In the past, the average Lagosian would have had precious little interest in Icelandic affairs, but this is May 2010, and the world is what it is.

If frigid Iceland can keep it’s temper in check – and desist from volcanic eruptions for the next few days – I should be able to keep an appointment with books in Victoria Island.

And in gratitude to Iceland I shall learn to pronounce ‘Eyjafjallajökull volcano’… I did get a pronounciation lesson from a friendly lady from the Icelandic embassy (who was standing in for her delegation during the London Book Fair) but I forgot everything within five steps of her stall…

Anyhow, here’s the lowdown from organiser, Igoni Barrett:

“The BookJam @ Silverbird” is a monthly event that consists of book readings, discussions, musical performances, poetry recitals, book signings and a raffle draw. At each edition of the BookJam you have the chance to meet and discuss with some of our finest writers—and you might win a prize too, if you buy their books.

The BookJam is hosted by A. Igoni Barrett and the Silverbird Lifestyle store.

The guest writers for BookJam 4 are:

SADE ADENIRAN is a graduate of the University of Plymouth and also spent time as an exchange student at the University of Massachusetts. She has written various pieces for theatre and her work has been performed at the Lyric, the Bush and the Riverside Studios. She won the “Best First Book Prize” (Africa Region) in the 2008 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for her debut novel Imagine This. She lives and works in London, and is working on her second novel.

CHUMA NWOKOLO is a lawyer and writer. He was writer-in-residence of the Ashmolean Museum and chair of Leys Newspapers, Oxford. He is the publisher of African Writing magazine. He has written short stories, novels and poetry. His story, Diary of a Dead African, was chosen by La Internazionale as one of the 3 best stories worldwide in 2003. He lives in the UK.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE is the author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and The Thing Around Your Neck. Purple Hibiscus won the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) and Half of a Yellow Sun won the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her latest book, The Thing Around Your Neck, was shortlisted for the 2009 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize. She lives between Nigeria and the US.

BINYAVANGA WAINAINA is the founding editor of the literary magazine Kwani?. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002 for his story Discovering Home. He is currently a Director at The Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, Granta and National Geographic.

Admission to the BookJam is free. Members of the audience who purchase books during the event stand a chance to win a special prize in the BookJam raffle draw. Any questions about the BookJam should be emailed to auggustmedia@gmail.com

Share on Facebook

They would also have made a case for annual sabbaticals for long-term occupants of high office. There may be no pressing need to sack a long-lived exec, but an extended vacation (especially one in a low-pressured job on Everyday Street which can make them human again) may well reawaken the passion that makes high office a vehicle for a vision, rather than just another high-calibre job.

In the end, democracy is a great evolutionary junction for a society to straddle – even the Westminster variant of it. But one quickly sees the limitation of this model when elections are in prospect (which, for a politician, is all the time) when it becomes impossible to get a straight answer to the most obvious questions.

Q. Are tax rises inevitable?
A: As I said earlier, the objective of our party is to deliver excellent frontline services, to get the NHS fully staffed, the Police fully equipped, and the Army supplied with helicopters for the next war. Compare that with what our opponents are offering…

Yet the most damaging impact of the Westminster model – at least, as practised in the last few parliaments is how vast resources can be squandered simply to create the sensation of progress. Many times in the last 13 years, ‘boring’ should have been a positive characteristic to aim for, in a national budget. (To take a householder’s budget for comparison, one or two ‘exciting’ budgets over the summer months should just about balance ten sensibly ‘boring’ budgets over the year.) In many scenarios it would have been advisable to leave an institution with a pat on the back, a reprimand or a tiny tweak. But ‘boring’ appears too similar to ‘tired’ and does not catch the eye – or win votes in elections. And a spanking new quango gives a better impression of a kinetic government than the Victorian restraint that finesses fit-for-purpose institutions from one decade to the other.

Which points to an unfortunate contradiction in the fabric of democracy: ruling wisely will not necessarily get you re-elected, and wise policies will often be recognised only in hindsight.

And the Labour government, perhaps deprived of an ideological envelope, perhaps denied an overarching vision, have sometimes employed the chancellor’s chequebook as a slush fund to retain the affections of the fickle American lover, at other times to woo the positively adulterous electorate.

