THE FORM OF PROTEST
IN KENYA:
DRAMA OR THE NOVEL?

Critics can't pretend to that kind of innocence, so I should

David Maughan Brown
My aim in this paper is to focus attention on one of the crucial conditions
of the production of drama and the novel in the very specific social context
of post-Independence Kenya.
I use the term 'drama' rather than 'theatre' be-
ca~se I have access only to what has been published as text, but I want to
shIft the focus of interest away from the individual text and look at the
putati~e audience, and the wayan
author's perception of that audience will
de~ermlne not only what he wants to say, but how to say it. The relation-
shIp be~we~n what a writer wants to say and the people to whom he will be
saYIng It IS clearly a key factor determining the choice of genre.
I have
chos~n to look at protest literature partly because it is there that any
possIble conflict between the ideologies of author and readers is likely to
show itself most obviously.
A critic's, and, often more obviously, a lecturer's choice of what to look
at and how to approach it is always ideologically determined.
Mountaineers
are on occasion heard to claim that they climb mountains just because they
are there.
start by acknowledging my reasons for choosing this particular topic.
An understanding of the social and ideological factors determining literary
production in East Africa is clearly essential in arriving at a knowledge
of the works of the individual authors, and very little attention appears to
be being focused on East African literature in our universities;
but that
is only part of my reason for choosing this topic. More important is the
parallel between the situation in which the writer in Kenya who wishes to
protest about the structure of Kenyan SOCiety finds himself or herself, and
the.situation facing lecturers
trying to teach literature i~ ra~ially sel-
ectIve universities in South Africa.
half of my paper on this parallel, because it raises fundamental.Questlons
about the nature and purpose of the study of English Literature ln South
Africa in 1980.
And such Questions would seem to be overdue w~en the ~nnu~l
conference of South African university English teachers can fall to raIse.Its
corporate eyebrows at heads of EngliSh departments who trot out phrases l:ke
'social relevance and other such sentimentalities', who ar9~e ~hat ~recht s
Marxism was incidental to his drama, and who express open, If InartIculate,
hostility to the discussion of literary theory.
What then is the situation confronting the writer in.Kenya? The social, ~ol-
itical, and economic situation about which Kenyan wrIters have p~ote~ted IS
succinctly summed up in Henry Bienen's (1974, p.4) account of crItICIsm of
Kenya since 'Independence ':

I want to focus attentlon ln the.second

47

the rich get richer and the poor stagnate or worse.

The sense of bitterness among Kenya's critics is the

In Kenya's c~se, the national movement has been said to have been
betrayed.
greater because Kenya had such a traumatic colonial past.
Africans
fought and died during Mau Mau only to have the loyalists and the
Europeans win out in the end, it is argued.
It is said that the
African elite has accepted the norms of the old rulers.
The critics
of Kenya point to a faction-ridden party, the Kenya African National
Union (KANU), which ren~ins an empty shell.
They maintain that power
resides in a small clique around President Kenyatta and is wielded
through a Civil Service which is colonial in form and substance, down
to its very pith helmets.
Growth takes place at the expense of the
poor:
A privi-
leged elite distributes the benefits of economic growth that it gains
through alliances with Europeans and through expropriation of Africans
and Asians to tribal clients unfettered by any of the formal mechan-
isms of control which reside in the Legislature and elections.
In the
process, it exacerbates tribal tensions and creates them where they
did not exist before.
This same elite arrogates to itself the wisdom
to choose a path for development on the grounds that people do not
understand developmental
problems and will, if left to themselves,
allocate resources on a short-run calculation for schools, clinics.
roads, and other immediate benefits.
Curtailing effective mass par-
ticipation is thus justified.
Organized dissent is not allowed and
the heavy hand of civil administration and, if need be, police and
riot squads are used to put down opposition.
(Zirimu & Gurr, 1973, p.97) saw the East African
In 1971 Atieno-Odhiambo
writer's response, his particular version of the criticisms outlined by
Bienen, as follows:

people who believe that you can somehow maintain c?lonial,

There are '"
economic, and other social institutions and graft on them an AfrIcan
culture.
We have seen that colonial institutions can only produce a
colonial mentality.
The trouble, of course, is that many African
middle classes helped to smother the revolutionary demands of the
majority of peasants and workers and negotiated a tr:aty.of mutu~l
trust with the white colonial power structure.
In flghtlng for In:
dependence, some o.~the African intelligentsia only wa~ted that whIch
was forbidden to the~ or rather they saw the struggle In terms of
.
their immediate needs
nurtured by the social position they had attaln-
ed under the colonial 'system, whose fulfilment was however frustrated
They wanted to wear.the same
by the racism inherent in the system.
clothes and shoes, get the same salary, live in t~e.sam~ kInd of man-
sions as their white counterparts of similar quallflcatlons.
After

