•  ISSUENUMBERONE* 1397 •

Black Fury

James Gibbs

Kodwo  Abaidoo, BLACK FURY, Woeli Publica-
tions, Accra, 1995, 301 pp.

is a novel that was long passed
its  sell by date  before  it was
published. This is a pity since
considerable labour went into
the writing and publication of
the book, but not a great cause
for regret  since Black Fury is
not, in any case, a very good
piece of writing. It is not the
sort  of work  that  would,  I
would have thought, have com-
mended  itself  to an African
publisher. Although an African
political issue is central, Africa
is not presented with particu-
lar  insight,  and Africans are
shadowy  presences. The  one
part  of the world  Abaidoo
writes  about without detail is
focus of concern: Southern Af-
rica! (Awareness of ignorance
perhaps  accounts for the  re-
drawing of the map).

Despite the African  politi-
cal dimension to the book, it is
essentially a 'Western' thriller.
At one point - after  passwords
have  been  exchanged,  one of
the  characters  says: "Why all
this  James  Bond-ism?'  (184)
Abaidoo thus  provides a hos-
tage to fortune: the sort of ref-
erence reviewers will jump on.
The  novel is, indeed,  deriva-
tive. As if to draw attention to
other  forebears,  it contains a
character called Simenon, and
another called Templar. The lit-
erary  context of this  book is
provided  by European and
American traditions; Fleming,
Frederick  Forsyth,  Jean Le
Carre and their ilk stalk the
text. They account for some of
its strengths, and for some of
its weaknesses.

On  the  positive  side,
Abaidoo is generally excellent

T HIS  is  a  book

whose  time has
passed. A political
thriller  set  in
2027, it concerns the strategy
by which  Black  nationalists
from white-ruled^Malangada
in  Southern Africa,  those in
sympathy  with  them and
those  hired  by them,  bring
pressure to bear on the white
regime and its allies to accept
black  majority  rule. For his
work, Kodwo Abaidoo has re-
drawn the African  continent
a  little, but the rest  of the
globe - the setting for most of
the action in the novel, is in-
tact:  Europe  and  North
America  are in the right
places  geographically. The
values of the book are funda-
mentally those of the thriller
genre, with its lack of inter-
est in humanity and its pre-
occupation with sadistic sex.
There are major flaws in the
writing and there is a confus-
ing superabundance of plot.
One  can't  help  but feel
that,  as a novelist, Abaidoo
must have viewed the politi-
cal changes of the last seven
years with some chagrin. He
must  have realised  that the
obliteration  of the Berlin
Wall, the fragmentation of
the Soviet Union, the release
of Mandela, and the holding
of elections in South  Africa,
meant that any credibility or
indeed  any interest  in this
novel was leaking away. The
manuscript  became an his-
torical  curiosity in 1989. So
far from being prophetic - or
an  intriguing  glimpse  of a
possible future  - Black Fury

Glendora  Books  Supplement

17

on places. He knows the im-
portance of detail and preci-
sion in setting the scene. Hi>
is good on road  names, pub-
lic  buildings,  tube  stations
and the like. He has,  I sus-
pect,  travelled  widely, he
knows  the  places  in the
Northern  Hemisphere  that
he describes; he has collected
streets maps and used them.
He is good on the nitty-gritty
- but he is not, even at this
level,  perfect.  For example,
cars are parked  with  infuri-
ating  ease  in crowded  city
centres and it takes an hour
by 
from
Paddington to Reading!

train 

fast 

On the negative side the
writing is, like much of that
in the thriller genre, limited
when it concerns human feel-
ings. There are several assas-
sinations and quite a number
of betrayals in the novel, but
these rarely cause the pulses
of those involved to race, cer-
tainly there is no soul search-
ing. See, for example, the re-
laxed manner in which Carlo
drives  away  from  the scene
after  shooting his 'target' in
Maryland  (151).  He has
'taken  out' an  important
American and might assume
that  a police  operation had
been set in motion, yet he is
not  even  worried  about dis-
posing of the gun that  lies
beside him.

Abaidoo's killers, of which
there are several, have little
emotional  life,  but they do
have sex lives. Following the
thriller  genre, the writing
about  sexual  arousal and
sexual  liaisons  tends to  re-
peat  a formula.  There is a
sub-Ian  Fleming  quality
about  the  hand-me-down
eroticism. (See 127,133,136,
269).

