By Mursi Saad El-Din The African Society recently invited me to take part in a discussion of African literature. My co- speaker was Hamed Taher, poet and vice-president of Cairo University. Walking into the Society's headquarters in 5 Ahmed Heshmat Street, Zamalek, brought back memories of 40 years. The Society was first created by the late Ambassador Abdel-Aziz Ishak, under the name of the African Association. In my capacity as Deputy Secretary General of the Permanent Secretariat of the Afro-Asia Peoples' Solidarity Movement, I was responsible for contacts with the Association and with over 20 African liberation offices housed there. It was out of 5 Ahmed Heshmat Street that the voices of the colonised people of the continent were heard. So much for memories. I started my talk by giving a general introduction to African literature. First, the way languages affected, or rather inspired it. Peoples colonised by countries that spoke Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) produced poetry. On the other hand colonisers who spoke English produced prose. The question that always came up for discussion was why African writers should use the languages of their colonisers anyway, be they English, French or Portuguese. The answer, as given by a Portuguese critic, was that with hundreds of local languages, using the one language of the coloniser helped generate national unity. While there are defenders of this stance, we find some African writers who rebelled against the use of European languages. The Kenyan writer Nojugi wa Thongo described the use of the coloniser's language, "Linguistic imperialism is a cultural bomb in Africa". He rejected it as a means of expression, turning to Gikuyu, his mother tongue. He believed that through their language the colonisers dominated the mental world of the colonised, hence freeing language became freeing the soul. Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize in 1968, was often accused of alliance with Europe. In response he published Myth, Literature and the African World, a book of essays in which he countered his critics by arguing against "encouraging prejudices of dichotomies between "European rationalism" and "African emotionalism". Soyinka's work reflected an anti-colonialists, anti- apartheid stand. Later on he began to criticise the postcolonial rule. He wrote against African dictators and local corruption. In his plan "Dance of the Forest", he expressed his concern over the country's ability "to transcend the colonial legacy of corruption". He was imprisoned but managed to escape and he is now living in the US, teaching at one of America's universities. He is known for an adage, "Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress the truth." Besides what one might call black writers, some white African writers deserve mentioning: Nadine Gordiman, who won the Nobel Prize in 1991; and JM Goetzee with two Booker Prizes and a Nobel Prize in 2003. Both wrote against apartheid when that infamous system was at is peak. Then there is Alex Laguma, again from South Africa, who won the Lotus Prize awarded by the Afro- Asian Writers' Movement. He is both a novelist and a short story writer and lived in Egypt for some time when he was a member of the Afro-Asian Writers Bureau. These is just a handful, a small handful indeed of Africa's prose writers. The other side of the coin, the poets of the French and Portuguese colonies, will be the subject of my next column.
