The African Politician's Changing Image in African Literature in English Author(s): Bernth Lindfors Source: The Journal of Developing

Areas, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Oct., 1969), pp. 13-28 Published by: College of Business, Tennessee State University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4189643 Accessed: 26/10/2010 16:55
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cbtsu. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

College of Business, Tennessee State University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Developing Areas.

http://www.jstor.org

The Journial of Developiity Areas 4 (October 1969):

13-28.

The African Politician's Changing Image in African Literature in English

BERNTH LINDFORS

In the 1950s the African politician was a hero. He was fighting to bring an end to European colonial rule; he was leading his nation to independence; he was the voice and symbol of African aspirations for a glorious future. When independence was achieved, his people hailed him as father of the nation, paramount chief, redeemer, and living god. However, by the mid-1960s the African politician had fallen from grace and in many parts of the continent had tumed into a villain. He was mismanaging the affairs of the nation, robbing the poor to enrich himself and his wealthy colleagues, and ruthlessly suppressing opposition and dissent. His people now often branded him a criminal, a monster, a dictator, a vain fool. In several countries his excesses finally brought about his own ruin. The meteoric rise and sudden eclipse of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana perhaps best illustrate the two polarities in this changing popular image of the African politician. In literary works produtced by African writers in the fifties and sixties one frequently finds sketches and soimietimes ftull-length portraits of real and fictional African politicians, and these representations, whether drawn from life or imagination, are worth studying as reflections of popular attittudes toward politicians in Africa. This paper, by surveying novels, plays, and poetry in English from West, East, Central, and South Africa, will attempt to demonstrate that the image of the fictional African politician in African literature changes drastically once independence is achieved. Special attention will be given to Nigerian literature since it contains many of the most complete and most interesting characterizations of the African politician. It should be stressed at the outset that the image of the fictional African
Assistant Professor of Engsh, University of Texas at Austin; Foreign Area Fellow, 1967-69; editor of Research in African Literatures, a recently initiated biannual journal; author of numerous articles on African literature. The author wishes to thank Professor C. S. Whitaker, for one of whose political science courses at U.C.L.A. an earlier version of this article was originally written.

14

Berimtli Lindfors

politician is something quite different from the image of the real African politician in fiction. African literature about real African political leaders tends always to be adulatory, at least while the leader is in power. In Ghana, for example, Nkrumah's friends and subjects showered him with rhymed flattery between 1957 and 1966, but none of this court poetry has been seen since Nkrumah's ouster.' Similarly, Nigerian newspapers frequently carried poems praising outstanding Nigerian politicans until the January 1966 military coup. Also, Nigerian pamphleteers 2 have written scores of inexpensive paperback plays, novels, and fictionalized "biographies" based on the lives of prominent Nigerians and non-Nigerians.3 In market bookstalls in Onitsha and other large towns in southern Nigeria one used to find titles such as Dr. Nkrumah in the Struggalefor Freedom,

in Political Storm, The Trials of Lumumba,Jomo KenZik and Auwolowo yatta and St. Paul, and How John KennedySufferedin Life and Died Suddenly. These chapbooks spun legends round contemporary political heroes, emphasizing their noble deeds and superhuman powers. Lumumba, for example, was usually pictured as a caesar, a christ, a saint and martyr, a great nationalist, an immortal, and a man foully betrayed. Obviously, panegyric literature of this sort affords only the most idealized imagc of prominent African political figures. One also finds faintly disguised portraits of famous African politicians in several African novels. In Cyprian Ekwensi's Beautiful Feathers,4 which is dedicated "To Leopold Sedar Senghor of Negritude Fame and Alhaji Sir Abubaker Tafawa Balewa, Patron, Society of Nigerian Authors," there is an easily recognizable French-speaking African president who gets carried away when he speaks of African unity and an equally familiar Koranreading prime minister whose self-effacing manner inspires warm admiraa description tion. Ekwensi includes in another novel, People of the City1,5 of an eighty-three year old nationalist who greatly resembles Herbert Macaulay, an eighty-two year old nationalist who died in Lagos in 1946, only eight years before Ekwensi's novel was published. James Ngtigi, a Kenyan
"For an example of the adulation, see Michael Dei-Anang and Yaw Warren, Ghana Glory: Poems on Ghana and Ghanaian Life (London: Thomas Nelson, 1965). A very (lifferent attitude toward Nkrumah is expressed in Cameron Duodu, The Gab Boys (London: Deutsch, 1967), which will be discussed later in this article. 2 Throughout this paper I refer to Ibo writers as Nigeriams Nigerians because they wvere when they wrote and they vrote about Nigeria, not Biafra. Today they would no doubt prefer to be called Biafrans. "Three substantial articles have been written on this literature: Ulli Beier, "Public Opinion on Lovers: Popular Nigerian LiteratureSold in Onitsha Market,"Black Orpheus 14 (February 1964): 4-16, Donatus Nwoga, "Onitsha Market Literature," Transition 19 (1965): 26-33; Nancy J. Schmidt, "Nigeria: Fiction for the Average Man," Africa Report 10 (August 1965): 39-41. Political analyses of this literature can be found in Kenneth W. J. Post, "Nigerian Pamphleteersand the Congo," Journal of Modern African Studies 2 (November 1964): 405-13; Charles R. Larson, "The Kennedy Myth in Nigeria," Colorado Quarterly 16 (Summer 1967): 39-45; and Bernth Lindfors, "Heroes and Hero-Worship in Nigerian Chapbooks," Journal of Popnular Culture 1 (Summer 1967); 1-22. 4 London: Hutchinson, 1963. Here and subsequently, quotations are from the edition cited.
5

London: Heineinann, 1963.

