Ayi Kwei Armah featuring The Invasion of Africa Part Two

Some have described Ayi Kwei Armah as an alienated figure. Some have described some of his books as sick. Others say it is impregnable and woody. Yet, no one has questioned his intelligence. If there is any writer whose works are as important today as they were when they were published, if there be any writer whose words rang through in the fourteenth century and ring true in the twenty-first century; if there be such a writer then it definitely IS Ayi Kwei Armah. From The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born to The Healers - sticking to those I have read - the themes he speaks about still prevail.

Yesterday, we were told that French Forces have arrested Laurent Gbagbo and most Africans went gay just as the West went gay. To most Africans, the Devil has been caught by the forces. Note that France and the UN has tried dissociating themselves from the arrest though most news channels, including the initial report from the BBC, reported that this infamous arrest was led by the French Special Forces. There are some questions we would have to answer ourselves: Why was the world so quick to jump to conclusion that Ouattara has won the election when the results itself was contested? Why was the results announced in the same hotel that housed Ouattara and his rebels led by Soro? Could the electoral commissioner have been able to announce any other results apart from a win for Ouattara when he was in their hotel surrounded by their forces? Did the world jump in the Bush-Al-Gore disputed results and the 'problem of Florida' or did they quickly proclaim Al-Gore the winner of the results? Did Al-Gore announced himself the president after the court declared him the loser? Does the French Forces love the Ivorians so much as to spend  all these money just to bring peace? What interest does France has in imposing a leader who himself has been accused by the Red Cross Society for atrocities against civilians, just like Gbagbo, on the people of Cote d'Ivoire? What do they stand to gain?

These are questions whose answers bring to mind Ayi Kwei Armah's novels Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers. The conditions that led to the slave trade and the rule of the colonialists in Africa still exist today. Today we still have the likes of Otumfur, Ababio, and Edusei who in search of cowries or morsels or crumbs to fill their paunches sing praises to flatter their kings; schemes to overthrow their leaders; kill to survive. We still have Koranche, that 'empty, strutting fool, suffered to strut this way only because of ... social conventions' and those types of Asante kings who 'succumb for fear of losing their positions'. The Invaders always rely on these individuals to front their course. Now the French have invaded Cote d'Ivoire and the president has been arrested. Let's ask 'is it possible for any African country to invade France when they realise they are having election irregularities?'

Ayi Kwei Armah in these two novels fittingly described these events. Armah talked about how some Africans became zombies and askaris fighting for the Destroyers and the Ostentatious Cripples. He talked of how these imposed chiefs were given 'clothes of colour so bright to fascinate children's eyes set in adult heads' so that they bowed to the wishes of the Destroyers. So that they handed over our lands to them. Again they have come in offering presidency (just as they offered kingship) to anyone who would help them access the resources of the land (just as they came for the land the people).

There are those who point accusing fingers at these at the Gbagbos  and say 'if they had left there would not have been any problem'; 'the African is power drunk' and more. These individuals, mostly Africans, in their analyses ask these questions to justify foreign invasion. So I ask again, should similar problems arise in other Western countries, could we intervene with our military and uproot the sitting president and impose the one we feel can do the work? The problem in Cote d'Ivoire has just began. It would not end because Gbagbo has been arrested. It would not end because the French want a stooge president: one who would offer free access to resources and foreign reserve because they have refused to keep it in France as was agreed in colonial times, just before independence. And like in Armahs novels, these things are done with full complicity of Africans.

Yet, Armah offers hope. There are Healers like Damfo and Densu, those with knowledge about the path to The Way - Our Way - like Isanusi, the present day young Africans who see through Western tactics, who are working tirelessly to find the Way, to Heal the people. There are those watching and connecting the dots; for how is it understandable that one is deemed a socialist when one thinks about his people but another refers to this same 'thinking about his people' as patriotism? And Armah concedes that the Healing, the finding of the Way, would not take a day, a year or even a century to achieve. But the heart-warming issue is that it shall be achieved.

For those Otumfur, Edusei and Koranches of Africa, those who make statements such as 'Africans are this .. Africans are that...'; those who think that by aligning themselves with them they aren't Africans, know that the disgrace of the crocodile is the shame of the alligator, that when it affects the mouth it affects the nose. Except when they have magically de-melanised themselves, but until then whatever happens include you.

These happenings, these occurrences, these blatant disregard for the sovereignty of African states, is what Ayi Kwei Armah wrote about. He has shown that his thinking horizon is broader than most of these individuals who have spoken harshly against him.

Glen Retief: Homoeroticism and the Failure of African Nationalism in Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones

I am not a 'formal' student of Literature. In fact I cannot, in no other way, call myself a student of Literature, formal or informal for I read novels to enjoy them first, reflect on the second and connect the dots later. These latter two always occur way after the novels have been read. Sometimes months or even years. In fact I still think about novels I read as far back as 2005. Hence, I am the last person to make a critique, academically, a novel or even read research articles based on literary writings. I am scared. My training is in Agricultural Economics and I stay with it.