48

This angry writer has

Generally the East African writer has since independence been a bitter,
sometimes critical mind.
He has been angry.
had his anger very well focused.
He knows against whom he is bitter -
against the bureaucracy,
its corruption, its despotic narrow-mindedness,
its lack of concern for culture, and (ironically) its lack of tutelage
over East Africa's intellectual and artistic life.
But some East African writers are not as self-interested as Atieno-Odhiambo
~ight seem to imply - their concern is not simply with the effect the neo-
colonial dispensation
has on their own livelihood, its lack of interest in
'culture'.
Thion9'O is only the most obvious case, recog-
nIze, and are more concerned about, the wider social implications, about
what the attitude to culture is symptomatic of.
So we find Ngugi (1972,
p.12) describing the Kenyan elite's cultural subservience to the West, and
Its origins, as follows:

Some, Ngugi wa

independence, the racial barrier to their needs was broken.
rush for the style of living of their former conquerors had started.
Skin-lighteners, str~igh~ened hair, irrelevant drawingroom parties,
consplCUOUS consumptlon ln the form of country villas, Mercedes-Benzes
an~ Bentleys, were the order of the day.
Clutching their glasses of
whlSky and soda, patting their wigs delicately lest they fall
some
of these people will, in the course of cocktail parties, sing'a few
tradltlonal songs:
hymns of pralse to a mythical past: we must pre-
serve our culture, don't you think?

The gold-

The major problem facing the Kenyan'writer is that the conditions of produc-
tion of both the novel and drama in Kenya are such that it is precisely for
the group described here by Ngugi that he or she is writing.
If, that is,
that the
writing is directed at an African rather than an overseas market.
The protest writer seriously concerned about the state of his society will
obviously want to direct his protest chiefly towards that society. Just
how elite is the African elite Bienen talks about and Ngugi describes?
Arthur Hazlewood's recent book, The Economy of Kenya: The Kenyatta Era (1979)
reveals the extent of the discrepancies in income distribution in Kenya. He
rE'fersto several World Bank publications which, he says, show that:
'Roughly
speaking 20% of the population receives nearly 70% of the total income. This
distribution refers ..• to both monetary and non-monetary or subsistence
income (p. 192). Hazlewood (1979, p.191) quotes the 1972 ILO report which
shows that only 13% of Kenyan households had an annual income of more than
KI200 a year, and only 3% had an income of over K£600, and then goes on to
comment:

Therefore the typist with a salary of KI4S9 - 690, and the Skilled
wage-earner with K£216 - 452 are among the middle class and the rich.
But, as the Duke of Wellington, at the height of his fame, replied
to the person who approached him with 'Mr Smith, I believe':
'Sir, if
you believe that, you will believe anything.'
That the typist and
wage-earner are in any significant sense among the rlch cou~d be be~
lieved only by someone without experience of the way they 11ve or wlth
his nose buried firmly in the figures.

(Hazlewood, 1979, p.196).
The elite, in whose hands rest political. bureaucratic, and,to some ~xtent
economic, power, is a very small group indeed, who have thelr educatlo~
largely to thank for being where they are. As Hazlewood (p.198) puts It:
The accumulation of wealth since the early 1960s has been mainly the
consequence of an earlier access to education, pro~i~ing t~e oppor-
tunity for salaried employment in business and admln~s~ratlon, a~d
of whatever in different cases has determined the abl1lty to achleve
political influence.

d's
Productl0n, as Marx stresse , 1

The elite are the elite largely because of their education, wh!ch obviously
has a crucial bearing on the conditions of production of the llterary work
only ever campleted by consump-
,
1n Kenya.
d'
The primary factor determining }~e K~ny~ntno~e~~~; ~o~u~~~~eA~~i~:nce
tion.
is clearly the ability to read.
~des ear to have figures an
Contemporar
Record (Legum, 1977-7~, p.121?,~ou t apPKenya's highly prog;ess-
1 e~a Xf ica _ Africa Contem orar
estimated 3 .,of the adult populatlon W:S
ive education policy, one of the mo~t a vancetlnforrabout 4 ~ of t e recurr-
Record says, 'expenditure,on educ~tlon acc?~n sn the social services'
ent budget and for two-thlrd~ of ltS spendldgt~at the figure is substantially
(legum, 1976-77, p.B233) - w'll(hav~ ens~~~) points out when talking about
But, as John Halld,19t?' ~Sh between 'reading ability' and the
higher now.
the 'reading public' one must

lS lngu

,,'

