The former head of development research at the World Bank and current Professor of Economics at Oxford University, sets out a broad agenda for the G8 to tackle the problems of the (unidentified) countries at the bottom of the development heap.

Using statistics to cut through persisting preconceptions, he analyses their problems as a series of “traps” - conflict, natural resources, landlocked, and bad governance – before setting out an agenda to solve them including aid, military intervention, legal reforms and trade.

There is much to be commended in the book – especially its accessible style and its quest to take a fresh and facts-based approach to old controversies. Unfortunately this does not always result in the unbiased analysis and objective solutions that the author (and the reader) are seeking. The importance of inequality, of geopolitics and of history in determining both problems and solutions, for example, is given little analytical space and resulting policy advice is therefore skewed.

This is most evident in the chapter on trade – one of the most hotly contested topics in development circles.

During his time at the World Bank that institution’s trade research was criticized as failing to take a balanced view of the evidence and favouring research that suited its own policy agenda. In the Bottom Billion, this selectivity and bias is evident.

The trade chapter opens with a three page attack on Christian Aid and its campaign on trade justice as part of the Make Poverty History coalition. Nowhere is it acknowledged that many of the policies he prescribes are similar if not identical to those of the charity – reforming farm subsidies, ending mercantilist approaches to trade negotiations with poor countries and better market access for their exports.

Instead he criticizes Christian Aid for being misled by Marxist advisors on the basis of advertising slogans and an (inaccurate and) unflattering look at the credentials of its researchers and advisors. He does not go into the substance of the original debate that he and colleagues had with Christian Aid and its advisors within the letters pages of the Financial Times.

In the research in question Christian Aid estimated GDP losses for Africa in the 1980s and 1990s due to aggregate demand effects arising from trade deficits resulting from trade liberalization of that period. That imports grew faster than exports with a reduction in net demand for domestically produced goods and services and national income is consistent with historical observations and other studies carried out by UNCTAD and the Carnegie Foundation, among others.
It is a result that is not palatable for those, like Mr Collier, who favour liberalization as the only trade policy choice for developing countries and who decry the use of selective, outward looking protectionism.

In Mr Collier’s book, therefore, we find the usual warnings against rent-seeking protectionists but no examination of its success stories that range from the Japanese car industry to the dairy sector in India.

The politics of trade policy is also ignored. He does not explor the role of rich countries his former employer, the World Bank in imposing economic reforms on poor countries and in creating the problems they now face in harnessing trade for development. This tradition of externally designed and driven solutions is one of the key changes that needs to happen before the prospects of the Bottom Billion can improve.

* Charles Abugre, Head of Global Advocacy and Policy, Christian Aid, London, UK.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What can be done about it. By Paul Collier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 205 pp.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

To read the more detailed response from Christian Aid, see the link below.

Imagine This is the debut novel of one-time Radio 4 playwright Sade Adeniran.

The young author funded the publication of the book herself after several positive but non-committal responses from various publishing companies. I had the pleasure of attending the book launch of 'Imagine This' earlier this year. Adeniran's belief in her first novel was clear from her impassioned reading of excerpts. It is hard to fault her for her sense of confidence - it is a strong start to a promising literary career.

The book takes the form of a journal kept by the prodigiously articulate, assertive and oft misunderstood protagonist Lola Ogunwale. She spends her early years in foster care in Kent with her brother Adebola. Fearing that they might be taken permanently out of his care, the two are plucked from the relative comfort and affection of Aunt Sue and Uncle Eddie by their self-absorbed and emotionally distant father to live first in Lagos, Nigeria and then to be passed from uncaring relative to uncaring relative in various surrounding villages. Through Lola's diary entries addressed to her cherished confidante Jupiter, the book chronicles her transition from childhood to young adulthood- peppered with all the things that typify this difficult time in a young girl's life alongside the astounding levels of misfortune that befall her. Adeniran deals with the harshness of Lola's surroundings, the callous treatment she experiences at the hands of resentful family members with a pathos and vulnerability that makes the story instantly accessible. This is evident most in the early journal entries.

The author retains the endearing childish bewilderment of someone who cannot understand the arbitrary nature of injustice. Yet at the same time she convincingly conveys that Lola is a little girl of great social awareness who can articulate her feelings of discontent in a way that intimidates those around her.

The book raises questions of how much a person is a victim of circumstances, the choices made by those around them and the role of personal responsibility. This is embodied in the fraught relationship between Lola and her father. After his seeming neglect of Lola and her brother, which inadvertently leads to Adebola's death, only to set up house with another woman and her children Lola takes to referring to her father as 'HIM', her angry response to his betrayal and seeming indifference. Then there's the looming spectre of Lola's longing for her lost mother, whose absence is only half-explained towards the end of the book leaving the reader with more questions than answers. This seems quite deliberate on the part of the author, perhaps in an effort to avoid the book being brought to an unrealistically neat and tidy resolution. Although Lola is often perplexed as to what is going on around her Adeniran seems wary of making her a victim of self-pity. That's why it seems particularly harsh at one point in the story, when a 'friend' chastises her for what she perceived as Lola's 'put-upon-attitude'.

The book is not without moments of hope and levity - in fact it's in these areas that Adeniran's shows particularly deftness as she balances the severity of Lola's environment with the accidental humour found in the things going on around her. Lola's time at boarding school in Idogun serves as some welcome comic-relief and it was from this part of the book Adeniran chose to read at the launch, shielding the audience from the darker aspects that are more prevalent in the novel.

The latter half of the novel shows a more philosophical Lola, trying to forge ahead and retain her dignity as the difficult situation facing Nigeria in the 80s under Buhari and Babangida successively, as well as her father's reluctance to get involved emotionally or financially force her to be at the mercy of various relatives. At times Lola's musings become a bit too laboured as she quotes and repeats ad nauseum, at times barely relevant, Yoruba adages. In this respect the author's approach seems somewhat heavy-handed as she tries to highlight Lola's evolution from beleaguered but optimistic little girl to world-weary young woman. Nevertheless Adeniran redeems her debut by introducing more colourful characters in the form of Lola's college friends and love interests proving that there is more to her lead character than domestic anguish and despair.

When asked, Ms Adeniran denied that the book was autobiographical - all the more reason she should be commended for making Lola's story so credible. Imagine This does not necessarily make for thoroughly comfortable and light hearted reading but Adeniran's sensitivity and the intimate nature of the writing make for a compelling and ultimately rewarding first novel.

* Tola Ositelu is a trainee solicitor living in London.

Imagine This is published by SW Books ISBN-13: 978-0955545306 Paperback: 331pp.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

We, the people of the Republic of Liberia, were
originally inhabitants of the United States of America.

Some of the early settlers . . . were formerly
inhabitants of the United States of America.
We were taxed without our consent.

They were . . .
We were made a separate and distinct class . . .
Strangers from other lands, of a color different from ours,
were preferred before us.

They were made a separate and distinct class, and against them every avenue of improvement was effectually closed. Strangers . . . were preferred before them.

-- Albert Porte, Thoughts on Change; Crozierville, 1977.

Bill shall be. George--even our greatest.
Seeing that Jimmy is now puzzled about
what seems a plain transfer of Savannah to
Harbel. To state to (or ask?) the Firestone Plantation chief
“why” is deep thinking, Jimmy. If James was buried with the
key to a diseased city, it is also deep thinking to
wonder why Monrovia has been dying since birth.
Imagine a Lazarus' relief, Mr. Poet,
in a renewed cancerous life. Would a new city--
away from this now
unmarked grave of all our pathos--be too much
for the thinking? Or the de facto national gods of
Ignorance, Disorientation, Elections and Enjoyment
sacrifice us to a vexed Atlantic, as Buchanan,
another dying city, lies hapless
for that watery knife?

* Born in Harbel, Liberia, Annaird Naxela lectures in English at CUNY/College of Staten Island and researches the development and evolution of Liberian literature. His soon-to-be-published collection of poems is entitled: ‘Memory and Migration.’