However, I was browsing the net and accidentally found this article. Because I have not access to the main article I could only read the abstracts. From what I could glean from the abstract, Ayi Kwei Armah's Novel The Beautyful Ones are Not yet Born, is a subtle or subliminal way of telling Africans to embrace same-sex desire and human rights for sexual minorities. The Abstract:

Building on the work of Stewart Crehan, Joshua D. Esty, and others, this paper "queers" Armah's canonical novel of disillusionment with the African nation state, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, by tracing sublimated and explicit expressions of homoerotic desire through the text. The protagonist's scatology is seen not just as a metaphor for the postcolonial predicament, but also as a psychological defense mechanism holding at bay a taboo form of sexual expression—a desire implicit in the protagonist's self-sacrificing and profound love for Koomson. Reread this way, The Beautyful Onesis understood as an allegory for the need for African nationalism to embrace same-sex desire and human rights for sexual minorities. By Glen Retief (Research in African Literature - Volume 40, Number 3, Fall 2009, pp. 62-73)

I have never attributed this highly-acclaimed novel to sexual minority or the need to embrace it. Consequently, I would be searching for and reading the full article so we could discuss this properly her. But in the interim, do you think such an association could be part of Armah's thought-processes in writing this novel? Or is it simply an association a researcher is making based on his own readings?
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I can't access the document. It's limited and I would be glad if anyone who gets it could share it with me at freduagyeman(AT)yahoo(DOT)com. Thanks

40. When will the Beautyful Ones be Born? - A Review of Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born

Title: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born

Author: Ayi Kwei Armah

Genre: Novel

Publishers: Heinemann

Pages: 183

ISBN: 978-0-435-90540-8

Year of Publication: 1968 (this edition, 1988)

Country: Ghana

The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born is the fourth of Ayi Kwei Armah's novels that I have read and reviewed and I must say I have not as yet been disappointed by this great writer of our times. There is something I have realised and it is that his books are gradually being republished, not only by his publishing press Per Ankh, but also by other publishing houses.

The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born is set in the latter stages of Nkrumah's reign, in the country Ghana, and ended just after the first coup. It talks about 'the man' who, pure in heart and spirit, saw no reason to amass wealth through bribery, which, of course, has become the in-thing. It talks about the personal and emotional struggles 'the man' went through as he tried to convince his wife and mother-in-law that though wealth in itself was not evil but it is the means to its attainment that makes it evil. However, these two women in the man's life denigrated him, insulted him, and made him a useless thing, describing him as a nobody. They found love in his classmate who has now become a party man and so uses his position of influence to enrich himself. This man, Koomson, proudly displayed opulence wherever he went.

The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born documents, narratively, the period in Ghana when corruption became institutionalised and when one is judged by the wealth one has with asking how that wealth was made. People despised knowledge and revered wealth; thus, men would go any length to enrich themselves. It also talks about the period where not only physical corruption but spiritual, wealth and environmental decadence reached its peak. And it is yet to decline, for the situation still prevails.

In the story is a Teacher, whom 'the man' consulted anytime he had problems. It was this Teacher who guided the man to resist the torments of his wife and mother-in-law, whilst at the same time showing him that the path is not that rosy and things wouldn't change even now. The mental decay that characterised the period is seen through a lady called Maanan who thought that the coming of an eloquent man, who showed glimpses of learning and not just learning but having knowledge of the path, of having power not bestowed upon him by the white man, and when this man (reference to Nkrumah) failed her, she went insane. This is how the Teacher described Maanan's view of this new person, leader:

It is not true at all that when men are desperate they will raise their arms and welcome just anybody who comes talking of their salvation. If it had been so, we would have been following th first men who came offering words and hidden plans to heal our souls. But we did not run out eager to follow anyone. In our boredom we went out to the open public places to see what it was people were talking about, whether it was a thing we could go to with our hopes, or just another passing show like so many we had seen and so many we are seeing now. (Page 80)

The novel talks about the politics of the day, as a newly independent country sinks into the throes of corruption and the national coffers, wealth, treasure became a free for all scramble by men whose thought and learning rested and ended only within the grumblings in their stomachs.

there is something so terrible in watching a black man trying at all points to be the dark ghost of a European... (page 81)

The above quote reminded me of a similar quote in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Weep Not Child, where Kamau told his brother that 'blackness is not all that makes a man ... a whiteman would always be a white man but a black man trying to be a whiteman is wicked..(to paraphrase)'. However, the author never lost sight of where power truly lies

We knew then, and we know now, that the only real power a black man can have will come from black people.

And how true can this be. Even today, in our advertisements, we seek the stamped approval of light-skin people. Our inferiority complex, borne out of our dark complexion, has pervaded our every move, our everyday lives to the extent that manufacturers and advertisers and politicians and the taxi driver and every other person would want to be seen associating with these individuals in order for them to be regarded as 'somebody'.

