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| Modern African Poetry |
Modern African Poetry did not grow or develop in vacuum; it was
given impetus, shape, direction and even area of concern by the social,
political and economic forces in a particular society.
However, the inaugural of the scholarly engagement with Modern
African Poetry is best seen as coinciding with efforts of making Modern African
Literature a subject of academic enquiry in the 1960s.
In Modern African Poetry, writers (poets in particular) and their
works are implicated in the larger struggles which define three phases in the
development of African Literature: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial.
Each of these periods is marked by peculiarities, i.e. issues they showcase
(cultural, social, economic, intellectual and political issues). These three
phases are marked by certain socio-political experiences and ideologies common
to Modern African Poetry, namely: Slavery, Colonialism, Neo-colonialism/Post-
colonial disillusionment, Cultural conflict, Apartheid and Economic
exploitation.
It is also important to note that Modern African Poetry deals with
collective destinies of the African within its own human and physical
environment. Although a particular human living condition which the poet
expresses is inserted in a time and space frame work, his creative imagination
has a temporal and spatial forward and backward movement which unfolds the evolution of the
society and the life lived in it. Since African Poetry takes “matter” from the
realities of African living conditions and value systems in the past and
present, one easily recognizes it in socio-historical events, names and
environments.
Politics is usually integrated into a people’s culture and
everybody is in one way or the other affected by politics. Political practices
are part of a people’s culture; thus, politics forms an important thematic
preoccupation for Modern African Writers.
Again, Modern African poetry helps us to better understand the
historical and cultural events of Africa. Reading Okot P’ Bitek’s “Song of
lawino and song of Ocol” or Gabriel Okara’s “The Fisherman’s Invocation” in one
way or the other, provokes you to reassess the impact of colonialism on the African
and your relationship-weather as a husband, public official or as a student; so
there is no doubt that historical, political and indigenous cultural forces
shape Modern African Poetry.
The poets of Modern African Poetry from the three literary regions
of Africa- West, East and South Africa, inculcate these historical, cultural
and socio-political experiences and ideologies to their poetry and their poems
seeks to address and correct these experiences. This makes Modern African
Poetry a Protest Poetry. In order to achieve their set goals, they inculcate
ideas, values and feeling to their poetry.
Having said that, we will now embark on a careful analysis of
selected poems of Modern African Poets from the three literary regions of
Africa to ascertain to what extent the socio-economic, historical, indigenous
cultural and socio-political situations in most African nations have shaped or
influenced their poetry (i.e. Modern African Poetry). To carry out this
analysis, we shall first visit West Africa.
WEST AFRICA
From Western Africa, we shall study the works of David Diop who
was born in July, 1927 at Bordeaux in France of a Cameroonian Mother and a
Senegalese Father. An intimate reading of Diop’s poetry reveals that the
content of his poetry is determined by the circumstances he found himself. His
poetry can be referred to as “Poetry of Revolution.” He belonged to and was
influenced by the ideological and literary movement in Africa that went by the
name “NEGRITUDE.”
In other words, David Diop belonged to the period of protest
poetry writing in Africa. Though he died young in a plane crash, his few
surviving poems have placed him as a credible Modern African Poet. Like poets
of his time who had undergone and experienced the humiliation of colonization,
most of his poems are full of nostalgia for Africa’s glory past. The
hypocritical and destructive influences of colonial rule and his dreams and
vision for a free and independent Africa are all embedded in his poems. David
Diop in his poems expresses his sincere faith that Africa will one day break
the shackles of slavery and return to its former glory. He glorifies everything
that is Africa and denigrates anything that is Europe in his poems. He did this
because he was a Negritude poet and one of the hallmarks of Negritude poetry is
the appraisal of Africa and her heritage.
In his poem, “The Vultures” which is an extended metaphor and
signifies colonialism, we see how the colonial masters forcefully and violently
made their way to Africa through “civilization” and “missionary” activities.
This is evident in lines two and three of the poem:
When civilization kicked us in the face
When holy water slapped our cringing brows.
The above lines (2 & 3) also show the inhumanity of the
white man and the humanity of the black man as civilization which represents
the white man kicked the black man on his face. The whites are “The Vultures.”
The poem somehow opens with suspense by the use of “In those days”
and “when” and tells us how the colonial masters used government, Christian
religion and Indirect Rule System to subjugate Africans. The poet also
showcases the evils or negative effects of colonialism on the Africans: the
impoverishment of the people, the destruction of the cultural values and making
slaves out of Africans. This is evident in lines 4 and 5 of the poem:
The Vultures built in the shadows of their
talons
The bloodstained monument of tutelage.
In his poem, “Africa,” Diop recalls the days of slavery before
colonization when Africans were carted away by Europeans to different parts of
Europe to work in their plantations:
Your blood split over the fields
The blood of your sweat
The sweat of your toil
The toil of slavery
The slavery of your children.
While identifying with this ancient continent with its rich
agrarian past that he has come to know through folklore, he draws upon racial
memory to recall its sad history of slavery and colonialism. Thus, in the next
five angry and accusatory lines, the rhetorical question enumerates the
sufferings of Africans under the domination of colonial rule and hints at a
revolution that would lead to a glorious future for Africa:
Africa, tell me Africa
Are you the back that bends
Lies down under the weight of humbleness?
The trembling back striped red
That says yes to the sjambok on the roads of
noon?
The lines express the poem persona’s anger on the Europeans and
express empathy to the injustices done to the Africans. They were humiliated by
the colonial masters.
Also, Africans are dehumanized as the Europeans hypocritically try
to make them forget their sufferings by preaching and reminding them about God
and the blessings that await them in heaven in “The Vultures”
And the monotonous rhythm of the paternoster
Drowned the howling in the plantation
Recalling the evils done by the Europeans to Africans, Diop then
goes on to lament the hypocrisy and inhumane treatment meted out to Africans.