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

This poem was written upon hearing of the death of Napoleon Ricks, a loving son, brother, husband, father, relative and friend. All who knew him felt the pain of losing him. Napoleon was dashing and handsome with a natural spontaneity . . . easy to laugh and affable in his interactions with all. His brother Henry and I were classmates at the College of West Africa in Monrovia. I dedicate this poem to everyone who lost loved ones during the civil crisis in Liberia . . . a senseless war too brutal to be part of the divine plan. If I am allowed to speculate, this madness was brought on us by karma generated through decades of injustice. Though more than a quarter of a million people died, we must still hold on to our faith and continue to believe that there is a method to God's plan, no matter how incomprehensible it might be to us. Mourners, weep not for dead leaves.

It started to change overnight . . .
the bright brilliant green
began to fade
ever so slowly,
giving way to a pale yellow
that crept across the surface . . .
softly, gently,
almost imperceptibly,
like night stealing upon day
on a late March evening.
and so, Death conquered my dying leaf.

but as is birth, magnificent,
fascinating,
so is death:
the sharp contrast of hues,
dead by living together— one bright yellow, while
the others displayed
spotted patterns of green and white—
animated the evolution of man
and painted a picture for we who
would stop to look,
and listen.

buried between two pages of a Webster dictionary,
my dead leaf remains a sight of
wisdom, wonder and amazement . . .
God's wisdom, my wonder, the world's amazement,
that Life and Death,
partners on the road to eternity,
are two great manifestations
of the Master's handiwork.

Mourners, WEEP NOT FOR DEAD LEAVES!
instead, glorify the Creator of the universe,
for She giveth and He taketh away . . .
as it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be,
world without end,
forever,
amen.

— March 1980

Copyright © Omanza Eugene Shaw

* Omanza Eugene Shaw is a photographer, photojournalist, photographic artist, actor and poet born in Monrovia, Liberia. He lives and works in Accra, Ghana.

*
* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Eva Acqui illustrates Liberia’s little known, yet vibrant literary tradition.

Before delivering a lecture at a university in Hungary two years ago, I presented some slides to the professors of the board along with two wooden masks I had brought from Liberia, holding them in my arms as if they were my children. The professors of the board asked about my choice. I responded, “These are images of African wood carvings, masks, hailing from Liberia, the West Coast of Africa. I chose them because of the power of supremely well organised forms, the unification of form and expressive power.

These masks belong to an art with origins before recorded history; their images were chosen to illustrate permanence, universality, perfection. They correspond to humankind’s instinctive search for beauty, giving shape to fundamental beliefs and feelings, transmitting ideas, values, attitudes, from generation to generation. Thus, they are culture carriers across time and borders. They have a definite role in the evolution of culture, ensuring its continuity and bringing about innovation. They are Liberia's ‘cultural ambassadors’ to this part of the world.”

A nation survives through its culture. One of the main functions of art is to keep and build on tradition, create new values. Art is called upon to establish the future of culture. Liberia's historic experience of civil war has motivated its artists to engage their art in the struggle for the survival of their culture and nation. Art has to address spiritual and cultural needs, social needs, to develop an aesthetic, which has to act as a cultural stabiliser. Stabilising culture means to keep all traditional achievements together, innovate, and create new works of art to ensure continuity and survival.

Back in the 1990s, still at the beginning of the war, there were people who found enough inner power to take refuge in their artistry, to record events, feelings, reactions. K. Moses Nagbe's book ‘Thinking Through the Times’ was published in 1991 and was on sale in Monrovia; Aaron Fallah Brown continued to paint and write in that time of sorrow. These artists felt they had to tell the world somehow what was going on, to speak for people who did not attend universities or expensive schools, but did entrust their last words to those who they felt able and willing to carry out a very hard task: "Go and write about us. Tell the world. Let people know," convinced that the sound of their names would raise awareness and interest in their culture and fate.

Liberian literature has a valuable canon, a cultural asset to be preserved, organised, and recorded by literary history, both in Liberia and the world. It contains a chronological record of Liberia's pastoral, folk literature, with its folk songs, proverbs, folk tales, known since the 1800s. There are writers, genres, and species, from poetry to drama, important to be taught for the ongoing development of Liberia’s literary history. We find the first novel in English written by an African, Guanya Pau, by Joseph Walters, 1891. We find written poetry dating back to the 1800s; ‘Leaves from Love's Garden,’ written by Edwin Barclay, 1836-1961; ‘Echoes of the Valley,’ edited by Roland T. Dempster, 1947; ‘Poems of Liberia,’ collected by A. Doris Banks Henries, 1963. We find Liberia's novelists, Bai T. Moore, Henry B. Cole, Wilton S. Sankawulo; short story writers, such as Robert H. Brown, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. Dramatists also occupy a notable position: Lester Parker, Kona Khasu, Peter Ballah, Kerkura Kamara, and Womi Neal have all contributed by their work to the development of a literary genre in Liberia.

Art can have a powerful transformational and restorative effect within society. Being exposed to cultural contexts provides an insight into society, too. Works of art reveal details about dominant social values of the period in which they are produced, conveying the feelings and ideas of that period, and the human experience, through a variety of details, on social, political, and environmental issues. The collaboration among art creating groups is another aspect of the social function of art: it ensures the joint effort of groups and individuals in the process of creation, in the attaining of social objectives by the aid of art. One such vital objective is peace. Artists are those who use the power of their means (word, sound, colour, image, dance, etc.) in the struggle for these supreme human values.

Liberian culture as a whole, literature especially, has several culturally vital tasks to attend to, within exercising its role of struggling for a better future, for speaking to the spiritual and cultural needs of a nation it has culturally attempted to keep up. It has to preserve its rich foundation of folk culture, consisting of customs, rites, and the related literary products, such as tales, legends, etc. The danger of myths and motifs vanishing into oblivion does exist, unless people themselves hand over this rich cultural heritage to the present and future generations, and teach them the pride of holding such an inheritance. There have been notable efforts in preserving folklore, in the writings of Wilton S. Sankawulo, A. Doris Banks Henries, Peter Dorliae, addressing the preservation of Liberia's rich folklore by bringing it into print.

Another vitally important task for Liberian writers is to keep writing, to ensure development and progress in both culture and society. Liberians have successfully responded to this “call,” whether from home or abroad, to cultivate the feeling of belonging to Liberia carrying their country's name and specificity into the future. Joining the literary forum provided by the Sea Breeze Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings and offering their work to the reading public, aided by the Internet, many cultural personalities have contributed to the establishment and development of a body of literary work, internationally recognised. In his statement on the importance of the literary journal, Professor Wilton S. Sankawulo underlines the importance of the freedom of expression, production of literature, around the literary forum thus provided, with regard to what it represents for the generations of the future, stating that, “If we continue neglecting the development of the intellectual resources of our country in preference for that of physical infrastructure alone, we will break down tomorrow what we build today.”

However rich and valuable a culture may be, if it does not find its way to universality, it is doomed to oblivion by other cultures and peoples. Therefore, it has to integrate itself into the culture of the world, keeping its originality and yielding the best of the people it represents. It has taken centuries of evolution to reach today's multi-expression by arts' various forms: in the 1800s art was primarily concerned with ideas of truth and beauty; in the 1900s it was marked by radical breaks in modernism and postmodernism, while the 1990s and 2000s witnessed the idea of art as cultural-image making, based on survival as core of contemporary experience: artists have addressed this reality in the most powerful terms possible. For art to carry out such a function, it needs to address another critical aspect: the educational function.