Ayi Kwei Armah

And even when the inevitable coup came, purportedly to erase corruption which, at that period, had become endemic in the life of the people and was synonymous to wealth and life itself, the author never gave in to the euphoric attitude of the few. He knew then that these are individuals who have also come to participate, greedily, in the national looting spree. One family has come, let another too come; and even today, in the politics of 21st Century Ghana, this mantra is used and abused. 'The Man' seeing policemen taking bribes at the numerous road blocks, after he has helped his friend, Koomson, escape from the military junta, walked home, head bowed, wondering when the 'Beautyful Ones' would be born.

The title of the novel, The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born, was an inscription the author saw written at the back of a car a policeman had stopped, in the novel. Yet it has its unique significance. In Ghana, as in most countries perhaps, car inscriptions are common. It is an art and also a way of knowing what the driver believes in or stands for. This inscription, which, according to the author in the June 2010 edition of New African magazine, saw in real life after he was looking for a title for this novel, is one of such arts. The industry of sign-writing is populated mostly by semi-literates and such petty mistakes in spelling abounds. Yet, even though it spoke literally to the driver or owner of the sign, in its misspelt state it was a spiritual message to the author. Thus, in its unwholesomeness it became wholesome, beautiful, intellectual, symbolic and above all meaningful in all its aspects. For in that period the only source of solace is to know that 'The Beautyful Ones' of Africa, those men who would stand corruption and fight it to the letter at the expense of their lives, leaders who have visions to take the country farther into development and not to 'see the true end of politics as wealth (Busia)', those who are spiritually in-tuned with the way and knows the path have not yet been born. This makes room that they would be born. Someday. For what is hope if the end is known. So I ask, Are the Beautyful Ones of Africa, The Healers?

The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born, set the premise for the succeeding novels of Armah. He began answering the questions he raised in this first novel. Yes, the Beautyful Ones in Africa are those who know the Way, the Path and not the Ostentatious Cripples; they are the Healers. All of Armah's novels address the way to freedom, to prosperity of the spirit, the environment and the mind. His novels are inter-linked and address similar themes in varied ways.

Some scholars have questioned the use of an un-named man, referred to simply as 'The Man' in a named country. To such folks I say, it is the apt thing for Armah to do. The Man is symbolic. The use of the definite article 'the' supposes that the attitude of this 'man' could be taken up by any specific person. It could be you or me but at the same times, he does not delude himself into thinking that they would be many and judging from the period where it was set, the use of 'the man' seemed even more applicable. He was a solitary man in his thinking. Besides, why shouldn't the country be named? The use of Ghana is good enough. Ghana at that point signified the hope of Africa, the beacon of hope, hence if the house has fallen, who are you to ask if the ceiling came with it? Corruption then was ubiquitous and for those countries that hadn't caught the the cold, it was only a matter of time.

This is a book that would rank high amongst my favourite books. When will the Beautyful Ones be born? Africa, when?

This is a highly recommended book.

ImageNations Rating: 6.0 out of 6.0

Library Additions and Other Award News

What would you do when you have searched for a book for so long and the time you found it, at a bookshop, you had only as much money as would take you back to the office? Do you buy it and walk, knowing that the distance between your current location, the bookshop, to your destination, the office, can in noway be covered by walking; or would you forgo it and risk spending another ten years or more searching for it? I chose the former and prayed for a miracle. And this is how come I have in my possession Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Yeah! But I did not walk after the purchase. Miraculously, I met a friend who also love Ayi Kwei Armah and he lent me some money for transport and also got himself a copy.

In Other News

Shachi Kaul

The Commonwealth Short Story Competition 2010 winners have been announced. The overall winner was Shachi Kaul from India with Retirement. Shachi is a banker and former hotelier. She started writing during a sabbatical from work. Chief among her goals is to tell stories rooted in contemporary India that resonates with people everywhere. Her writing--both prose and poetry--is beginning to appear in thematic anthologies in Asia. Currently, she is working on her first novel.

Karen Jennings

The African Region winner was Karen Jennings from South Africa with From Dark. Karen was born in Cape Town in 1982. She holds Masters degrees in both English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. In 2009, she won the English Section of the Maskew Miller Longman (South Africa) Short Story Competition with her story The Shark. 

Shola Olowu-Asante

The Antie Isong Special Prize for a story coming from Nigeria was won by Shola Olowu-Asante with Dinner for Three. Shola was born in Nigeria but lives in Edinburgh with her husband and two children. She is a freelance broadcast journalist and has only just begun to try her hand at creative writing.

Read the rest here.

Points of Convergence between No Longer At Ease and Fragments

Usually, I try to review novels and not to compare them. However, there comes a time when one cannot run away from a topic, a call, no matter how one tries. This topic had been in my head ever since I reviewed Chinua Achebe's No Longer at Ease (on September 30, 2009). I dreamt about it, talked about, did everything but obey this call. The only way to prevent an incubus from attacking you is to remain un-asleep, no? Well, that might not even suffice but I know that the only way to obey a call is to respond to it. Finito! So today, in this very post, I respond to this call.

