Zambezia (1992), XIX (ii).BOOK REVIEWSLiterature, Language and the Nation: Proceedings of the Second GeneralConference of the Association of University Teachers of Literature andLanguage (ATOLL) held at the University of Zimbabwe, 24-28 August1987 Edited by E. Ngara and A. Morrison. Harare, ATOLL and BaobabBooks, 1989, 230 pp., ISBN 0-908311-11-7, Z$30,00.The range of papers in this valuable collection shows the desire of universityteachers in the SADC region to address issues relating to the broad areasstaked out in the title: language, literature and national consciousness.What is immediately and fascinatingly clear is the tension betweenregionalism and nationalism which a number of the essays suggest, eitherimplicitly or explicitly. The continuing anxiety over the use of English asa national language is also evident in some papers, and another trans-continental theme which emerges from the essays is the increasing gapbetween the intellectual and the political elite in the post-independenceera.There is a surprising Š given the stance of the nascent Zimbabwe onquestions of gender during the liberation war Š near-silence in thecollection on issues of gender and its relation to literature, language andnationality. One of the few essays which deals with women and writing isRosamund Metcalfs essay, 'The liberation of female consciousness inAfrican literature'. Her provocative readings of Mariama Ba and BessieHead (in When Rainclouds Gather) as writers trapped in the mythology ofromance and her praise of Emecheta form a fascinating contrast to PhillipDine's essay. Dine castigates the dominant 'realist' mode of Lessing's TheGrass is Singing (and by implication most of African writing in English!) as'one more repressive colonial structure' and contrasts Lessing's earlyworks with the Algerian Kateb Yacine's Nedjema which he characterizesas an anti-novel 'committed to the disorientation of the reader at everylevel' Š a remark which could be fruitfully used for Dambudzo Marechera'sfiction as well. Dine does not, however, see the ironies in this iconoclastictext, using the woman Yacine as a trope for the nation and thus reiteratingthe negritudist 'Mother Africa' iconography in which the figure of womanin Africa can be so easily trapped and turned into a symbol without anypolitical agency.Anthony Nazombe's review of Frank Chipasula's fine anthology ofcentral and Southern African poetry (When My Brothers Come Home)usefully contrasts the modern poetry of Malawi with that of Angola andMozambique. He is critical of the way in which Angolan and Mozambicanpoetry is burdened by revolutionary rhetoric and Š in his view Š ignoresthe myth and music of the country, unlike Malawian poetry which is full ofsubtle irony and ambiguity. Here Nazombe is in danger of a kind of easyformalism and of failing to address the different socio-political contexts ofthe two regions. His anxiety about the reduction of art to the level of 'merepropaganda' spills over into his discussion of South African poetry wherehe, interestingly, acknowledges the new importance of the intrusion oftraditional forms with their own aesthetic. He does not, however,145146 BOOK REVIEWSacknowledge that so-called traditional forms rarely distinguish betweenart and propagandaŠand are, in fact, usually full of both. Neither Nazombenor Emmanuel Ngara, in his article on South African liberation poetry,seem prepared to enlarge the parameters of their discussion of poetry toinclude popular song, which can Š in my view Š be seen as a legitimateform of poetry and which is, in the African context, at least as viable amedium for social and artistic expression as printed poetry.In contrast, the need to include the medium of song in any discussionof protest and popular consciousness is stressed in Joe Mbele's paper but,unfortunately, this paper gives the impression of being a survey whichfails to engage at all closely with the dynamics of a particular tradition.Mbele does not raise questions about audience, about the relation betweensong and written verse and about which form takes precedence in popularawareness. Here the language question is crucial and we are reminded ofNgugi's nagging fear that English, however decolonized and localized itmay be, can never be a popular language, or the vehicle of expression forthe bulk of the populace.One of the most innovative papers in the collection analyses an itemof popular culture Š the comic strip Š and demonstrates how it subtlyengages in wide-ranging political comment. Tim McLoughlin's usefullydiachronic essay, 'The comic strip and Zimbabwe's development', showsthe shifting interface of comic-strip and colonizer, comic-strip and aspirant-consumer and a range of other