The quality of aesthetic experience can be ensured only by educating art consumers towards a well-developed intellect with a thirst of knowledge and a continuous search for beauty. The engagement in cognitive activities entails the use of associations and the understanding of abstractions: the use of imagination to make a difference between what is implied and what actually exists. Glancing beyond the facades into details needs good skills of impression that help art consumers to identify, analyse, and evaluate what is experienced. All this literary work is extremely valuable to the nation's culture. The world has to know, and through its literature know the country, its people, their view of the world and its representation, for Liberian literature to be part of world literature.

* Eva Acqui, Ph.D., lives and works in Baia Sprie, Romania. She is a university lecturer, translator, award winning poet, fiction writer, and scholarly writer of feature articles and scientific papers

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The 2007 Caine Prize for African Writing, the leading literary prize for short stories from the African continent, was awarded to Uganda’s Monica Arac de Nyeko for her story ‘Jambula Tree’ published in African Love Stories (Ayebia Clarke Publishing 2006).

The Chair of Judges, the writer Jamal Mahjoub from Sudan, who was himself short-listed for the Caine Prize in 2004, announced Monica as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, UK, on 9 July 2007.

He described her story as ‘a witty and touching portrait of a community which is affected forever by a love which blossoms between two adolescents’.

The other judges of the 2007 prize were: Wangui wa Goro, the Kenyan academic, critic and writer; Delia Jarrett-Macauley, an award winning novelist; Jonty Driver, South African poet and novelist; and Robert Molteno, former managing editor, Zed Books.

The 2007 prize winner, Monica Arac de Nyeko, was born in Uganda. She is a member of the Uganda Women Writers Association (FEMRITE). She was also short-listed for the Caine Prize in 2004 for her story ‘Strange Fruit’.

As part of the award, Monica will take up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, Washington DC, as a ‘Caine Prize/Georgetown University Writer-in-Residence’. The award will cover all travel and living expenses.

Also on this year’s shortlist were: Uwem Akpan, from Nigeria, for ‘My Parents Bedroom’ (The New Yorker); E.C Osondu, from Nigeria, for ‘Jimmy Carter’s Eyes’ (AGNI Fiction Online); Henrietta Rose-Innes, from South Africa, for ‘Bad Places’ (New Contrast); and Ada Udechukwu, from Nigeria, for ‘Night Bus’, (The Atlantic Monthly). Kenyan Billy Kahora’s ‘Treadmill Love’ published in The Obituary Tango (Jacana/New Internationalist 2006) was highly commended by the judges.

The Caine Prize was launched in 2000, named after Sir Michael Caine. It is awarded to a short story of between 3,000 and 15,000 words, published in English, by an African writer whose work reflects African culture. Translations are eligible, and the internet is an acceptable mode of publication. Previous winners include Helon Habila, Segun Afolabi, Brian Chikwava, Binyavanga Wainaina, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and Mary Watson.

For further information, see

Ayebia Clarke Literary Agency and Publishing
BBC interview with the 2007 winner

tlhokomeliso
‘if needs be, it is an ideal
for which I am prepared to die.’
~ntate mandela

before the naming rites,
even before we were free to be free
from terror in our ranks,
before prison or death
became our constitutional rights,
a cry echoed among the elements
to shake the tenements
inside heaven and inside hell;
flesh came into my shell,
resided in me, heavy and light
according to the moment—
like a rumour, God and politics
entered me and sat on my heart;
so I must ask you to destroy me
because there’s a part of me that
still belongs to the sun, and will
not acquiesce; for the benefit of
your crew, destroy, before it’s too
late, the blood in me that is hers
and will not succumb — slay
this whole idea of a Motuba who
rides a sun-ray to illume our day.

© Rethabile Masilo -

The massive popularity of wireless networking has caused equipment costs to continually plummet, while equipment capabilities continue to increase. By applying this technology in areas that are badly in need of critical communications infrastructure, more people can be brought online than ever before, in less time, for very little cost. This book was created by a team of individuals who each, in their own field, are actively participating in the ever-expanding Internet by pushing its reach farther than ever before.

African Writing is a literary paper with an online presence. It is the first open sales publication of its kind with an All-African perspective, offering new writing from, and information on, the literatures of the continent.

African Writing is interested in the literary lives, literary work and thoughts of those who make writing happen in the African world, and in the organizations and circumstances which support or affect the processing, appreciation and study of their work. Catering for the varying levels of readership interests, our literary paper, and its online edition, will offer interviews and reviews, literary profiles, some criticism and political commentary, new poetry and fiction, creative non-fiction, performance sketches and visual arts work. We will reflect the faces, controversies and peculiar flavour of the African writing world, a world increasingly inclusive in the processing of its familiarisation with other world writings and writers.

For us at African Writing, this has been a journey of discovery. Encounter the fifty representative writers of our ‘Profiles’ pages, follow the narratives, utterances and reported achievements of the many other poets and story-makers in this introductory issue, and, perhaps, you will agree with us that even for the expert much of contemporary writing in Africa awaits discovery. Join us in that journey of discovery.

African Writing is edited by Afam Akeh, and is available monthly on subscription and from selected bookshops from September 2007. The debut issue of African Writing is now online at Online submissions of new writing and all letters responding to our work may be addressed to [email][email protected] Enquiries from advertisers, and promoters of literary activities or products intended for our readership can be directed to [email][email protected]

Hallo... Hi, it’s you? ... Oh, yes. Your voice, it sounds different. What’s happening? Ha ha, he he... No, actually, it’s sexier today. I guess father of children is home, that’s why. Ha ha... Mine? No, he is out of the country. You know he is a busy man... Yes, he went to China yesterday. You know, as the president of the country he must travel all the time to encourage investors to come and invest in our country whose rivers never run dry of milk and honey... I am fiiiine! Strong and fat like a white man’s dog. What can eat me, a woman of class?

Don’t talk too much, you friend of mine. Give me the chance to talk. If you don’t shut your mouth I won’t tell you why I called. I will keep mine shut... That’s better. Guess what, friend of my heart. I have some great news meant for your ears only. I spoke to him last night before he left the country. Yes, we are getting the plane. Hurray! We are getting it. Just imagine, you and I in a two-hundred-and-something sitter empty plane. Just the two of us flying to Rome next week... You can’t believe me? You better believe, girl. It’s happening live in this very third world country. You and i next week going for shopping. We shall shop till we drop as they say. No limits. Anything goes.

That perfume you mentioned last week? Yes, I will make sure I buy it. That’s the first thing I want to buy as soon as we touch the soil of Rome. Why not? I heard the likes of all the Hollywood celebrities haven’t heard of it. I was the first one in the whole world to learn about it and I will be the first one on mother earth to wear it. How awesome. Paris who? She does not stand a chance. She hasn’t. I don’t think so. This time I will beat her to it. She is always the first one to get anything that hits the fashion world but this time I give her no slightest chance. I hate that girl... J-who? I don’t even want to hear her name. Both of them come second this time. I told my husband about the perfume and he is sooo excited. He cannot wait. Yes, we were supposed to go earlier but he said there is no fuel so the largest plane in the country is currently grounded. As soon as it’s filled up, we are the first ones to grab it, and that’s exactly one week away...

The new underwear? I heard that J-girl and the Paris one bought it but no worries. We will be the first ones in this part of the world anyway. We must make sure we fill up the whole plane with our shopping bags. That’s why I sweet-talked my husband into diverting the route of the plane to Rome. Ha ha ha. You know the best moment to talk. As soon as, you-know-what, starts talking that’s when I make my demands. Just before he enters. Yes. I simple say, “honey, just hold on a bit. I have something to say.” Before I say it he shouts, “yes, yes. I will do it for you. Anything.” Stop laughing. That’s the trick. Try it with your man and you will get anything you can dream of. Don’t let that thing enter you before you get what you want, he he.