No one can challenge the achievements of Ayi Kwei Armah and Chinua Achebe. Even though these two literary giants of African descent may disagree at the academic level, their literary works stated here tend to converge at several points, and diverge at some. This issue has bothered me for so long and I refrained from writing about it, mainly because as a untrained essayist and a first-ladder novice in academic-literature, I find it unfit to discuss similarities and differences among great works by such great novelist, who are themselves subjects of research. For instance, last week a friend of mine asked me where he could get the complete works of Ayi Kwei Armah for someone who was doing a PhD work on this author. So one could easily see that I, who haven't obtained any formal learning in literature, am not the right person to do this work. However, I would go on to provide my opinion, no matter how hollow it would be, still knowing that it wouldn't be taken so serious by the cognoscenti.

No Long at Ease tells the story of Obi Okonkwo after his academic sojourn in the UK. Arriving in his homeland Nigeria, his community, who had contributed to his education whilst in Europe, expected that he would do enough to pay back the money spent on his education and also to help the children of the people who financially helped him. However, wanting to distance himself from all corruptible tendencies, Obi Okonkwo found himself on the wrong side of his people who thought that the young man has become proud and so wasn't showing the necessary respect demanded by his elders. 

Fragments also talked about Baako after he arrived in Ghana after his academic sojourn in the UK. In Ghana, his parents wanted to see the characteristics of a 'been-to'--someone who had just arrived from abroad--in him. They wanted to see the big houses, the big cars, the big jobs and all. They wanted to be associated with the big money that would be flowing from him. Women just wanted to be close to him because of his 'been-to' status.

Points of Convergence

Societal Values: In both of these novels we find that the values of society are different from those of the new arrivals. Thus, whereas Baako and Obi came back with knowledge and enthusiasm to reform and transform their societies, with energy and zeal to improve the lot of the country in the development direction, the society they belonged to were more materialistic and egoistic. They wanted to reap the benefits on a more personal basis. These latter characteristics was to mark the gradual deterioration of societal values and norms from a non-materialistic, value-laden objectives to one that would eventually lead to corruption and corruptible behaviours. Thus, ones standing in society gradually evolved, or more correctly--if judgement is allowed--devolved from ones intelligence, wisdom and honesty to wealth--exhibiting the utility property of transitivity (the more the better). Judging from the periods that these books were written and published (1960 for No Longer at Ease and 1969 for Fragments), it is not far-fetched to state that they represented the point in time were looting and corruptible behaviours of the government became the symbol of African democracy and militancy. 

What then could have been the cause of this drastic change in societal values? Colonisation? Greed? If greed from where? One fact is that, even today those 'lucky few' who find themselves in government and remain clean from all corruption are looked down upon if they return from service without those 'big' cars, houses and constant travels. Ones own family is wont to desert you for not helping them out, for not being corrupt, though they wouldn't say it directly. On the other hand, this same society, which praised the wealthy, would condemn you if the laws catch up with you and justice is executed. In the end, it looks as if society is saying is that 'steal, but don't be caught'. 

Another question that begs to be answered is this: 'Is the individual's values greater that the collective value of society?'

Individual Choices: Whereas both Baako and Obi Okonkwo were faced with similar challenges, each took it differently. Obi Okonkwo, realising that being honest does not pay the bills, quickly gave in to the unbearable pressures of corruption. He fell, debase himself and became the man his people wanted to see, one who drove big cars and lived in big houses. However, steel-willed Baako fought society boot for boot, thought for thought and in the end lost. His loss ended him a bed in solitary confinement in a psychiatric ward as his singular mind could not match society's pressure. Though differently, in their end there is convergence. Both Obi Okonkwo and Baako lost the battle, both ended up in solitary confinement, one in a cell the other in a ward.

In conclusion, I would say that these aren't the only parallels between the two novels but are those I wanted to point out. 

32. They and Us Killed Us, A Review of Ayi Kwei Armah's The Healers

Title: The Healers

Author: Ayi Kwei Armah

Genre: Novel

Publisher: Per Ankh

Pages: 351

ISBN: 2-911928-04-0

Year of Publication: 1978 (this edition 2000)

Country: Ghana; Africa

Authors write for different reasons. To some writing has a therapeutic effect. Some write to express a personal opinion, some write toward an idea whereas others write from an idea. Others also write to project the views, aspirations and culture of a tribe. But Ayi Kwei Armah uses his writing to achieve a wider, larger objective of African unification.

PLOT: The period of the story is the nineteenth century when the colonialists are fighting the Asantes for control of the land and the Asantes are also fighting the Fantes to reclaim their land. The Healers tells of a young man, Densu, who was framed up for the murder of the heir apparent to Esuano's throne by his guardian Ababio, after the latter had unsuccessfully convinced the former to step up and claim the position. But Densu attracted by the work of Damfo, a healer decided to become a healer and so turned down his guardian's request and moved to the Eastern Forest where Damfo and his daughter Ajo, lives.