If Labour loses this election – and God knows there are pundits and polls enough who call it against them – it should be clear that it may have been goaded into bankrupting the coffers of state and the goodwill of party by skilled parliamentary hecklers. Democracy is not too efficient, true, although it is better by far than most alternative forms of government. It takes true leadership to rise above the baiting that goes with the dispatch box, and to refrain from gilding the budget, even when the electorate is throwing a tantrum at the polls. This is a leadership trait that is in critical demand, whether in democracies, theocracies, or dictatorships.

Share on Facebook

Interesting the way this breaks down: via fatter dividends, UK shareholders get the fiscal benefits of a decade of the illicit business, and, following the bust, the UK government gets over £8 million in fines from the prosecution.

This is of course part of a growing trend of deficit-busting prosecutions that enlarge the coffers of the West. Not too long ago, the US treasury earned over $600 miliion in fines on the back of corrupt practices in Nigeria in the Halliburton cases. It is almost a new windfall tax on business that corrupt companies are lining up to pay.

Corruption-based causes of action seem to be a new, valuable, ‘natural’ resource that is sadly, prevalent in the South. Indonesia – and other cess-pools of corruption – really must get their act together. If they are to get anything from this double-edged, intangible asset – beyond bugetary holes and the environmental degradation from tons of poisonous lead, they must learn to launch their own pre-emptive prosecutions…

Share on Facebook

The text of a proposed law is not the sexiest subject for a blog, but some laws are capable of a transformative impact on society and they should interest all of us. An example of a law that can completely transform society is one that ends Apartheid.

My proposal for a ‘magic bullet law’ aimed at endemic corruption is potentially transformative not just of Nigerian or even African society. This draft law is scripted for Nigeria, but it is relevant to any society whose public institutions are still nascent.

Why this is a Great Idea
is explained in some detail in my December ’08 and December ’07 blogs. Do read them for a little background.

The corporation is far older than the modern African state. Companies have sold and bought everything from 17th century slaves to 21st century shirts. The borders of many African states were carved by companies. Much of Southern Nigeria was originally ruled by the Royal Niger Company, which sold its ‘interests’ to Britain in 1900 to establish the protectorate of Southern Nigeria. Similar stories will link many historical companies – the German West African Company, The Mozambique Company, The British South African Company, and the Serria Leone Company, for instance  -  to the countries where they operated.

This history is important because the nascent democratic and administrative institutions of many modern states are not proof against the well-run modern African company, how much more the modern multinational corporation.

Many a decent fellow, of any nationality, will succumb to the temptation of a million dollar bribe. (This much we can glean from the ease with which dodgy ’419 ‘ proposals attracted takers from all over the world.) Thousands of companies can also afford to pay million dollar bribes, if the deal is right. However, while a Nigerien, Nigerian or Togolese colonel may conceivably take a bribe to overthrow his government, no British or French colonel is likely to receive, or accept, such an offer, for obvious reasons. Because African institutions are still relatively unstable, Africans have to devise peculiarly African solutions to a peculiarly African problem.

There are a few reasons why mere fines are inadequate to address corporate corruption. Halliburton may have been fined close to $US600 million dollars for giving US$180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials, but the fines went to enrich the US treasury, not the Nigerian people or government who were the victims of the corruption.  And the loot itself always goes abroad. Besides, although the fines were reckoned in millions of dollars, the contract for which the bribes were given  were reckoned in billions of dollars. It is also the case that in corrupt societies, only the tip of the iceberg is ever exposed. So companies need never stop the practice. They only need to get smarter.

What is this Magic Bullet?
All those calculations change with this proposed law. The concept is simple enough: companies that are guilty of serious corruption should be liquidated. It is the equivalent of capital punishment for Enterprise. It spells Zero Tolerance.

It does not  work like ‘magic’, and it still requires courageous enforcement. The draft itself is a template, neither will it address every facet of serious corruption. Yet, it can be the critical component in an anti-corruption toolkit. Once this law is on the statute books, the average multi-national would rather shut down its operations in Nigeria than deliver a ministerial kick-back. No chief executive would risk a 100 billion dollar share capital to secure a 1 billion dollar contract. Shareholders are less likely to pressure chief executives to deliver obscene dividends ‘whatever it takes’ if they are dicing with expropriation.

That is exactly the spirit we need all over Africa.

