The Disfigurement of Africa in Ayi Kwei Armah's Novels

285 Pages·2014·5.98 MB·English

A SAGA OF BLACK DEGLORIFICATION:
THE DISFIGUREMENT OF AFRICA IN AY I KWEI ARMAH'S NOVELS
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Moses Geoffrey Kwame Ayivor
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Thesis Presented for the Degree of
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iDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
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in the Department of English
UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN
April 1998
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The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No
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quotation from it or information derived from it is to be

published without full acknowledgeement of the source.
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The thesis is to be used for private study or non-
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commercial research purposes only.

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Published by the Universit y of Cape Town (UCT) in terms
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of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author.
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Abstract
The focus of this dissertation is the thesis that if Ayi Kwei Armah's five novels - The Beautyful Ones
Are Not Yet Born (1968), Fragments (1969), Why Are We So Blest? (1972), Two Thousand Seasons
(1973) and The Healers (1978) - are closely analysed, they will emerge as a single creative mythology
devoted to the fictional disfigurement of Black Africa from primeval times to the present. An analysis
of Afiican writings reveals that a body of contemporary African literature has and is still undergoing
a distinctive metamorphosis. This change, which amounts to a significant departure from the early
fifties, derives its creative impulse from demonic anger and cynical iconoclasm and is triggered by the
mind-shattering disillusion that followed independence. The proclivity towards tyranny and the
exploitation of the ruled in modern Africa is traced by radical African creative writers to an ancient
source: the legendary and god-like rulers of pre-colonial Africa. Ouologuem's Bound to Violence,
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Wole Soyinka's play, A Dance of the Forests, and Armah's Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers
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hypothesize that past political violations begot the present wrecokage of the African populace. The
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legendary warrior heroes of the past, whose glory and splendour were once exalted in African writing,

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are now ruthlessly disentombed and paraded as miscreanpts and despots, who brutalized and sold their
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people into slavery. Although Armah glorifies "The Way" in Two Thousand Seasons and "the
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metaphysics of African healing" in The Healer s, the dominant preoccupation of two novel histories
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is to divest the ancient godlike kings of their false glory.

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In Armah's postcolonial fiction - rThe Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Fragments and Why Are We
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So Blest? - the theme of tyrvanny and political corruption is linked to the colonial middle class elite
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and the ancient kings. Armah achieves this didactic creative purpose by exploiting a plethora of
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symbols, images, scatology and dystopian metaphors, particularly in The Beautyful Ones Unlike the
heroes in the two histories, Armah's postcolonial protagonists are so intensely paralysed by unrelieved
despair, passivity and self-alienation that they hardly function as conventional heroes. Instead of the
traditional hero, Armah's modern principal characters like the Man, Baako, Modin and Solo operate
as anti-heroes or marginalised beings, trapped permanently in limbo. Despite the debilitating
environment which shapes and informs them, the postcolonial heroes are committed to using their
talents in transforming the society and empowering the dispossessed masses. The thesis is divided into
six chapters, a short introductory chapter and a short concluding chapter.
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Acknowledgements
My first debt of gratitude is owed to Professor Brenda Cooper, my supervisor, whose scholarship and
deep and incisive comments on my multifarious errors have helped me put my wayward approach and
style into some order in this research. This dissertation would not have been completed without her
meticulous supervision. I wish also to thank Mrs Isabella Scholtz of Department of Development and
Public Affairs, whose unparalleled professionalism was revealed in her success in getting me a Study
Permit after I had tried unsuccessfully for seven months to get one. Perhaps I must also mention Mrs
Scholtz's devotion to duty - an attribute which accounts for her not only booking hotel
accommodations for me but also arranging transport to pick me from the bus station and to send me
back to station for my return journey to Butterworth. Deserving mention alsno are the members of staff
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of University of Cape Town Library, who helped in locating sources for this study. I also wish to
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thank Mrs N Mpeta of the Inter-Library Loan Section of the TUniversity of Transkei Library for

ferreting out a few of the sources needed for this study. eMy gratitude also goes to the Harry
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Oppenheimer Scholarship Fund for funding this research. Finally, I would like to thank my colleague,
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Dr Laban 0 . Erapu, for having the unpleasant task of reading my first chapter drafts. The views

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expressed in this thesis are, however, my own anod the errors which this thesis may contain are my sole

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VII
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................v i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................. vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................... viii
1. Chapter One, Introduction: Ayi Kwei Armah's Dominant Mythology ...................... I
2. Chapter Two, The Historical Backdrop of Armah's Novels winth Postcolonial
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Settings .................................................................................................................. 7
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3. Chapter Three, Endless Cycles of Recurrent Historical Follies: Armah's The
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Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born ..............a.......................................................... 45
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4. Chapter Four, Independent Ghana Portrayed As A Neo-Colony: Ayi Kwei