Meanwhile, at Cape Coast the colonialists had manipulated the chiefs and kings to provide the men required to fight the Asantes. The great battle that ensued saw fighters coming in from across the continent such as Dahomey, Hausas, Ada, Ga, Aneho, Akim, Ekuapem, Kru, Temne, Mande, Sussu and many others. Thus, whereas the Healers were working through inspiration to unite the continent, the British colonialist using manipulation had brought together soldiers to fight the Asantes. The kings of Asante also afraid of losing their position of power succumbed to the colonialist, thus leading to defeat and division. 

On the other hand, the kings of Asante blamed the healers for their decision and so sent soldiers, those who were to fight the whites, to ferret out the Healers and kill them.

The story is narrated by an omniscient narrator who showed himself or herself through emotional outburst such as an address to certain individual to surfeit him or her with words so that he or she could continue to narrate the story:

Ah, Fasseke, words fail the storyteller, Fasseke Belen Tigui, master of masters in the art of eloquence, lend me strength ... Send me words Mokopu Mofolo. Send me words of eloquence (page 63)

MY THOUGHTS: As an informal sequel to Two Thousand Seasons, The Healers tells of how for their crave for food to fill their paunch, drinks to glaze their eyes and pamper their nerves and silken clothes to lie upon, the so-called kings and chiefs of Africa plotted the continent's dis-unity. Thus, those who have taken oaths with the gods' swords and sworn upon the gods' names to serve the people became the served.

Ayi Kwei Armah exposes the causes of Africa's disunity: self-importance, the crave for power, lack of knowledge regarding origins and the smallness of the leaders' (kings and chiefs mainly) mind. If not for the love of power how then could Ababio frame his god-son, the orphan Densu, for the murder of the heir-apparent so that he, Ababio, would ascend to the throne at Esuano with ease? or the queen mother of Kumase work against the war strategy of Asamoa Nkwanta, the mighty warrior for the Asantes (the Osajefo), because she fears that should the war be won the latter would fight them for the throne at Kumase? According to the queen mother

the wisdom of a king lay in knowing at all times what to do to remain a king. If what should be done now was to yield a bit to the whites, better that than lose all power to an upstart general (page 331)

If not for the lack of knowledge regarding origins, how then could the Asantes see themselves different from the Fantes, the Akims, the Ekuapems and many others, when they are all Africans?

Though Armah discussed the causes of Africa's disunity, he does not drum only doom and does not pretend to have quick answers to the problem. According to him there are the Healers whose greatest work is to work towards the unification of Africa. To these Healers this scattering and individualism of Africans are but a temporary phase in the affairs of men and though they are persecuted by the kings and queens and chiefs of Africa they are not giving up. Slowly and carefully they believe they would realise this long-term objective.

Armah's penchant for writing on Africa's unification and recreating Africa's past does not blind him to certain inhuman practices accepted as tradition. In fact, he speaks vehemently against such acts and attributes them to selfishness, lust for power and ignorance.

Scaling up Armah's novel, it becomes easier to see these events in present-day Africa. How many times haven't Africans working to create the unity of the continent been killed: spiritually or physically? Think of Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and many others. Think also of the author's own halleluya when he wrote his famous novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, and his immediate crucifixion and fall from grace when he wrote Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers. Why? Because these two novels blame the whites and some ignoramuses of Africa for Africa's current predicament. Because these novels show how Africans can put the past aside and work towards the future, towards the goal of black unification. Because when such a unification is achieved these people of power would lose their positions and such positions would no longer be necessary. And this is what the Ostentatious Cripples and the Vultures are not prepared to hear or to have it heard. Yet, like Healers such as Damfo, Armah knows the final result of their small works may not be realised now or even in their lifetime; it may be realised centuries after we are all gone. The peaceful and the most enjoyable part is that IT SHALL COME TO PASS when the parts shall become whole.

Finally, Armah bemoans in this novel of how every affair of man is about competition, about victory and loss rather than about collaboration. Currently, if a company had to pollute rather than incur huge financial losses, it would pay its way to pollute even if such pollution would lead to the death of men and of things. In the media it is common to see TV crews fighting to cover a child dying of hunger than to see them actually helping the child. It is profit first, life last. Whatever would put money in the bank account would be highly competed for even if it would lead to the death of its victims. This is how capitalism has been defined today.

In reading The Healers you can see Armah in motion, moving to and working from Senegal and talking to the people of the continent, sowing the acorns of realisation and working tirelessly to ensuring that the healing of Africa's wound, the spiritual awakening of dead souls, that the path to origins would once again be found. I end with a beautiful quote from the book:

Let the error raise its own correction (Page 8)

I recommend this book to every individual. However, I say read Two Thousand Seasons before reading this. This is not just a novel, it is a text book, a book that inspires understanding, love, and begs for action.

In Ghana, a copy of this novel could be obtained from the University of Ghana's bookshop. Current issues are published by the author's publishing house PER ANKH, where copies could be obtained.