...Hezvo, hezvo, hezvo, don’t tell me. Don’t worry, I will sort it out. He was talking of a school that needs to be built in his constituency. You know he is an MP too. President and MP. I will make sure that the school is not built and the money goes towards your kitchen. You know you need a presentable kitchen. What kind of husband is he? I don’t understand your man. A businessman of his class must know what his woman needs. Never mind. I will deal with it. Leave it to me. A village school is nothing. They can do with learning under a tree using their knees as tables. All the money for that school is going to your kitchen... Don’t thank me. That’s what friends are for.

Yes, I bought the handbag. I used the money meant for sinking boreholes in his constituency... The electric toothbrush? You mean the one we saw when we went to London last time?Yes I bought it. He wanted to build pit latrines for his people and I said, “stop, you don’t own any people except me, your wife. I come first.” I told him they can use the bush for now. After all they have been doing it in the bush for the past donkey years. Nothing new. I can’t brush my teeth with an ordinary toothbrush like a village woman. Next thing people will see me using a stick like a cow herder.

Am I shouting? It’s that minister of agriculture making noise. He is working in my garden. He is cutting my lawn with the lawn mower. He does it twice per week. You should come and see my flowers. He did a great job, that man. Yes. Yes. All the money meant for farmers’ fertilizers went to my garden. I have a fresh garden full of nothing but roses. This minister of agriculture is doing a wonderful job I tell you. If it wasn’t for him I don’t know where my garden would be. Maybe it would be a cheap one like the ones we see in locations when we accompany our husbands to campaigning rallies. My hubby is proud of him. That’s why he chose him when he reshuffled the cabinet. The last one was stubborn. He wouldn’t do my garden. Always pretending to be in a hurry. “Hee, I have to go to my constituency. Hee, this year we need a bumper harvest. Hee, I want to feed every belly in this country with my own hands.” Where in these worlds has someone fed the whole country with his own hands? He was a dreamer and I told my husband to kick him out of office...

The minister of health? She is doing very well as my nanny. My children are well fed. All my dogs and cats are healthy. I don’t have to worry when I go out of the country for my shopping. I will tell my husband to extend her term... Yes, she is here. She is playing with the kids in the playing room. My worry is the minister of home affairs. That man, I don’t like him. He was here yesterday. I asked him to feed my dogs and he refused. He doesn’t know me well. His stay in government is in my hands. The other one is the minister of information. He sees and talks too much, that man. I don’t like his ugly head. He tells my husband everything. Everything, I tell you. Yes, you are right. I understand. Yes, he banned all the private newspapers. They never stopped writing about my shopping as if I am the only one in these worlds who does shopping.I know. Yes he did well to ban the opposition on radios and TVs. “The first lady is shopping too much. The first lady is shopping too much.” That was their only campaigning tool, my shopping. Nothing else to offer the people of this country.

Hold on, hold on. Just a minute, I need to talk to my other maid. She has just walked in. Hey, who told you to just walk in like a cockroach while I am talking on the phone? Answer me. I told you when I am on the phone I don’t like people sneaking in like snakes, you here me? You better be sorry. Tell me, do you still want to work for me? You keep stealing my dogs’ food...Yes, don’t deny it. You steal it and send it to your village to feed your filthy children. They don’t eat dog food? Are you sure? Don’t open your stinking mouth to tell me your kids don’t eat my dogs’ food. If I find it missing again I will show you the way to your village.

Your pay? I didn’t pay you last month? Look at you. When you came here you were thin like a match stick. Now you have grown fat and you tell me I didn’t pay you last month. The food you are eating in this palace is your pay. You must count yourself lucky you are blessed enough to work for someone like me, the president’s wife. Some people are dying to shake my hand and you shake it everyday. Isn’t that a blessing?

Come here. Come closer. I couldn’t find seven of my under panties. You stole them. I know you did. Lift up your skirt... I am embarrassing you? Is that how you talk to a wife of a great leader? Now, leave. Leave my house. I don’t want to see you.

Sorry my friend. These village girls we employ, they need to be taught who is the mother of the house around here. If you don’t they will enter your pockets. To tell you this girl stealing my underwear is fifty-seven years old you won’t believe me. Yes, fifty-seven. Alright, where were we? Oh, I was talking of my husband’s cabinet ministers. They must work hard and impress me if they want to stay in government. I told my husband his army is eating government money for nothing, and guess what. They now take turns to help the minister of agriculture in my garden. They are busy weeding my flowers with their own hands right now. The other four are out walking my dogs and cats. I told them if they want pay rise this month they must show me that they deserve it. I don’t want my husband’s government to pay people for eating and sleeping.

Oh, yes I still have your birthday in my mind. It’s going to be a great party for you, my dear friend. I can’t let you down. You have been by my side for a long time. I overheard him saying the orphans will receive a donation of US dollars next month from America. That coincides very well with your birthday since it’s also coming up next month. What? Yes...yes...aha. Alright. What I am trying to say is the money is coming straight to my handbag. Don’t worry. I know how to do it. From my handbag it goes straight to buying you the best birthday present a friend has ever received.

Ha ha ha. Winning votes is not a problem my friend. They wanted to vote for the opposition. My husband nearly lost that parliamentary seat until I intervened. Yes, I did. I went there myself and held a meeting with the women of the area. Oh, my ancestors, those women were dirty. I have never seen such dirt in my life. Their dresses and blouses full of breast milk stains. Bare feet. Unkempt hair. You know I used to feel jealous whenever my husband went for campaigns thinking he might be seduced by one of his followers only to realize recently that there is nothing to fear. Little children smelling like toilets at the bus terminus. Running noses. Oh, no I feel like vomiting. I pretended to be strong and sat down with them, carrying their children in my hands and wiping their noses. I think some of those women haven’t washed their babies to this day because they don’t want to wash off the finger prints left by the first lady. I shook their hands too and there is no way they went home and washed the hands shook by the president’s wife, ha, ha.

Oh, yes, I went there to the constituency and injected my magic. I said to the women, “if you want freedom in your houses vote for my husband. I will donate sewing machines to you so that you can start your own small businesses, making your own money.” I gave them some of my second hand underwear and they couldn’t stop ululating. Some of them had nothing under their skirts and dresses and they wore the underwear straight away. Washed them? Does it matter? I don’t need to wash my underwear. I wear a new underwear everyday. I don’t do repeats. Not me. So why wash them? I just gave them away as dirty as they were. Isn’t it a blessing to wear underwear once worn by the president’s wife? Don’t you think it is? Well, be an ordinary woman in the village and you will see what I am talking about.

I haven’t finished. I promised them second hand shoes, washing machines…..yes, washing machines. I know there is no electric power in the rural villages but, you know, you can say anything to impress those women and they never take time to think. Before you finish to say, “washing machines,” they are already ululating.

I told them if they don’t vote for the president they will be in big trouble. I lowered my voice and said to them, “as a woman I am just warning you. My husband knows who voted and who didn’t. He can see it while lying on his back in his own bedroom. There are cameras that he uses to monitor whoever is voting in this country. If you put your X on the wrong place, you will see. Hear it from me, another woman like you. I am the president’s wife but I am also a woman and I don’t want other women to suffer. We must stand against these men.” There was non-stop ululation, singing and dancing. I told them to go and pass on my message to their husbands. Come election results day. My husband had a landslide victory. That’s why those who speak well say behind every successful man there is a woman.

You want to come to the celebrations with me? No problem. We must go and celebrate. It’s great to have a female president on this continent. I will make sure we get a private jet for that one. Females only. All our friends are coming. Drinking and partying all the way.

What? Food and fuel shortages in the country? I don’t care. Teachers and doctors on strike? Well, it’s not my mother and father and sisters suffering. My family is happy and strong. If they fall sick I fly them to my specialist overseas. Yes, I did. All the money meant for teachers and doctors pay-rise, I spent it. I bought my son a toy. He wanted a scooter. Food and fuel? Yes, I bought my girl a very nice baby doll. She is so excited, I tell you. She said I must buy her a pram for it next time and I am targeting the money meant for the new hospital my husband was talking about. I know. The budget is tight but not a big problem to me. That’s why I told my husband to choose a professor of accounts to be the minister of finance. He comes three times per week to help me with my budget. He is staying in the cabinet when the next reshuffling is done. I have already told my husband. He is very happy with him.