He tells that the colonial masters are hypocrites and at the same time inhuman
because they force the African female slaves into sexual relations; discarded
their initial promises of friendship to Africans as soon as they established
themselves in Africa.
Colonialism denied Africans of their humanity, culture, language,
labour (the reward of their labour as they could not eat the fruit of their
labour) etc.
EAST AFRICA
Arriving East Africa, Jared Angira’s poems portray these
historical, cultural and socio-political experiences and ideologies. Angira is
from Kenya; he writes about the new form of colonialism, “neo-colonialism” and
its central theme is that of post-colonial disillusionment. This is the era
where fellow black (of petty bourgeoisie class and intellectual class) oppress
the majority blacks (of low class). He details the period after Africa’s
independence.
In his poem “Obliggato from the Public gallery” present in his
collection Cascades,
we see the familiar theme of post-colonial disillusionment. The tone and mood
of the poem is anger and bitterness as it satirizes and lashes out at the
politicians who have betrayed the national ideal:
The public has no believe
In democracy
It has mocked his expectation
The public has no hope
In the party
The party partitioned himself
For the zombies are the particans
In the “nation”
(Cascades, p.88)
The attainment of independence has not resulted in true
independence for all; rather, it has revealed the true ambition of few
emancipated intellectuals which has always been to fill the vacuum created by
the departure of the colonizers. The new political class is corrupt and demands
the position of the colonizers. The emancipated African intellectuals intend to
do the same.
Also, in “Noticeboard,” Angira portrays his disillusionment and
disappointment on the emancipated African intellectuals:
When that passes
Transforming itself into
Records of experience
We too pass
Into antiavity
Leaving, tightly bolted
Behind us
The door that we kept
Knocking so long
Angira is concerned with the suffering of the oppressed masses. He
examines every aspect of the socio-economic and political life of his society
and the suffering placed on the masses by the emancipated African
intellectuals. Independence is not promising anything good; the politicians
have betrayed the masses; they are not doing what they are supposed to do. This
is also evident in “The Stage,” another poem of Angira, where he showcases the
economic and political problems faced by Africans.
To him, present generation of Africa has no meaningful political
ideology. This democracy is what obtains in many African countries.
SOUTH AFRICA
South African literaturs are
often times Literatures that
protest against apartheid in South Africa. In other words, South African
writers through their writings bring to limelight the conquest and humiliation
of the indigenous people who came to be denied literally their rights in their
own country. The poetry of Oswald Mtshali, Sounds
of a Cowhide Drums, expresses
the agony and sufferings of the Black in apartheid South Africa much as it
dramatizes the political violence which apartheid elicited and unleashed. For
apartheid is only sustained at great lost.
In his collection, Sounds
of a Cowhide Drums, his poems
largely treat apartheid, poverty, suffering, fear and humiliation in Apartheid
South Africa. It will not be out of place to call the poems of Mtshali “Protest
poems of Alienation and Augment” or “Poems of Lamentation.” This is because his
poems are informed by the agonized collective cries of a down trodden,
repressed and oppressed people in their own land. The atmosphere of his poems
is also characterized and dominated by ‘fear’ and ‘hostility.’ In his poem,
“Detribalized,” he details the theme of survival and poverty in Apartheid South
Africa.
He skipped school
during play time
to hock sweets
pilfered in town/peanuts, shoe laces
caddied at the golf course
Here, Mtshali gives a rich image of deep poverty and subsequently
that of survival. Stealing and skipping school to sell his pilfered goods is
the only way the boy can think of surviving. He comes out of school half -baked
in his academics:
He can write
only his name;
He can read
the world:
our own and only paper
The Golden city post-murder, rape and
robbery
The above lines reveal that the boy can only write his name and
can only read- not literally- “the Golden post.” It means that he is familiar
with what the newspaper writes. It also reveals that the boy is a typical
apartheid South African. “Murder, rape and robbery” are the iniquities of
apartheid South Africa and the boy has been at the ‘fore’ (a main prison in
Johannesburg) doing prison terms for these crimes:
Just as unavoidable
and unpleasant
as going to desists
The entire poem attacks and undermines the value system of
apartheid.
Another of Mtshali’s poems, “Just a Passerby” evokes images of
helplessness of the black South African under apartheid who witnesses white
‘clobber’ to death a fellow black:
I heard him scream with pain
Like a victim of slaughter
This is a very ironic and sarcastic piece of poetry through which
the poet expresses the helpless condition of many blacks in apartheid South
Africa. The poem incorporates a number of themes besides describing the
gruesome incident of a brother being ‘clobbered’ while he (poet) passes by
without rendering any help. The poet draws an ironic parallel with the parable
of the Good Samaritan. The religion of the whites (Christianity) that preaches
to be your brother’s keeper is in itself, the root cause of violence. But the
irony of what the poet considers an escapist religion is that the poet instead
of helping his brother from ticklers, goes instead to the church to pray for
the brother’s soul. The denial in the last line of the poem:
“O! No! I heard nothing. I’ve been to
church.”
The denial reveals that the poem’s persona is unwilling to
acknowledge the brutal killing of his brother for the reason that he may be
‘clobber’ too.
The poem is indicative of the height of violence and the
helplessness of the people in the society the poet lives in.
CONCLUSION
In sum, from the aforementioned points, it is obvious and glaring
that historical, indigenous culture, socio-economic and socio-political forces
influence Modern African Poetry as Modern African Poets inculcate these ideas
to their works in order to correct them; thereby making Modern African Poetry a
Protest poetry.
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