New Acquisitions and Other News

News Item One: AmaZulu by Walton Golightly

I have got myself a copy of Walton Golightly's first novel, AmaZulu. I have not read any review of this novel before. I bought it because a friend of mine, Obed Sarpong, has a copy. 

Back of the novel: 1818 SOUTH AFRICA: The searing wind of change is sweeping across the African continent s the European powers clash over the lands they consider to be theirs by right of conquest and settlement.

But in th homeland of the Zulu tribes, a new power, which will change the course of African history and soak its soil in blood, is preparing to fight back. The warrior king Shaka begins his ruthless and violent rise to power, a path that will lead to the birth of the Zulu Nation and the formation of its legendary Impis--units of the most disciplined, courageous and fearsome army the modern world has ever known.

About the Author: Walton Golightly is a freelance writer from Durban, KwaZulu-Natal--on the doorstep of what used to be the Zulu Kingdom. He's a film buff with a passion for Spaghetti Westerners, '70s action movies and the films of Jean-Luc Godard. AmaZulu is his first novel. He shares his life with a few thousand books and two dogs. Occasionally the dogs let him sleep on the bed. (As written on the second page of the Novel).

The book was published by Quercus in 2008, however it was originally published by Kwela Books a division of NB Publishers (Pty) Limited, Cape Town, South Africa in 2007.

I purchased this copy from the University of Ghana's Bookshop at 6 Ghana Cedis or US$ 4.29.

News Item Two: ImageNations in Business and Financial Times (Friday July 9, 2010)

Hurray! The interview I had with author, Nana Awere Damoah, was published in the Friday July 9, 2010 edition of the Business and Financial Times. It is interesting to see how far ImageNations is going. Thanks to you all. You can also read this interview from the B&FT homepage.

News Item Three: What You Need to Know About Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, and the Perceived Problem with Chinua Achebe. 

Read this in the June 2010 edition of the only truly African magazine NewAfrican. It sells for GHCedis 3 but the information it contains is worth much more than the price tag. The title of the article is "Armah--in his own words" on page 92. Ayi Kwei Armah, whose novels I have reviewed on this blog, is one of the very few novelists who live what they writer. Thus, it is virtually impossible to differentiate what he says with his pen from how he lives his life. Recently, he has established and publishing company called Per Ankh, that is republishing all his books. If you don't have any of his books rush to the University of Ghana's bookshop and you would get a copy. 

Some Quotes from the Article: 

Seeing myself as an African, I had though it natural and logical to choose work that, in my estimation, would help the creation of a new society in Africa (page 93)

My writing may be inspired at times, but the inspiration comes not from palm wine or yamba, and definitely not from heaven or hell. It comes from knowledge acquire through regular, systematic research (page 94).

Called by a Book

I went to the University of Ghana, specifically to the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness,  to check on some issues. While leaving, and I must say it was also drizzling, and having got to the main entrance, something questioned me whether I have visited the bookshop. And immediately two books came to mind: Osiris Rising and The Healers, both by Ayi Kwei Armah. The latter book I even voiced it out. The last time I went there I purchased Two Thousand Seasons and Fragments (by the same author). So I undertook the long walk back to the bookshop and there it was 'The Healers', sitting quietly in its rack, calling to me, saying pick me up please and as an obedient Bibliophile I picked it up and began looking for its brother/sister, 'Osiris Rising'. But the latter, I could not find and I know it would call out to me wherever it is.

The price tag of this book was Ghana Cedis 20 or about US$ 14.

The Healers, Ayi Kwei Armah's fifth novel after Two Thousand Seasons, was first published in 1978. However, this copy was published by Per Ankh in 2000.

At the Back

'The Healers' tells a story of conflict and regeneration focused on a group with a chosen vocation: to replace the toxic ignorance that breeds ethnic, class and caste divisions with the healing knowledge of African unity.

The time: late nineteenth-century Africa. Three centuries of Slaving Wars have destroyed Africa to enrich Europe and America. Now European armies push to partition Africa for more systematic colonial pillage. The continent resists. But because its traditional elites see themselves not as part of one human community but as members of hostile micronational, ethnic, class and caste groups, Africa's defenses lie shattered.

For The Healers, the cause of Africa's subjugation is clear: the poisons of division have eaten deep. The antidote is equally obvious. The time has come to replace the destructive, obsolete rituals of division with the creative work of unifiers.

This book is available at amazon. Click here

Celebrating Efua Sutherland

The National Theatre, on Friday 25th June 2010, would be the place where the works and achievement of ace Ghanaian playwright, Efua Sutherland, would be celebrated. There would also be the review of her book Marriage of Anansewaa.

As a literary night, there would also be music, drama and poetry. The time for the event is 6:30pm and admission is free. All are welcome.
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Read my review here

Quotes from Two Thousand Seasons

One book I enjoyed reading most is Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah. Whilst reading the book I penned down some phrases that could serve as quotes and today I am serving you with some of these. Thus, in the coming days I would be bringing you quotes from different books I have read.