Yes, you are very right there. The new Reserve Bank Governor is awesome. I told him about my planned shopping trip. Guess what he said. He said he will print new bank notes just for my shopping. I am getting fresh, untouched, never used currency just to buy my little goodies. There is nothing greater than being the first lady on this earth, especially in this continent. Those who say Heaven is above are liars. It’s right here on this earth, in my kitchen.

Ha, ha, ha. It was very easy for him. He made an announcement that the country needed development funds to create jobs for the youths. The civil servants grumbled and grumbled but he stood his ground. He knew in his heart that he wanted to do something special for his young lady on Valentine’s Day. All those sweet little presents I got he bought them using civil servants’ money after introducing Development tax. Next month he is introducing another levy called Roads Levy. Oh, yes. On paper it’s meant to raise money to replace traffic lights around the country stolen and destroyed by the opposition youths but, you know what. I don’t trust these walls. Let me whisper. The money is actually meant for a holiday for me and my kids. Yes, we are going overseas for three months. We need real money.

Er, my door bell is ringing, my friend. Maybe it’s the minister without portfolio bringing my cup of tea. Ok, better I go. I will ring you again later in the evening. Yes….. Yes. Take care... You too. Oh, before I go, are you busy tomorrow? Ok, I am taking you for lunch.London. Just a simple lunch and we come back. Let’s meet at the airport. Bye.

‘We are late,’ from outside the door of the vendor’s room came the irritating voice of her friend, ‘We need to sell our vegetables while they are still fresh. Mbare Msika market is not near.’ She looked at her young son who was still snoring, covered him with the single blanket they shared, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as if wiping off the sun’s rays that sniffed with their noses into the square room through the cracked glass of the window and rose carefully from her sleeping mat.

THE END

* Stanley Makuwe was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in New Zealand.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

School of Oriental & African Studies at the University of London will be hosting a conference on Migrants and making of Indian Ocean cultures on Wednesday 11 July 2007. Cross-cultural Outcomes from the dispersal and movement of peoples and cultures within the Indian Ocean will be the main theme of this Conference.

ABC-CLIO is in the process of developing a comprehensive 21-volume Encyclopedia of World History. We are looking for interested scholars to prepare 500-1500 word articles with a global perspective in the area of African History and Culture. contributors will have their names associated with the entries they contribute, and will receive access to the e-book version of the entire encyclopedia (list price $1,800) for personal use. Contributors assigned 3,000 words or more will also receive a credit of $300 towards purchase of ABC-CLIO books.

I greeted the news from a friend of Chimamanda Adichie winning the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction for Half of a Yellow Sun with ambivalence. It was more in regards to the book than the talent of the author. I must preempt the following explanation by stating how much I admire Adichie as a writer. I think without question she is one of the most gifted and refreshing authors to come out in recent years. Her first novel Purple Hibiscus took me unawares and left me with no doubt that it was a seminal piece. It was one of those books that became a yardstick by which I measured other novels and writers. Its beauty is in its simplicity. Ask me to tell you what it’s about and it’s a stretch – in short not a lot happens. Through it’s main character Kambili, it deals with very familiar topics like domestic violence, religious zealotry and hypocrisy and coming-of-age. Here lies the genius of Purple Hibiscus. In the hands of any ordinary writer the book would have been derivative but Adichie masters the art of taking age-old issues and presenting them in a refreshing, sensitive and accessible way. Not overly reliant on elaborate imagery and with a similar prosaic narrative-voice so effectively used in Chinua Achebe’s Things fall Apart (one of Adichie’s literary heroes) her first outing managed to be at once empathetic and emotive without the reader feeling they were being manipulated to react this way.

I cannot however say the same for Half of a Yellow Sun. Having held her debut in such high esteem I could not wait to get my hands on the follow-up and pre-ordered my copy. It soon became apparent to me that what made Purple Hibiscus so special was missing in the second novel. There was a sense of self-consciousness in the writing that was not apparent in her debut, as if she wanted this to be regarded as an epic piece. The young author admitted in a recent interview with BBC Africa Beyond that there was not the same sense of expectation with ‘Purple Hibiscus’, obviously because she was a new kid on the block. This self-awareness made the book seem less sincere in parts.

‘…Yellow Sun’ ticks all the boxes of what makes a controversial and sensational novel – sex, war/violence, issues of class, badass language – and yet it lacks the soul of Purple Hibiscus. The debut did not need to resort to these plot devices to be such a worthy read. If you think this is coming from a socially conservative standpoint think again. I recently discussed the book with a friend who is not prone to prudishness by any count. To my surprise he commented the book was overly reliant on graphic scenes when he said, and I paraphrase, that he doubts any one anywhere would have been so liberal sexually even in the swinging 60s, let alone a middle class family in Nigeria. This is a country that still has a very conservative outlook on many things, as I experienced on my recent trip there.

‘…Yellow Sun’ is told from multiple viewpoints but the characters in the first novel seem a lot more 3-dimensional and easy to relate to despite the fact it is told from one perspective. Now this could be down to my own predilection for character as opposed to plot-driven stories. However the majority of people I know who have read both novels, with the exception of one, found it easier to connect with ‘Purple Hibiscus’ and an altogether better book. And whilst the first novel was short and sweet and got to the point, ‘…Yellow Sun’ seemed too long in parts and much was superfluous to the novel’s needs. Ironically I think it’s Adichie’s skill as a writer that saves ‘…Yellow sun’ from being barely-readable melodrama.

Now Adichie should be commended for tackling such a sensitive topic as the Biafran war. She has certainly achieved what I believe she set out to do in raising awareness of the war especially amongst young Nigerians of her generation, like myself. As a result of reading the book I started to take an active interest in researching the causes of the war although finding texts with a non-Biafran bias has proved difficult indeed. I don’t doubt that her desire to deal with this subject has been a long time coming. In a recent interview in the Guardian Miss Adichie reflects on how she started writing about Biafra at 16. Being of the Igbo tribe of eastern Nigeria, who suffered great loss of life prior to and as a cause of the war, she felt the need to explore this dark and seldom-discussed part of the country’s history.

Nevertheless I have my own cynical view as to why she chose such a monumental and ambitious subject matter and it is the same reason I believe the Orange Prize judges decided to award her with the prize this year. It seems little do with the actual quality of writing but more to do with literary politics. Adichie was long listed for the Man Booker Prize and short listed for the UK Orange Prize for Fiction with 'Purple...’ in 2004 but lost out on the latter to another epic novel Andrea Levy's 'Small Island' which also had a good dose of sex, war and questionable language in parts. Don’t misunderstand, ‘Small Island’ is a great novel but Levy had several books to her credit by this time. Yet even as a debut novel ‘Purple…’ was in a league of its own. But it seems that for the panels judging these book awards the more sensational the novel and ambitious the topic the better and more likely it is to win. I imagine Miss Adichie felt slighted and cheated when she did not win the prize 3 years ago – and so she should. Miss Adichie wants to win awards too and it's my estimation she feels the need to play 'the game' – hence a change of tack. But surely it takes more dexterity to write a novel that takes the simple and mundane aspects of the quotidian, makes the reader care about the protagonist(s) daily struggles without it all becoming a bit too self-indulgent. The debut novel had that quality –despite it’s ‘ordinary’ subject matter.

I cannot say I am familiar with most of the other books short-listed for this year's Orange Prize except the ‘Inheritance of Loss’ by Kiran Desai, which won the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Ms Desai has undeniable skill but I found the novel less inspired than it was acclaimed to be. Once again we find the author deals with major issues such as class conflict in post-colonial India, the repercussions of colonialism, disenchantment with the American dream, romance, cultural displacement and anything else that has plagued man since the dawn of the modern age. The novel tried to deal with so much at once I was distracted and much of the sympathy and sense of engagement that I should have had for the characters didn’t have a chance to develop. But what do I know? ‘Inheritance…’ is an epic novel and the Man Booker judges duly rewarded Ms Desai for her efforts.