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Armah's Fragments .............................................................................................. 85
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5. Chapter Five, Nationalist Leadership in Liberation Politics Maligned: Ayi Kwei
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Armah's Why Aren We So Bies(! ............................................................................ 123
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6. Chapter Six, Africa's Legendary Tradition Deflated: Ayi Kwei Armah's
Two Thousand Seasons .......................................................................................... 158
7. Chapter Seven, A Fictional Vilification of Akan Kings: A Reading of Ayi Kwei
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Arm ah' s The Healers . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. .. . .. . . .. . . . . . .. .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . .. .. . 19 5
8. Chapter Eight, A Conclusion: The Thematic Unity of the Novels .......................... 247
9. Select Bibliography ............................................................................................... 261
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Chapter One
Introduction: Ayi Kwei Armah's Dominant Mythology
The title ofthis dissertation, A Saga of Black Deglorijication: The Disfigurement of Africa in Ayi
Kwei Armah 's Novels, prescribes a rather negative role for me - a critical role which I need to
play in order to substantiate the thesis. Despite the limitation of this critical function, my attitude
to Armah in this study is a rather ambivalent one, since there are occasions in which, instead of
the usual negative criticism, some of my commentaries on Armah are complimentary. A close
analysis of Ayi Kwei Armah's novels - The Beautyjit! Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), Fragments
(1969), Why Are We So Bies/? (1972), Two Thousand Seasons (1973) and The Healers (1978)
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- reveals that the five works are preoccupied with the African leadership's betrayal of the African
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Continent. The thesis contends that the corpus is informed by an ingoenious unity of thematic and
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creative ideas. The themes such as the corruption of the ruling elite, the Middle Passage, and

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parasiticism of the political leadership which are introdpuced to in us in The Beautyjit! Ones
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resurface in the rest of the novels. The narrative modes of in medias res, images of decay and
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d{s·integration, ironic reversals loaded with sardon ic humour and paradoxes, which dominate The
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Beautyfid Ones are orchestrated in the corp us.
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In writing the five novels Armah selfr-consciously exploits two distinct stylistic forms: the opaque
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metaphorical language which vdominates novels with postcolonial settings as well as the non
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figurative style bordering on matter-of-fact narrative form which Armah exploits in his two
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historical novels. The style of The Beautyfuf Ones Are Not Yet Born emerges as the most intricate
and the most metaphorical. The style in the first novel is a maze of multifarious scatological
symbols and dystopian met'!/phors that defy simple interpretation. The stylistic patterning in the
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second novel, Fragments, is ~ore comI?Jex and metaphorical than that of Why Are We So Blest?.
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In this work Armah creates -~ re-Afri~anized style which is a reassemblement of Akan traditional
motifs, rituals, icons, and-symbols - a narrative structure which incorporates the multi-layered
labyrinthine living world of the Akans. Although the style in Why Are We So Bfe st? is more
fif,rurative than that of Two Thousand Seasons. it is less dense than the stylistic patterning in the
first novel. As we move to the novei histories, we notice that the style is predominately less
metaphorical. Armah's style in Two Thousand Seasons is characterized by the direct use of
language. In The Healers, Armah continues to exploit this direct use of language, a form of
narration which is akin to the narrative mode of history and historiography. There is, however,
a significant stylistic shift in the fifth novel. The simple direct style exploited by The Healers
conceals a thick Akan iconic forest of symbols grounded on a complex Akan ethnohistorical
backdrop, the actual living historical and cultural heritage of the Akans as opposed to an invented
world. This stylistic manoeuvre, in which Armah exploits a multifaceted and complex figurative
patterning in the three novels with postcolonial settings but adopts a style marked by self
conscious narrative simplicity devoid of metaphorical density and ambiguity in the two novelistic
histories, particularly in Two Thousand Seasons, is probably a self-conscious creative design and
not an accident of creative development. Owing to Armah' s exploitation of the myth of the Magus
- the Akan magical grove - which is ingeniously concealed by an ovnert surface simplicity, The
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Healers is more labyrinthine and more eclectic than Why Are We So Bies(?
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In his Resistance in Postcolonial African Fiction ( 1990), Neil Lazarus comments on Armah' s
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preoccupation with the same ideas - a critical formaulation which re-affirms my hypothesis of the
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thematic wholeness of the five novels. Lazarus's assertion on Armah's rehearsal of themes in his

