‘Queer People Were Living, Loving, Suffering, Surviving – But Invisible’: West Africa’s Groundbreaking Gay Novel 20 Years On

A scene from the 2019 film version of Walking With Shadows, based on the novel.

BY ADESOMOLA ADEDAYO

When Jude Dibia first tried to sell the manuscript of his groundbreaking novel Walking With Shadows 20 years ago, he was aware of the silence around queerness in West African literature. While there had been books with gay themes, his is widely recognised as the first novel in the region to put a gay character at the heart of the story.

“The absence wasn’t just literary; it was societal,” Dibia says. “Queer people were living, loving, suffering, surviving – but largely rendered invisible or spoken of in hushed tones, if at all. That silence felt violent. It felt like erasure.

“Literature has the power to name what society refuses to see. Walking With Shadows was my small attempt to do that,” he adds.

Initially, some publishers refused to touch the novel, considering it too controversial. Others suggested he rewrite the ending, either making the character renounce his homosexuality or killing him. When the book was finally published, Dibia was called names. He lost friends and was blacklisted from certain literary spaces. He was invited to events, only to later be uninvited once the organisers realised who he was and what he had written.

Dibia’s novel is widely recognised as the first Nigerian book to depict queerness with depth and empathy. It tells the story of Ebele “Adrian” Njoku who has buried his sexuality in the past, become a husband and a father, but who has to confront who he really is when a co-worker informs his wife that he is gay.

Ainehi Edoro, associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the literary blog Brittle Paper, says the novel marked a turning point. “For a long time, queer characters in African literature were either invisible or treated as symbols of crisis, like their presence was a sign that something had gone wrong,” she says. “So when Dibia wrote a novel that centred a gay Nigerian man as a full human being, that mattered. He pushed back against an entire archive of erasure.”

The book, which turned 20 this year, was published by Blacksands in 2005 and republished in 2011 by Jalaa Writers’ Collective. In 2019, it was adapted for the screen by Oya Media and a special film edition was released.

But the initial backlash Walking with Shadows faced has not entirely disappeared, says Dibia. “Some still view the book as too controversial, too political, too queer. But I’ve made peace with that. If a story makes people uncomfortable because it tells the truth, then perhaps discomfort is the first step toward awareness.”

Dibia was forced to leave Nigeria and now lives in Sweden after the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, a law that criminalises homosexuality, was passed in January 2014, fearing he might become a target for his writing.

Since the publication of Walking With Shadows, an increasing number of books with queer characters at the heart of them have been published in West Africa and, specifically, Nigeria. There have been a slew of firsts: Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees (2015) was the first novel to focus on lesbianism; Romeo Oriogun’s Burnt Men (2016) was the first queer poetry book; Chike Frankie Edozien’s Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man (2017), the first gay memoir; Unoma Azuah’s Embracing My Shadows: Growing Up Lesbian in Nigeria (2020), the first lesbian memoir.

Dibia, who has published two more novels – Unbridled in 2007 and Blackbird in 2011 – considers the fact that his debut gave visibility to lives that had been systematically ignored as the book’s most meaningful contribution.

“That’s the legacy I’m proudest of: not the controversy, but the quiet courage it gave others to tell their own stories, in their own ways,” he says.

Chike Frankie Edozien, author of Lives of Great Men, agrees. “Each time I do something that examines the fullness and varying natures of our lives, I know that I’m continuing the work Jude began by adding to a canon that boldly debunks the prevailing narrative that queerness in West Africa is foreign or imported,” he says.

“We’ve been diverse as long as we’ve existed and I’m thankful for Jude’s brave work that cracked open the door for the rest of us to kick down. All these years later, it [Walking with Shadows] still is for me a guiding light.”

For the British-Nigerian gay rights activist Bisi Alimi, the book was liberating the moment he laid hands on it. “Prior to that day, I had never really read any book as personal and relatable as that. Jude and the book did something to me,” he says.

The writer and researcher Ayodele Olofintuade had a similar experience. “The book came as it is, creating a new genre, queer literature,” she says. “Encountering the novel about two years post-publication was a shift in reality for me. Walking with Shadows is a roadmap of what is possible.”

Dibia’s deepest satisfaction comes from readers all over the world who say that Adrian’s story helps them feel seen. He sometimes wishes, however, that he had been better prepared for, and protected against, the fallout. “But then again, maybe part of the novel’s power comes from the fact that it was written without armour,” he says. “I don’t regret writing it. I only regret the climate that made it feel dangerous to tell the truth.”

Today, Dibia still hopes people see the book as an act of courage and, more importantly, an act of care. Likewise, 20 years from now, he hopes the novel will still feel relevant yet like a historical document of a time outgrown.

