Lovemore Ranga Mataire The Reader
Attempts by early European writers to depict Africans as a people without any form of social organisation and sophisticated communication modes have over the years been convincingly dismissed as nothing but sheer bigotry. African literature formed the basis upon which social organisation was structured and served different purposes at various ceremonies and important cultural gatherings.

Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu says African literature is literature of and from Africa and includes oral literature or orature. Traditionally, Africans do not radically separate art from teaching. Rather than write or sing for beauty in itself, African writers taking their cue from oral literature, use beauty to help communicate important truths and information to society.

Oral literature existed in prose or verse. The prose was often about a mythological or historical figure and included tales of a trickster character. Story tellers in African often employed the call and response techniques to their stories as a way of engaging the audience.

Storytelling is punctuated by familiar songs. Poetry also was often in the form of songs or verses in praise of a mythological hero or ancestral figure that would have triumphed against adversity. The poetry mainly sung includes narrative epics, occupational verse, praise poems to rulers and other prominent people. Praise singers sometimes called griots performed their stories with music.

Examples of pre-colonial literature include, “Epic of Sundiata”, “Epic of Dinga-from Ghana”, “Book of Kings in Ethiopia” and “Utendi waTambuka”.

Best known pre-colonial literature dates back to the slave trade in West Africa such as Olaudah Equiano’s “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” (1789).

Writing in Western languages began very early when Africans were exposed to foreign languages like English and Portuguese. In 1911, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford also known as Ekra-Agiman of the then Gold Coast (Ghana) who published arguably the first African novel written in English known as “Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation”.

Twenty-four years later, Africa had its first African play in English titled “The Girl who Killed to Save: Nongqawuse the Liberator “ in 1935 written by Herbert Isaac Ernest Dlomo of South Africa. In the same year, Ngugi wa Thiong’o published the first East African Drama called “The Black Hermit”, a cautionary tale on tribalism between African tribes.

“Things Fall Apart” by Nigerian Chinua Achebe, which depicted early contacts between Africans and Europeans, was the first African novel in English to receive international recognition. The book focused on the effects of colonialism on traditional African society and the violent conquest of Africa.

It was Achebe who set the tone for late colonial period African literature towards the end of the First World War to focus on issues of liberation and independence even in French controlled territories.

Thus, the first anthology of French language poetry written by Africans was published in 1948. The initiative was spearheaded by Leopold Sedar Senghor who was to be become the first President of independent Senegal.

With his Negritude movement, Senghor published Anthology of the New Black and Malagasy, which was in French and featured an introduction by French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre.

It must be noted that early African writers could not be separated from issues that were taking place during their time. Some if not most of them actively participated in numerous liberation initiatives. A typical example is Christopher Okigbo who was in battle for Biafra during Nigeria’s civil war in the 1960s.

Mongane Wally Serote was detained as a result of the South Africa’s Terrorism Act Number 83 of 1967 between 1976 and 1970. He was later released without trial.

Writers were so much enmeshed in their works to the extent that some even committed suicide rather than live under oppressive regimes.

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