The Risk of Capital Flight
The instinctual objection from Corruption Inc is that such a law will lead to capital flight from investors who are afraid of arbitrary expropriation. Most countries should of course welcome the departure of companies willing to risk conflict and war, but unable to commit categorically to probity. This will make way for the arrival of ethical companies which have for decades been unable to operate in our societies.

It is important to emphasise that it is not every corporate act of corruption that will activate the liquidation process. A company driver who pays a ten dollar bribe to a traffic policeman will not trigger the liquidation of a billion dollar corporation. There is a Sphere of Governance, and there is a threshold for the bribe. The Magic Bullet Law is not aimed at petty corruption, although its effects will certainly filter down with time.

Time to Break a 500-year Curse
The Scramble for Africa continues apace. It is  now the responsibilty of our generation to put on the brakes. This Magic Bullet Law is one way to do it. All we stand to lose are our exploiters. As we speak, a constitutional amendment is rocketing through Nigeria’s National Assembly. Clearly, when Legislators are properly motivated, they do legislate. Of course there is not much incentive for beneficiaries of a broken system to fix it. That is where WE come in. A Corporate Corruption Bill is soon heading for the National Assembly. Please add your thoughts, suggestions and comments below. If you agree that this magic bullet should be fired, please send your name, address and country of interest – for now – along with any special skills you may want to contribute to this campaign here.

And do spread the word. We will contact you in the days and weeks ahead.

—————————————————

Read the Draft Law here

Share on Facebook

Diana Quick's A Tug on the Thread

The most fascinating people in our lives are often our own ‘boring’ parents. Actress Diana Quick made this discovery only after her father died, back when she was still a student in Oxford University.

I met her back in 2008 during the programming of Oxford Playhouse’s  70^th Anniversary. Soon after that, I read her family memoir, A Tug on the Thread, which was in part inspired by her father’s death. She had thought she knew her old man well enough, but he had requested a full-blown Catholic requiem service and she’d had no idea that he had any Catholic roots. Writes Diana,

When  I really thought about his background I realised that all I knew for sure was that he had been born and raised in India and had come to England to be a student at Guy’s Hospital a few years before the Second World War. p.12

That led Diana into the fascinating realm of the ancestor sleuths. A season spent in libraries and registries eventually took her from England through Pakistan into India, turning up a part-Indian ancestry and a great-great- grandfather who died in the Indian mutiny. In this book, Diana combines her own biography with a riveting family history. She unravels a family feud, and the reason why she had always been drawn to the role of the exotic outsider in her acting career. The book evokes another time and place, and the sense of the personal cost, even to the colonists, of establishing an empire halfway across the world,

There was, at best, five months in which to find a partner, and for those men who had had to get leave to travel hundreds of miles from their postings, find a wife, get married and return to work, it was a much shorter period, perhaps just five to ten days. A frenzied marriage market ensured, conducted at balls and soirees and picnics and riding expeditions. It was a hysterical time, in the true sense of the word. p.72

Having watched a recent production of Racine’s Phedre, (http://blogs.african-writing.com/chuma/?p=376) it was also interesting to read about her experience, playing Aricia (p.140-7) in a Harrison version of the play and making the connections between the Indianized character and her own real life.

I took this book along on my recent visit for my father’s funeral. Ogbueshi Chukwuma Nwokolo was just as fascinating in his own way. On his deathbed he opened up for the first time to my brother, Kanwulia, about his experiences during the civil war in which he was shot and wounded during the Asaba genocide. Much later, on a visit to Asaba’s Ogwa Ukwu, I saw a faded black and white photograph of my father’s grandfather, Obi Nwokolo, who was the Asagba of Asaba back then. It was a pretty poor image, but I had not realised there were any surviving photographs of this particular forebear. I stood there awhile, feeling, ever so faintly, the tug of the ancestral cord, and then I went on to answer the summons at the traditional court.

There is probably a story, or a memoir here. Time will tell. For the present, Diana’s will do.

Share on Facebook

As a fringe party, the BNP is not totally irrelevant in British politics. From some 500 votes in the 1987 elections, it has gone up to attracting about 190,000 nationwide in 2005. It won some 5% of the votes in the London-wide vote in 2008 and won a seat in the hallowed London Assembly – with about 56 councillors nationwide.