‘[I hope it] becomes a reminder of what silence cost us, and how far we’ve come,’ he says.

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The Key Differences Between Afrofuturism And Africanfuturism (With Examples!)

(Jembefola Press, Orbit, Harper Voyager, and Tordotcom.) via The Mary Sue

BY ALYSSA SHOTWELL

Later this year, the highly anticipated sequel to Black Panther (2018), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, releases. This will likely mark another big surge in wider public excitement and shared fan art depicting elements of Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism. Despite their similar origins and many cultural ties, these two genres within science fiction and speculative fiction tell very different stories.
What is Afrofuturism?

First brought into discourse in at least 1993 by Mark Dery in Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose, Afrofuturism is a genre featuring science fiction themes that address cultural issues Black people face in the past and present. The genre uses conversations about race and technology to imagine what the future or an alternative present could be like for Black people. Some within the greater Black diaspora (globally) that live in a place where they’re second-class citizens or were influenced by the Atlantic Slave Trade use this to describe their work.

While coined in the ’90s regarding technoculture, many of its earliest examples include work created before as far back as the 1800s. Some 1950s-1990s work of writers Ralph Ellison and Octavia E. Butler, plus musicians like Sun Ra and Parliament-Funkadelic. Some recent literary examples include some works by N.K. Jemison, Rivers Solomon, Tomi Adeyemi, and Colson Whitehead.

Many contemporary visual and music artists have dabbled with Afrofuturistic aesthetics in their work. However, Outkast, Missy Elliot, and Janelle Monáe use these themes and aesthetics consistently. Monáe’s albums were my first meaningful interaction with Afrofuturism. Fellow TMS staff writer Princess Weekes did this *chef’s kiss* explanation of the genre for PBS two years back.
What is Africanfuturism?

Africanfuturism is similar, as it’s a type of science fiction, mainly in English or French, created by Black artists and writers. However, like Afrofuturism, this genre features its own nuances and arguably stretches back even further in time. While the phrasing has been in discourse since 2013, prolific Nigerian American writer Nnedi Okorafor coined the use as the literary definition in 2018 on her blog.

Africanfuturism is similar to “Afrofuturism” in the way that Blacks on the continent and in the Black Diaspora are all connected by blood, spirit, history and future. The difference is that Africanfuturism is specifically and more directly rooted in African culture, history, mythology and point-of-view as it then branches into the Black Diaspora, and it does not privilege or center the West.

Africanfuturism is concerned with visions of the future, is interested in technology, leaves the earth, skews optimistic, is centered on and predominantly written by people of African descent (Black people) and it is rooted first and foremost in Africa. It’s less concerned with “what could have been” and more concerned with “what is and can/will be”. It acknowledges, grapples with and carries “what has been”.

Regarding Black writers, residency and nationality are not as important as the historical and cultural context. Some recent literary examples include some works by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Tade Thompson, Nicky Drayden and Okorafor. Some of these creatives currently live in an African country (many in Nigeria), while others are the children of immigrants.
Can they work together?

Speculative fiction anthologies that include many Black science fiction writers will feature stories and themes found in Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism. Sometimes these works can come together in a single narrative. For example, on April 19, 2022, Janelle Monáe’s creative universe (built into her discography) is coming together to include Afrofuturist and Africanfuturist writers for an anthology work.

Some writers like Nigerian American writer Tochi Onyebuchi dabble in both, depending on the work. For example, his award-winning novella Riot Baby is a work of Afrofuturism because of its very American perspective, theme, and setting. However, his War Girls series is a work of Africanfuturism as it’s a post-apocalyptic look at another Nigerian Civil War. Readers can approach both stories with little background knowledge. However, understanding anti-Blackness in the U.S. for Riot Baby and Nigerian independence for War Girls shapes each work.

If you’re in the Americas or Europe, you’re more likely to come across Afrofuturism (or its siblings, like Caribbean Futurism) than Africanfuturism. If you want to learn more about these subjects, check out Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack, How Long ’til Black Future Month?: Stories by N. K. Jemisin, and the essay Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and the Language of Black Speculative Literature by Hope Wabuke.

Social Differences, Social Justice Cluster Hosts Inaugural Research Symposium

BY SYRACUS UNIVERSITY NEWS STAFF

Austin Lewter, a graduate student in Pan African studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, presents at the inaugural Social Differences, Social Justice Research Symposium March 31.


On March 31, the Social Differences, Social Justice research cluster hosted its inaugural symposium, crossing interdisciplinary boundaries to showcase student and faculty research related to equity, social justice and global transformation.

