivist conceptions of national identity, the Khiama Boys expose the postcolonial government's failure to move beyond colonial hierarchies, anxieties and categories that were concocted to drive wedges between various races, shades and ethnicities. The musicians propose Zimbabwean identities as essentially multifaceted as opposed to one identity that seamlessly traces its origin to one ethnicity or place of origin. This former position is made more plausible given that Zimbabwe's national borders are an artificial creation of British colonialists and the fact that many people currently living in Zimbabwe trace their origins to areas outside the country's national borders. In this vein, selected musicians of foreign origins articulate the failure of the Zimbabwean post-colonial nation to achieve what Benedict Anderson had termed “simultaneity”, that is “the ability to imagine the existence of an extended community in time, even without direct knowledge of other members of this community who exist at the distant edges of national space” (Szeman 7) This is within a nation that has generally not appealed to a mythic or primordial past for national legitimacy but rather “a communal project whose aim is to create a promising future out of a terrible past” (8) These musicians insist that in spite of the mark of “foreignness” they remain Zimbabweans, thus dismissing notions of national identity rooted in ethnic origin or place of origin. The paper exposes the schizophrenic character of Zimbabwean post colonial identity(ies) given its ambivalent relationship with certain prominent “foreigners.”

Conflict Resolution in Oral Literature: A Review of some Yorùbá Satirical Songs    by Arinpe Adejumo


Introduction
CONFLICT, an ever-present human phenomenon in social life, is a universal one. The perception of individual action as a threat to the goals of another is the springboard for the different forms of conflict that manifest in every part of African societies. Attempts have been made to manage conflicts in Africa through Western approaches. However, total breakthrough has proven evasive. In the traditional Yorùbá society of Southwestern Nigeria, satire, a form of literary art, is one of the powerful weapons used to sanction erring members in a bid to forestall and, at times, manage and resolve conflicts. This paper, using the sociological approach to literary evaluation, specifically focuses on Yorùbá satirical songs as a way of demonstrating how traditional methods of ridiculing non-conformists could prove an effective strategy for conflict management and resolution.
Literature takes its root from the realities of the conditions and values of the society that provides and primarily consumes it. Thus, the norms and values of the society are transmitted and internalized into the audience or citizens through the various literary genres that exist in that society. Globalization and civilization are trends that have promoted a state of anomie in most parts of African societies as a result of cultural diversity and cultural integration which gradually culminate in perpetual conflicts. In contemporary Nigerian society, ethnic, religious, political, social, domestic and interpersonal conflicts are prevalent. Research findings reveal that attempts have been made to manage conflicts in Nigeria without paying attention to the deployment of traditional methods for the resolution of conflicts. Such methods in Yorùbá society clearly involve the deployment of satire, a form of literary art, in ritual and festival songs for the purpose of mediation, reconciliation and resolution of conflicts. Salient lessons could therefore be learnt from Yorùbá satirical tradition for the peaceful resolution of animosities that constantly arise among the various ethnic and religious groups in the African continent.

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LITTLE HAS been written about the riddle genre of Africa's oral art apart from scattered references in some research efforts by western scholars. Yet the riddles of African oral literature still survive as a literary genre in its own right with short diction and imposed meanings, stock devices and stock answers repeated almost word for word in communities where they flourish.^l Among the children of Alaa the value of the riddle and bash contests is not just in the educational or entertainment motif. There lies some superabundant wit in the prolific deployment of imagery, epithets and symbolism from the repertoire of Alaa tradition and culture. Alaa's progeny themselves are regular contestants and have, over time, cultivated so much artistry in this artistic form that they must generally come to be recognised as bards in their own right. The creative genius in African literary tradition is often indebted to his immediate environment or larger society. It is the society that provides him with linguistic and literary traditions in terms of a common language or dialect, metaphor, imagery, and proverbs. But this in no way dims the creative vision that drives the spirit of his art and the genuineness of his work. 'Genius' here implies the artiste's ability to effect some variations on this body of existing traditional sources at his disposal. 'Some traditions allow for considerable individualistic expression,' says Abdulkadir. '(So) the poet must however rely to some extent on traditional forms and structures... and traditional materials in (his)... composition. (Abalagu, et al, 1981) Thus the evidence of performance reveals that it is the personal dynamics that must coalesce acceptably with the artiste's traditional repertoire in order to make the final piece a unique and aesthetically pleasing experience. This is what makes the elaborate riddle contests of Alaa a richer concatenation of expressions of intrinsic poetic value than ordinary riddles and one can agree no less with Jack Mapanje that 'the person who can complete the metaphor (and symbols laden in this art genre)... is well equipped to understand (great) poetry.' (Mapanje, 1983)

