The Language of Afrikan Literature is not yet born

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

The Language of Afrikan Literature is not yet born - Ayi Kwei Armah

THE DIRECT RESULT OF European colonisation of Africa was the depreciation of the African image in the European mind to justify the imposition of political control. This naturally also involved the devaluation of African culture.

This is what Ayi Kwei Armah, the Ghanaian novelist, who delivered a lecture at the University of Nairobi's Taifa Hall two weeks ago, believes. Armah says that when Africans claim that they are independent under present conditions, they are misguided.

"The idea of independence is false, a joke in all other ways," says Armah, 65, arguing that political independence is meaningless without cultural independence, for it is only cultural values the can "inspire a people with national pride, give them a separate identity and something to live and die for."



Creative writers, especially in West Africa, he says, emerged with forms of writing aiming at restating and emphasising African culture. The musico-ethnologist Kwabena Nkeita of Ghana, for example, recorded and interpreted the funeral dirges of the Akan while Chinua Achebe reconstructed the Igbo traditional culture as it existed before the colonialists undermined it, in his novels, Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God.

Armah, who says he feels sorrow over the current state of affairs in Africa, observes that, although many countries have had nominal independence for years, life has not improved for the ordinary citizens.

"It is our foolishness which makes us live the way we live. Until we make up our minds and decide what we want to do and design our own system, we shall be going nowhere," he says.

"We need to sit down," he continues, "and look at our history because it is from such a history that we can begin to find a solutions to our present-day problems."

Asked what language should be used in writing and therefore documenting what he calls African history, the author who has taught in universities in North America and worked in most parts of Africa, agrees that, indeed, that is part of the problem.

His answer, however is even more telling:

"We are suspended while waiting for a decisive breakthrough; if an African language is adopted it will be a big solution. Africa is vast and it requires a vast language to put through all our ideals, and that language is not yet born," Armah says.

He therefore says that he will continue writing in languages that reach the largest number of Africans; that is English or French.