In 19

,t e

,

b

49

'reading habit'.
It doesn't help the prospective novelist much that, say,
4u. of the adult population can read if an enquiry into what they read
suggests that the situation in Kenya is the same as that in Nigeria where
Achebe (1975, pp.38-41), in his essay 'What do the African Intellectuals
Read?', has to conclude that African intellectuals read very little.
A~gus Calder's (1974, p.83) experience in Kenya led him to conclude in 1971:
'The reading public in East Africa is a small class of highly educated
~eople.
Such people also form the bulk of the local bourgeoisie, and would
seem on all available evidence to prefer the sick fantasies of James Hadley
Chase and the meaningless romances of Anya Seton to novels about real
conditions by local writers.'
As evidence Calder cites the fact that in two
years' lecturing at Nairobi University.he found only one first year student
out of 75 who had read Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat, which was already available
in paperback.
This would appear to have been due as much to residual colo-
nial attitudes assertive of black inferiority as to anything else.
Calder
cites the case of a Nairobi clerk who told him he preferred Ian Fleming to
Ngugi because Africans couldn't write good English.
While education is the fundamental qualification for elite status, a man or
woman's position in the hierarchy is not determined by his or her intellect-
ual prowess or, beyond a certain point, by the extent of his or her educat-
ion.
'Those involved in intel-
lectual (university, journalism and publishing) as well as literary work
have been outside the formal institutions of power, are despised by the bulk
of the power holders, and have no formal basis in traditional societies.'
The vast majority of those who are literate but do not belong to the elite,
and might thus be receptive to literature satirizing that elite, are pre-
cluded from membership of any realistic putative audience by the cost of
books and the inadequacy of library services.
The East African Publishing
House has adopted the very sound policy of having book buyers in the metro-
polis subsidize those in the periphery - thus a copy of Armah's Two Thousand
Seasons cost £2,40 in London in 1977, but only tSsh. in Nairobi, while Kibera
and Kahiga's Eotent Ash cost £l,SO as against 9sh.SO.
But when 77% of the
population are earning less than £10 per household per month, and over SO~
are earning less than £S, it is clearlygoing to be impossible for many novels
to be bought when they each amount to at least a twentieth of the household's
monthly income.
As Calder (1974, p.84) concludes:

As G C M Mutiso (19

has put it:

,p.133)

in short

The writer
is confined to addressing a small section of
the community which is probably, of all sections, least interested
in a really radical message or a really subtle criticism of contem-
porary manners.
A writer who saw his novels as blows for the cause
of humanity, and who wanted to move a large public, would find no
large public to move.

Drama would seem to be the better bet as a medium for protest.
nature it is a communal experience and has to do with a corporate rather
than an individual response - it will move mo~e pe6ple more q~icily.
In-
deed, drama has been identified by African wrlters as the ObV10US genre for
the writer with revoluticnary ideas.
Soyinka (197S, p.6Sl, for example, has
argued of the interaction between actor and audience:
Since this is the operative technique, this technique of (sensual and
moral) interaction, a technique whose only end can be change, not
consolidation (change, however fragmentary, illusory, however transient.

Of its very

50

~~wever 1acki~g in concrete, ultimate significancies, nevertheless
'J change) ~ lt suggests that the theater is perhaps the most revo-
lutlonary art form known to man.

And Ngugi (1977) in his preface to The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, written joint-
ly with Micere Mugo, makes it.clear that his play is intended to perform a
revolutionary function:

We cannot stand on the fence.

We believe that Kenyan Literature - indeed all African Literature
a~d its writers is on trial.
We a;e
Af-
e~ther ~n the side of the people or on the side of imperialism.
r1can Llter~t~re ~nd A~ri~an Writers are either fighting with the
peo~le or a1dlng 1mper1a11sm and the class enemies of the people.
We
be11eve,that ~ood theatr~ is that which is on the side of the people.
that WhlCh, w1thout mask1ng mistakes and weaknesses, gives people
courage and urges them to higher resolves in their struggle for total
liberation.