Co-sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, Humanities Center, Lender Center for Social Justice, Renée Crown University Honors Program and Whitman School of Management, the symposium featured a keynote address from Gisele Marcus ’89, a Syracuse University Trustee and professor of practice in diversity, equity and inclusion at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

“Today is a day of celebration, valuing and honoring,” said Kira Reed, associate professor of management in the Whitman School and member of the Social Differences, Social Justice cluster, addressing scholars during her introductory remarks. “We are excited that we now have a cohort of cluster hires and that the University recognizes the value in convening scholars of different disciplines to bring forth issues of justice and equity and ideas about how we can make improvements. We are here to value you and your contributions. Your work is meaningful and impactful.”

Ravi Dharwadkar, professor and chair of management in the Whitman School, and James Haywood Rolling Jr., co-director of the Lender Center for Social Justice and professor of arts education in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, welcomed symposium attendees before the panel discussions commenced.

The first panel on African Diasporic Studies showcased student research, featuring graduate students from the master’s program in Pan African studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Moderator Danielle Taana Smith, professor of African American Studies and director of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, acknowledged that “the Department of African American studies has a long and rich history at Syracuse University. It continues to be a space where intellectuals across many disciplines center Africa as a site of intellectual knowledge, where faculty and researchers contest pre-existing ideas of what Africa and its diaspora mean, and present alternative knowledges.”

Taana Smith then introduced first-year graduate students Joy Nyokabi, Kailey Smith and Austin Lewter.

Nyokabi presented her preliminary research on attempts by the British government to conceal documents and evidence of war crimes against Kenyans during the Mau Mau War in the 1950s.

As a critical component of the discussion about reparations, Kailey Smith’s presentation argued for the return of stolen cultural artifacts from Western museums to the African nations from which they originated.

Lewter presented his research on the legacy of lynching in the United States, arguing that lynchings have moved from public spectacle—such as the courthouse lawn—and become quieter and more institutionalized, invoking the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland and Eric Garner as examples of modern lynchings.

The second panel, Democratizing Internet Access, was moderated by Abdullah Naimzadeh, a graduate student in the School of Information Studies (iSchool), studying applied data science. Exploring the principle of global internet access as a human right, panelists Catherine Forrest ’22, doctoral candidate Jane Asantewaa Appiah-Okyere and Professor Lee McKnight, from the iSchool, shared ongoing research on deployment of the internet backpack technology, which was co-invented by McKnight.

Use of the internet backpack to expand global internet access was presented through the lens of several contexts and projects, including for health care workers in rural and remote Central America; teachers in rural Ghana; and elementary school students in underserved areas of Brooklyn and the Bronx in New York City. The panel also addressed the moral imperative for universal internet access—especially amidst the COVID-19 pandemic—and the importance of championing a framework for ethical data collection.

The morning then segued into a full schedule of faculty research briefs and presentations, including:
Jamie Perry, assistant professor of management in the Whitman School, presented on the characteristics and outcomes of diverse teams;
Hector Rendon*, assistant professor of communications in the Newhouse School, presented on contemporary representations of Mexico, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in Hollywood films;
Rachael Goodwin*, assistant professor of management in the Whitman School, presented on dehumanization and maladaptive perfectionism at work;
Charisse L’Pree Corsbie-Massay, associate professor of communications in the Newhouse School, presented on her forthcoming book, “Diversity and Satire: Laughing at Processes of Marginalization;”
Srivi Ramasubramanian, Newhouse Professor in the Newhouse School, presented on the personal, professional and political challenges of critical race scholar-activism;
Rashmi Gangamma, associate professor and director of graduate studies in marriage and family therapy in the Falk College; Melissa Luke, Dean’s Professor and Provost Faculty Fellow in counseling and human services in the School of Education; and Bhavneet Walia, assistant professor of public health in the Falk College, presented research on the continuation of teletherapy post-COVID-19;
Ethan Madarieta, assistant professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, presented on his forthcoming book, “The Body is Not the Land: Memory, Translation, and Territorial Aporias;”
Delali Kumavie*, assistant professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, presented on her current book project, “Aerial Geographies: Rooting Aviation in Global Black Literature;”
Warrick Moses*, assistant professor of music history and cultures in the College of Arts and Sciences, presented on racial and language identity within the mixed race or coloured community of Cape Town, South Africa;
Ruth Opara, assistant professor of music history and cultures in the College of Arts and Sciences, presented “Mirroring Motherhood/Land in Diaspora: Igbo Women in Music;”
Melissa Yuen, the curator at the Syracuse University Art Museum, presented “Teaching and Learning Social Justice at the Syracuse University Art Museum;”
Erin Rand, associate professor of communication and rhetorical studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, presented “Too Much to Tolerate: School Bathrooms, Trans Temporality, and Black Excess;” and
Carol Faulkner, associate dean and Andrew W. Cohen, Walter Montgomery and Marian Gruber professor of history in the Maxwell School, presented “Gender at the Polls: Illicit Voting and Suffrage Before the Civil War.”

