THE QUESTION OF THE AFRICAN QUESTION LITERATURE IN AN AGE OF SEPSIS

A KEY NOTE ADDRESS

BY
PROF. JOHN S. ILLAH, FSONTA
UNIVERSITY OF JOS

AT THE 3RD CHINUA ACHEBE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE NSSUKA

22ND – 25TH MAY, 2019

THE QUESTION OF THE AFRICAN QUESTION:
LITERATURE IN AN AGE OF SEPSIS
Africa Weeps
Africa weeps,
Shredded at the seams
Through the Niger
And the Congo
Water paths of blood
Bouyed by human skulls.

50 odd lengths of water
The Nile to the Zambazi
The Carnival rages
And cannibals arrive
Pomped with pimped ivory
As Blue Helmets watch

Africa weeps
At this arena of skulls
A lone vegetable seller
Gees up in flames
Trepidate
Africa weeps at the seams
(Anonymous)

A) Premise: The Trouble with…..
I greet you all on the note of this epigrammatic poem. It explores the historiography of the African question in literature. But it was Chinua Achebe, in whose honour this conference is held annually, that first posed this question in terms of The Trouble With …. He was concerned with the question of the Nigerian Question, but of course, it is equally emblematic of the larger Africa.

In posing this question in this historiographical terms, we are reminded again that the issues involved are not concluded. They are not settled. Rather, the question is an open wound, festering to a choreography of flies!

Achebe posed it in leadership terms. The transition from colonialism to independence, into neo-colonialism, and now globalization, the highest form of imperialism, has not brought about significant changes in the lives of the people. The quality of leadership is so compradorial, so dynastic that Africa’s leaders remain indefinitely in power, changing the constitution as it suits them, propped up on walking sticks, on protocol aides, surrounded by Marabouts and the intellectual elite who pontificate on their behalf.
Right now, this historiography is being tested on the streets of Sudan. Al Bashir, after about 30years of structured repression has just been removed by the people. This was preceded by the Algerian (Smile) Revolution which removed Abdulaziz Boutefilka from power after about 2 decades of ruling, mainly, from a wheel chair. In Egypt, Abdel-fattah el-sisi, hijacked a similar revolution from the people, and has just presided over a fake referendum allowing him to remain in power until 2030. Libya is now in a permanent chaos, becoming a black market for African slaves. With Central African Republic, it has become avstaging post for terrorism in the Sakel.
A state of stasis has enveloped Cameroon, Uganda, Burundi and DRC. Others are on crutches, waiting for aid from Western Capitals to balance their budgets. Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Madagascar have no infrastructure to control flooding. Even South Africa that gained independence in 1994 has increasingly become corrupt and inept.

It is repeating the Nigerian model, varying only in quantum. In Africa, corruption , the structured abuse of the apparatuses of State to enrich oneself, is virtually a legitimate enterprise. It is endemic. According to Corruption Perception Index (CPI), published by Transparency International, 2018, the least corrupt African Country is Namibia, appearing at No 52. Nigeria ranks 144 while Somalia is ranked last at No. 180. Corruption permeates all sectors of economic, political, and socio-cultural life.