The white-only membership of the BNP is at the heart of its identity. Its current constitution defines its potential membership with the particularity of an apartheid byelaw:

2) The indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of ‘Indigenous Caucasian’ consists of members of: i) the Anglo-Saxon folk community; ii) the Celtic Scottish folk community; iii) the Scots-Northern Irish folk community; iv) the Celtic Welsh folk community; v) the Celtic Irish folk community; vi) the Celtic Cornish folk community; vii) the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic folk community; viii) the Celtic-Norse folk community; ix) the Anglo-Saxon-Norse folk community; x) the Anglo-Saxon Indigenous European folk community; xi) members of these ethnic groups which reside either within or outside Europe but ethnically derive from them.

And yet the compulsion to open up the party membership will hardly transform the party. There can’t be that many Black and Asian masochists pining for the opportunity to spend their free weekends in the midst of angry ethno-exclusivists debating how best to run them out of town. In any case, the road that leads to full BNP membership is fraught. There are those two years of funding the party before earning the right to vote at BNP meetings, and the full five years before qualifying to challenge Nick Griffin for his job as party chairman.

So, to get its token black members (and earn a pass-mark from its nemesis, the Equality and Human Rights Council,) the BNP might actually have to make an effort. That is why I suggest the following advertising copy:

YOUR PARTY NEEDS YOU NOW!!!

Are you a victim? Have you been swamped by alien immigrants? Have you lost your land, your homes and your benefits? Have your women been seduced and married by alien races? Have you become a second class citizen in your own land? Is your very culture now threatened by foreign cultures from across the seas? Don’t be a silent victim! Join us today!!

These are some of the sentiments that the BNP taps into across Britain, but if he uses this copy, Griffin will find that the words have such resonance across the world that, for every ten new membership enquiries he receives, only a couple will be from his ethnically pure Caucasian demographic. – But if he embraces his new members, and campaigns effectively for them, he will find a lot more ‘ethnically pure’ Britons heading home to balance out his immigration worries over the ‘browning’ of Britain.

Share on Facebook

145. Whenever the President transmits to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary such functions shall be discharged by the Vice-President as Acting President.

Now, no declaration, written or otherwise, was transmitted by Yar Adua to the lawmakers. Indeed the president has ‘ignored’ the Assembly’s 12th January resolution requesting such a declaration. The clear implications are that Yar Adua  is either incapable of making declarations or well beyond caring. Instead, the senate has interpreted a radio interview granted to the BBC recently by a enfeebled voice that claimed to be the President (who promised to return as soon as his doctors discharged him) as a written declaration for the purpose of the constitution. In the words of David Mark, Senate President:

Viewed from the ordinary reading of section 145, the Senate came to the conclusion that the President, through his declaration, transmitted worldwide on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), has furnished the parliament with irrefutable proof that he is on medical vacation in Saudi Arabia and thereby complied with the provisions of the section,”

To explain why an unverified voice on the radio was equated with a written declaration, David Mark further explained:

“A rigid and inflexible interpretation will not only stifle the spirit and intendment of the Constitution, but will also affront the doctrine of necessity.
“The doctrine of necessity requires that we do what is necessary when faced with a situation that was not contemplated by the constitution.”

The ten naira question of course was why it was necessary concoct a ‘doctrine of necessity’ that was totally unnecessary in the first place. The constitution has  a perfectly reasonable and workable provision that fits the present situation like a glove. It is S. 146:

146. (1) The Vice-President shall hold the office of President if the office of President becomes vacant by reason of death or resignation, impeachment, permanent incapacity or the removal of the President from office for any other reason in accordance with section 143 of this Constitution.

Of course, to activate s.146, the lawmakers would have had to despatch a medical team to assess whether or not the 78 day absence of the president was a symptom of a permanent incapacity. The lawmakers lacked the moral courage to take this step. This is puzzling. It does not require a huge amount of courage to order the medical examination of a president who has been unable to direct state business for close to three months. (To indulge a moment of conspiratorial madness, for all we know the Nigerian president may be the victim of a kidnap plot, no member or agency of government having seen him for 80 days.)

Perhaps in the judgement of the Law makers, the President’s kinsmen and clansmen would have rioted, were the Emperor declared to be in fact naked. Yet, a medical panel cannot kill, or permanently incapacitate a president. It can only force a truth into the public realm where it belongs, for Yar Adua’s oath of office had made the state of his health a matter of fundamental public importance.