While the cost of the cheapest theatre

But the dramatist writing plays in English in Kenya is not, in fact, very
much better off in terms of his possible audience than his novelist counter-
part.
'Theatres' are confined to the larger centres and are owned and con-
trolled by the elite.
tickets will
be less than the price of a novel it will still make very severe inroads in-
to the household budget of the majority of people. More important, the
theatre-going habit in 'Independent' Africa has tended to be the exclusive
preserve of the elite even more than the reading habit has.
Theatre-going
has been one of the activities of the colonial elite most avidly taken ave.'
by the black elite, as one could have predicted from Ngugi's description
quoted earlier.
Not only is the idea of going to 'the theatre' taken over -
so also is the idea of what a theatre should look like, and what kind of
play is acceptable.
,p.206), for example, identifying
an obsession with naturalistic drama on the part of the Kenyan elite says:

Angus Calder (19

In terms of European theatre. Brecht's drama reached back towards
Shakespeare, but was able to borrow also from the non-naturalistic
devices still standard in China and Japan.
Yet people in Nairobi
can talk as if a town with 'theatres' of the European sort can have
no 'drama"
as if the tedious naturalism of detective thrillers and
light comedies were the consummation of the world's dramatic tradi-
tions, rather than a monstrous local aberration.
In writing plays in English fora
theatre-going publi~ who have wh?lly ~c-
cepted the colonial cultural norms, the playwright, 11ke the nove11st, 1S
confined to addressing a small section of the communi~y, the section 1e~st
interested in radical messages, or, for that matter, ln any form of socl~l
criticism, which will inevitably come down, in one way or another, to cr1t-
icism of itself.
The definitive endorsement of this view would seem to ha~e come not ~~om a
literary critic
Early 1n 1977 NgUg1 5
most recent nov~l Petals of Blood, an avowedly, and at,times po1e~ica11y!_
Marxist novel
was Officially launched by one of Kenya s most sen10r Cabl
net Ministers: Mr Mwai Kibaki, the Minister of Finance. The Kenyan ~vern-
ment had clearly assessed the novel's potential impa~t on Kenyan soclety,
come to the same conclusion as Angus Calder, and declded that it could a~ford
not only to countenance but to patronize the n?ve1•. Just as it had re~11zed
it could afford to ignore The Trial of Dedan Klmath1 (1977) and,This T1me
Tomorrow (lS70).
Indeed, Petals of Blood provided the opportun1ty f~~t:
1
useful government propaganda exercise.
that. 1n launching the novel, Mr Kibaki 'announced the government 5 decis on

but from the Kenyan Government.

C B Robson (1979, p.136) ~ep

51

Later in 1977, however, Ngugi co-authored

Robson provides the fullest available

to maintain freedom of expression.'
a play in Gikuyu with Ngugi wa Mirii.
The play, Nqaahika Ndenda, about a poor
account of this play's history.
peasant who loses his land to a wealthy farmer, broke entirely new ground
~n drawing on the local peasantry for its actors and actresses.
It opened
~n O:tober 1977 to packed houses at a community centre near Ngugi's home
1n L1muru;
in November 1977 it was banned by local officials on the grounds
~hat it was creating divisions among Kenyans and awakening old rivalries;
1n December 1977 Ngugi was detained without trial.
A significant event in
a country with a far better record on detention without trial than South
Africa's.
Ngugi was released only after the death of Kenyatta, while his
university post was advertised shortly after his detention.
Freedom of
expression in Kenya would appear to be acceptable only so long as it is dir-
ected at, or accessible only to, those who can be guaranteed to remain un-
moved by what is expressed.
The novel is acceptable because it is available
only to the literate and, generally, only to the better off among the lit-
the dramatist is safe as long as he writes in English, be-
erate at that;
cause that limits his audience sufficiently for the neo-co1onia1 state's
comfort.
But let the writer speak directly to people who might really want
to listen and extreme forms of censorship are unleashed.
Most of what I have said so far falls into the traditional realms of socio-
logy and economics - areas within which the literary critic must obviously
MOve if he or she is to arrive at a knowledge of literature, or the formu-
lation of statements about literature which aren't simply revelatory of the
critic's own, no doubt finely honed, sensibility. And of all the relevant
conditions determining the Kenyan novelist's or dramatist's production I
have glanced at only one - the prospective audience;
an examination of the
Rather than do
others would involve further excursions into these fields.
that, though, I would like to take one example by way of illustration and
glance briefly at the way the situation I have outlined has
been the key
determinant of Leonard Kebera's (1970) novel Voices in the Dark.
It seems
a particularly appropriate example for a paper on both drama and the novel
in that it is a novel about the futility of writing plays.
Voices in the Dark is a dense, elliptic, and impressionistic novel. whose
form is clearly determined more by a reaction against the demand for natur.
alism discussed earlier than by anything else, and whose plot is difficult
to pinpoint, let alone summarize.
The scene shifts mainly between a pair
of crippled beggars in an alley in Nairobi, two ex-Freedom fighters whose
plight symbolizes the effective quality of the freedom t~ey fo~ght ~or, ~nd
Gerald, a socialist playwright.
Gerald assaults the rul1ng el1t~ w1th h1S
plays. has an indecisive relationship with Wilna, the daughter (In the Romeo
and Juliet pattern of the early Ngugi) of the leading neo-colonial capital-
ist villain, and gets shot in a very casual pair of parentheses at the end
of the novel.
Gerald is a fictional embodiment of Kibera's recognition of the futility of
writing 1n the Kenyan context.
The reader is told, for example:

His role as a writer is satirized throughout.