Theory in Praxis: Matrifocal Feminism and The Lianja Epic   by Sharla Dudley

IN HER influential work, Feminism Without Borders, Chandra Talpade Mohanty discusses the divergent feminisms of Western and Third World origin. Mohanty describes U.S.-based feminism as class-centric and academic, located within a protocapitalist norm which avoids or ignores the need for collectivity. This feminism lacks the solidarity that Mohanty seeks, the “mutuality, accountability, and the recognition of common interests as the basis for relationships among diverse communities” (7). Mohanty's political solidarity and theory in praxis proposes that women pursue a collective empowerment based on understanding and appreciation rather than difference and pity. Similarly, there are preexistent alternatives to Western patriarchy and cultural imperialism being discussed by African scholars such as the contributors to the online journal, JENDA; these contributions demonstrate Mohanty's transnational feminist theory in praxis. Scholars in fields of study such as sociology and anthropology develop and utilize their perspective to increase understanding of African communities. Essentially, this recent movement reclaims feminism in a mother-centered African context, and so we may refer to this emergent school of thought as matrifocal1 feminism. The sociological foundation of matrifocal feminism offers a theoretical method for considering female characterization in African classical literature. This paper applies theories of matrifocal feminism to an analysis of The Lianja Epic, an African oral text.2 This application of theory is used as a means of investigating the characterization and political power of female figures in the narrative, and determining the cultural and literary contribution of the text to the discussion of transnational feminist community.
Matrifocal feminism and its “co-mothering” community offer a possible alternative and means for political solidarity. Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí rejects the globalization of the term sisterhood as a post-colonial form of Western imperialism (“Introduction,” African Women and Feminism). She points out that the term does not carry the same political or social meanings in an African context. In the place of this “sisterhood,” she prefers co-mothering:

To an African reader…the model of motherhood is absolutely natural, because if anything binds women together in collective experience, it is child-bearing and the mothering of children, and consequently the nurturing of community. [emphasis added] (5)

Oyěwùmí proposes a non-Western alternative for a global ideal of feminist community as developed in co-mothering communities. In the above passage, she articulates specific aspects of matrifocality that can extend to all members of a community. Child-bearing and mothering imply separate but cohesive acts; child-bearing as a biological privilege, and mothering as acts of nurturing that a mother bestows on her child, and which all members of the community might put into practice, regardless of gender, age, or identity differences.
Matrifocal feminism articulates a sense of self-determination and agency grounded in the respect given to the role of women in motherhood and through acts of mothering. According to Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí and Mojúbàolú Olúfúnke Okome, in a Yoruba community the mother assumes political, economic, and communal power as the central figure of the family. The respect afforded to this familial position means that,

In this family system…motherhood is the most important source and model of solidarity, and being a mother is perceived as an attractive and desirable goal to achieve. (“Introduction” 13)

Motherhood's central importance to the family and the community suggests a matriarchal society. Oyěwùmí establishes the importance of all relationships grounded in [African] women's identification with motherhood and mothering. The Yoruba society places mothers at the center around which family and community are structured. Relationships within the family are delineated by that role: the term for sibling, “omo-iya,” has no gender implication and means “my mother's child,” indicating a shared experience of the same womb. Beyond this societal or familial construct, “omo-iya” also “emblematizes unconditional love, togetherness, unity, solidarity, and loyalty” (9-10). Oyěwùmí's goal is to establish the transcendent quality of motherhood while still acknowledging the communal value of mothering, or nurturing acts, that can be practiced by men and women.
In her discussion of female roles in Yoruba society, Mojúbàolú Olúfúnke Okome includes the Yoruba saying: “There is no deity like the mother, mothers are the ones that we ought to worship” (15). If mothers are to be respected as deities, then they implicitly possess the power to both create and punish. When a society confers this type of respect on mothers, all women within the community possess the same potential of power and self-definition.