T'he African Politician's Changing linage

15

writer, makes several references to "Jomo," an African leader Europeans are said to fear, in his novels Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat." The authors have nothing but praise for personalities so readily identifiable.7 It is, of course, tempting to regard every politician in African fiction as a real person masked and to search for the faces that best fit the masks, but such lines of inquiry seldom lead very far. It would be more profitable to think of the fictional politician as representing not a particular person but a particular type of person and to search not for individual correspondences with reality but for typological differences in the images presented. In African literature written before independence it happens that he is usually pictured as a leading nationalist, a man of courage, integrity, and high moral character. This image can be seen in novels from South Africa, Sierra Leone, and Malawi. Peter Abrahams, a South African Cape Colored,8 had been living in voluntary exile in London for more than fifteen years when his novel, A Wreath for Udomo, was published in 1956,9 only nine months before Ghana attained its independence in March 1957. He had associated with Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, and numerous other Africans in England who had returned to their home countries to lead nationalist movements. His novel tells the story of Udomo, a dedicated nationalist who leaves London, where he had lived for several years in the company of African and West Indian intellectuals, and returns to his homeland, Panafrica, to lead the struggle for independence. Udomo starts a newspaper, enlists the support of African market women who control a good portion of the nation's economy, launches an African Freedom party, is thrown in prison, and a few years later emerges as the leader of independent Panafrica. However, he soon learns that "Running a country can be more difficult than winning it" (p. 201). Before independence he had swom to send the white man away, but now he realizes that his country needs white manpower and technical skill to progress. He had also sworn to oppose the white regime in Pluralia, a neighboring country where Africans are denied any voice in the government, but now economic cooperation with Pluralia seems highly
" Weep Not, Child (London: Heinemann, 1964) and A Grain of Wheat (London: Heinemann, 1967).
7 Notice that adulatory literature about real African political leaders is published both at home and in London, but literary works criticizing or satirizing leading politicians tend to be published abroad after a hated regime has fallen from power. This does not necessarily mean that the adulatory literature was intended mostly for home consumption and the critical literature primarily for a foreign readership. Until quite recently it was virtually impossible for an English-writing African novelist or playwright to get

home.

with their his workspublishedanywherebut London.Writerswho were disenchanted country'srulersmay have bottled up their anger, knowingfull well that they would as well as punishment and reprisals at home if they were to publish face censorship to condemnthe fallen abroad.Those who laterseized the opportunity protestliterature worksto be widely read at regine certainlymusthave wantedtheir London-published
8 Cape Coloreds are mulattos, not black Africans, but in white-dominated South Africa they suffer basically the same disadvantages and indignities as other nonwhites. In this paper two Colored novelists, Peter Abrahamsand Richard Rive, are discussed as African

writers.
9 Faber

and Faber.

1l6

Bernlit Lindfors

desirable. In these dilemmas he always elects the alternative that will help his country to advance more rapidly; hts ambition is "to carry the country to a point from where there can be no going back. To make the great transition from the past to the present" (p. 255). Most agonizing is the dilemma that confronts him when Pluralia demands that he ttrn over Mhendi, a Pluralian freedom-fighter Udomo had befriended in London and had promised to help after winning independence in Panafrica. If Mhendi is not surrendered to Pluralian authorities, Pluralia will withdraw the financial and technical assistance Udomo has been relying upon to modernize his country's economy. Faced with such a choice, he once again puts his ovn country's interests first. Five years later Udomo is killed by Panafrican tribalists who accuse him of fratemizing with whites and betraying his own people. Udomo is a hero who sacrifices everything for his country. He leads his people to independence and then tries to lead them into the modern world. He is willing to compromise certain of his principles and even sacrifice the life of a close friend if by so doing his country will be able to "make the great transition from the past to the present." For a time he succeeds and his country makes progress, but eventually the forces of darkness he fought against overwhelm him. A similar hero can be found in The African, a novel written by historian William Conton of Sierra Leone and published in 1960,10 one year before Sierra Leone attained its independence. Kisima Kamara prepares to return to his native country, Songhai, after five years of study in London. He and a close friend vow "to free our beloved country from the shackles of imperialism and lead it into self-government" (p. 99). After a year of preparation involving study of the various languages of Songhai, speaking tours throughout the countryside, and Kamara's marriage to an uneducated village girl, they found the Party for Unity and Liberation (PUL), which has ats its official slogan: "Unity Now; Self-Government in Five Years." The party grows quickly and benefits greatly from the publicity it receives when several of its leading members are jailed by the colonial government. Kamara is elected leader of the party and shortly thereafter becomes the first African prinme minister of independent Songhai. Soon he is head of an international committee studying the feasiblity of Pan-African unity. However, in the end he decides to resign all his political positions in order to join an underground movement in the Republic of South Africa. Kamara, like Udomo, is a great nationalist hero who leads his country to independence and is rewarded for his labors by being elected to assume control of the country after independence. But unlike Udomo, Kamara is willing to help in the strtuggle for independence in South Africa (Pluralia). He is thuis an even more idealized hero, a brave knight whose shining armor never gets tarnished. A variation in the image of the Africani politician as a nationalist hero can he scen in a Malawian novel, Aubrcy Kachingwe's No Easy Task, which was puiblished in Jantiarv 1966 l)ut had been largely written before

"0London: Heinemann, 1964 (reprint of 1960 original).

