Of writers and Politics in Africa

BY ERIC SINDABI
According to literary critics, literature is all about Man and his environment. It is to this note therefore that one could easily come across political and related themes in most African creative works or normally referred to as African Literature.
The critics say that to write in Africa, one has to tackle three aspects of the continent including history, identity, and destiny. Since the political independence the African social –economic environment has been pre-occupied with power struggle and its distribution. Here, capitalism, socialism, imperialism and neo-colonialism have taken a centre stage in many forms.
Hence to write in Africa, one cannot side step these issues. Politics is all about life on a day to day scope in society. Politics indeed shape the destiny and nature of livelihoods of a people as it involves power and society.
Seasoned African creative writers like Prof.Chinua Achebe,Prof.Ngugi wa Nthiongo’,Christopher Okigbo,Dennis Brutus,Peter Abrahams,Alex Laguma,Ken Sarowiwa among others,have all tackled political themes in their creative works.
The writers have transcended the level of politics per se and even getting deeper into the minds of the culprit of post –colonial Africa; the illiterate, the un-employed, the urchin, the marginalized, the destitute and the peasant.
Chinua Achebe for example in A man of the people is disillusioned with how African independence took a degenerative process. Freedom became corruption while Democracy became Autocracy and dictatorship because of political immaturity.
In A walk in the night, Alex Laguma reflects the ills of the political apartheid system as it were in South Africa, while in the Trial of Dedan Kimathi Ngugi wa Ntiongo’ clearly puts across that to be a scribe means being with the people, being their voice, speaking out the silent cry of the masses and talking on behalf of the voice less.
Critics thus hint that it is to this basis that most post independence governments have always been so openly uncomfortable with seasoned writers. Their works inflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. These works dramatically depict the day to day experiences of the post colonial African masses in the hands of their governments or those in power.
Corruption, injustice, insecurity, poverty and hunger, bad laws and marginalization.....name it, all characterize the citizen of Africa.
African government leaders who hold on to power feel threatened by the activities of seasoned writers because they expose their ills and enlighten the society.
These writers have undergone un told sufferings in the hands of those in power for their noble creativity.
Many have tasted jail and lived in exile and some lost their lives for their works that depict the plight of the common man in the African society. Kenya has not been left behind in this. For example the presumed father of serious literature in Kenya Prof.Ngugi wa Nthiongo’ has had difficult times trying to soldier on with his creative works during the Kenyatta and Moi regimes. Indeed the author still lives in exile to date. Recently the writer and his family during a visit in the country were brutally assaulted by people who were believed to be politically linked out to intimidate the literature icon and force him out of the country.
Critics however categorically hint that literature transcends Geographical boundaries…that from our rural Kenyan villages, we can be able to access information about Kenya by someone in New York. Intimidating writers is not really killing their intelligentsia.