ZANZIBAR ON FIRE FOR EAST AFRICA

Abdulrazak Gunhar’s Prize for Literature is a notable addition to Africa’s Nobel Laureates, writes Okello Oculi

In 1964, a political convulsion in Zanzibar created ripples of change which rolled into giving Eastern and Southern Africa their Second female president. Following the death in office of John Magufuli, his Vice-President Samia Hassan Suluhu became the first female President of Tanzania.

Several months later, Sweden’s Nobel Committee announced Abdulrazak Gunhar as 2021 winner of its Prize for Literature. Tanzania matched Nigeria and South Africa in producing a Laureate.

In 1964, a group trained in Cuba removed from power a Persian/Arab clove plantocracy in Zanzibar and Pemba islands. As a front for the revolution they used an immigrant carpenter, John Okello, from Uganda. Presidents Jomo Kenyatta (of Kenya), Milton Obote (of Uganda) and Julius Nyerere (of Tanzania) quickly lured him out.

NATO’s diplomatic pressure urged Nyerere to swallow Zanzibar into a political union and block the risk of Zanzibar becoming a military base for Cuba and: Communist Soviet Union. Tanzania (a combination of Tanganyika and Zanzibar) was born. Half a century later, its ruling party: ‘’Chama Cha Mapinduzi (Party of Revolution’) elected Zanzibar-born Suluhu as Vice President.

At the age of 18 years Gunhar migrated to Britain, earned a doctorate degree and a professorship of Post-Colonial African Literature at Kent University. Although he travelled to Tanzania and saw his father, the old man died before his son’s moment of literary heroism to a region which once drenched its soil with the blood of his kin.

His Tanzanian identity has a tradition of literature sung in Swahili language; while Mwalimu Nyerere translated into Swahili Shakespeare’s ‘’JULIUS CEASER’’ and ‘’MERCHANT OF VENICE’’. The works are to warn Tanzanians against leaders engaging in violent treason; and becoming greedy exploiters. Swahili is spoken countrywide.

Ugandan writer Okot p’Bitek pioneered literary work in vernacular with ‘’LAK TAR’’(White Teeth of a prostitute, in ACHOLI). His subsequent research for a doctoral degree from Oxford University gave birth to ‘’SONG OF LAWINO’’. It gained a storm of popularity; challenging the perception of ‘’POETRY’’ as a literary form created only in written form. SONGS by women all across Africa are literary works of poetry.

While President Jomo Kenyatta awarded Okot a prize for his work ‘’SONG OF PRISONER’’, the novelist, James Ngugi (later transformed into Ngugu Wa Thiongo, rubbed Kenyatta the wrong way with celebrating heroes of MAU MAU guerrilla war to win back land from colonial oppressors. Daniel arap Moi, as Kenyatta’s minister of security, later carried into his presidency the habit of hunting Ngugi into exile and vicious imprisonment.

During President Mwai Kibaki’s rule, officials physically attacked Ngugi and his second wife inside a Nairobi hotel. This was surpassed under Idi AMIN when a female dramatist, ELVANIYA NAMUKWAYA ZIRIMU, was appointed Ambassador to Ghana but murdered as she toured Uganda before travelling out. Her husband, Pio Zirimu, had staged a play critical of dictators at FESYCA 1976.

Ngugi wa Thiongo earned hostility among Kenya’s British immigrant community by successfully campaigning for the University of Nairobi to change the ‘’Department of ENGLISH’ into the ‘’Department of LITERATURE’’, thereby, including literary works by Caribbean, African-American, West African, Japanese and Russian writers.

This ‘’DECOLONISATION’’ of Literature integrated ‘MARXISM’’ into his novels notably: ‘’Devil on the Cross’’; and ‘’WIZARD of the Crow’’ . Moi’s regime was alarmed by his working jointly with a local community to develop the text of drama plays and acting them to the communities.

The approach brought up criticism by peasants of local and national leaders. These ‘’Community Theatre’ projects were considered to be artistic ‘’SUBVERSION and treason’’.

From villagers using their Kikuyu language for drama, Ngugi evolved into an advocate for literature written and sung in African languages of local communities. His first wife translated his writing from English into KIKUYU. He wrote brilliant essays linking mental freedom to thinking and writing in ‘’MOTHER TONGUES’’, and teaching Africa’s children and youth with those weapons.

In 1962 Chinua Achebe attended a Conference on African Literature at MAKERERE University College where Ngugi was a student in the Department of English. He became Ngugi’s hero. It took over six decades to turn Achebe around to embracing Ngugi’s campaign for AFRICAN LITERATURE written in AFRICAN LANGUAGES.

Despite his rich record of struggle and creative investments in promoting Literature, Ngugi lost in the lobbying that goes on around the Nobel Prize for Literature. As professors of African Literature in England and the United States of America, respectively, Ngugi and Gunhar had powerful academic voices to lobby NOBEL’S referees for the prize.

Moreover, in 2014, Dangote Foundation announced a plan to distribute Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s novels to schools all across Africa. Perhaps the entry of Marxism into his rich struggle and fecundity for literary culture splashed faces of NOBEL’S Committee members without melodies from waves on Indian Ocean waters.