This constitutional shenanigan suggests that in the estimation of the lawmakers, Nigeria cannot survive the truth. That is a lie. Nigeria will not burn, unless the usual political mafias pour the petrol and stoke the fires. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was not drafted to save the blushes of a Musa Yar Adua or the coterie of beneficiaries that sup in his name. There may come a time when sagacious senatorial flair can pull a doctrine of necessity from the spirit of the constitution to save Nigeria from the fires of hell. That time has not come. The cries from Yar Adua’s home state are the same as the cries from everywhere else in Nigeria: for food and jobs, for electricity and roads, for good governance.

The leadership has short-changed us. By dodging the bullet of s. 146, the lawmakers have steered Nigeria into a fusilade:

1. The appointment of the Acting Vice President is illegal. It may be politically expedient, but it is fundamentally flawed. This is a source of further legal and political logjams. In whose favour will the constitution be fiddled with, next? Next time, merely complying with the constitution will cause a crisis.
2. Because Goodluck is merely an ‘Acting President’, unless Yar Adua returns, there will be no understudy of  a Vice President for the life of this government. If Goodluck Jonathan had become substantive President under s.146, he could have appointed a vice president immediately. As it is, there is no constitutional provision for an ‘Acting Vice President’ to an ‘Acting President’. This is a major administrative vacuum in the heart of the Presidency that opens the door to kitchen-mafias and the Distorted-first-lady-syndrome.  The David Mark Doctrine of Necessity is about to be called in for further rapes on the constitution.

There is of course a silver lining to this cloud, at least for the man at the centre of it all: if Acting President Goodluck (long may he reign) should suffer the ill luck of a heart attack during the rest of his tenure, the next in line for Acting Presidency will (in the absence of a Vice President) be none other than Senate President David Mark. – Unless of course a new political calculus throws up another doctrine of necessity to checkmate the strict consitutional provision…

WHAT TO DO
is embarassingly straight forward. A medical team should visit the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in his hospital ward in Saudi Arabia. Their report should inform the deliberations of the National Assembly. If the President is adjudged permanently incapacitated, the Vice President should be sworn in as substantive president. He should then appoint a vice president.

The heavens will not fall.

(Although some private ceilings may well cave in.)

Share on Facebook

The most recent edition of The New Yorker contains an Uwem Akpan short story, Baptizing the Gun. It is a vintage Akpan page-turner (or mouse-clicker, for I read it online). In the first line of the story, a woman traveling in a Lagos bus has her ear ripped by an earring thief. As the Reverend narrator of Akpan’s story continues down Lagos’ streets, it does not get much safer for the city’s intrepid commuters. Hair raising stuff.

The Denzel Washington film, Man on Fire, is set in a Mexico City where the children of the rich stay home from school for want of a good bodyguard, where uniformed policemen are members of the kidnap gangs that make the streets the kidnap capital of the world. Denzel Washington plays the American hero who saves the daughter of the American wife of a Mexican tycoon, Samuel (played by American actor, Marc Antony) by shooting and blowing up half the city. It is a 2004 film but I saw it yesterday. Hair raising stuff.

Stories like Baptizing the Gun and films like Man on Fire cannot take responsibility for shaping a people’s view of a city or a country. Few stories, or films, however great, can take that responsibility.

Stereotypes are shaped from relentless representations – often with the passive and active connivance of both the victims and perpetrators of the typecasting.

In any case, stories like Baptizing the Gun are strictly kindergarten stuff, compared with pieces like Grace Kim’s review of the horrendous Murami Book of Bones in AW8 (www.african-writing.com/eight/gracekim.htm). It would also be rich to pan The New Yorker for portraying Lagos negatively, when AW7 featured Crispin Oduobuk-MfonAbasi’s This is Lagos, a short story thriller of a criminal romp through Lagos that has since been translated into French and republished in a special African edition of The Courrier.

So this is not a campaign for the saccharine representation of Africana. It is about expanding our literary real estate into a robust space for reinterpreting ourselves and the world. That is the vision.

The same edition of AW that featured This is Lagos also featured a piece by composer Funsho Ogundipe on the process by which his mentor, the seminal Fela Kuti, created his musical masterpieces. The same edition that featured the horrific Murambi, Book of Bones, also featured the spell-binding nostalgia of Sudanese poet Abd AlHai and Isabella Morris’ Cario travelogue (it was a struggle though, finding light relief in that dark edition reminiscent of the War and Peace issue… ).