The same theory could be applied to Zadie Smith. One of the most prodigious and distinctive writers of the new millennium and a personal favourite, Smith’s gift of characterisation is second to none. She is also very adept at writing books, which are not big in the way of story line but make compulsive reading nonetheless. Her characters are so believable the reader could be convinced they have always known them and that they are merely a phone call away. She won the Orange Prize 2006 for ‘On Beauty’. This too is a good book – I believe Smith is incapable of writing an unengaging read – but not necessarily her best work. Yet it has a healthy dose of sensationalism, graphic scenes and yes, ticks those all-important boxes. I also think Smith’s winning of the Orange Prize last year was to compensate for her two previous books, the iconic ‘White Teeth’ and ingenious but underrated ‘Autograph Man’ being snubbed by the prestigious award. That leads to the second reason I feel Miss Adichie won this year – a consolatory gesture for what was denied her in 2004.

Of course all of this is conjecture and without a signed confession from the judges of these awards, hard to prove. But there does appear to be a pattern forming for what it takes to win these awards – and quality of work I fear is not always the paramount consideration.

There is hope that the simple but effective novel can sometimes triumph. Diana Evans was awarded none other than the Orange Prize for New Writers in 2005 for the sublime ‘26A’. Once again this is not a book so heavy on plot and more interested in exploring the diverse personalities of the two main characters, twins Bessie and Georgia, the dynamics of their relationship with each other, their family and the big wide world around them. Not to say that there are not meaty issues addressed in the book but these are discussed and driven by way of the characters and not vice versa.

I should be ecstatic that Miss Adichie is being recognised for her indisputable gift as a writer even if I do not feel as strongly about her second book as I do about ‘Purple Hibiscus’. Still it seems a phyrric victory that ‘…Yellow Sun’ is receiving so much attention compared to her, arguably, superior debut. Perhaps Richard & Judy and the like feel obligated to laud her efforts due to the topic of the Nigerian civil war and how it’s packaged in the book as oppose to the quality of writing itself. It is my hope that Miss Adichie’s third novel will see a return of the style and magic that set ‘Purple Hibiscus’ apart.

* is a trainee solicitor living in London.

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

An in-depth reading of Shailja Patel's Migritude alongside new work from Ngugi wa Thiong'o sets both in the context of new cultural production from the African diaspora.

In the past two weeks lovers of literature in Nairobi and Mombasa have had the exceptional chance of celebrating the official homecoming of Migritude, a powerful, one-woman oral poetic performance by Kenyan-born, US based Shailja Patel. The gifted artist entertained and educated enthusiastic spectators for four days at the Phoenix Theatre, Nairobi a week ago. She then staged her show in Mombasa at the Aga Khan Academy, Likoni this week. Her homecoming performances are courtesy of Ford Foundation, which is doing a laudable job supporting the revival of the arts and literature in post-Nyayo Kenya.

Shailja represented Kenya during the World Social Forum and has performed Migritude in East Africa before. She thrilled crowds at the Zanzibar International Film Festival as well as at the international Kwani LitFest last year. A third generation East African Asian who defines herself as both an Asian and an African, an 'Asian African', Shailja coined the term Migritude in 2005 from three cultural terms: migrancy, attitude and negritude. She uses it to name the spirit of 'a generation of migrants who do not feel the need to be silent to protect themselves'. Migritude then is a spirit of envoiced migrants who take up the challenge of making themselves narrators of their own (hi)stories to their nations and the world.

This nomadic narrative spirit comes to Shailja naturally considering East African Asians are the quintessential symbols of postcolonial migration from East Africa. Descendants of South Asian migrants who have in successive waves immigrated to East Africa, 'Asian Africans' are beginning to audibly challenge (n)atavistic accounts of the national histories and cultures of countries they have called home in Africa for more than a century.

Whether from East Africa or from the new homelands where they now live in Europe, America or Australia, East African Asians' efforts to 'remember Africa' and 're-membering themselves to Africa' are now becoming increasingly visible especially in the area of culture. In 2000, the Asian African Heritage Trust hosted an exhibition on the community's identity and culture at the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi. Kenyan-born, MG Vassanji, has been awarded twice the prestigious Giller Prize for his novels: The Book of Secrets (1994) and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003). His writings which include a new novel coming out in September, The Assassin's Song, treat the experiences of East Africans of South Asian descent through pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial times.

Zahid Rajan and Zarina Patel, the biographer of A. M. Jeevanjee as well as Makhan Singh, run an informative Nairobi-based journal on South Asian personalities, histories and cultures in East Africa called, Awaaz. They also organize the annual South Asian Mosaic of Society and the Arts (SAMOSA) cultural festival at the GoDown Art Center in Nairobi. Mubina and Sanaula Karmali have collected an anthology of diasporic oral literature, The Oral Literature of the Asians of East Africa, published by the East African Educational Publishers in 2002.

Shailja's solo artistic work further strengthens this East African Asian self-identification through art, culture and lifestories of an otherwise often misunderstood community; a misunderstanding evident in the April Anti-Asian riots in Kampala. Her poetic work traces the contours of her identity as an Asian African, as a woman and as a migrant East African living in the Diaspora. The Asian exodus out of Africa of the 1960s and 1970s occasioned by racialist nationalization programs and policies as well as racially-instigated (post)colonial gender violence are some of the major themes that run throughout the collection of poetic works that make up Migritude.

As a literary text therefore, Shailja's rich performance questions issues of history, politics, identity, place, culturo-racial diversity and migration. Structurally, Migritude takes the form of fourteen episodal poetic pieces, which hatch out of a multiracial yolk spiced with synchronized movements, stage effects manipulation and topical themes dramatically narrated in-between the lifestories and memories of the artist and her motherland.

However, the term 'migritude' can actually be expanded to capture the spirit of African peoples through their more than two thousand years history of migrations, settlement and re-migrations that continue to date. Loaded with memory, estrangement, history, politics and both local as well as global forces, 'migritude' appears to be the right word to describe that experience of present day Africans as they quest for their identities through the rubbles of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism and globalisation.

When Ngugi wa Thiong'o delivered his official homecoming public lecture, Re-Membering Africa: Burial and Resurrection of African Memory at the University of Nairobi early this year, one could discern that his literary politics and cultural ideology have also migrated beyond his standpoints of yesteryears. The renown writer appears to be shifting beyond examinations of the internal dynamics working against African nation-states towards the re-examination of those global forces identified under the mantra of globalization that continue to obstruct ways forward for African countries.

A keen reading of Ngugi's cultural politics beyond Moving the Centre (1993) locates his concerns beyond the scope of the limiting boundaries of African nation-states. He is no longer interested in national cultures and national languages as such. In the transnational spirit of migritude, the writer is embracing the whole continent as the arena of twenty-first century cultural contestations.

This spatial expansion is further illustrated through the critical observation that the fictional setting of the new novel, Wizard of the Crow. The 'Free Republic of Aburiria' is a metonymic post-colonial nation-state that could be many a post-colonial state in Africa and even Asia or Latin America. Aburiria is not easily identifiable as a former African settler colony (read Kenya) like the fictional settings of Ngugi's earlier novels. This spatial expansion can also be observed in his choice of abstract names such as His High Mighty Excellency the Ruler, Machokali (Sharp Eyes) and Sikiokuu (Great Ear) that cannot be typically identified with Kenya.

Characters from his early works had names such as Waiyaki, Mugo, Wanja, Njoroge that give cue to a reader familiar to East Africa as to which particular post-colonial African state Ngugi treats in the 1960s-1980s. This early period arguably reveals the novelist's interest in the welfare of former settler colonies in general, specifically Kenya, where issues of land, race and neocolonialism combine to produce postcolonial disillusionment, injustice and inequalities.