The Beggars' Squad and The Be

He would go to the workers' end where things happened and take a
good look around.
~) and
~~rs.
d~imself
Then,
improverished, he would retire humbly into Obscurity.
As soon.as
his candle of creativity died out he was bound to follow, leav1ng
behing him a blank check against ro~alties to all the beggars he
had so faithfully exploited.

There he would write three great pl~y~ (~
ars' S uad Rev1s1
lS conSC1ence.

to the squalor that

1stur ed

(p.36)

52

It is sp~cifically Gerald's role as a writer that is satirized, rather than
Gerald hlmself, for Gerald acts, much of the time, as the author's mouth-
piece in .0 indictment of neo-colonialism which is every bit as mordant as
Ngugi's.

As seen, for example, in Gerald's reflections:

That he might alienate from his theatre certain segments with a
tendency to judge him on,the
expatriate standards of Stratford-
on-Avon did not particularly bother him •.• And what he felt most
impatient with ~ere those Africans who carried their good English
around forever ln a trance, forever believing they owed Allan
Quartermain and Tarzan a debt of the soul.
For it was these very
people who, in an attempt to offer their own version of the Welfare
state through African Socialism, made nonsense of the latter and very
wisely took to exploitation.

(p.68)

They

At those points at which Gerald is seen in the least favourable light Kibera
is always leading up to a comment on Gerald as playwright.
At times the
desire to satirize the role of the creative artist in the Kenyan context
leads Kibera to attribute thoughts to Gerald which seem rather out of char-
acter.

Thus Gerald's reflections on Wilna's crying run:
It made him feel great to be a man because men never cried.
were strong and only the weak stupid ones among men displayed tearsi
the strong ones never did.
So the strong ones should whip hell out
of the weak ones and give them something to cry for.
It was great
to be a mani
for a man directed his tears and energy to his play-
writing and creative art, or chewed bubblegum when his eyes threat-
ened to become watery.
Playwriting in the Kenyan context can only be a form of therapy, on a par
'But then what would you expect?', the novel seems
with chewing bubb1egum.
to ask through its undisguised satire on'the Donovan Maule theatre, described
by Adrian Roscoe (1977, P.ZOS) as:
'East Africa's own Restoration Theatre
in the Tropics, decorating an opulent corner of national life untouched by
African culture.'
The underlying question, inescapable in view of the possible audience, 1s
'what difference does literature make?'.
Has Ngugi, Kibera's lecturer at
Nairobi, really done anything to convince the elite that the suffering of
the Kenyan peasantry is a cause for concern?
Or even, for that matt~r, that
the Kenyan peasantry are suffering?
Does literature r:all~ succeed 1n 1m-
parting the values it, or its proponents, take such prl~e ln, to anyone
at
all - let alone to anyone in a position to elnbodythem 1n a programme of
social reform?

As Wilna says to Gerald:

(p.97)

And even your plays - they help the establishment.
just write they will do nothing only praise one ano~her at 11terary
conferences and mutual admiration groups.
A good 11ne done for the
day and you are off to celebrate.
(p.93)
As Adrian Roscoe (1977, p.Z03) puts it:

like the rest of them.

As long ~s writers

Gerald's ultimate message is that novels like Voic:s !n the Dark are
a waste of time.
They make no difference to the vlctlms they cham:
pion, though initially they make a differ:nce to the autho:, all~l~~
him the luxury of a regularly eased conSC1ence.
From the 1dea 0 a
to change the world we are reduced to art as private therapy, ar~ as
penance and absolution.
Thus an assumption instinct in most Afrlca~e
writing _ that literature can change men's hearts and hence the ~~t
We a~e re
of social history _ gets some very sceptical tre~tmen~.
with beggars in the darkness of their alley hoot1ng w1th 1aug te

53

while they ask if they too should write plays.

(p.135)

In Gerald's words'

I wouldn't want to.