*Indicates a cluster hire in the Social Differences, Social Justice research cluster.

Marcelle Haddix, associate provost for strategic initiatives and Distinguished Dean’s Professor of Literacy, Race and Justice in the School of Education, shared her thoughts on the significance of the day prior to Marcus’s keynote address.

“This inaugural symposium is exactly the type of output, the kind of research work we want to see coming from the research clusters,” Haddix said. “Today spoke to the power of interdisciplinarity, the power of connecting us, bringing us together. And what we often don’t talk about are the kinds of resources it takes to engage in this work; how we acknowledge and reward interdisciplinary collaboration; how we create spaces and opportunities for people to come together across differences. That’s what today’s event really highlighted for me.”



Haddix then welcomed Marcus to deliver her keynote address, “Belonging: Essential to Enhancing the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Equation.”

Marcus began with a definition of belonging from diversity and inclusion expert Verna Myers: Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion means being asked to dance; belonging is “they’re actually playing some of my music.”

She spoke of belonging as a human requirement, shared how companies can expand their DEI initiatives to include belonging to address the Great Resignation, and how increased feelings of belonging for students lead to better outcomes in higher education.

“Belonging is all about feeling welcomed in a space, feeling that you’re included, feeling that your contributions are valued,” Marcus said. “It matters because when people belong, they are going to help their organization be more productive, there’s going to be better teamwork and an increase in their pride as an employee. And all of those things can be contagious in your environment.”

Marcus earned a bachelor’s degree in management information systems and transportation management from Whitman and an MBA from Harvard University. She is a member of the Syracuse University Multicultural Advancement Advisory Council; former vice president of the Syracuse University Alumni Association; an inaugural lecturer for the University’s Sankofa Lecture Series; and a 2014 recipient of the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence in Global Business Management. Marcus also endowed an Our Time has Come scholarship in her name in the Whitman School and joined the University’s Board of Trustees in 2021.

Patrick W. Berry, associate professor in writing studies, rhetoric and composition in the College of Arts and Sciences and member of the Social Differences, Social Justice cluster, closed the symposium, remarking on the scholarly community being strengthened through the cluster. Berry stated that this group of scholars will be prepared to inform the academy, the arts, business and society, and that including students in the endeavor prepares them to make a global impact.

The Social Differences, Social Justice research cluster includes more than 30 affiliated faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Engineering and Computer Science, College of Law, College of Visual and Performing Arts, iSchool, the Maxwell School, the Newhouse School and the Whitman School. The group has a listserv to which interested scholars can subscribe to stay connected and learn of future events. To join, send an email request to SDSJ@listserv.syr.edu. To learn more about its work, visit the cluster’s webpage.

Haunting Echoes Of A Commemoration

Chinua Achebe. Image: Leonardo Cendamo/Getty


BY OKECHUKWU UWAEZUOKE


A group exhibition, whose theme revolves around the 60th anniversary celebration of Chinua Achebe’s iconic debut novel Things Fall Apart, concluded its three-city tour of Nigeria in Lagos, after previously holding in Awka and Abuja, Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports

First, there was a caveat. And it was offered shortly before the Lagos leg of the exhibition was officially opened at the Thought Pyramid Art Centre along Norman Williams Street in South-west Ikoyi that Saturday, August 24 evening. At a cosy end of the gallery’s upper floor, where a roundtable discussion was in full swing, its resilient curator, Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, had reminded the discussants that – though the exhibition, And the Centre Refuses to Hold: Homage to Things Fall Apart @60, was based on Chinua Achebe’s debut novel, Things Fall Apart – it was not really concerned about the illustration of the novel’s content.

Among the leading art personalities present at that session, by the way, were the Obi of Onitsha, Nnaeneka Achebe; the renowned art collector, Omooba Yemisi Shyllon; the cultural activist and former newspaper editor, Jahman Anikulapo as well as the Arthouse Contemporary Limited’s founder, Kavita Chellaram. Also sitting among several others at the roundtable were two of the exhibiting artists – Tobenna Okwuosa and Akeem Muraina.