More than two decades of forced exile and university teaching away from East Africa has led the professor to reexamine cultural politics in deeper and broader terms. His magisterial lecture in January shows that the professor who now lives and works by choice in the Diaspora, finds clarity in post/transnationalist concepts such as Negritude, Pan Africanism, African Renaissance and Globalization when describing the complex cultural past, present and future of African societies and peoples. His recent most essay on the language question in Africa, 'Europhone or African Memory: The Challenges of the Pan-Africanist Intellectual in the era of Globalization' published in 2003 further attests to the metamorphosis.

Colonialism to Ngugi is no longer the preserve of Western Europe and its twentieth century oppression of Africa. His colonial discourse analysis has migrated deeper into history and farther away from Africa to also engage the subjugation of Ireland and New Zealand under the Great Britain as well as the colonization of some Far East nations under imperial Japan.

Ngugi's reexamination of twenty-first century Africa in light of growing interconnectedness betwixt and between African nation-states and the rest of the world is necessary in our incessant efforts to understand the emerging phenomena that is transnational African culture. In fact his new novel is a dramatization of the two thousand year epic journey Africans have made to the present as they get buried by local and global pressures only to resurrect and forge on towards their elusive homecoming—-their true Uhuru.

As diasporic artists such as Shailja demonstrate, this epic African quest for a place and time where Africans can finally feel at home is still on today. New African diasporas are mushrooming in Western Europe, the Far East, America and Australia as Africans continue to emigrate from the continent due to the political activities of post-independence African governments like that of the Ruler in Wizard of the Crow.

Seeing that more Africans such as Shailja and Ngugi find new homes outside the continent whether by volition or compulsion, the need for them to re-member themselves to the continent through remittances and the arts becomes urgent. To us in Literature, this urgency is already being reflected in celebrations of what is being referred to as the 'new diasporic African literature'.

Over the past ten years, 'Re-membering Africa' types of writings have grown into an amazing cultural enterprise supporting writers, publishers, critics and teachers of African/Postcolonial Literary Studies. For artists, diaspora themes, diasporic narrations and coming-home-from-diaspora homecomings are en vogue. For publishers, identifying and associating with potentially award-winning diasporic writers is considered a smart commercial venture. For critics, most of them being teachers, privileging diasporic theories in literary criticism is a strategy of identifying oneself with the avant garde of contemporary literary theory such as Homi Bhabha.

Respected outlets of learned discussions on African literatures such as Research in African Literature and English Studies in Africa celebrate the rise to prominence of diasporic writings of Abdulrazak Gurnah, Moses Issegawa, Jamal Mahjoub, MG Vassanji, Binyavanga Wainaina, Leila Aboulela, Doreen Baingana,Yvonne Owuor and Shailja Patel among other prominent East African as well as other new African writers. Kwani? currently East Africa's liveliest literary outfit, has brought some of these internationally-acclaimed writers to Kenya besides supporting that cosmopolitan literary spirit diaspora writers espouse.

Avtar Brah in her brilliant book, Cartographies of Diaspora (1996) tells us postcolonial Diasporas sustain that limited sense of belonging to any particular nation or culture, which in turn accentuate diasporic critiques of the postcolonial nation-state besides generating desire for new kinds of identification. In Africa today, these new kinds of identification can be discerned in most Africans who increasingly view themselves as citizens of the continent (i.e Pan Africans), citizens of the world (transnationals) or citizens of two or more nations (leading to calls for dual citizenship in Kenya). In the later case the first citizenship is usually ones country of birth and the second that of ones country of flight.

Diasporic literature with roots in post-independence Africa, to quote Brah once more 'offer a critique of discourses of fixed origins while taking account of a homing desire, as distinct from a desire for a homeland'. In light of these developments, we can venture the view that quests for new homes are not the main preoccupation of African migrants, writers or otherwise. Rather, it is quests for those places where African people will feel at home that really lead to the 'homing desire' epitomised by Ngugi's own emblematic rather than enduring homecomings since 2004.

Shailja's just concluded homecoming goes beyond the artistic effort of bringing Migritude to lovers of literature. It seems to suggest an invitation to expand the temporal and spatial dimensions of our narrations of African nations in the manner of Ngugi's Wizard of the Crow. In such expanded narrative spaces both indigenous and migrant memories and buried (hi)stories can be resurrected and given a long overdue homecoming.

* Justus Siboe Makokha, B.Ed, MA Dept of Literature, is a literary critic based at Kenyatta University.
* Read more on Shailja Patel at
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

He was my world
His armour shone
Glittering like diamonds in my eyes

He said I was his best friend
In my eyes, he was the world's strongest man
His words, always to be obeyed

I made excuses for his absences
Hid my disappointment
And tears in his broken promises
I would have died for him

His name was reverent on my lips
His friendship, I felt, was mine for keeps
He said we'd share all he had
His praise meant the world to me

I don't remember seeing much of him
Though I believed that words were meant
To be spoken in a slur
That stale breath, an angry voice and red eyes
Were a sign of male strength
And that the teetering walk was just his style

I was five
He was forty-two
He was my dad

PoP © 27 Jun. 07

Today, several civil society organisations issued an African citizens passport to the Ghanaian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon Nana Akuffo Addo in a pre-summit Continental Conference organised by the AU Ghanaian Civil Society Coalition. The passport is a response to a growing demand by African citizens for an easing of restrictions on travel within Africa by African governments as a pre-condition for African citizenship.

The Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Foundation made two awards recently for the Jaramogi Uhuru Awards for 2007. The first to HE the late Dr John Garang, first Vice President of the Republic of Sudan, President of GOSS. The second award was to Zarina Patel, the publisher of AWAZ magazine (http://www.awaaz.co.ke), and author of a number of outstanding books, Unquiet: A tribute to the founder of Kenya’s trade union movement (for review, see )

He’d never seen the inside of a police cell
Just finished primary school the year before
His family was poor, what we call dirt poor
All they had was their belief in family and God
This is Mungai’s story

The laughing stock of his friends in school
Was it a crime to live in the slum
Eking a living from his mother’s
Porridge, maize and beans kiosk
Poverty never had been a choice

He’d watched his age mates turn to crime
Always said he’d never turn
Living on hope and a prayer a day
Until the sounds of army boots broke the night

Doors were kicked open
Couples hid as they were caught naked
Heavy boots crushed children sleeping on the floor
The foul stench of dog breath was at the door

All young men were rounded up
The criminals had long since sniffed
The cops and fled
Mungai was huddled with a group
Of young and not so young men
They were taken to the corner
And quite suddenly shot dead

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/309/Xala_42074.jpgIn October 2003, at the opening of the Africa at the Picture film festival in London, veteran Senegalese film director Ousmane Sembène screened Faat Kine, the first of what had hoped to be a trilogy on the African heroism and with each film, strong female characters.

In Faat Kine, Djip of the son of female protagonist Faat Kine - a feisty single, unwed mother of two young adults and a businesswoman - publicly questions the authority of elders, as he refuses to show the customary respect to his absentee father. In this scene between father and son, Sembène pays homage to Pan-Africanism, as mural images of fallen heroes such as Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) feature within the background of the frame.

During an interview immediately following the screening, Sembène, commonly referred to as the 'father of African film', gave his take on the African brain drain, the exodus of Africa’s young people to the West, as he recognised the degree of individual freedom African youth experience in America and Europe as oppose to the restrictions traditionally placed on young people in Africa. Then, age 80, Sembène also identified the generational gap between himself and the young people of his native country of Senegal. He went on to acknowledge the work and struggles of a new brand of Senegalese filmmakers including Moussa Sene Absa, director of Madame Brouette.