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fiction is extended to cover the essays, the stories and the poems. The critic declares that "For in

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numerous, if intermittent, articles, stories, and poems that he [Armah] has continued to publish
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in such journals and magazines as Presence Africaine and West Africa since 1978, there is little
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evidence of new ideas. His various recent writings all seem to tread the same paths as Two
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Thousand Seasons and Tnhe Healers ..." (Lazarus, 1990: 233)1. My postulate that the novels form
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a single thematic structure, which Lazarus has eloquently confirmed, is also endorsed by Derek
Wright. In his essay, "The Early Writings of Ayi Kwei Armah" (1978), which deals with Armah's
stories, essays and poems, Wright records that "The germ of Armah's novels is represented in the
themes of his early stories and essays ... " (Wright, 1978:487). Significantly, in his Ayi Kwei
Armah 's Africa: The Sources of His Fiction ( 1989), Wright repeats this critical formulation by
contending that Two Thousand Seasons echoes "the underlying message" of the earlier novels and
The Healers (Wright, 1978: 141)2.
Another eclectic device Armah exploits in accentuating the unity of ideas in the five novels is the
technique of naming characters in the novels. For instance the name, Maanan, appears as the
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female character who is exploited both sexually and materially by Kwame Nkrumah in The
Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born and finally abandoned by Nkrumah when Ghana achieved
independence - an appalling and traumatic ill-treatment which drives Maanan insane. In Two
Thousand Seasons Maanan re-surfaces as one of Isanusi' s visionary initiates. Similarly, in Why
Are We So Blest?, Naita, a sharp-witted African American, who becomes Modin first girlfriend
and confidant in USA and to whom Modin's dairy is addressed, re-appears as one of the visionary
initiates in Two Thousand Seasons. Armah's eclectic manipulation of the creative ploy of
character-naming is also evident in his use of the name "Araba''. In Fragments, Armah names
Baako's sister Araba - a character who is tormented by the evil cycle of abiku3 Armah re
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exploits Araba in The Healers as Araba Jesiwa, Prince Appia's mother, and like her namesake in
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Fragments, Araba Jesiwa also suffers from abiku. Although Armah's version of the prophecy is
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different from that in Arna Ata Aidoo's dramatized in a play entitled Aonowa ( 1970), both versions
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deal with the African leadership's relegation of the populace to life of servitude.

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The analyses which deal with Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers go further back in time and
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are designed to comb the debris of Black racial history which conceals the seeds of Africa's
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enslavement and disfigurement. The purpose of these two novels is to lay bare how past evils

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begot present evils. Two Thousand Seastons and The Healers probe the root causes of Africa's
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denigration while The Bea11tyf11/ Oners Are Not Yet Born, Fragments and Why Are We So Blest?
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explore the subsequent cumulativve effects of Africa's decay and fragmentation. The historiography
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exploited by Armah is analogous to what Hayden White's seminal work, Metahistmy (1973 ), calls
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"the Contextualist" approach to history. White writes:
The Contextualist proceeds ... by isolating some ... element of the historical field
as the subject of study ..... He then proceeds to pick out the "threads" that link the
event to be explained to different areas of the context. The threads are identified
and traced outward, into the circumambient natural and social space within which
the event occurred, and both backward in time, in order to determine the "origins"
of the event, and forward in time, in order to determine its "impact" and
"influence" on subsequent events. (White, 1973: 18)
What Armah has isolated "as the subject of study" is the origins of tyranny and slavery in Africa.
In Two Thousand Seasons Armah investigates the origins of servitude and despotism in Africa
and links both to the institution of dynastic monarchy in Africa. He continues this fictional
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investigation in The Healers, his postcolonial novel with precolonial settings, and arrives at the
same conclusion: despotism and slavery are nourished by kingship rituals. In the novels with
postcolonial settings, The Beautyfitl Ones Are Not Yet Born, Fragments and Why Are We So
Blest? servitude/slave culture and dictatorship are again traced to the oppressive systems of
government created by the ruling elite. But what Armah is concerned with in his three
postcolonial works is the "impact" and the "influence" (the effects) of servitude and despotism on
the postcolonial Afiican states. Thus servitude and oppression created by the ruling class in Africa
become the preoccupation of Armah's five novels. This is the thematic core which unifies Armah's
novels and accounts for the rehearsal of themes. Some of the topics which have been rehearsed
are the symbol of the old slave castle, ironic reversals, demonic images of decay and of scatology,
pejorative and dystopian metaphors, and the brazen renegade attack nagainst Africa's heroes. For
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in Armah's vision, there is little room for idolization of individual heroes (the Man, Baako,
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Modin, Solo, Isanusi-cum-the-initiates and the healers, who themselves abhor the isolation of the