A people losing sight of origins are dead. A people deaf to purposes are lost. Under fertile rain, in scorching sunshine there is no difference: their bodies are mere corpses, awaiting final burial.

Woe the race, too generous in the giving of itself, that finds a road not of regeneration but to its own extinction. Woe the race, woe the spring. Woe the headwaters, woe the seers, the hearers, woe the utterers. Woe the flowing water, people hustling to death.

It is not easy to hide any kind of love and young love loathes disguise.

Dishonest words are the food for the rotten spirits.

Purpose lends wings to the traveller.

To them that know their destination fatigue is a brief stranger merely passing in the glare of day.


A copy of this book could be obtained from amazon.

11. Fragments by Ayi Kwei Armah

Title: Fragments:

Author: Ayi Kwei Armah

Publishers: Per Ankh

Genre: Novel

Pages: 286

Year: 1969 (this edition 2006)

Works of art are intended to inform, educate, elucidate, portray, uncover, and/or challenge a society's way of doing things. It can even go ahead to propose newer ways of doing things and stir a revolution. Any work of art could perform any of these functions. However, Ayi Kwei Armah's works have consistently challenged our collective actions and thoughts as a society. In Two Thousand Seasons, he clearly demonstrated his displeasure by showing clearly our complicity in the enslavement of ourselves coming from our greed and our diametrically opposed stance to 'the way'. In that novel he referred us as Ostentatious Cripples, and those who went into the service of the White Predators as Askaris or Zombies. In Fragments, Ayi Kwei Armah once again tackles the mindset of a society. A society that has lost its focus in life; one that consistently puts materiality above morality; one that has sold its core values in return for flashes of enjoyment, even if those flashes lead to corruption and rot in the society.

Baako, being a been-to (a person who had come from abroad), is expected to act as one: to live in a huge mansion, drive big cars, and shower gifts on his family members. Yet, Baako, a pragmatist, has a divergent opinion. His coming back home was with trepidation as to what he would discover or uncover, what he would do with himself and the expectations of the people around him. His point of entry into the country presented him with the collision course he would be on with the forces that drive the notions and thoughts of people, for it wasn't long that the sister of a friend he had met whilst enplaned to Ghana, told him that he does not look like a 'been-to'. Furthermore, in less than 24-hrs later, a lady friend of his friend and his mother, at different places, asked to be wheeled out when his car arrives. Here, Ayi Kwei Armah clearly depicts the mentality of the people without being direct, for both had presumed that Baako has a car, which would soon arrive; because every been-to has a car.

Yet, Baako had his values; values he held in high esteem such as prompt response to issues, priority settings, and efficiency. And these are the very things that the civil service within which he was finally employed did not do. Ocran, Baako's art teacher, explained to Baako, when he complained:

"Nothing works in this country ... The place is run by this so-called elite of pompous asses trained to do nothing. Nothing works ... It isn't even that things are slow. Nothing works. ..."

Unable to handle his growing frustration, the demands from his family, the diametrically opposing views (his and society's), Baako finally cracks and is bundled and dumped at a psychiatric hospital.

The clash between cultures and generations also came not as a surprise. Naana (his grandmother) and Juana (a psychiatrist and a psychologist) understood Baako, whilst Efua (his mother) and Araba (his sister) wanted him to be a real been-to. Yet, Naana, Baako's grandmother, belongs to the old generation and therefore Baako scarcely talks to her or takes her words seriously. Besides, her conversations are always embedded in the spiritual realm. Juana had her own set of problems, yet she was the one Baako could confide in.

In Fragments, the maternal inheritance system as practised by the Akan ethic group comes alive, as Baako's father, whether dead or alive was not mentioned. Besides, Kwesi, was also a passing character. According to Naana, "A father is only a husband, and husbands come and go; they are passing winds bearing seed. They change, they disappear entirely, and they are replaced. ..."

Imperceptibly, the writings of Ayi Kwei Armah are similar to that of Stephen King, not in content but in the boldness with which he tackles any subject and make it come alive, the boldness with which he fearlessly experiments, the boldness with which he pens down his narratives. Yet, the description of the processes leading to Baako's psychotic condition reminded me of King's Roadwork. The passion, the clarity of events, the resistance to society's norms and the breakdown make you wonder if Armah had been in such a condition before. This plot in the hands of some novelists might end up a boring piece.

Like a classical piece or an opera performance, Armah's works are to be loved or loathed. However, relatively I seemed to have enjoyed 'Two Thousand Seasons' much more than I did enjoy this. This may be because I delved into Fragments, with the heavy narrative of TTS in mind, as only one book separates these two readings. I would recommend this book to anybody who wishes to know society's 'stated' expectations and all those who just love to read.