Achebe has said:

'There is only one
I

Perhaps more to the point for our purposes here, the reader is left to ponder
the truth of Mama Njeri, Gerald's mother's, statement:
book worth writing, son, and that is a pamphlet on food and politics.
don't care for bigger words ••
It is the conditions under which the writer in Kenya has to produce his lit-
erature that determine the hopelessness and weariness which permeate Vcices
111 th~ Dark.
'Actually I am tired of writing plays.
I'm tlred of this one-man symphony against the English.
No one listens.
Everybody is too busy riding in the back seat of some expensive donkey.'
(p.145)
Kibera comes to the conclusion that writing plays is futile and writing
he thought it worthwhile writing a novel to say so,
novels is equally so;
.
but hasn't published one since.
Sembene Ousmane switched his attention
'I can't
from novel to film production long before that.
And even if I wanted to I couldn't.'
write a novel now.
Ngugi wrote Petals of Blood, but felt it necessary
(see O'Finn, 1975, p.50).
also to write plays in Gikuyu, and was arrested for his pains.
And that
hasn't assisted the production of further novels - a new Ngugi novel, Devil
gn the Cross, has been being faithfully promised by Heinemann ever since
early 1977, and is still not forthcoming.
The movement seems to be from
novel, to play or film in the language of the conqueror, to theatre in the
vernacular, as the author who wishes to protest about his society feels com-
pelled to look further afield, often literally afield, for people who are
not only able, but also willing, to listen.
But the conditions of production
of both drama and the novel in neo-colonial Africa would seem to be such as
to determine that, in the end, non-production becomes the response of many
of Africa's most important authors.
Kibera and Ngugi are committed to the cause of an African revolution against
neo-colonialism
and oppression - it is this that makes their perception of
their audience so crucial a determining factor in their literary production.
A violent manifestation
of that same revolution is gathering momentum outside
In July 1980 the
the windows of our conference rooms and lecture halls.
Association of University English Teachers of South Africa held its annual
conference in Johannesburg.
In terms of a ban on all meetings attended by
more than ten people at which criticism of the South African government
might be voiced, that conference was allowed to proceed only on the pre-
sUPP~sition firstly, that South African English Lecturers do not ~hare the
commlttment of Kibera and Ngugi, and, secondly, that.we a:e not.11ke~y to
relate anything in the literature we discuss to our 1mmedlate Sltuat10n.
~n
the event we chose to come together to discuss Shakespeare, among others, 1n
those circumstances
without, apparently, finding it necessary to ask ~hat we
There was only one paper on literary the~ry, ~nd no PUb~lC de-
were doing.
bate on what the ultimate object of our teaching Eng11sh Lltera~ure 1n the
Current South African context is intended to be.
It appeared to be gene:-
ally assumed that we all know that is meant by 'literature', that there ~s
a common consensus on how it should be approached, and a set of shared VlewS
on what is supposed to be bein~ achieved.
These assuptions s~em to me to be
no longer tenable;
ference in South Africa in 1980 simply self-evident.
What I have been saying about the problems facing writers in K~n~a who wish
to protest about their society suggests to me a number of spec1f1c par~ll.lS
with Our own situation as teachers of literature, English or African,

nor, I wouid suggest, is the value of a llterary con-

n

54

The message need not even be radical.

They fall into three related groups.