The African Politician's Changing Image

17

Malawi attained its independence in July 1964.11 The story is narrated by a joumalist who sees his elderly father, a simple village pastor, step forward at the invitation of a young nationalist party to unite the people of his country in a drive for self-government. The venerable old pastor is introduced at a political rally as a man the people can trust, "a man of peace, of love, of goodwill. A good man, a brave man. A man who fears God, a man given us by the Almighty" (p. 164). The people, fed up with corrupt, self-seeking politicians, respond enthusiastically to the Old Man, and in the months that follow he reorganizes the nationalist party, suffers imprisonment, and leads a party delegation to a London constitutional conference from which he returns with the triumphant announcement that new elections are to be held on a "one man one vote" basis, thus allowing Africans a chance to return a majority in the legislative council. The story ends with the country well on its way to independence. In this novel the nationalist hero is not a young activist but an "Old Man" capable of commanding mass support in the drive for Uhuru. The link with figures such as Jomo Kenyatta and Dr. Hastings Banda is clear. As a nationalist hero Old Man Josiah Jozeni shares with Udomo and Kamara a strong will, stubborn courage, and unselfish dedication to his people. Such is the image of the African politician in African literature written before independence. Before going on, it should be noted parenthetically that in a few East African novels published after independence and in some South African fiction the nationalist hero is not a politician but a revolutionary. In Weep Not, Child (1964) and A Grain of Wheat (1967), two novels about his native Kenya, James Ngugi celebrates the role of the Mau Mau freedomfighter.12 In Peter Abrahams's A Night of Their Own (1965)13 the hero is an underground agent who enters South Africa secretly via submarine and smuggles money to an Indian resistance movement. Much earlier Abrahams had included an African radical as a leading character in his novel, The Path of Thunder (1948).14 Another South African Cape Colored writer, Richard Rive, centers his novel, Emergency (1964),15 on a couple of young Colored radicals who engage in revolutionary activities during a period of
11 London: Heinemann. It should be noted that there are several minor political figures in this novel who are pictured as corrupt and self-seeking. Since Malawi attained its independence rather late, it is possible that Kachingwe's portrayal of these lesser politicians was influenced by the mood of disenchantment with nationalist heroes that was already spreading through other parts of Africa. Nevertheless, Kachingwe chose to personify his major political character Old Man Josiah Jozeni, as the archetypal nationalist who brings unity out of discord and leads his country to independence.
12I have heard it argued that Ngugi may have intended the latter half of Weep Not, Child as a criticism of the Mau Mau rebellion since he entitles this section "Darkness Falls" rather than "Dawn Breaks."This seems to be a misreading of the book. Darkness falls on the hero's life because he is deprived of education (light) and because his family becomes involved in the war. But Ngugi never implies that the Mau Mau rebellion was an unjust war or that "Jomo"and other nationalist leaders were wrong to bring on the darkness that later brought the light of independence to Kenya. The novel is a bald anticolonialisttract, not a veiled criticism of Kenyatta and Mau Mau.

13 London: Faber and Faber.

4 16

New York: Harper and Brothers. London: Faber and Faber.

18

Bernth Lindifors

cris in South Africa. Of course, since basic political rights are denied to nonwhites in South Africa, the nationalist hero in contemporary South African fiction by nonwhites would have to be a revolutionary rather than a politician, unless the writer were describing another country or an earlier era in history. Today in South Africa the nonwhite nationalist politician has become virtually extinct. Nevertheless, the nationalist hero as revolutionary in East and South African literature is not very different from the nationalist hero as politician seen elsewhere. Both are brave, moral, altruistic, and self-sacrificing. Both try to change their world so that their people can live in freedom. The politician usually succeeds and upon independence becomes leader of his country; the revolutionary sometimes fails and becomes a martyr to a lost cause. Turning now to the literature produced by African writers in West and Central Africa since independence, we see an entirely different image of the African politician. He is no longer a hero but instead a rogue. He gives and takes bribes, siphons off government funds for his own personal use, rigs elections, imprisons his opponents, and does everything else he can, legal and illegal, to ensure that he retains or improves his position. lie is an elected representative of the people who is concered almost exclusively with his own welfare. Such an image of the Africani politician is found in writings from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Malawi, and notably, Nigeria. R. Sarif Easmon, a doctor in Sierra Leone, has written two plays on political subicets. In Dear Parent and Ogre (1964), Dauda, a domineering and snobbish aristocrat who is leader of the opposition in Luawaland, wants to marry off his daughter to the leader of another minority party in order to cement a political coalition which will ensure him the prime ministership after the next elections. He holds a very low opinion of the government in power and a very high opinion of himself:
,

to governlPowercorruptsOur rulersare so obsessedwith powerthey have forgotten corruptseven the power of the eye to look criticallyin tupon itself. What a glorious with the clarity I, at any rate, see our problems thing to be Leaderof the Oppositionl eye, uncloudedby the need to balancethe demandsof office-seekers of a stateman's and nepotistswho, throughparty loyalties,either batten like barnacleson the ship of State,or swim aroundit like sharksawaitingtheirdaily quotaof offal . . . My godl were the reins How I would bend every nerveto lift this countryup by its bootstraps, resting between these two handsl Power does not really corrupt. Mlinister of Primne in wronghandswhennot in ours,who alone But, alas, poweris like money-invariably are bred to rule, and have the integrityand abilityto rule with grace,with grandeur,
and even perhaps with justice and a little modestyl (pp. 13-14).