Indeed, Ikwuemesi was only re-echoing what the literary luminary and Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, had written in his preface to the exhibition catalogue. Soyinka had explained that this endeavour was a continuation of the original “dialogue between image and word”, which began when his African publishers, Bookcraft, launched an outsize edition of Achebe’s iconic novel. This edition, it would be recalled, had featured contributions by a coterie of leading contemporary Nigerian artists. But, this exhibition, Soyinka reminded its audience, had set out “as original artistic tributes, for which the literary work maintains a ‘low profile’ as inspirational resource, leaving the artists to their own re-creative devices.” It is for this reason, he added, that it “should therefore be encountered as products in the vein of association of ideas, set as images, and not literal interpretations of the originating narrative.”

Featured at the exhibition, which ended yesterday, were works produced in diverse media by the following artists: Chuu Krydz Ikwuemesi, Tobenna Okwuosa, Ato Arinze, George Odoh, Tony Nsofor, Anthony Polo, Akeem Muraina, Ato Arinze, Chinyere Odinukwe, Nnaemezie Asogwa, Benjamin Akachukwu, Obi Nwaegbe, Iyke Okenyi, Jerry Buhari, Chris Echeta, Blaise Gundu Gbaden, Rita Doris Ubah, Doofan Kwaghhool and Abigail Nnaji.

Expectedly, the artists’ diverse backgrounds, experiences and idiosyncrasies gleamed through the works, among which were photographs, drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations and mixed media. These babel of expressions swirl around the trending issues in post-colonial Africa, through which the exhibition gropes for a unifying theme.

Take Akeem Muraina, the Lagos-based sculptor, for instance. Among the four works he contributed to the exhibition, two were metal sculptures while the remaining two were charcoal drawings. One of the metal sculptures, titled “Aremo” (Yoruba for step-father) depicts a bull and a young antelope co-joined in a prancing stance. The idea is to reflect the distinctions in class and status as well as a mutual affectionate bonding.

But, specifically, it metaphorically alludes to the relationship between the novel’s main character Okonkwo and his foster son Ikemefuna. Understandably, the old rugged bull, which symbolises Okonkwo’s bellicose disposition, finds its contrast in the antelope (a metaphorical depiction of the youth Ikemefuna), which exposes the soft underbelly of his fatherly love. The work, also a call to true humanity, urges affectionate bonding across artificial class distinctions. This is in reference to the love Okonkwo, a respected figure of Umuofia, had for a slave boy Ikemefuna, which he did not show to his own biological son, Nwoye.

Conversely, the photographer, Emezie Asogwa, with his body of works, titled “Wet Dreams”, makes no obvious reference to the novel. Rather, he expresses his thoughts about the power of the mind. Through blurry images hinting at motion, he tells the story of his dreams and the intrinsic energies of what he calls a “conscious unconsciousness” in a suite of miniature photographs. Thus, he guides the audience beyond the carnal imagery of his bodily experience and urges them to consider wet dreams as expressions of mental images in dense gross-materiality.

In the same vein, Obi Nwaegbe only tangentially references the novel in his acrylic on paper work, “The Protest”, but extends his musings beyond the obvious with his other similarly-rendered works: “Hangout at the Lounge”, “Women on a March”, “The Essence of Friendship” and “The Hawkers”. The Abuja-based artist seems rather more concerned about keeping a visual diary of the contemporary realities of his environment.

Similarly, Iyke Okenyi’s wooden sculptural offerings – “Dancer”, “Group Photograph”, “Heavy Rain”, and “Before I Die” – make no obvious references to the novel’s content. Yet, it leaves so much to the viewers’ conjectures.

This was not so the case with Tobenna Okwuosa’s paintings. For the Niger Delta University lecturer’s three oil on canvas works seem to be patently tied to the novel’s content. Yet, he lashes out through them at the mental slavery of the post-colonial African (in “Black Man, White Mask”); places the novel on a pedestal not just for its entertainment value, but also its possible use as a guide and text for mental liberation of the African (in “The Beginning of a Great Narrative”); and romanticises the heroism of its protagonist in the tradition of the Negritude writers (“Okonkwo”).

Nonetheless, not even the exhibition’s eclectic and impersonal attributes could have diminished its synergistic visual harmony. Hats off, therefore, to Ikwuemesi’s curatorial dexterity for the unobtrusive blending of the forms and the media.

Previously, the travelling exhibition – which featured a maximum of five works from each of the participating artists – had first held in October last year in the Anambra State capital Awka. This was before it held, more recently, in Abuja this year. And the Centre Refuses to Hold…,as a title, lends wings to the artists’ musings. It evokes a Tower of Babel scenario, in reference to the economic, political and social crises, which continually plague the continent. Thus, the novel’s account of the cultural conflicts between the colonial masters and their colonised subjects in the late 19th century echoes with relevance in the present. Beaming the spotlight on Unoka (Okonkwo’s father in the novel), it drew parallels between this character and the artist in the context of the contemporary Nigerian society.