I want to

Aren't we, and through us the literature we choose to teach

South Africa today, and raises a number of specific questions.
end by asking those questions.
Firstly, to what extent are teachers of English in South African universiti~
in a similar position to that identified for East African writers by Angus
Calder?
con-
fined to.addressing ~ small section of the community which is probabiy, of
all sect10ns, least 1nterested in a radical message or a subtle criticism of
cont~mporary manners?
Can we really
conV1nce ourselves that the last thirty years of preaching the Leavisian
noble values have had the humanizing effect on white South Africa that we
w~uld, if we got as far as formulating our intentions in teaching English,
11ke to pretend that they must have had?
Even when the universities are
opened will we not just be exchanging a predominantly black elite, the same
black elite castigated by Ngugi and Kibera, for our present predominantly
white elite?
Perhaps we should be asking ourselves, as Gerald does in
Voices in the Dark, whether it isn't true that:
Every-
'No one listens.
bOdy is too busy riding in the back seat of some expensive donkey,'
As
Calder's view would seem to have been confirmed in Kenya by the govern-
ment's feeling free to promote Petals of Blood, so its application to South
Africa would seem to be endorsed by this government's policy of letting
academics get on iwth it, as long as they don't involve themselves in trade
union activities.
Are we, as English teachers. simply voices in the dark
whose only achievement over the last thirty years has been. in line with
the rest of our universities, to fit our graduates for their niche in an
apartheid society which runs totally counter to the values of the literaturt
we trach?
We may not be able to determine whom we talk to but we should
surely be continually reassessing our function;
asking, what. in the South
African context. we are trying to do , and whether we have found the right
way of doing it.
And perhaps, to lend immediacy to our deliberations. we
should reserve space permanently at the back of our minds for the question:
At what point, if ever. in a society like ours, does it in fact become t:ue
that there is only one book worth
writing - and presumably worth lecturlng
on - and that is a pamphlet on food and polities?
The second group of closely related questions arises directly out of Wilna'~
statement:
As l~ng as
writers just write they will do nothing, only praise.one another at 11ter~ry
conferences and mutual admiration groups.' 00 our 11terary conferences, 1n
Kibera's term, get beyond being mutual admiration ~roups?
~ou scratch my
sensibility and I'll scratch yours.
People are be1ng shot 1n our st~eet~.
Repressive state action against dissent will usu~lly attempt,to jUSt1~y ~t-
self in terms of the necessity to preserve what 1S valuabl~ 1n the eX1st1ng
social order.
and
you don't get many more obviously cu~tural a~t1v1t1es than Unwers1ty.con-
ferences on English Literature.
Is 1t conce1vable that people are be1ng
shot so that we can sit at those conferences. or anywhere else for that
matter, and talk about Shakespeare?
on our part be?
It is worth reflecting briefly here on one aspect of ~rancis Coppola's pro-
vocative film A ocalypse Now (1980).
Coppola makes h1S Colonel Kurtz read
Eliot's 'The HO'low Men' aloud to himself, he has Fra~er's The.Golden
Bough and Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance prom1nently dlsPla~e1 o~
Kurtz's bedside table, he has the US helicopt~r~ bl~re ~~~~:; ~~to~lit~~a;i~;
speakers 'to scare the hell out of ~he slopes
is that the cultu"
Vietnamese villages.
One of the pOlntsE~~p~o~adi~agner ~as not prevented tN
represented by Conrad. Frazer, Weston,
10

'Culture' is frequently seized ~n.a~ an ObV10U~ s~ol;

'And even your plays - they help the establishment.

If so. what would an adequate response

1n tm:k~n

n

S5

literature
one.

as war-material.

of communism.

of our students

that Kenyan

literature

that literature,

paper,

Is it really possible

to evade that choice in

is an accurate
of African and South African

Which would necessitate,

to the working

of ideology.

necessitates
reveals
Is it then true that

or by claiming

to do with politics?
in a recent, unpublished

supposedly
perhaps,

resisting
ultimately
to ideological
as possible.

or on the side of imperialism.'
demarcation

of African

is raised by Ngugi and Hugo's assertion:
stand on the fence.

- indeed all African

has argued,
practice:

to my mind unanswerably,
has exposed
'When practical
in the arena of critical debate,

the onslaughts
do anything
ends we can surely try to make that co-
for a start, the

The other
it has been appropriated
is that the visible artefacts
of that culture have been
of what the war is being founght about - it is Western
To what
we value, being used in the same way?
very much about the co-

Vietnam war, indeed
point he is making
turned into symbols
'Civilization'
extent are we, and the literature
While we cannot,
option of literature
option as difficult
alerting
'We
The third group of questions
literature and its writ-
believe
We are either on the side
ers is on trial.
We cannot
The study of neo-colonialism
of.the people
examination
Wh1Ch any serious
of the battle lines, with 'the people' on one side
that Ngugi's
on the other,
and 'imperialism'
those committed
literature are
to the teaching
That we, too, are either on the side of the people or on
equally on trial?
the side of imperialism?
South Africa
back on the claim to be teaching English and
today by falling
not African
and the way it is
literature,
taught, have nothing
Michael
Criticism',
Practical
tation with Marxist
politically
determined
front each other
pretend
Marxist
veal the contradictions
practical
in a sentence
fields (or problematics)
exclusive.
the one having
autonomous
the other having
is the essential
everyone
teaching
on the side of the people or on the side of imperialism?
Perhaps what we, as English
saying to our students
p.ZOO), which I will ha~e to paraphrase,
passage from Petals
of'Blood
of the
somewhat
as the novel is banned.
operating
factors
i~eological
cond1t10~S of produc-
t10n of the literary
what 1S sa1d an~ how the
work which crucially
it implies that one of the things teac~ers of.l1terature
audience
responds;
should be doing
the working of ideolog~, and 1n part1cular the
relationship
literature
starkly,
asked by Karega
rooted in a critical
bOOks returned
Karega that he wanted
cators and men of letters
critics.
are, he argues,

but it does re-
is a comple~ one, impossible to summarize
that the conceptual
and practical
inhabit both conceptual fields,
sensibility
concept,
What, finally,
a choice has to be made.
that choice, which has to be faced by
and the choice between being

and ~t confronts ~s. very
A Nairob1 lawyer, haV1ng been
for some books which will give him a vision of the future
of the past, and having had ~ se~ection of
to him by a dissatisfied
Karega, points out In hIS reply ~o
edU-

awareness
the latter to judge for himself.