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individual for exaltation, are never idealized by their creator); only the larger community is fit for
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glorification. One exception to the above schema neaeds to be pointed out. In The Healers, Armah
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does glorify individuals like Anan, Appia, Araba Jesiwa, Damfo and Densu. It could, however,

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be concluded that, in the two novelistic histories, Armah attempts to illuminate the current social

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problems and conflicts of postcolonial Africa by tracing the root causes of the unprecedented
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despotism and decay in modern Afiica to their ancient origins. I argue, therefore, that the corpus
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is only fully revealed andv rendered more meaningful when the five novels are treated as one
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The central focus of this dissertation on Armah's five novels can be easily formulated: a dominant
Eurocentric colonial image habitually presented Afiica as the atavistic, barbaric, licentious "other"
of Europe; a first generation of Black radical colonial and postcolonial writers, understandably,
opposed this image with a Black counter-image which challenges the Eurocentric portrayals which
malign traditional Afiica and peoples of Black African descent by developing, instead, an African
Golden Age. A casual survey of selected works of Black displaced ex-slaves living in Europe,
ethnologists, historians, philosophers, politicians, literary critics and creative writers of Black
Africa and the Diaspora reveals one major preoccupation: to give back to Black Africa its lost
pride and dignity, to reassert the values of African cultures, and to re-interpret Africa's historical
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landmarks and achievements. Although this grouping is not homogeneous it has one dominant
preoccupation: to refute the European distortions of Black Africa. The advocates who lead this
Afrocentric counter-image debate are W. E. B. Du Bois (1965), Cheikh Anta Diop (1960; 1974;
1985a; 1985b; 1987; 1989; 1991), Chancellor Williams (1971), Walter Rodney (1972), Ivan Van
Sertima (1977; 1984, 1987), the editor of the Journal of African Civilizations, V. Y. Mudimbe
(1985; 1988), and Y. Ben-Jochannann (1971, 1972). In turn a number of radical African creative
writers, Ayi Kwei Armah included,4 have not only resisted this mythopoesy and have shown that
the "heroic" culture or "the fabulous past" was barbaric, feudal and anti-democratic and that the
appeal of modem Afiica rulers to this tradition has been in the sole interest of validating their own
repressive regimes. Perhaps, I must add that Armah's ambivalent position towards this "glorious
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past" needs to be stated. Despite Armah's rejection of the "heroic culture", he attempts
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simultaneously to recover the Golden Age via "The Way" and re-coreates from the debris of his
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mutilated Akan world order in The Healers a re-integrated community.

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l. In his Resistance in Postcolonial African Fict ion (London: Yale University Press, 1990),
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Thousand Seasons keeps faith with Armahy's three novels of postcolonialism by portraying the
vast majority of the African population ats in thrall to 'alien' ideologies ... Two Thousand
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Seasons does not, in short, differ from Armah' s novels of postcolonialism insofar as diagnosis
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of imperial hegemony is concernede. Nor does it underestimate the difficulties of challenging,
still less of destroying, the estabvlished order" (Lazarus, 1990: 219-220).
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2.Derek Wright's assertioUn in his Ayi Kwei Armah 's Africa: The Sources of His Fiction
(London: Hans Zell Publishers, 1989) appears to prove beyond all doubts the interpretation
that Armah's five novels' rehearse the same creative concerns, when he asserts the thematic
motif of the African rulers' exploitation of the ruled "has resurfaced, with a monotonous
predictability, in everything Armah has written since" (Wright, 1989: 242).
3. Abiku (Yoruba)/Ogbar?Je (Igbo)/Dzikuidzikui (Ewe) are traditional African motifs which
have the same meaning. In Gerard M. Dalgish's A Dictionary of Africanisms ( 1982), ahiku is
defined as "an evil spirit of the Yoruba who inhabits the body of a child. The child soon dies
and the spirit re-enters the mother's womb, to be born and die again". Ogbanje is described in
Chinua Achebe's "A Glossary oflbo Words and Phrases" to Things Fall Apart as "a
changeling: a child who repeatedly dies and returns to its mother to be reborn. It is almost
impossible to bring up an ogbanje child without it dying unless its iyi-uwa is first found and
destroyed" (Achebe, 1958: 150). Dzikuidzikui evokes the endless cycle of birth, death, and
rebirth through a linguistic coupling of the root words dzi (to give birth) and ku (to die) Thus
dzikuidzikui literally means "born-dead-born-dead".
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