comic-strip conversations and com-mentaries. The colonizer's wishful image of the grateful and subservientBlack man is mirrored in the pre-Independence Parade magazine characterNinepence; comic-strips were also used to depict myths of heroic fightersto the Whites. They can also, as the restless, shifty cartoon character ofthe 1970s, Haja-Kasaga, shows, catch the spiritual restlessness of thetimes just as subtly as the fiction of the same period Š for example in thework of Mungoshi, Marechera and Nyamfukudza. In its accessibility andtopicality as well as its ability to create healthy ridicule at a time of tensionand dissent the comic-strip is indeed a sensitive and useful popular artform, in the same way as the song. McLoughlin's paper is the only one inthe collection to consider popular art forms and literature in a singleargument Š and yet, if one is to be true to the production of culture inmost parts of Africa today, surely this is essential?The section of the book entitled 'Language' has several essays whichdeal at a very general level with the crucial issues of education, equality,national consciousness, and culture Š all of which are inevitably suggestedby this topic when discussed in an African context. Other essays are morespecific and these are the more rewarding for the reader. Andrew Morrisontackles the possibilities of the development of a specifically ZimbabweanEnglish, thus implicitly querying Ngugi's assertion of English as a cultural'dead-end' for Africa. The paper by Ines Machungo and Gilberto Matusseon 'Language and literature in education in Mozambique' is far too general;nothing is analysed in depth and the potentially fascinating subject ofmulti-Iingualism in Mozambique is not addressed in nearly enough detail.The two contributions by Scandinavian scholars are somewhat unevenin quality. Preben Kaarsholm draws parallels between the democratizationBOOK REVIEWS 147of the Danish countryside in the 1930s and Zimbabwe's tradition of popularmobilization. Helge R0nning's essay, in spite of its alarmingly general title,is both wide-ranging and sharply focused and suggestive rather thanprescriptive in its comparisons between Norway and Zimbabwe. Thispaper gives a clear historical sense of Norway's move towards a democraticnational consciousness rather than a national consciousness fixed withinthe bourgeois elite. This was, he argues, possibly because of the basicegalitarian ideals of traditional Norwegian society and the role of a nationalculture based on popular institutions and traditions combined with anelement of classic European learning and modern science.Peter Mwikasa's challenging and tightly argued paper on the linksbetween Sesotho and distant Silozi puts the question of the elitist role ofEnglish in Africa in the context of other workable possibilities involvingAfrican languages. He outlines the accidents of colonial and church historylinking the two languages and suggests modern possibilities for printmedia which could supply a readership of 10 million Sesotho-Silozi-Setswana language speakers, a group which cuts across nationalboundaries. Mwikisa points out that indigenous languages, far from beingdivisive, can offer possibilities for regional unity which cut across nationalboundaries. He might have added that it also provides a bulwark againstthe flourishing of narrow ethnicities, but he does point out the irony of thefact that it is the South African government that has most exploited thepropaganda and consciousness-raising potential of indigenous languages;for example, during the Namibian war of independence they introducedSilozi into radio programmes beamed at the Caprivi Strip aiming to win the'hearts and minds' of the few Silozi speakers in that area.To conclude: although in some ways this is an uneven book, it remainsan important one. It gives the reader a sense of the diverse energies ofscholars and teachers from the region wrestling with problems relating tothe politics of culture and the cultural politics of nation and region. Thebook has no doubt already been of much use in cultural studies andcourses on literature focusing on Southern Africa. It certainly deserves tobe widely used. It could also provide a lead to educationalists and culturalpolicy-makers in SADC's troubled neighbour, South Africa. Most importantof all is the sense of a carefully realized regional focus which transcendsthe often artificial boundaries and the fragile concept of the 'nation'.Perhaps, as the book half hints, in spite of its title, what is needed most isnot nationalism but regionalism. Taken as a whole the essays in thiscollection give a sense of what that regionalism could mean.School of Oriental and African Studies Liz GUNNER