SOURCE: THIS DAY

The Achebean Restoration

BY HERBERT EKWE-EKWE

(Paper presented at the Conference on Things Fall Apart at 50, School of Advanced Study, Institute of English Studies, University of London, Friday 10 October 2008)

“Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond”

This 11-worded dramatic opening sentence in Things Fall Apart on the life and times of Okonkwo is as defiant as it is engaging in establishing the African presence and interests in history right from the outset in the novel. For Chinua Achebe, the restoration of the African as the central focus of deliberation and agency is a crucial task of the African narrative on the morrow of the European conquest and occupation of Africa. As a result, Achebe accomplishes two crucial goals in this endeavour. First, he ensures that there is no universal loss of memory of the historic realities of African sovereignty and independence, prior to the conquest, nor on the regenerative seeds of African freedom which survive the occupation. The germination of these seeds, subsequently, would radically define the parameters of the African struggle for the re-establishment of its sovereignty. Secondly, Achebe counters the conquest literature of the aftermath. The latter achievement cannot be exaggerated because in its totalising quest to “rationalise” or indeed “justify” the conquest and its devastating aftermath, the European World’s pervading historiography on Africa (in the arts, science, technology, philosophy, etc., etc) expunges or at best marginalises the creative and driving force of the African humanity in the historical process. The apogee of this project was of course the historiography’s construction of the fallacy that “Africa had no history”, epitomised most outrageously in what Basil Davison has categorised, quite succinctly, as “Hegel’s nonsense” of the 19th century. Achebe’s own careful choice of the wordings of the title of the District Commissioner’s book of conquest at the very end of his novel is a deft reference to this development. Yet, this choice of the towering title of imperial self-conceit was in itself a devastating parody of eurocentric ahistoricity. Even though it appears that the District Commissioner has the last word in Things Fall Apart with the commanding space of the title of his text, the groundings of his conquest architecture of control and consolidation are at best tenuous. So, contrary to the bombastic title of an anthropological treatise, the future of history is not in fact dependent on the District Commissioner nor his nascent occupation regime nor indeed the headquarters of his imperial state back home in Europe. Unquestionably, Umuofia, Africa, still lays claims to this initiative, despite the conquest of the era.

A number of critics have stated over the years that Achebe’s desire to become a writer acquired some urgency following his confrontation with Joyce Carey’s Mister Johnson, whilst at university in the 1950s. It should be recalled that Time magazine had in October 1952 described Mr Johnson most ecstatically as the “best novel ever written about Africa”. There is evidence of Mr Johnson’s impact on Achebe’s mission but this is far less sentimental than some have observed. It is the case that the importance of Mr Johnson, for Achebe, was that the underlying philosophical and historical assumptions of the novel and the techniques employed in its execution, were part of the composite portrait of the eurocentric conquest historiography on Africa that had written Africa out of the reckoning of events. This was the picture that was encapsulated in the endless shelf-rows of literature-of-African agency-denial that made up the curriculum that Achebe had to work through as an African undergraduate in a university college located in Africa. As exemplified in Mr Johnson, for instance, Lyn Innes has correctly noted that Joyce Cary’s “European characters belong to history; their psychology is understood in terms of cause and effect, and they learn and change within specific social and historical situations.” “In contrast,” Innes continues, “African characters like … Mister Johnson do not learn; they behave in certain ways because they are what they are, and ultimately they remain true to their assigned racial characteristics” (emphasis added). For Achebe, it was not just the “infuriating principal character, Johnson,” that he found objectionable in Mr Johnson but a “certain undertow of uncharitableness just below the surface on which [Cary’s] narrative moves and from where, at the slightest chance, a contagion of distaste, hatred and mockery breaks through to poison his tale.” Achebe recalls the occasion of a party in the novel that Johnson gives for his friends which is described in the following grisly prose by Carey: “the demonic appearance of the naked dancers, grinning, shrieking, scowling, or with faces which seemed entirely dislocated, senseless and unhuman, like twisted bags of lard, or burst bladder.” Achebe’s response is quick and to the point: “Haven’t I encountered this crowd before? Perhaps, in Heart of Darkness, in the Congo. But Cary is writing about my home … isn’t it? In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like.” Talking of Heart of Darkness, Achebe would later in 1977 publish his celebrated African-centred reading of Conrad’s text under the caption “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”.