The leadership ineptitude and corruption have institutionalized poverty. Inspite of her vast resources, Africa is in decline in knowledge production delivery of health and cultural sustainability. Majority of Africans, live below the poverty line of one dollar a day. Maternal and infant mortality rates high. Malaria, HIV and Aids, Ebola are prevalent. Hunger and malnutrition are rampant, heightened by crises, insurgency, internal displacement, wars and the new slave trade.
According to the World Bank’s Poverty and Shared Prosperity: Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle, “Projections… show that extreme poverty is showing few signs of improvement in Sub-Saharan Africa”. Similarly, “the average poverty rate for Sub-Saharan Africa stands at about 41 percent, and of the world’s 28 poorest countries, 27 are in sub-saharan Africa, all with a poverty rate about 30 percent”.
This is the state of sepsis. In the African situation, inept leadership, corruption and poverty are interfaced, making it imperative that we pose it as an historiographical question. Why does Africa defy solution? Do we swallow the bitter Hegelian pill, when he referred to Africa as “ the land of childhood, which lies beyond the day of self-conscious history, is enveloped in the dark mantle of might”
Our how do we explain University educated African Youth, escaping through the Sahara desert into Lampedusa to Europe into prostitution and destitution or the ruling elite emptying African treasuries, stashing the money away in European banks. Was this was Walter Rodney meant by How Europe undeveloped Africa? Or what Samir Amin meant by The Developing of Underdevelopment? Or still Chinweizu’s paradox, The West and the Rest of Us.
No, it cannot be! We must question the question, to restore integrity to the discourse and its subject. It bids us re-narrate, according to Edward said in Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community, the original question to better understand these emergent twists of sepsis.
That is what the people are doing on the streets of Algiers and Khartoum. They are questioning the basis of an inherited historiography. They are enacting new stories, myths, songs, dances, choreographing new ways to make their lives meaningful. Young girls, clad in hijabs, are climbing lorry tops to challenge gun-totting soldiers. They are constructing new dialogues, like the Yellowests in Paris, new conversations of freedom, forged in gunshots, rebellion and blood. The youth are running shifts in telling their stories. Is this the Vista of literature in an age of sepsis.

B) LITERATURE IN AN AGE OF SEPSIS
In post-colonial theorizing, Achebe’s Things Fall Apart did blow Africa’s Literary firmament. It was new, fresh and told the story of the colonized native. It set the mood for challenge and renewal, against the background of Senghor, Cesaire, Diop and the other Negritude writers. The new literature blended well with the pan-Africanist platform – Nkrumah, Seku Toure, Azikwe, Ngerere, Mandela and many others. They blow the trumpet of decolonization. They sang the songs of a new dawn, across Africa where oppression and exploitation will be things of the past. By , 1960, Nigeria celebrated with Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests, “bidding us return to our roots”. The clarion call of this euphoria overwhelmed and binding us all.
For as Fanon was to note, the tragedy of African independence was thinking that the colonial oppressor was simply going to walk away. No! He reinvented himself in the new elite who assumed his taste, his faith, his language, (according to Ngugi, wa thiong’o in De-colonizing the mind), his literature (according to Adrain Roscoe-Mother is Gold) and his mindset. So here we are!
Over the last 60 years of Africa’s independence, the elite has created and presides over a Sepsis of poverty and disconnection. The people are increasingly poorer, vitiated and denied access. And these permeate our literature Achebe’s No longer at ease Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horse Man, Sembene’s God’s Bits of Wood, Osofisan’s Morountodun, Nwabueze’s When the Arrow Rebounds, Yerima’s Iyase, Agunloye’s More Than Dancing Jallo’s Onions Make us Cry. There are a host of new African writers, mediating this sepsis into their art. But can literature continue to bear this burden?
Increasingly, literature is trapped in the paradox of its art:
– It is written to be read
– It is written to be performed
– It is written in a foreign language
– It is only available to be brought
As performance, only the elite are invited to the specialized theatres. In effect, Literature is a curricular event, ensconced away from the streets of Khartoum and Algiers. Can it be the site or arena of a rebirth or of a new historiography, in a period of declining literacy!

C) THE VEGETABLE SELLER
In the course of the Arab spring I have been fascinated by the implosion on the streets. It was ignited by the vegetable seller on the streets of Tunis. The Tahir square in Cairo received the vibrations. More recently the rumblings in Algiers, and Khartoum.
Narratives are being relayed by Nokia and Samsung. Images are being transmitted live. Intimations of new platforms, new choreographies, new poetries and historiographies. Can we bid farewell the Babylon?

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THE QUESTION OF THE AFRICAN QUESTION LITERATURE IN AN AGE OF SEPSIS