As can be seen from this passage, Dauda is a comic figure, the sort who eventually succeeds in winning the prime ministership but never quite succeeds in imposing his will on the members of his immediate family. In the end his French wife manages to persuade him to allow his daughter to marry the man she loves, a musician of low birth. In The New Patriots (1965),17 Easmon satirizes a more vicious type of politician, the type who has no concern for the public. In the following
16London: Oxford University Press.
17

London: Longmans.

The African Politician's Changing Image

19

passage a governmentminister and a member of the governmentare conferring:

B: The P.M. said we should remember how much bigger is our ?3,000 a year salary compared with the average worker'spay. M: Why shouldn't we be paid that? After all, we are their elected leaders. B: Do you think that'll make the workers contented with their lot? M: If they want to change places with us, let them vote themselves in at the next general election. B: The discontent shows itself in the unrest up-country. And now the trade unions are threatening to call a general strike if we don't grant a ninepence a day rise in the workers' wages. M: (Scandalized) Ninepence a dayl That'll just about bankrupt the country. B: Is the country so near bankruptcy? And yet we've just increased our up-country travelling allowance three-fold. M: Naturally. You don't expect us to serve the country at a loss to ourselves. B: I think we should be more sympathetic to the workers' case. After all, it is the people who put us in power. M: Look here, man: on whose side are you-the people's or Government's? (p. 24).

It is the selfishnessof "new patriots"who refuse to take the people's side that finally leads to a popular uprising and the forceful overthrow of the government. The politicians pictured in Easmon'splays are not self-sacrificingheroes but self-seekingknaves interestedonly in obtaining and retaining positions of power and wealth. They are not of and for the people but above and against the people. They are objects of scorn, ridicule, and satire. In a novel from Ghana, Cameron Duodu's The Gab Boys (1967), politicians are treated even more harshly. The attack is both general and specific since Duodu is not reluctant to identify Ghana's leading politicians by name when expressing his discontents. The narrator of the story is a teenage delinquent who leaves his village and runs off to Accra wNhere he manages to find employment in the lower grades of civil service. He is in a good position to hear political discussions, to witness the deterioration of civil order during election campaigns, and to experience some of the hardships of the Ghanaian proletariat after independence. Soon he, a "low" person, begins expressing his own opinions about the "high" people who occupy political office. He is especially outraged by the extravagance of the Nkrumah regime. ernorsof colonialtimes could have dreamtup to wet their beds in. And there would be golden beds in these houses,and they would be equippedwith helicopterlanding stripsto makewhoringboth quickand safe. And to providethe womenwith an opportunity to show off the loot they gatheredin these houses,numerous ceremonies would take place each year: expensive,empty exhibitions of pompositygoing under the unashamedsobriquetof "pompand pageantry"; the cars for which the roads would be would no longerbe Chevrolets, closed for these ceremonies Packards and Rovers; these would have been tagged "small-boys' cars"and instead,we would see Rolls Royces, Cadillacs and Mercedez Automatics. And they wouldtax the shitout of our arse-holes in order to pay for their pomposity; assumingthat our stomachs,starvedof meat, fish, sugar,milk, and bread,would remaincapableof producing shit (pp. 144-45). But he has seen enough of politics and politicians to realize that even if the leadership of the country were to change, the gross economic disThere would be houses of numerous names-"State Houses," "Government Houses," "Guest Villas," "Guest Chalets"-surpassing in luxury anything that the "thievish" gov-

20

Bernth Lindfors

parities between the intelligentsia and the masses would not change. The politicians in opposition were no different from those in power.
The fact was that so far as we low, uneducated people were concerned, they were all the same; they enjoyed the same things, though they attached labels to one another. None of them ever thought of giving up some of their privileges so that we could enjoy a little ourselves. They had, and we didn't have; and the words they talked were meaningless to us. Neither communasocialismnor neocolosciencism meant that somebody would stop people dying because they didn't have money to go to the hospital; or prevent them living in houses without ceilings, where ten people had to share one room; or give to public toilets and water supplies the same attention as to income tax and propaganda (p. 154).

This is protest writing at its most virulent. The African politician is not just ridiculed; he is denounced and spat upon. A recent novel from Malawi, David Rubadiri's No Bride Price,18 contains further condemnation of the African politician. Government ministers are shown living in luxury and employing their top civil servants as pimps, firing them if they fail to arrange "fixtures"with selected European and Indian beauties. Those leaders who seemed so virtuous and dedicated when the country was struggling for independence now seem totally unscrupulous, immoral, and despicable. When the army launches a coup and takes over control of the nation, people rejoice that a new era has begun. They agree with the general of the army who states in his first radio broadcast that:
Over the past three years much harm has been caused by the people you elected to rule you. Not only has there been corruption, murder and injustice but their policies and love of power had forced them to use all means to destroy the people. A whole generation of young people has been turned into monsters, trained to be destroyers of lives and destroyers of the souls of our formerly simple and great people (pp. 155-56).