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African Poetry
JAL No.5

Edward Brathwaite's The Arrivants and the Trope of Cultural Foetal Searching   by Ayo Kehinde

One major strand that runs through the poetry of Edward Brathwaite is the quest for identity, an attempt to come to terms with a past that was overwhelming in itself “and still remains overwhelming in its undesirable intrusion into the present” (Egudu 8). Brathwaite's main artistic preoccupation is to achieve 'wholeness' through poetic reconstruction. For him, therefore, “the eye must be free/seeing --an attempt to retrieve his world through his poetic vision” (Dash 122). In fact, the importance of Africa in West Indian writings cannot be overestimated, either as providing alternative metaphors of cultural difference or as a fully developed Negritude.
The trope of Africa is a recurrent feature of West Indian literature. As Kole Omotoso rightly observes, Africans in the Caribbean suffer two major psychic wounds:

They have been violently taken away from their ancestral homes through conspiracy of their own people and the white slavers and thus been permanently deprived of the revitalizing effect of their home culture, something which the Europeans of the Caribbean depended upon to survive their sojourns and the Indians looked back to in exile … The second damage stemmed from the denying of the values and worthiness of African culture and consequent on-going denigration of continental African culture. (30)

Omotoso echoes Coulthard who believes that for the African slaves and their descendants in the Caribbean, the impact of these psychic wounds have been so profound that their consciousness has over the centuries been afflicted by the crisis of identity (25). Indeed, it is this very crisis that basically informs the creative imagination of the average Caribbean artist. All kinds of cleavages along the lines of race, wealth, class and political affiliation have caused the alienation felt by the Africans in the Caribbean. This position is the central thesis of an informing and insightful discourse by Shelby. In the book, Steele mildly interrogates some themes of African-American literature that emphasize racial solidarity (122-128). It should be stressed that the alienation felt by the Africans in the Caribbean has become the burden of the West Indian writer attempting to capture the complexity of his society. In doing this, as one would expect, there are bound to be areas of common interest among the writers, just as there are dissimilarities among them. But one thing they have in common is the need felt by the West Indian writer to recreate and redefine the essence of his/her black colour and West Indian experience - the need to capture the reality of the people who seem rootless.
Therefore, the trope of Africa is a case study of “tropological revision” in West Indian literature. According to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., tropological revision is “the manner in which a specific trope is repeated with differences, between two or more texts” (xxv). Karen King-Aribisala in her perceptive article “African Homogeneity: The Affirmation of a 'United' African and Afro-West Indian Identity” declares:

One of the consequences of this predicament is the tendency of West Indian writers to make actual or imaginative pilgrimage to Africa, in an attempt to rediscover their ancestral roots. (40)

Given this unified African heritage and shared commonality of the African historical experience, African and West Indian writers appear to consciously examine their African heritage in the literatures of both areas. Brathwaite's sense of awareness --most importantly of his historical position and situation in society-- finds utmost expression in his brooding, slow but progressive attempt to achieve 'wholeness' out of the debris of his past. His Ghanaian experience, no doubt, had opened his eyes to this possibility. His comment on this issue is worth quoting below:

Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly; obscurely, slowly but surely, during the eight years that I lived there, I was coming to an awareness and understanding of community, of cultural wholeness, of the place of the individual within the tribe, in society. Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, I came to a sense of identification of myself with these people, my living diviners. I came to connect my history with theirs, the bridge of my mind now linking Atlantic and ancestor, homeland and heartland. (38)

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