Re-entry

“Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond.” In contrast to the extant literature-of-African agency-denial, Things Fall Apart begins with this uncompromisingly evocative statement, proclaiming the re-entry of the African subject of history in this long-overdue reconstructionary narrative. No more are we stuck with the mummifying escapades of the lobotomised creature called Mr Johnson. Instead, we begin to interact with an African who operates from a clearly recognisable centre of their choosing – we have no difficulty whatsoever in recognising and understanding Okonkwo and his land and his people and his humanity. Indeed by the end of chapter one, which is just four pages long, the author establishes a discerning profile of Okonkwo: his upbringing and family ties, his friends, his achievements, and a fascinating overview of the juridico-spiritual and political economic foundation of Umuofia. The rags-to-riches triumph of Okonkwo’s phenomenal personal struggle to succeed in life, despite his modest background, offers a breathtaking insight into the sociology of Igbo meritocratic society; but we also engage with the weaknesses and the intricate balances between the conflicting, and at times contradictory, frames and processes of everyday life that Umuofia has had to construct, such is Achebe’s unwillingness to project a merely romantic canvass of Igbo pre-conquest history. Achebe’s is a remarkably straightforward, disarmingly effortless and a non-convoluted enterprise. It shows that the African story of restoration does not require some pretentiously nor ornamentally turgid sociological or narratory oeuvre. As Robert Wren has cogently observed, “much of Achebe’s fiction, like the greatest fiction, has something of the compression of poetry, which says much in little.” At the end, Okonkwo, the valiant general of his people’s past wars, loses the opportunity to lead his people in the historic resistance battle against the impending European invasion of Umuofia which he has long relished. He commits suicide when he is convinced that “Umuofia would not go to war.”

Kole Omotoso has argued that unlike the Yoruba who view the British invasion of their country as a “mere episode, a catalytic episode only”, the Igbo see the British invasion of Igboland as a confrontation with a “strange Difference, an Other, a Contradiction, an encounter that can only be negative in terms of the effects on Igbo culture and its ways.” Umuofia surely appreciates the grave implications of this archetypal “clash of civilisations” that Omotoso depicts. The Okonkwo-Obierika studied deliberations on the horrific massacre of the people of Abame by an ever-expanding European invading military force and the impact of the event on Umuofia’s national sovereignty is highly illustrative. Indeed, the continuing independence of Umuofia is threatened by this invasion. This gives rise to calls for a steadfast defence of their homeland by its people, despite the military superiority and the ruthlessness of the enemy it faces as historian Obierika is keen to stress: “Have you not heard how the white man wiped out Abame?” He adds, ominously, “They would go to Umuru and bring the soldiers, and we [Umuofia] would be like Abame.” For Okonkwo, the obvious overwhelming military odds against Umuofia notwithstanding, the country must defend its sovereignty resolutely: “We must fight these men and drive them from our land.”

Okonkwo’s forthright response to Obierika’s apparent reticence about how to respond to the impending British invasion of Umuofia shows clearly that years of enforced exile from home have not in any way diminished the hero’s patriotic instincts and distinctions. Okonkwo’s position on this subject has been the source and focus of criticism by some scholars who think it is reckless, given the preponderant military superiority of the invader; nothing else. Ernest Emenyonu notes: “He [Okonkwo] stubbornly clings to his delusion, does not admit defeat until ‘tied to a stake’.” Solomon Iyasere agrees: “Compelled by his own uncompromising attitudes ... Okonkwo turns to the only means he knows – violence – to solve the problem.” Kalu Ogbaa writes: “Okonkwo seizes the call to arms as a welcome opportunity to demonstrate once more his patriotism and valor without discretion. He understands how to ‘root out this evil’ without regard to the danger ...” Richard Priebe reflects on what he terms “Okonkwo’s unbending will” which “inexorabl[y]” leads to the “tragic end” of the hero’s suicide. In the same breadth, Abdul JanMohamed feels that Okonkwo is “blind to the virtues of flexibility and accommodation” which leads the latter to “impulsively” kill the envoy sent by the invading European-led army (positioned outside Umuofia at the time) to disband a crucial mass meeting of Umuofia ohanaeze (people and leadership) called to discuss the grave emergency of the impending European invasion. This subject of “inflexibility” in Okonkwo’s response to the emergency at stake is a theme pursued by Abiola Irele who describes it as a “tragic flaw” in the hero’s character which he also reckons is a “reflection of his [Okonkwo’s] society.” Gareth Griffiths, finally, is particularly contemptuous of Okonkwo’s unquestioning disposition to defend his homeland from the European aggression: “Okonkwo is destroyed because he performs more than is expected of him, and sacrifices his personal life to an exaggerated, even pathological, sense of communal duty.” Yet, bound by the sole preoccupation on the balance of military forces of both sides, these critics lose sight of the salient features in history that characterise the defence by peoples, any peoples, of their homeland from external invasion whatever the odds – even when this defence might appear “too obviously suicidal”, to quote from C.L.R. James. As history has shown, each and every invader of some other person’s country is potentially militarily superior to their would-be victims. But the latter’s response to the event is the defence of the homeland under attack despite the odds and even when these are known by the defenders as overwhelming.

