March 21 was here again recently. On this particular day in 2013, Professor Chinua Achebe, one of the world’s most distinguished writers and intellectuals took his last breath in Boston, Massachusetts, mourned and celebrated by his teeming readers, critics and diverse people across the globe on whom his work and life had significantly impacted in various ways. I have to use this period to examine some of the important discussions that have continued to circulate around Achebe, his work and African literature which appear to have even gained considerable weight since his demise and have also distinguished themselves by the largely tantalising distortions, half-truths and deliberate misinformation that have been carefully injected into them.
This service is for the benefit of students, younger professors and scholars who were yet to be admitted into the African literary household when some of the events stoking these discussions took place and who are innocently gobbling up the horribly deficient accounts being fed them by those who either do not have any better grasp of those aspects of the African literary history themselves or are on a deliberate mission to distribute misleading concoctions.
It seems so natural to commence with Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Literature Prize given that discussions on it have stubbornly refused to go away even after over a decade of Achebe’s passing.
Achebe and the Nobel politics
By 1986, it was very obvious that the Swedish Academy which annually selects the recipients of the Nobel Literature Prize had decided to bring it to Africa. But to actualise this, they did something that viciously affected the credibility of that year’s prize. They summoned African writers to Stockholm to discuss African Literature before them. While several African writers, including the illustrious Wole Soyinka who won the prize that year trooped to Sweden to attend the conference which held from 11-17 April, 1986, Chinua Achebe thought that such an event was not worth his time.
In his message to the Nobel Committee rejecting their invitation, Achebe wrote:
“I regret I cannot accept your generous invitation for the simple reason that I do not consider it appropriate for African writers to assemble in European capitals in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. In my humble opinion it smacks too much of those constitutional conferences arranged in London and Paris for our pre-independence political leaders.
“The fault, however is not with the organizers such as yourselves, but with us the writers of Africa who at this point in time should have outgrown the desire for the easy option of using external platforms instead of grappling with the problem of creating structures of their own at home.
“…I strongly believe that the time is overdue for Africans, especially African writers, to begin to take the initiative in deciding the things that belong to their peace…” (See “Ikejemba: He Had in Him the Elements So Mixed” by Professor Michael Thelwell, Usaafrica dialogue google groups).
One wonders what the astounded Nobel Committee members must have whispered to each other after receiving this letter.
In an interview a few years later with ThisWeek magazine (November 27, 1989), Achebe explained further why he chose to ignore the event: “In 1986, I rejected an invitation to Stockholm to discuss African literature. They thought it was the turn of Africa. I thought it was not right for African writers to troop to Europe to discuss the future of African literature. The relationship between me and them is well known; I am not battling for their recognition. Recognitions are good but I am not going to stop any work in order to court your attention. No matter how well meaning, no one else can tell your own story.”(p.19)
Now, why would the Nobel Committee take the very suspicious decision of inviting African writers to Stockholm to discuss African literature before shortly giving the prize to a Black African writer – an action some of us found very patronising? It would even be more disastrous to the reputation of the Nobel Committee and its distinguished literature prize to suggest that perhaps the committee might not have achieved sufficient acquaintance with African writers and their works and so considered it necessary to bring them to Sweden in order to make up for that deficiency.
That would then amount to underlining the impression that their decision to bring their prize to Africa preceded their determination of the criteria for selecting the particular African writer they intended to give it to. But how would just a single conference be enough to help the committee make such an important decision when they had all the time to thoroughly examine the works of African writers since the announcement of the last winner the previous year? Or were there some extra-literary considerations they usually relied upon to choose the prize recipients? For instance, was a demonstration of adequate respect to the “Nobel masters” by honouring their summons to flock to Stockholm that year the key requirement designed for African writers to enable one of them “qualify” to receive the coveted prize?
The reason that makes more sense is that their decision was obviously a product of anxiety and fear. By this time, Africa’s best known and highly regarded writer, Chinua Achebe, whose novels, lectures and essays had formidably challenged the stereotypical portrayal of the continent and her people by Western writers and had largely influenced a significant review of how the rest of the world saw Africa and her people had earned for himself the status of a “suspect” within the Western literary establishment.
This kind of sincerity is so touching, although, definitely, not everyone that heard Achebe in that audience would be able to suppress his entrenched prejudice to generate such a positive, edifying response.
But the more unfortunate aspect of the matter is that while the “authentic universal” people are realizing that they had long been mired in pitiable self-delusion, some African intellectuals are falling over themselves to announce to the world like the African American writer, Booker T. Washington, the author of Up From Slavery, that they are scared of losing their chains.
In January 1974, Achebe had declared to a gathering of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and language Studies at Makarere University, Uganda: “I hold, however, and have held from the very moment I began to write that earnestness is appropriate to my situation. Why? I suppose because I have deep-seated need to alter things within my situation, to find for myself a little more room than has been allowed me in the world. I realize how pompous or even frightening this must sound to delicate sensibilities, but I can’t help it”.
A reading of Achebe’s 1975 collection of essays, Morning Yet on Creation Day, should be enough to help anyone appreciate the reasons that qualified him for the “special status” he enjoys in the Western literary world. He and a few African writers who share similar views have already earned for themselves the tag of “uppity Africans” who could not be trusted and who might want to “embarrass” the “owners of literature” by using a rejection of their “biggest prize,” the Nobel, to effectively drive home their clear repudiation of Europe’s hegemonic tendencies on African life and culture.
Achebe’s decision to spurn the invitation to the 1986 Stockholm conference and the tone and content of his rejection letter, therefore, was the timely red flag the Swedes eagerly awaited to confirm their fears that this was one of those Africans “who were beginning to reject their place in the world”.
But the next action of the Nobel Committee members betrayed their abject lack of sound judgement. Or, maybe, they really intended to underline for African writers the fact they required more than quality work to earn their prize. A wiser decision would have been to wait for another year or two before bringing the prize to Africa and many people would not have easily linked the two events (the summon to Stockholm and the award of the Nobel prize to an African shortly after) to achieve damaging conclusions.
Now, it is important to state here that the two leading figures on the African literary landscape whose names would necessarily feature prominently in this discussion, Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka, despite a couple of disagreements based clearly on principles, remained friends till the very end. So, those who would jump out of their small holes to inherit a non-existent quarrel between the two friends should better save their energy. This tribute by East Africa’s leading writer, Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o, recalling what happened just thirteen years before Achebe’s death would help to underline this point:
“At Achebe’s 70th birthday celebrations at Bard College [New York] attended by Toni Morrison and Wole Soyinka among others, I told this story of how Achebe’s name had haunted my life. When Soyinka’s turn to speak came, he said I had taken the story from his mouth: He had been similarly mistaken for Achebe. The fact is Achebe became synonymous with the Heinemann African Writers Series and African writing as a whole. There’s hardly any African writer of my generation who has not been mistaken for Achebe… He was the single most important figure in the development of modern African literature as a writer, editor and quite simply a human being.
His novel, Things Fall Apart, the most widely read novel in the history of African literature since its publication in 1958 became an inspiring model. As the general editor of the Heinemann African Writers Series, he had a hand in the emergence of many other writers and their publication. As a person, he embodied wisdom that comes from a commitment to the middle way between extremes and, of course, courage in the face of personal tragedy! Achebe bestrides generations and geographies. Every country in Africa claims him as their own. Some sayings in his novels are quoted frequently as proverbs that contain universal wisdom. His passing marks the beginning of the end of an epoch.”