For African nations afflicted with such soul-destroying politicians, the only solution envisaged in this novel is military rule. The fact that many African nations have actually turned to such a solution to rid themselves of corrupt politicians indicates that the literature written in Africa after independence accurately reflects Africa's new mood of disillusionment with its former heroes. Writers in Nigeria have always been more critical of politicians than
writers in other African countries. Even before independence one could

find traces of political satire in Cyprian Ekwensi's People of the City (1954), Chinua Achebe's No Longer At Ease (1960), and Wole Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests (1963).1 After independence, however, political satire became a major genre in Nigerian literature as writers grew more intent on exposing the inanities and transgressions of the elected representatives of the people. The Nigerian politician became an obscene joke, sometimes funny, sometimes sick, but hardly ever respectable. His image can be seen in works by minor writers such as James Ene Henshaw, Obi B. Egbuna,
18

Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967.

19Achebe's work was published in London by Heinemann and Soyinka's in London by Oxford University Press; all were written before Nigeria attained independence in October 1960.

The African Politician's Changing Image

21

and T. M. Aluko, and in works by major writers such as Ekwensi, Achebe, and Soyinka. The hero of Henshaw's play, Medicine for Love (1964),20 is a man running for public office who tries to bribe his way to victory in the elections but loses because his opponent tricks him by writing a withdrawal paper with disappearing ink. In Egbuna's novel, Wind Versus Polygamy (1964),21 a fat, wealthy chairman of a local district council who believes his money can buy anything or anyone, confidently proposes marriage to a young girl and is stunned when she flatly refuses him. In Aluko's novel, One Man, One Matchet (1964),22 a semieducated local politician interferes with the work of a newly appointed African district officer and fattens his own purse by extorting huge sums of money from his people which he says are to be used for paying legal expenses in court cases which will benefit the district. The politicians in these three works are without exception dishonest and moneyhungry, and their outrageous behavior is a rich source of humor. Here the African politician is seen as someone to laugh at. Ekwensi's first full-length novel, People of the City (1954), includes an interesting portrait of an elderly politician who claims, "My party fights for the people, for the poor. There are poor men in every tribe and race, therefore my party is the Universal Party" (pp. 50-51). But he says he is up against unscrupulous opponents: "They're out to line their own pocketsl They're out to capture all the highest posts. . . . The candidate for the other party . . . says he stands for the workers-the liarl He tells them I am deceiving them, that I am an aristo. And he gives them money, so they believe him-that's the worst of itl" (p. 51). The hero of the novel, a journalist, listens sympathetically to the old man, but during the election campaign he sees him in a different light. First in Lugard Square he hears speakers from the Self-Government Now party offer crowds of listeners "hoarse and false promises for better working conditions, improved medical services, more and better houses" (p. 93). Then in a narrow lane nearby he sees the old politician addressing a small group of people: "He was saying much the same thing as the speaker of Lugard Square, namely, more houses, more food, more water and more light for the people" (p. 94). The moral that can be drawn from this episode is that while some politicians may be more unscrupulous than others, they all offer false promises in an election campaign. Moreover, as Ekwensi points out elsewhere, politicians find it difficult to "sink their selfish differences and unite.... [They] all go their different and opposite ways, quarrelling like so many market women" (p. 74). Thus, in Ekwensi's earliest novel, one finds traces of the kind of political satire that was to become his dominant mode of expression in novels written after independence. Jagua Nana (1961),23 Ekwensi's most successful novel, is a story of the ups and downs of a Lagos prostitute who gets deeply involved in politics when she takes Uncle Taiwo, a Lagos politician, as her lover. Uncle Taiwo
20 21 22

London: University of London Press. London: Faber and Faber. London: Heinemann. Hutchinson.

23 London:

22

Bernth Lindfors

is secretary of O.P. 2, "one of the big political parties in Lagos. He rode a Pontiac and lavished a lot of campaign money in the name of the Party" (p. 125). He invites her to go round on campaign tours to help him win votes from the women of the city. When she asks what she should say to the women at a big campaign meeting, he answers:
Tell dem to vote for O.P. 21 Tell dem our party is de bes' one. We will give dem free market stall, plenty trade, and commission so dem kin educate de children. Tell dem all de lie. When Uncle Taiwo win, dem will never remember anythin' about all dis promise. Tell dem ah'm against women paying tax. Is wrong, is wicked. Tell dem ah'm fighting for equality of women. Women mus' be equal to all men. You wonderin' what to tell dem? Oh, Lordl Tell dem all women in dis Lagos mus' get good work if dem vote for me. No more unemployment. Women mus' be treated right. Dem mus' have status. Dem mus' have class ... (p. 142).

At another rally, when she sees Uncle Taiwo moving through the large crowd "scattering handfuls of ten shilling notes, like rice grains on a bride," she asks him where the money comes from and is told, "Is Party money. I give dem de money like dat, so them kin taste what we goin' to do for them, if they vote us into power" (p. 138). At first Jagua finds this kind of life exciting, but she loses her enthusiasm for it when Freddie Namme, her former boyfriend, returns from studies in England, joins O.P. 1, and announces that he intends to run against Uncle Taiwo in the forthcoming elections. Jagua tries to persuade him to change his mind.
Politics not for you, Freddie. You got education. You got culture. You're a gentleman, an' proud. Politics be game for dog. And in dis Lagos, is a rough game. De roughest game in de whole worl'. Is smelly an' dirty an' you too clean an' sweet (p. 137).