An element in Fleming's
erotic writing is also followed
in several  scenes of sadistic
sex. In these Abaidoo actually
out-Flemings  Fleming. An
extreme  example is the  ac-
count of Roland Cutler's fren-

<< 

ISSUE NUMBER  ONE •  1997

zied  sexual  attack  that  has
been  caught  on  video  and
that is used to blackmail him
(162-3).  But there is also the
encounter  between  Mfonda
and Woods referred to below.
It  is  disconcerting  that
Abaidoo  passes  with  some
decorum (Then all hell broke
lose',  'The  rest  was  a  blur'
etc.) over mutually enjoyable
sex  but  goes  into  consider-
able  detail  in  those  scenes
which combine sex with vio-
lence. Without  being  prud-
ish,  there  is  a  disturbing
sense that Abaidoo is writing
to meet certain expectations:
readers,  it is assumed, want
a  certain  number  of  sex
scenes,  and  they  relish  sa-
dism.

As  might  be  expected
from what I have said, char-
acterization is weak. This is
noticeable in the handling of
motivation,  particularly
where characters shift  their
allegiance.  For  example,  at
one  point  30  year  old
Mablane Mbusa, the African
mistress of a racist general,
Frisch, is recruited to kill her
lover.  There  is  reference  to
the  plan  to enlist  here, but
silence  about  how  the  ap-
proach  in  made  or  how she
reacts  to overtures.  On  the
other  hand,  and,  in  view of
the emphasis on violence al-
ready  mentioned,  not  sur-
prisingly there  is  a lengthy
description of the manner in
which  she  disposes  of  the
general  -  and  a  clumsily
staining  for  immediacy  as
she does  it.  Briefly,  she in-
jects potassium cyanide into
a  cake 'now' and  he eats  it
'now' (68).

The writing is, in fact, re-
leased by violence and death
- and in this once again it fol-
lows the  convention  of the
thriller.  In  addition  to  the
last  minutes  of  General
Frisch  (70), there  are  par-
ticularly elaborate accounts
of deaths,  in  Germany  (6),
and  in  Paris  (173).  When
people die on a massive scale

Glendom  Btokt  Supplement

18

in  Philadelphia  following  the
detonation of a canister of poi-
son gas, Abaidoo waxes lyrical.
He also becomes confused, and
the account includes the follow-
ing:

The vehicular commotion in
the area boggled the imagina-
tion.  ...  Crushed vehicles lit-
tered the streets.

... A  stunning  blonde lay
astride the pavement, her legs
over her poodle.' 228-231.

(Incidentally  the  African
liberation  group  responsible
for  this  wholesale  slaughter
does  not  take  account  of the
significant  number of African-
Americans likely to be killed by
an  attack  on  down-town
Philadelphia).

When  Hamburg  later  re-
ceives  similar  treatment,  the
novelist writes:

... No one  moved in the tram
now. No one could. They had
been gripped by the cold death
that  was sweeping across the
Plaza.  (238)

Since the novel's contribu-
tion  to  the 
international
thriller genre is in putting the
triumph  of an  African  demo-
cratic movement at the centre,
it  might  be  anticipated  that
African characters would have
major  roles  to  play  and  that
they  would  provide  a  sympa-
thetic presence at the centre of
the novel. This does not  hap-
pen and, indeed, several of the
African characters are particu-
larly poorly drawn - they don't
attract  much  of the  novelist's
attention. They may  be plan-
ners and paymasters, but they

inhabit  the  margins  of  the
plot  and  are  not brought  to
life  on  the  page.  I  suspect
this is because Abaidoo has
more models for second-hand
Cosa  Nostra  hit-men  and
corrupt CIA agents than for
African freedom fighters and
nationalist campaigners.

The process of generating
interest in a story-line, tak-
ing it to a sort of conclusion,
and  then  dropping  it  is re-
peated  several  times  in
Black Fury - and is a particu-
larly irritating feature of the
work.  The  novel  contains
enough plots for four  thrill-
ers  and  enough  characters
for five or six. Abaidoo would
have  been  well  advised  to
economise, to concentrate, to
follow sequences through to
conclusions.  For  example,
one asks  in vain  what hap-
pens when  Kalule  is  under
surveillance? And one won-
ders:  what  does  Stevenson
Crump  of  The  Washington
Post do with the information
he  collects  in  Africa?  The
first  question  draws  atten-
tion to poor plotting, and the
second  question  points  to a
larger  silence: What  about
public opinion  and  the  me-
dia?  Abaidoo  writes  of  a
world  in  which  journalists
have little impact. He writes
of politicians who seem to act
without taking heed of what
the media is saying.

James Gibbs was a professor of
English in Ibadan. Liege (Belgium)
and is now in Bristol. U K.

Producing  Africa
Fiona  Ledger

I N 1967 when the BBC World Service broadcast The Union

Men,  a play by John Storm-Roberts, an Englishman who
lived in Nairobi, a tradition was born on the BBC: radio
drama for Africa.

The  theme  of this  first  play  is  a  mystery  - the  tape  onto
which it was recorded is now blank - but it was to be followed
by four  or five plays for Africa,  all  written  by Europeans  (in-
cluding, oddly, the  Swiss  playwright,  Friedrich  Durrenmatt),