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Elliot Ziwira At the Bookstore

Libyan poet, Omar Salem’s “Ghana Reveals Her Secrets”, published by Unity Media Ventures (Accra) and translated from Arabic to English by Gibrill M. Al-Munir, evocatively reveals the essence of heritage as enshrined in the land, spirituality and history in Africa’s struggle against colonial hegemony.

The land has always been a people’s pride, and it remains so, because without ownership of it, development continues to recede to the horizon.

It is the womb to aquatic, mineral, agricultural and other natural resources, which makes it trite to wish away any struggle for its repossession.

The poems in the anthology were penned during the time the poet was on a diplomatic mission to Ghana.

In the Introduction to the collection, the Secretary-General of the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA), Atukwei Okai writes: “Ghana Reveals Her Secrets”, Omar Salem’s translation of the “Dead Sea Scroll of the African Soul”, seeks to discover and reveal the key that will break the code of the oracle of our destiny.”

As a proud people, Africans should understand that the key to unlocking the abundance of their heritage is enmeshed in the rich history that informs their being, which the colonial West seeks to relegate to the annals.

They should be conscious of the whole “gamut of truths that had been suppressed about the rich heritage and powerful spiritual sovereignty of the African Soul as well as the indescribable magnificence of Africa’s future,” (Atukwei Okai).

That Africa is endowed with vast mineral resources is as true as the fact that the colonial world was developed through their pillage, but sadly the continent remains poor and lies prostrate on the ground, while imperialists rape her willy-nilly.

History has it on record that colonisation reduced the legitimate owners of the land to subsistent croppers, who barely exist beyond the tag of peasantry, on barren land, with the minority, whose belief in the superiority of their race is legendary, occupying vast tracts of arable land.

Hope abounds that the aspirations of the devastated beau, whose bride bled on the night of their wedding at the callous hands of alien gangsters from where the sun sets, imbued with sadism and anarchism, will sprout to fruition.

Even though she continues to suffer at the hands of imperialists through their hegemonic machinations, Africa will rise again, if the poetic lover remains true to his identity as an African.

Africa should not always be the punch bag and astonishing beauty that remains in the limelight as a tool for sexual gratification.

In spite of the vast mineral resources in her womb, heightening her beauty, Africa remains poor and underdeveloped, and it is this that Salem takes a swipe at through the therapeutic music of his poetry.

The rich imagery exploited as well as the metaphors that play on the devastation and crestfallenness of two love birds in a world that preys on their vulnerability and fragile expectations, pave the way for easier interpretation of the African’s feelings of displacement, exploitation and alienation.

Reminiscent of the Negritude Movement championed by Leopold Sedar Senghor, Aime Cesaire and David Diop, and the Romanticist poetry of William Wordsworth, William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the allure of the beauty that manifests in hope is purveyed through the use of natural images of the night, moon, sun and dawn.

Though the night may depict darkness and hopelessness, the image of the moon complements and counters that of the sun, which has the same capacity to destroy and construct; thus portraying the paradoxical nature of life.

The extended metaphor of the night merges with the symbol of dawn, which denotes a new day and connotes a new era of hope, expectation and fruition.

The anthology, which has 20 poems, is divided into different parts to allow for the release of different episodes of the African experience, which are allowed to interact and merge, to capture the metaphysical, physical and emotional, through time and space.

The story of the despondent lover, who is the hero in the poems, ceases to be his story alone, as it transcends racial, tribal and ethnic boundaries to capture the resilience of the African struggle of hope, decolonisation and self-reliance.

The opening poem, “Africa: The Sun of Tomorrow the Day of the Future”, reveals the beauty of Africa, and the inevitability of her existence in the world matrix.

Written through a combination of prose and verse, the poem examines how the West can ignore the continent’s rise from the slumber of colonial hegemony at its own peril.