'A Marxist polemic contra
that the confron-
practical criticism as a
criticism and Marxism con-
neither can any longer
That does not bother the
neutral character of

commitment
in the avowedly

political
The argument
of Marxism
individual
the class struggle,
between
difference
about literature,
or writing

no one can simultaneously

(1977,
on author and audi~nce,

It stresses the.1~portance
determ1ne

which would obviously

~nly voices which,

include both wr1ters an
in spite of appearances, are

in South Africa in 1980, should.be
ourselves,
is best summed up 1n a

criticism are mutually
as its determinant

to be an innocent
critic

whose
criticism.

or two, but it is based on the recognition

with the choices

outlined

is acknowledged,

politically

is examining

between

literary

criticism

and open practice.'

lecturers

and remembering

Vaughan,

Becuase

loosely,

and ideology;

above.

56

Intellec~uals,

The choices are clear-cut:

not neutral or disembodied, but belong to parties with vested interests.
It
is imperative for anyone looking for the truth of the words uttered by any
voice to identify the body behind the voice.
For any voice always provides
a rationalization of the caprices, the vagaries, the needs and the desires
Discover then, the lawyer argues, the ideology in
of the body behind it.
whose interests the intellect is acting and you will be in a position to
analyse its utterances with confidence.
you
either serve those who are oppressed and exploited or you serve those who do
the oppressing and exploiting.
In a situation in which the pOlarities are
as stark as this there can be no genuine neutrality, for all the apparent
neutrality, in any approach to politics, history or literary criticism.
Those who wish to learn should look about them; choose their side.
If English teachers in South Africa in 1980, are Qualified for anythin9,
they are qualified to look about and learn.
References
Achebe, C.
1975:
Atieno-Odhiambo.

1973:

Bienen, H.

1974:

Calder, A.

1973:

Calder, A.

1974:

1979:

Hall, J.
Hazlewood, A.
Kibera, L.

1970:

1979:

Legum, C.
Legum, C.

1977-78:
1977-7B:

Mutiso, G C M.

1973:

Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
Ngugu wa Thiong'o.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
Ngugu wa Thiong'o.
O'Flinn, J P.

1975:

1968:
1970:
1977:
1977:

East

E A l B, Nairobi.

The Politics of Participation and Control.

Morning Yet on Creation Day.
H E B, London.
'The Historical Sense and Creative Literature'
Black Aesthetics, ed. Zirimu & Gurr.
African Literature Bureau, Nairobi.
Kenya:
Princeton University Press.
'An Open Letter to Pio Zirimu'. Black Aesthetics,
ed. Zirimu & Gurr. E A L B, Nairobi•.
'Some Practical Questions', Writers in East Africa,
ed. Gurr & Calder.
longmans, london.
The SOCiology of literature.
The Economy of Kenya: The Kenyatta Era. 0 U P.
Voices in the Dark. East African Publishing House,
Nalrobl.
Africa Contemporary Record.
Rex Collings, London.
Africa Contemporary Record. Africana Publishing
Co., London.
'African Socio-Political Process: A Model from
Black Aesthetics, ed. Zirimu &
Literature',
Gurr.
A Grain of Wheat. Heinemann A W S, London.
This Time Tomorrow. E A P H, Nairobi.
Petals of Blood. Heinemann A W S, London.
~qaahika Ndenda.
'Towards a Sociology of the Nigerian Novel',

E A l B, Nairobi.

57

Robson,
Ro~coe,
Soyinka,

C B.
A.
W.

1979:

1977:
1975:

2lrlmu.

P & Gurr, A.

Today No.7, ed. Eldred Jones.

Macmillan,

London.

Literature

African
Ii E B, London.
Nquq; wa Thion9'o.
Uhuru's
'Drama and the Revolutionary
ed. Morell,
University
stitute
Seattle.

for Comparative

Cambridge

Fire.

K L.

University

Press.

Ideal', In Person.
In-
of Washington

and Foreign Area Studies,

1973: Black Aesthetics.

E A L B. Nairobi.

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