Genocide

The Abame massacre and those Umuofia debates on its aftermath crucially map the spectrum of milestones that would define the trajectory of the British 100 years’ war against the Igbo and the variegated frames of Igbo resistance to it. This war culminates in the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide when 3.1 million Igbo, a quarter of the nation’s population then, were murdered. This was the foundational genocide of post-European conquest Africa, effectively inaugurating the age of pestilence which, by and large, characterises contemporary Africa. Soon, the killing fields from Igboland expanded almost inexorably across Africa as the following haunting reminders of slaughter during the epoch illustrate: Uganda, Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, southern Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Sudan. Twelve million were killed in these 13 countries. Added to the 3.1 million Igbo dead, Africa has had a gruesome tally of 15.1 million people murdered by its genocide states in the past 42 years.

Britain was a central operative, along with the Nigerian state, in the planning and execution of the Igbo genocide right from its outset in 1966 to its concluding phases in 1969/1970. It was Britain’s “punishment” of the Igbo for its audacious lead of the struggle for the freeing of Nigeria from the British occupation that began in the 1940s. Twice during that struggle, the occupation regime had casually watched two organised pogroms against the Igbo in north Nigeria – in 1945 and 1953. These murders, which also included the looting and destruction of tens of thousands of pounds worth of Igbo property and businesses, were carried out by pro-British political forces in the region who were opposed to the restoration of African independence but who Britain would hand over supreme political power of the country on the eve of its so-called departure from Nigeria in 1960. The pogroms were clearly dress rehearsals for the subsequent genocide.

Without British complicity, it was highly unlikely that the Igbo genocide would have been embarked upon in its initial phase by the Nigerian state with such unrelenting stretch and consequences between May and October 1966. Without the massive arms support that Nigeria received from Britain especially, it was highly improbable that Nigeria would have been in the military position to pursue its second phase of the genocide – namely, the invasion of Igboland – between July 1967 and January 1970. Harold Wilson, the British prime minister at the time, was adamant, as the slaughtering worsened, that he “would accept” the death of “a half a million” Igbo “if that was what it took” the Nigerian genocidists on the ground to accomplish their ghastly mission. Such was the grotesquely expressed diminution of African life made by a supposedly leading politician of the world of the 1960s – barely 20 years after the deplorable perpetration of the Jewish genocide. As the final tally of its murder of the Igbo demonstrates, Nigeria probably had the perverse satisfaction of having performed far in excess of Wilson’s grim target … In the wake of the genocide, Igboland remains occupied by the Nigerian military. Several thousands more Igbo have been murdered in Nigeria since 1970 by the state and its varied agents, some who now organise unrelentessly from the platform and under the banner of religious fundamentalism. Forty years on, Nigeria has imposed on the Igbo and Igboland the most dehumanising raft of socioeconomic package of non-development and deprivation not seen anywhere else in Africa. In essence, the genocide savagely goes on …

Renaissance

Finally, we must pose the following question: When will Umuofia re-establish its lost sovereignty? The restoration of Umuofia freedom is arguably the most eagerly awaited development in Africa of the new century. The precise formulations and circumstances of such an outcome, with consequences of immense epochal proportions, are impossible to predict or indeed prescribe. Interestingly, historian Obierika reminisces on the future of Umuofia, albeit cryptically, in those solemn moments as he reassures the world of the great life of his fallen dear friend. One component in this seeming puzzle is however certain. In one of those fascinating but intriguing quirks that occurs in the course of history, the restoration of freedom, for Umuofia, will, again, amount to things falling apart. Umuofia’s current geopolitical status, as everybody knows, is completely untenable for its people. This second time around, unlike the cataclysmic events of 140 years ago, a far-reaching social transformation of the nation is at once distinctly inevitable and historically liberatory. Umuofia’s restoration of sovereignty will herald the much-sought process across Africa for the dismantling of the constellation of genocide and kakistocratic states embedded in post-European conquest Africa of which Umuofia is presently forced in. The African renaissance would have begun in earnest.


Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is a leading scholar of the Igbo genocide, 1966-1970. His books include Conflict and Intervention in Africa (Macmillan, 1990), Africa 2001: The State, Human Rights and the People (IIAR, 1993), African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe (African Renaissance, 2001) and Biafra Revisited (African Renaissance, 2006)