AJ Quinnel, author of the original novel, Man on Fire, set his book in Italy. Hollywood’s version of the story is set in Mexico and the young girl who is kidnapped, raped and murdered in the novel is not so violated in the film. She survives for a tear-jerking finale, while Denzel Washington’s Creasy pays the supreme price in another book/film reversal. You see, the ‘truth’ of literary texts has to negotiate with the editorial and filmic realities of Hollywood’s USA. None of this is necessarily tragedy. American media should revolve around the American Universe.  After all, Condé Nast’s magazine is called  The New Yorker, not The Nairobian.

Which is why African Writing needs your partnership to present a counter-balancing narrative that proceeds, not just from Africa’s writers, thinkers and artists but from an alternative mindset that does not centre the world in New York, Los Angeles or London. Life continues after the reportorial frenzies of the earthquakes and the famines have subsided and pushed Africa and her Diaspora back off the radar. It continues in between the summer editions of the special African issues in metropolitan magazines, and you can live that life on the pages of African Writing. You can do worse than get a piece of that real estate.  Click here to get a print subscription

Share on Facebook

A black notebook is discovered in a loo, 20,000 feet above Abuja. It contains political secrets so ‘explosive’ that its owner has to deny it. Here’s the first of ten recently discovered commandments designed for the aspiring politician.

The full PDF is available here and you would be mad not to read it all…

then again, reading it might just drive you mad, or worse… decisions, decisions… anyhow, here’s the first of ten commandment.

The Ten Commandments

No. 1

Don’t Hit the Big People. Hit the Little People

Ice Water’s problem was that he hit a Big Woman. That was a big mistake. To succeed in Politics, you must never hit the big people. Always focus on the little people, the Naija mugus. Although the little people are much more powerful, they don’t know it. So it is safer to scam them, as politicians have been doing for more than fifty years now. Hit a Nigerian big man once, and he will send an assassin to your house. Hit Nigeria’s little people from now till Jesus comes back and they will still be hailing you as their chief.

I know your second question:

Look, government is the biggest 419 business around. You have to build your own conduit pipe from the national budget to your clubhouse. You are right to be afraid of the anger of 140 million people. If they all get angry at the same time, you should be very sorry for yourself. It doesn’t take many hands to lynch a thief and it is a very dangerous thing to steal from a street of only twenty people, how much more from a country of 140 million people. But Nigerians can only talk. Believe you me, their anger finishes at the door of the beer parlour. If they ever riot, it will be to kill themselves. They will never rise against politicians. They are stupid. You are safe. Take it from me, I am talking with more than fifty years’ experience.

But the problem is how to become an elected politician, not so? Easy.

Commandment No. 2 (Clinching the Nomination) continues here

Share on Facebook

The current  issue of Granta magazine features an interview with Ngugi Wa Thiongo.

Ellah Allfrey takes the African-language-warrior through his forthcoming memoirs, Dreams in a Time of War. He talks about the phenomenon of the ‘concentration villages’ created by the dislocation of hundred of traditional villages by the colonists. Now, that’s a story I’d like to read.

But Ngugi never veers too far from his pet subject, the African language. Here, in a quote from the interview, he expresses his only reservation against young African writers:

‘I have not (so far  – I may be wrong) seen a young writer of the new generation who takes a positive stand for and on behalf of African languages.’

This is the Ngugi-Wa-Thiongo challenge for young African writers.

Yet, I’d like to throw Ngugi a challenge of his own: an important award in his name for a work of fiction published in a language indigenous to Africa [this should let out English, French, Portuguese...]. The first award could be made in two or three years to give publishers (and writers!) a headstart. African Writing will be glad to support this initiative. Perhaps Granta will too?

Because writers do not write in a vacuum, we need to create the environment to receive these works of fiction that arrive in the languages of the ‘lesser gods’. If any African writer can spearhead such a renaissance of writing in African languages, it is Ngugi Wa Thiongo. But beyond his consistent evangelism, beyond his labour of love in the enrichment of the Gikuyu language, it will have to be with a more strategic, game-changing initiative similar to the African Writing Series, which he briefly edited in the sixties… something like an Ngugi-Wa-Thiongo Prize for African Language Fiction - which could be all the rage, as early as 2012…

& there’s the gauntlet – with a hand in it!

Share on Facebook