9. My Two Thousand Seasons Encounter With Ayi Kwei Armah

Title: Two Thousand Seasons

Author: Ayi Kwei Armah

Genre: Novel

Publisher: Per Ankh

Pages: 317

ISBN: 2-911928-03-2

Year: 1973 (this edition 2000)

Country: Ghana

Two Thousand Seasons is Ayi Kwei Armah's bold attempt at recreating the 'lost' history of Africa. It starts from before the beginning where Africans were following The Way and ends at the point where Africans were or are fighting slavery, yet it does not end there at all. This is a story that shreds long-held belief systems into tatters. Institutions and what had always been referred to, wrongly though according Armah's Narrative, as Tradition - such as the Chieftaincy institution and the inequality against women - do not stand up to Armah's critical observation and construct. In Armah's novel women are held esteem and were the ones who planned and executed the fall of the Arab invasion and also fought side by side with men, and in some situations surpassed them, both in numbers and in strength, when the plan to destroy the destroyers was implemented. The story was set in some years before and during the slave trade. Before the coming of the destroyers, there were no chiefs or kings but rather caretakers carefully selected from any family and thus any individual who has been initiated and has shown enough beauty of mind, and character could become a caretaker. Armah describes Koranche, the king, as 'an empty, strutting fool, suffered to strut this way only because of thin social conventions.' Lands were not something that were cut up and owned by people and no one bows to anybody or owns anybody. In effect the ownership of property was communal. Christianity and Islam are both rebuffed and laughed at in the novel: '... It is the white men's wish to take us from our way--ah, we ourselves are so far already from our way--to move us on their road; to void us of our soul and put their spirit, the worship of their creature god, in us. ... They say it will be reward enough when we have lost our way completely, lost even our names; when you will call your brother not Olu but John, not Kofi but Paul; and our sisters would no longer be Ama, Naita, Idawa and Ningome but creatures called Cecilia, Esther, Mary, Elizabeth and Christina. ...'

The story did not take place in a given country, though it's about the slave trade, but in towns such as Anoa, Poano, Edina and the rest. The people are Africans, and are neither Ghanaians nor Nigerians for Soyinka, Oko, Nandi, Ndlela, Dovi, Kimathi, Umeme, Chi and many others were all denizens of Anoa. Thus, Africa, in the novel, is an entity without borders and so were its people who followed the way of reciprocity.

Anoa, the first to bear such name, prophesied the coming of a destruction, one that would persist for two thousand seasons and one that would take us from the way onto a path not known before. Hence, the coming of the people of the desert and those of the sea--the predators, the destroyers, the ostentatious cripples--and their hold over the people of Anoa was an event that was no surprise but it was the attitude towards them that was surprising.

What remains clear in the novel is the people's complicity in the events that destroyed them and took them away from the way, for there were individuals like Otumfur whose paunch thrives on flattery and so would say anything that would get to the head of the king. There were also greed-filled people like Edusei and Koranche whose eyes and heart are far from the way and in their laziness of mind and body want to live on others, make slaves of them and fill their bellies from their sweat and so worked for the Destroyers. Besides, the people were also filled with 'foolish generosity', one that do not follow the way of reciprocity. Another angle of the people's complicity in their enslavement had to do with their own ignorant and standoffish attitude that made them think that the deeds and demands of these predators would not stand the test of time and so did nothing, that like a disease, it would heal itself.

The people of Anoa became zombis and askaris working for these white destroyers, the predators, the slave masters. However, hope was kept alive at every turn of event as people, like Isanusi, who know the way decided to hold on to it and teach others who were eager to learn. There were people whose love for the way goes beyond the gratification of the self and such people were always willing to take Anoa back to the way, and even though they never fully succeeded, more importantly was the fact that they never despaired, they never were discouraged and they never gave up.

The narration of the story is unique. The narrator of the story is not an omniscient one, but one that surpasses time. The narrator is part of the people but a phantom part whose identity was never revealed. He/She was there when Anoa prophesied the coming of the destruction, was there when the Arabs fled to the deserts, was there at the crossing of 'bogland' to Edina, was there at the coming of the people from the sea, was there when the plot to destroy the destroyers was hatched and executed. There is less conversation in the story and every action is rather told by this narrator. In fact, the prologue and the first chapter seemed impregnable at first reading. However, the reader finds his/her rhythm and understanding from the second chapter. The novel uses a lot of symbols and it requires an individual to dig deep to comprehend what is being said. Armah, has a way with words. For instance he describes the clothes that was used to bribe the chief Koranche as 'clothes of colors bright to fascinate children's eyes set in adults head'... Such description and turn of phrase abound in this narrative and there are many statements that could stand on their own and make interesting quotes.

However, since Armah wanted to portray Africa and the African way as the way for our liberation, I was slightly shocked that at certain points he went in for the anglicized spellings of names, for instance Koranche instead of Korankye. This decision may have come as a result of not trying to portray a particular tribe or ethnic group in the novel but to use a blanket spelling for all names. To me this does not detracts from the novel. The novel is a masterpiece, one that I can read and read and learn something new every time. My recommendation is not to read this once. There are times when you lose track of the narrative and reading requires much attention.