EEKVERWYDER WORD NH

176 Pages·2016·6.82 MB·English

University Free State
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VERWYDER WORD NH:
AFRICAN WRITERS' USE OF SYMBOLISM, MYTH
AND ALLUSION IN PRESENTING THE IDEOLOGY OF
LEADERSHIP IN POST-INDEPENDENCE AFRICA: A
STUDY OF SELECTED NOVELS BY NGUGI WA
THIONG'O, CHINUA ACHEBE AND AYl KWEl
ARMAH.
BY
KABELO WILSON SEBOLAI
SUBMITTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
IN THE FACULTY OF THE HUMANITIES
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL CULTURE
UNIVERSITY OF THE FREE STATE
SUPERVISOR: MR C. M. UWAH
30TH NOVEMBER 2000

ABSTRACT
This dissertation was aimed at examining African writers' use of symbolism, myth and
allusion in presenting the ideology of leadership in the post-independence Africa.
Specifically, it focussed on Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born,
Ngugi Wa Thiongo's Petals of Blood and Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah.
One of the basic problems of the African continent has been the quality of its political
leadership. In most cases, leaders that take over power in Africa after independence
are not different from their colonial masters. Having attained power, these leaders
exhibit worse oppressive tendencies than their erstwhile colonial masters. The African
writers of this period have responded to this harsh reality with works that are critical of
the excesses of these leaders. Strange as it seems, although it was fashionable for
black writers to pit themselves against the system of apartheid at its peak in South
Africa, the same writers have in the main, not yet responded to some of the excesses
of the country's leadership in the new dispensation.
This research was therefore necessary because of the literary vacuum left by the
demise of apartheid in the literary output of South Africa's post-independence period.
There is so much the writers have to say in this period especially when one considers
the fact that problems experienced in the post-independence Africa in general are
beginning to manifest themselves in South Africa as well. While writers in other parts
of the continent have produced works that mirror the hopes and aspirations of the
masses inthe post-independence period, such has not been the case in South Africa.
This dissertation was in a small way, intended to serve as a wake-up call to South
African writers. It was meant to signal a resuscitation of literary creative writing in the
post-apartheid South Africa; a type of literature whose concerns will resemble those of
the general post-independence prototype inAfrica. The dissertation examined critical
novels ofother African writers inthe post-independence period and presented these as
examples for South African writers to follow.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1.1 A literature review of the origins and development of the African writer from the
colonial to the post-independence period pp 1-30
CHAPTER ONE
1.2 The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. pp 31-71
CHAPTER TWO
1.3 Petals of Blood pp 72-128
CHAPTER THREE
1.4 Anthills of the Savannah pp 129-159
CONCLUSION ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. pp 160 - 166
1.5A summarized account of the three writers' use of symbolism, myth and allusion
in presenting the ideology of the post-independence African leadership in the three
novels. A brief comment on the nature of the yet to emerge South African literature
in the post-apartheid period pp 162-168
LIST OF REFERENCES pp 167-169
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Iwish to seize this opportunity to thank all those who in one way or another helped me
to produce this dissertation.
My special thanks go to my supervisor, Mr C. Uwah who patiently went through and
commented on my work at each of its stages.
Ialso wish to thank Mrs P. Dimpe without whose professional typing skills my timeous
completion of this work could have been delayed. Iam also grateful to Mr S. Mahlabe
who should be credited for having stimulated my interest in African literature in
particular and whose moral support was indispensable to my successful completion of
this work.
Finally, the financial assistance ofthe National Research foundation (NRF) towards this
research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at in
the dissertation, are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the
National Research Foundation.
INTRODUCTION
In order to establish a strong foundation to this dissertation, it is necessary to trace,
right from the onset, the origin and development of this writer from the period of
imperialism/colonialism to the post-independence era. Accordingly, this chapter will
begin by focussing on the nature of the European metropolitan literature that attended
the process of imperialism/colonialism as well as on the almost concurrent protest and
resistant literature it triggered from the colonised writer throughout the empire in the
colonial period. While the European metropolitan writer served, through his writing, to
promote the presumed European imperial supremacy to the whole world, the colonised
writer tended, through his work, to resist and contest this perspective. Secondly, as an
immediate prelude to the ultimate thrust of this essay, the chapter will give a general
overview of the nature of the African literaturewritten inthe post-independence period.
Finally, since the four form the essence of the dissertation, this chapter will also make
an attempt to give a brief definition of the concepts, ideology, symbolism, myth and
allusion. Hence, what follows is a brief history of the emergence and development of
African literature, a type of literature that was fundamentally a response to the
European metropolitan type produced in Europe at the onset of imperial exploration.
The African writer who emerged after the second world war has gone through three
periods which also mark the three stages in his growth. These are the ages of the anti-
imperial/colonial struggle, independence and post-independence (Ngugi 1993: 60). In
order to put the writer's development in its right perspective, a brief definition of the
concepts imperialism/colonialism is necessary. The word imperialism can be defined
as the authority gained by a state subsequently known as the mother country, over
another territory beyond its borders. This authority can be expressed in pageantry,
symbolism as well as in military power (Boehmer 1995: 2). Immediately after this,
imperialism proceeds to its second and final stage of development known as
colonialism. This is the stage at which the mother country consolidates its imperial
power over the occupied territory subsequently called its colony. This consolidation is
manifested inthe settlement of the occupied territory, exploitation of its resources and
the attempt by the mother country to govern the indigenous inhabitants of this territory
(Boehmer 1995: 2).
With the onset of European migration and colonisation, people inthe imperial European
countries, that is, metropolitans, began to experience a need to fashion stories about
the foreign lands their countries were colonising. The advent of European imperialism
therefore, almost simultaneously stimulated the rise of a literature that underpinned it,
and that understandably came to be known as colonialist. This was a type of literature
that expressed the colonising European's distorted perception of the colonised non-
European peoples subjugated by them. Very often, this literature embodied the
stereotyped and prejudiced imperialist perspective of the colonised. It is against this
background of its distorted representation of the colonised, that Boehmer (1995: 50)
broadly defines colonialist discourse in general as:
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that collection of symbolic practices, including textual codes and
conventions and implied meanings, which Europe deployed in the
process of its colonial expansion and in particular, in understanding the
bizarre and apparently unintelligible strangeness with which it came into
contact.
In specific terms, colonialist literature formed the essence of the symbolic practices
referred to by Boehmer in the passage above and was founded on theories that
espoused the superiority of European culture and that legitimized European efforts at
imperial expansion. In addition to this, this literature clearly expressed the imperialists'
assumed incomprehensibility of the peoples they colonised. Boehmer (1995: 14)
concludes thus, that from the early days of colonisation, colonialist literature
underpinned efforts to interpret other lands in order to offer domestic audiences a way
of thinking about exploration. It served as a means through which colonial images and
ideals could be exchanged. Itwas through this literature, that the view of the world as
conceived by colonial metropolitans came to be consolidated and confirmed.
Since the ultimate focus ofthis dissertation will revolve around the African writers whose
countries of origin were formerly colonised by Britain, it seems pertinent at this stage,
to narrow itsfocus briefly onto British imperialism ingeneral and its attendant colonialist
literature and subsequently, onto the literature of protest and resentment precipitated
by the British colonialist type from colonised writers in her colonies.
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