The poet sings: “Africa is the sun of tomorrow and the future days to come: the bright moon of civilisation that can never be eclipsed by Western technology nor her splendour dimmed by the AIDS epidemic nor the scourge of malaria.”

Omar Salem expresses contempt at a civilisation that is premised on “racial discrimination . . . and the enslavement of one man by another.”

He is all too aware that Africa remains the beacon of the world’s trajectory into the future, without which all hope dies.

The poet admonishes: “Consider my friends how your lives are going to be without Africa . . . how miserable you will be without the savanna forests in your world . . . without its mines of gold… without the Uranium deep . . . And without all other things that words cannot count . . . Oh, how wretched you are without the beautiful face of Africa!”

Reciprocity, as Ayi Kwei Armah advocates, is the way to go, as the West, or indeed the world, needs Africa as much as the continent needs global interaction, so as to foster win-win outcomes.

The title poem, “Ghana Reveals Her Secrets”, combines lyricism with wit to proffer hope to the agonising beau; the true African, who bleeds inside as he witnesses the brutal rape of his beloved – the Motherland.

Ghana, the poet’s enchanting sweetheart, whose beauty mesmerises the world, metaphorically stands for Africa, the paragon of virtue. As she professes her undying love to her progeny, Africa implores them to remain true to themselves and refuse to be subdued, and only give glory to God, and not to mere mortals.

The rationale above also obtains in the poems “The Disappointed Lover”, “When the Soul Bleeds” “Hymns to the Face of Africa” and “Presages of A Fortune Teller”.

Notwithstanding past setbacks, hurt and betrayal endured in the yesteryears, which seem to permeate the present, the African’s spiritual connectedness to God, makes it possible for him to espouse the light that glows in his future.

Salem awakens his people to the fact that spirituality has power over humanity, as he intimates that even “in the graveyard of my Soul . . . You shall never take God from my heart . . . For I am engraved upon the face of lightning/And storms breastfed me with their milk/And in my heart I carry/ What still remains of prophetic embodiment” (“When the Soul Bleeds”).

As the voice of the voiceless and “truth’s defence” (Pollard, 1970), Salem offers himself as the sacrificial lamb for Africa’s cause. He is conscious of the need for self-abashment and sacrifice for the African dream to be realised.

The poet draws the continent to the history of the struggle for political independence championed by the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, whose ideologies were shaped by his belief that: “Only the best is good enough for the African”.

It is through our own designs that we can free ourselves from the colonial yoke of subjugation. It is the duty of every African to redefine and reshape the Motherland’s dream through a truly African sensibility.

Africans, therefore, should be wary of getting swayed by suitors who come dressed in the fashion of Santa Claus to hide their nefarious intentions.

Poverty indeed is the culprit that the West exploits effectively against the continent, but Africa should remain resilient and united against plunder glossed over as aid.

Impoverished democracy is not what is yearned for, but a better standard of living for the majority in a world where diseases are not manufactured to decimate presumed inferior races, where everyone is equal, and where wars are not manufactured to create anarchy and chaos as a way of plundering others’ ancestral resources.

In such a desired world, the power of the mighty is checked to ungag the voices of the feeble and vulnerable, mutilated, displaced and molested over generations of stoic submission.

Also, the multiplicity of religious and cultural beliefs is respected, and the word “terrorism” is not used selectively.

Salem implores in the poem, “For Your Eyes Only All Poesy”: “In your palm/The African moon is born/And all tyrants/bow in homage to/its dazzling light”.

The Motherland, whose womb flourishes with treasures untold, should be able to sure-footedly shatter night falls in the wake of promising dawns, and map her own destiny, through expression of choice without surrendering herself to the whims of the insidious glare of the unfortunate suitors, who feel chided by her independence of will.

Indeed, the African is as human as any other being, and should be given a chance to run his/her affairs, but only if he/she is willing to give an arm and a leg for the realisation of such an outcome; for therein lies the Motherland’s redemption.