Freddie, however, cannot be dissuaded; he tells Jagua, "I wan' money quickquick; an' politics is de only hope" (p. 137). In the campaign that follows Freddie is badly beaten up by party thugs and later brutally murdered outside a nightclub. Jagua is horrified at
how ordinary people she knew became transformed by this strange devil they call politics. When so transformeda man placed no value on human life. All that mattered was power, the winning of seats, the front-page appearance in the daily papers, the name read in the news-bulletins of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (p. 155).

After the elections Jagua hears that Uncle Taiwo, a loser at the polls, has been murdered by his own party for breaking faith with the party and failing to win a seat. His death teaches Jagua that "politics was dirtiest to them that played it dirty" (p. 185). The hero of Ekwensi's next major novel, Beautiful Feathers (1963), is Wilson lyari, a Pan-Africanist who runs the Independence Pharmacy and leads the Nigerian Movement for African and Malagasy Solidarity (NMFAMS). An idealist who believes in unity, he is distressed by the political strife in his own country and in Africa at large. "If only all the parties could put aside their bitterness, frustrations, jealousies and realize that the end in view was the same . . . but nol everyone wanted to be a leader" (p. 29). He and other leading members of NMFAMS, a movement "dedicated to the abolition of disunity," plan a peaceful demonstration and march to rally public support and "to remind Nigerian leaders of our desire

The African Politician's Changing Image

23

for African Solidarity." Police, however, disrupt the orderly procession and a riot breaks out. Wilson is arrested but bailed out of prison by a wealthy businessman with political aspirations who offers Wilson and his movement ?50,000 if they will liquidate a government minister who might prevent him from winning a seat in the House at the next elections. Although the NMFAMS is in desperate need of money, Wilson refuses the job and the bribe. The publicity given the riot in the press brings Wilson's activities to the attention of the prime minister who decides to harness Wilson's energy by asking him to lead a Nigerian delegation to a conference on African Unity in Dakar. Wilson attends the conference, reports back to the prime minister, and then, because of mounting family problems and political pressure, disbands NMFAMS and withdraws from political life. Wilson is an activist but not a politician, and he insists that NMFAMS is "not really a party." Indeed, one reason that Wilson can retain heroic stature in a political novel is that he is above partisan politics. The only professional politician portrayed in depth24 is the "Minister of Consolation" who, with the assistance of a "Perennial Secretary" and a "Complipresides over a useless ministry "founded as a symmentary Secretary,"7 pathetic gesture, a kind of Universal Aunt" to console and help Nigerians in time of need. Here Ekwensi's satirical thrusts are sharp and pointed. The minister is introduced as follows:
The Minister of Consolation was standing before the mirroradmiring his own image. He turned his face to the left and smiled. He turned his face to the right and smiled. He watched the mirror to see the effect of smiling with his teeth shut tight, with his lips parted and his tongue lolling out (p. 74).

Later, when talking with a reporter,

He showed his teeth in the manner which the mirror had told him was most flattering. The photographer appeared and began focusing his camera. The Minister maneuvered the reporter till he was farthest from the camera (p. 78).

A few clear-sighted individuals manage to see through this minister; one sums him up as
standing neither here nor there, only where the money is, the personal profit. He does
not place the interest of Nigeria first .
.

. but .

. his own private interests. He is vain,

conceited, stupid, empty, illiterate, a thorough fool, but shrewd enough to take everyone in (p. 86 ).

The tragedy is that whereas nincompoops like this are enshrined in ministries, truly talented men such as Wilson do not attempt to seek public office. Politics is still too dirty a game for the clean ones to play. Ekwensi's most recent novel, Iska (1966 ),25 contains a brief sketch of another politician, Nafotim, a member of the House of Representatives in Lagos. Nafotim is also a contractor and his association with the Greater Nigeria party yields huge profits for his company. However, after quarrelling with the leadership of the party over the locating of a new industry which he feels should be in his home district, he breaks away, forms his
24I am excluding here the characters mentioned earlier as representing Balewa and Senghor. 25London: Hutchinson.

24

Bernth Lindfors

own party, the Reformed People's party, and hires a journalist to write a party newspaper. He is described by those wo know him best as "a sinister character . . . one who wants eveiything his way."
[Nafotim] had certain qualities common to all politicians. He was shrewd. He was direct. He knew what he wanted, and even if his enemy possessed it and the best way to get it would be through temporary friendship with that enemy he would arrange that friendship of convenience (p. 182).

While mouthing unity, he plays on tribal animosities to strengthen his position. When asked how he sustains his followers, he answers frankly,
With promises and a little money. Enough to keep them quiet. Look, don't forget that man lives on hope. A man in the Sahara desert will always hope he will soon find water. It is this hope that keeps him alive. The people I lead hope they will soon find better jobs, better homes, better everything (p. 183).

Nafotim, like the Minister of Consolation, Uncle Taiwo, and other politicians in Ekwensi's novels, thrives on lies and is willing to throw the country into chaos to make his own position more secure. As one character

in Iska, remarks,"It'sthe politicians who bring all the trouble"(p. 173).

Certainly, the politicians pictured in Ekwensi's novels lead one to agree with Jagua Nana's statement that in Nigeria, "Politics be game for dog." Chinua Achebe has written less about contemporary times than Ekwensi, so one finds fewer politicians as characters in his novels. In No Longer At Ease (1960), written just before Nigeria's independence, Achebe includes a sketch of the Honorable Sam Okoli who
was one of the most popular politicians in Lagos and in Eastern Nigeria where his constituency was. The newspapers called him the best-dressed gentleman in Lagos and the most eligible bachelor. Although he was definitely over thirty, he always looked like a boy just out of school. He was tall and athletic with a flashing smile for all (p. 37).