Despite, his assertion of a generational gap, Sembène’s films continue to resonant with African audiences, both young and older, because they challenge the prevailing notions of traditional African society and give voice to the far too often unheard masses.

From the beginning of his journey as a filmmaker, Sembène’s focus has been on speaking to his people. In his own words, in a 2005 interview with The Independent, he states: 'I create to talk to my people, my country. The priority is that my people can understand me. Africa needs to see its own reflection. A society progresses by asking questions of itself, so I want to be an artist who questions his people.'

In one of his earliest work, Borom Sarret, Sembène does just that, as the short drama follows a day in the life of a horse-cart driver. In this film, Sembène questions both the practice of the traditional, as the horse-cart driver struggles to decide whether to pay a griot for praise-singing, and the repressive nature of neo-colonialism, as the driver goes through a trencherous misadventure while he takes a passenger to the white section of the Dakar. Through Borom Sarret, Sembène critically examines the social and economic challenges of the working poor in Dakar, through the horse-cart driver who comes home from work empty handed and is left with the baby while his wife goes out to find money, perhaps resorting to prostitution.

In 1975, Sembène directed a film adaptation of his 1973 novel, Xala, in which he again tackles the frustrations and disillusionment with a neo-colonialist Senegal. Xala is a satirical look at the state of post-independence Africa, drawing a creative parallel between Senegal’s struggle for self-governance and the sexual impotence of the film’s main character El Hadji, a member of the newly constituted Chamber of Commerce. El Hadji uses his new position to launder money in order to pay for his elaborated wedding to his third wife.

Like many of Sembène’s films, Xala features strong females and gives a voice of wisdom and progression to younger characters that question the judgement of their elders. In a subtle yet prolific scene, Rama, El Hadji’s eldest daughter challenges her father’s preoccupation with western consumerism and his use of the former colonizers’ language as she answers all of her father’s questions in Wolof despite El Hadji having posed his questions in French. The use of indigenous language in Sembène’s work is an important characteristic that differentiates him from other African directors, as he was the first to rely on indigenous languages for film dialogue, reminiscent of Ngugi’s arguments on the use of language in African literature.

Beyond the dependence on Western culture, Rama also challenges traditional customs that for her, appear to be outdated such as her father’s polygamous marriages. Out all of the female characters in Xala, Françoise Pfaff asserts that Rama symbolises Sembène’s Marxist ideology as African liberation is directly mirrored by African women’s social and political emancipation, as represented in his films. According to Pfaff, 'with the winged swiftness and freedom of a modern day Amazon…Rama is a positive and refreshing counterpart to her father who represents the corrupted bourgeoisie who robs the masses and perpetuates the French neocolonial presence in Africa'.

By the end of the film, Rama along with her mother Awa, El Hadji’s first wife, witness the ultimate humiliation of El Hadji, as he is stripped naked and spat upon by 'human trash', the disable and refuge of the society, as a means for breaking the 'curse' of his sexual impotence. Here again, Sembène gives agency to the seemingly disadvantaged thereby challenging conventional notions of power.

In his last film, Moolaadé, Sembène once again portrays strong women as he takes on the highly controversial subject of female circumcision in Africa. In a small village in Burkina Faso, Collé the second wife of one of the villagers relies on the tradition of moolaadé, 'magical protection', a sanctuary to protect several young girls from the practice of 'purification' or female circumcision. Sembène addresses the subject of female circumcision brilliantly in this film, as he examines various aspects of the debate, recognising the central role that women play in maintaining the tradition as well as the role of men, in ignoring the politics of the practice, relegating the matter to women’s business.

In Moolaadé, Sembène also takes on the even larger question of the intersection between the so-called traditional and modern, as the son of a village elder returns from Paris for an arranged marriage to an uncircumcised bride. In this aspect of the plot, Sembène identifies the position the young men in either perpetuating or deterring female circumcision since it is believed that an eligible man will not marry a woman who is deemed to be uncircumcised and therefore unclean. In a poignant scene exploring the intrusion of modern-day life, the men of the village, afraid that the radio programmes frequently listened to by the women, may be to blame for the recent protest against the tradition of circumcision, gather all the transmitter radios from every home and place them in a large pile in the centre of the village thereby cutting the woman off from the rest of the world.

By the end of the film, when one of the village women takes her daughter out of the protection of Collé, to be circumcised and subsequently the woman’s daughter dies from the procedure, the intense social and spiritual bond of African womanhood is cinematically represented as Collé presents the grieving mother is an infant girl to care for and raise as her own daughter.

Throughout his life through activism, writing and later in filmmaking, Sembène worked diligently to not only reflect but to challenge his people and his country. In so doing he infused his own political ideology, tackling both the dependency on Western neo-colonialism and blind adherence to so-called tradition. Both were fair game for critical interrogation in Sembène’s films as he represented power in those deemed as powerless.

In Sembène’s female characters, one sees the embodiment of self-determination and strength as evident in Rama and Collé - the types of Africa women who are frequently overlooked within Western feminist discourse on Africa. Further, Sembène remained hopefully as reflected in his work, on the state of young people in Africa, believing that African youth would be the ones to move forward and transform the continent.

According to Sembène, cinema is the 'night school' of his people and he sough to educate within this medium, elevating the style and language of film in order to serve the needs of African audiences. Sembène was drawn to filmmaking not simply for art sake - for self-indulgent exploits, like that of the Italian neo-realists or the French new wave, but to use cinema as a libratory practice, compelling his audience to do more - to do more than simply sit in a dark room, staring at a glowing screen. Rather, through his films, Sembène asked of his African audiences to challenge, to innovate, to progress.

* Montré Aza Missouri is a filmmaker and PhD Candidate in the Centre for Media and Film Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Two months ago, Mombasa was given a rare treat to Eric Wainana live at the Little Theatre Club in a bid to revive and restore this jaded cultural monument. In addition to Eric’s dynamic performance, the crowd were elated to see and hear the captivating voice of a rather unique talent in Kenya. Barefooted and hair-plaited, the young man walked on stage with his guitar and was welcomed by a frenzied crowd. His ability to reach every musical pitch coupled with the smooth simplicity of his songs had me mesmerised. I claimed ignorance and asked who it was:'“Harry Kimani of course!'

A month later, we were surprised to find out that Harry would be playing at the Bamburi Forest Trails over the Easter weekend. We immediately postponed our travel plans and made our way to the venue. Despite the rather unfortunate turn out, Harry was not dissuaded in the least. Dressed in a full 3-piece tuxedo, he stood firm and gave us a virtually private showing with all his heart and voice. There is something nostalgic about his music that leaves you beckoning to relive a special moment in your life. There is no clatter or distraction which leaves a lot to be admired, for he has to live up to his talent to make it a successful performance. But it is his version of the National Anthem that really triggers my emotions, leaving me with a tearful pride in being a Kenyan.

Weeks later, he reappeared at the Little Theatre Club but this time there was no evidence of a big star playing in our town. Harry Kimani is undoubtedly one of Kenya’s most popular upcoming musicians who in addition to having record sales amongst the top five in the country, has also performed in several countries around the globe. Yet, he retains his modesty everywhere he goes just like the first time I saw him playing barefoot. I asked him what’s keeping him at the Coast: 'I’m trying to teach music and put a CD together with the children from Wema Centre so I will be around for a while and I love this place.' Through his work with Wema, Harry was so inspired that he is now establishing a foundation to teach music to less privileged children. I was sold. Not many Nairobi residents can stand our relaxed sea pace beyond their beach holiday and dedicate their time to something as meaningful as this.

Once again he performed to a much smaller regular crowd giving it all his soul. Under the dim coloured bulbs, we sat on the ageing couches and listened to his magical voice. He has become a regular face at the Theatre Club and is always willing to pick up his guitar and play a song or two. There is unquestionably a lot of talent in this country and plenty from within Mombasa. It is only a question of seeking it out and opening up our minds to what is truly Kenyan.