My Father was the working title for Yunhouse, by The Author
I began dreaming of Yunhouse from
the moment of my arrival in Europe in
the middle of the last century. It was a
dream that would afflict my career
development. For a couple of
decades, after graduating with two degrees, I wondered through
space and time with a nagging existential itch that was
attributable to my psyche being wired into Europe-Africa mode. I
got relief from this itch by keeping diaries, millions of words,
thousands of pages, and dozens of volumes.
I approached middle age without a job that satisfied My Father’s
idea of earning a living. On one historic day, he asked what I
planned to do with my life. ‘If I don’t write I will die’, I said. He
paused for a long time, then he said: ‘If only we had known that
Whiteman’s schooling would turn our children into Whitemen…As
it is now, I don’t’s see any of myself in you. You have turned out a
bastard…The only thing traditional left in you is to ensure I have a
decent funeral”.
I felt hurt. Really, deeply hurt.My Father did not go to school. But he was – and still remains –
the person I most respect on this planet. He is the only role model
I can think of. So, how on earth could he regret his decision that
led to my growing up to be who I am?
The exchange with My Father helped focus my Yunhouse dream.
I took a critical look at European education. I stripped being
European-educated of its popular blessings: earning power,
material possessions, high status in society, and all that. Then I
saw the curses: the unresolved contradictions and conflicts
inherent in The Pacification Of The Natives as a process in the
colonisation of Africa. And this revelation: the much vaunted
Golden Fleece being pursued by European-educated Africans
was a Trojan Horse! The irrepressible urge to narrate this
revelation in full became the essence of the dream about a place
of interminable hot debates about Africa, Africans African-ness,
and associated emotions, notions, locutions or prognostications.
But, how could this dream narration be attained without resorting
to anti-colonial furore so loudly expressed in extant literature
about Africa but seemingly made redundant by the full continent
wide attainment of political independence? For instance, what
else can an African say about colonialism after the world famous
Nelson Mandela Option is deemed to have concluded the liberation struggle, and Africans are asked to sheath their swords
of anger, forgive the brutalisation, forget the dehumanisation, and
move on? Move on to what life?
I considered a narrative angle that used My Father to characterise
the generation that sent my generation to school. Imagine My
Father having gone to school and travelling to England to study,
how he would have been in a position to experience and observe
at first hand the undeniable conspiracy behind the colonisation
process. Armed with their language and knowledge of their social
attitudes, he would be able to directly engage those responsible
for re-engineering the destiny of his people. How would he defend
Africa?
Predictably, My Father would vehemently challenge the basic
assumption that Africa was there to be taken by any non-Africans
who so desired. He would adduce arguments from first principles
of humanity: what of the humans (the Africans) who have lived on
this target continent for millennia, their history, their culture, their
traditions, not to mention their god-given rights to life aimed at a
destiny of their aspiration? The responses, explicit and implicit,
would come at him, loud and clear, wherever he goes, whatever
he sees, anything he touches, every sound he hears: What
African people? Non-Africans have been taking Black Africans for centuries, the Arabs moved millions across the Sahara Desert,
and lately Europeans shipped millions across the Atlantic Ocean.
These responses would no doubt sicken My Father. Even more
so when he points their implications at himself: does that mean he
too has been taken? He cannot answer because he cannot
believe the probability. He cannot believe the probability because
he cannot he cannot accept the possibility. He cannot accept the
possibility because it would mean shredding everything he holds
as the essence of the life as he has known and lived.
Feeling dejected, rejected and even ejected, My Father reaches
for his soul’s panic button: fight or flight! But…who are the
enemies?…where are they?…where is the battlefront?…flight
from where?…retreating to what destination? Too many things
are simply not adding up in this existential equation.
Typical of his generation, My Father hankers for his roots, for any
bits of traditional wisdom, to ease his anguish. He recollects the
event of his native community’s initial encounter with Europe. The
community’s Spiritual Leader walked out of the first ever formal
discussion with the first ever European person to step on their
native soil, because: “Dialogue with a total stranger is a total
illusion!”. And he spat. The pronouncement (together with the
spitting) has become an adage in My Father’s language. But the speakers of this language are undecided about the pertinence of
the symbolism in the fact that this iconic Spiritual Leader, straight
after dropping his pearl of wisdom, hanged himself. Had the
cause of death been suicide, African Spiritual Leader – of all
people – would have been denied the dignity of traditional funeral
rites. So the elders noted the cause of death as natural tragedy,
and it was so recorded in the community’s collective memory.
All pre-colonial African communities had Spiritual Leaders who,
without exception, expressed opposition and resistance to the
phenomenon of the appearance of the Whiteman. All the Spiritual
Leaders had the premonition that the European was harbinger of
an ill-wind that would blow away all things African. But now, as My
Father and his peers could clearly observe, all the social
relevance of the spiritual leaders are being deleted by Christianity,
and their institutions are being categorised by anthropologists as
medicine-men, mumbo-jumbo, juju, etc, etc, in the scientific
nomenclature for African purveyors of perceived superstition.
However, in the mind-set of My Father’s generation, there persists
a legacy of the Spiritual Leaders foresaw Africa being invaded by
strangers who were vectors of an alien cultural pathogen against
which Africa’s cultural immune system had no defence. The
manifestation of this virulent pathogen is that it chews up Africa’s past, compels Africans to a life that begins today, and infects
them with perpetual angst about tomorrow.
Being at the cusp of this transformation exacerbates My Father’s
anguish. In spite of himself, he witnesses how and why there is
not much he can do about the unfolding reality whereby he cannot
be the role model for his children the way his father had been for
him. He can only wish his children would live out their scenes of
this existential drama with less pain than himself. Hopefully, they
will have more to