He drives a long DeSoto, dates "been-to" girls, and lives in a huge mansion. There had been "controversy in the Press when the Government had decided to build these ministers' houses at a cost of thirty-five thousand each" (p. 68). The Hon. Sam Okoli, if charming and attractive, is also revealed as quite materialistic, pompous, and adhering to a belief in the myth of the superiority of the white man. At a party he tells his friends:
I used to have a Nigerian as my [Assistant Secretary], but he was an idiot. Hlis head was swollen like a soldier ant because he went to Ibadan University. Now I have a white man who went to Oxford and he says "sir" to me. Our people have a long way to go (p. 69).

It is men like Okoli who set a bad example for Nigerians in lesser positions
of responsibility and who thus weaken the moral fiber of the nation. They

are notoriously corrupt. "Had not a Mlinister of State said, albeit in an unguarded, alcoholic moment, that the trouble was not in receiving bribes, but in failing to do the thing for which the bribe was given?" (p. 88). With such men in power, it is not surprising that people develop a peculiar notion of government. "In Nigeria the government was 'they.' It had nothing to do with you or me. It was an alien institution and people's business was to get as much from it as they could without getting into trouble" (p. 33). The politicians, of course, are in a position to get the most.

The African Politician's Changing Image

25

Achebe's most recent novel, A Man of the People (1966),26 is also set in contemporary times and takes as its hero a young schoolteacher, Odili Samalu, who is moved to enter politics when his mistress is seduced by Chief the Honorable M. A. Nanga, MP and minister of culture. Odili joins a newly formed political party and prepares to contest Nanga's seat in the next election. He also tries to win the affection of Nanga's fiancee, a young girl Nanga is grooming as his "parlour wife." In the end Odili loses the political battle but manages to win the girl. Nanga loses everything because the election is so rough and dirty and creates such chaos in the country that the army stages a coup and imprisons every member of the government. In Nanga, Achebe has created one of the finest rogues in African fiction. He is by nature and profession consistently immoral. "Chief Nanga was a born politician; he could get away with almost anything he said or did" (p. 73). He dazzles his constituents into believing that he is serving them well when in fact he is using his position only to further his own selfish interests. He grows fat on graft and wallows in ostentatious opulence. In an election year he tries to buy off or forcibly suppress his opposition. His palatial home, his shady business enterprises, and his openhanded manner of giving and receiving bribes mark him as one of those dedicated men who seek first the political kingdom and then look for its silver lining. Of course, a corrupt politician is only a symptom of a sick society. One must look into the heart of the body politic to account for a diseased member, such as Nanga. Achebe's diagnosis is that people who have recently passed through a period of colonial rule adopt a rather cynical attitude toward political corruption. They are willing to excuse the extravagances of their leaders because they believe that these men who led the struggle for independence now have a right to "eat the national cake." They also believe that a well-fed MP might let a few crumbs fall to his constituents. In this kind of political climate, reforms such as Odii and his party advocate receive little public support. "'Let them eat,' was the people's opinion, 'after all when white men used to do all the eating did we commit suicide?"' (p. 161). Such cynicism keeps hungry men like Nanga in power and perpetuates a tradition of corruption in government. The sick society must undergo a major political convulsion before such cynicism is transmuted into hope. Achebe's perceptive eye travels over the whole range of recent Nigerian political experience. He shows us the noisy preindependence parliament sessions with politicians jostling for position, the do-nothing ministers (minister of overseas training, minister of public construction, minister of culture), the private armies of hooligans mobilized by politicians to terrorize the opposition, the election violence, the gross corruption and abuse of public office. Sometimes there is penetrating political analysis, such as this observation by Odili:
A man who has just come in from the rain and dried his body and put on dry clothes is more reluctant to go out again than another who has been indoors all the time. The trouble with our new nation-as I saw it then lying on that bed-was that none of us had been indoors long enough to be able to say "To hell with it." We had all been in
26London: Heinemann.

26

Bernth Lindfors

the rain together until yesterday. 'Ten a handful of us-the smart and the lucky and hardly ever the best-had scrambled for the one shelter our former rulers left, and had taken it over and barricaded themselves in. And from within they sought to persuade the rest through numerous loudspeakers, that the first phase of the struggle had been won and that the next phase the extension of our house-was even more importantand called for new and original tactics; it required that all argument should cease and the whole people speak with one voice and that any more dissent and argument outside the door of the shelter would subvert and bring down the whole house (p. 42).

And when thc house is finally brought down, when the "fat-dripping, gummy, eat-and-let-eat regime" is ended by a quick military coup,
Overnight everyone began to shake their heads at the excesses of the last regime, at its newspapers, the radio, the hitherto silent graft, oppression and corrupt governmnent: intellectuals and civil servants-everybody said what a terrible lot; and it became public opinion the next morning. And these were the same people that only the other day had owned a thousand names of adulation, whom praise-singers followed with song and talking-drum wherever they went (p. 166).

Achebe's analysis is exceptionally deep and clairvoyant here, considering that this passage was written at least eleven months before the January 1966 coup in Nigeria.27 Odili's political role merits attention for he is one of those unusual men who manages to remain untainted while swimming in a sea of filth. Though his main motive for entering politics is to avenge the humiliation he suffered in a love rivalry with Nanga, he is also genuinely concerned about the deterioration and abuse of national government and the greed and dishonesty of the politicians in power. He joins a radical party, the Common People's Convention, which has been organized by one of his old school friends, and campaigns for reform. When Nanga offers him a generous bribe to get him out of the race, Odili refuses it and campaigns even harder. Finally he is brutally assaulted by Nanga's followers and winds up in the hospital on election day. His friend, the organizer of the CPC, is murdered. Odili vows never to get involved in politics again. Thus, like Wilson lyari in Ekwensi's Beautiful Feathers and Freddie Namme in Ekwensi's Jagua Nana, Odili is forced out of public life. Politics is a dirty profession and only the dirtiest professionals remain eager to continue in it. In the writings of Wole Soyinka, Africa's leading playwright, politicians are always comic figures. Soyinka is particularly fond of mocking their gullibility and grandiose notions. In A Dance of the Forests (1963), a play commissioned for Nigeria's independence celebrations in 1960, a council orator proposes that his country make a search for the direct "descendants of our great forefathers" so that they can be present on the historic occasion of the "gathering of the tribes."
Find them. Find the scattered sons of our proud ancestors. The builders of empires. The descendants of our great nobility. Find them. Bring them here. If they are halfway across the world, trace them. If they are in hell, ransom them. Let them symbolize all that is noble in our nation. Let them be ouirhistorical link for the season of rejoicing (p. 32).

But when these honored guests appear, they are neither noble nor dis" The novel was submitted to Achebe's publisher in February 1965.

The African Politician's Changing Image

27

tinguished; indeed, one is a whore. Soyinka plays on this irony in order to spoof Africa's attempts to create myths of a glorious past at the time of independence. Politicians are the men most eager to create such myths. Soyinka also includes politicians as minor characters in The Road (1965), The Trials of Brother Jero (1963), and in his novel, The Interpreters (1965 ).28 In The Trials of Brother Jero, to take just one example, an ambitious member of parliament is duped into becoming a follower of a hypocritical, self-proclaimed prophet when the prophet predicts that tlle MP will become minister for war if he displays sufficient piety. Again Soyinka is ridiculing the gullibility, magnificent schemes, and egocentric aspirations of the African politician. Unlike Achebe and Ekwensi, however, Soyinka does not picture the politician as inordinately vicious; rather, he is a fool too easily deluded by his own dreams. Soyinka's most political play is his most recent, Kongi's Harvest (1967),29 in which Kongi, president of Isma, an independent African country, plans to inaugurate a Five Year Developmient Plan with a grand national festival to be known as Kongi's Harvcst. Kongi wants Oba Danlola, an influential traditional "spiritual leader," to demonstrate his loyalty and subordination to the modern regime by performing his rituals at the festival and by presenting Kongi, instead of the traditional gods, with the symbolic new yam. Kongi will then reign as Spirit of the Harvest and all citizens will be obliged to submit to his authority. Kongi holds Oba Danlola in preventive detention and offers him numerous bribes to persuade him to play his part. Danlola finally agrees, but the festival is disrupted by a band of revolutionaries who succeed in overthrowing Kongi. Kongi is a marvelous burlesque of the self-conscious African president. HIeis obsessively concerned with projecting an appropriate image and locks up a conclave of elders in a mountain retreat so that they can think without distraction, decide which image would be the most satisfactory, and ghostwrite his books and speeches. These advisors, together with an organizing secretary who acts as Kongi's official go-between with the public, show great imagination in devising an image. Kongi's speeches are to be filled with "positive scientificism"; he is to govern by the principle of "Enlightened Ritualism"; places are to be nained after him (Kongi Terminus, Kongi University, Kongi Dam, Kongi Refineries, Kongi Airport); the calendar is to be changed so that everything dates from Kongi's Harvest; he is to go into seclusion before the Harvest and then emerge to announce a reprieve for all political prisoners awaiting execution. Kongi, perhaps remembering recent bomb-throwing incidents, balks at the suggestion of reprieve for his enemies, but his secretary, endeavoring to point out how the outside world would look upon such generosity, produces a dazzling series of attractive images. Flattered, Kongi agrees to the reprieve which in the end brings about his own downfall. Because Soyinka creates an entirely imaginary world in this play, his satire tends to be broad and sweeping rather than aimed at a particular
28The Road (London: Oxford University Press, 1965) The Trials of Brother Jero in his Five Plays (London: Oxford University Press, 19645, and the Interpreters (London: Deutsch, 1965). " London: Oxford University Press.

28

Bernth Lindfors

target. He pokes fun at African politics, not just African politicians. He ridicules not only image-building but also coercion of traditional authorities, suppression of opposition, development plans, preventive detention, ideology formation, propaganda techniques, and tradition-tinged ceremonial occasions celebrated in the modem African state. His image of the African politician, though hardly complimentary, is at least less savage than the images seen in Nigerian literary works which strive to be realistic. Ekwensi's politicians were dogs, Achebe's were dogs with deceptive personal charm, but Soyinka's are foolish overreachers misguided by dreams of glory. To sum up, the image of the fictional African politician in African literature in English changes drastically after independence. The idealistic, selfsacrificing nationalist is transformed into a greedy, self-seeking opportunist. Even in Nigerian literature, which was not without moderate political satire before independence, the tendency has been for writers to critcize politicians more vitriolicly and more frequently in recent years. The changing image of the African politician in African literature affirms that Africans have become disillusioned with their politicians since independence.