Heads of state and delegates attend the closing session of the French-speaking nations’ La Francophonie summit in Kinshasa on October 14. Picture: File
A meeting was recently held in Kinshasa to bring together the former French colonies in Africa — dubbed the Francophonie Project. To fit in with the emerging regional trading blocs, French-speaking African countries are increasingly adopting English as their national language, with Kiswahili taking root as the lingua franca.
We are already awash with stories covering the colonial and immediate post-colonial period of Africa’s history; colonialism as a topic has become fairly blasé.
That said, Ivorian Ahmadou Kourouma still wrote the book Monnew, offering an insider’s look into the successes and failures of the French mission in Africa, and how it impacted on the traditional lifestyle.
The central character in the story is King Djigui Keita of the Soba region, a descendant of the fabled Sundiata Keita. Things are going smoothly in his traditional Islamic kingdom held together by an elaborate set of African beliefs hinged on myth and fetish, through which the Islamic faith weaves a solid string that guarantees the old patriarch near-eternal reign. That is, until the European Nazarenes appear on the scene and things start falling apart.
Djigui is a complex character. At one time he is the typical patriarch, blessing the children with his fatherly touch and servicing his expansive harem like a true king. And then the seasons of bitterness visit his court and he descends into near oblivion. Like the ageing eagle, he has to make an odyssey into the mountains to undergo a painful rebirth. The cycle is complete when he re-emerges fresh and ageless, and the community once again troops to his balloda to seek his wise counsel.
In many aspects Djigui reflects our current leaders; complex individuals who hold us entranced by their very presence, their eloquence causing us to forget the heavy burden they have placed on the struggling taxpayer. Leaders whom we can only be rid of if they choose to bite their own tails, like the fabled desert serpent.
Once he has established his authority, the white man moves fast to completely emasculate and pacify the African labour that feeds his mills and factories as he embarks on his “great humanitarian and civilising project.”
You may not like the tone of the tale, but as far as richness of language goes, Kourouma is in the class of the masters. The words cut deep, but they ring with African sage wisdom, the narrative generously layered with idiom.
The story sings like an ode in its original language.
African leaders, specifically those prone to using the iron fist, can learn a thing or two from Djigui. “It is indispensable for all men in power to have in their entourage a man who is free in his judgments,” he says. “The chief who only has griots and courtiers around to flatter and applaud him is a solitary man; no matter where he goes, he only meets himself, no matter what he listens to, he only hears his own words.”
There is a dearth of such men all over the continent.
Djigui’s complexity stems from his retention of men like Fadoua, his sceptre-bearer, who describes himself as the monkey’s tail. “Someone who was rebelling against forced labour would come to the balloda,” says Fadoua of his role. “The king would listen to him, console him, speak to him of Allah, of the damnation of the nigger… The visitor would go away satisfied. I would follow him like a dog, and at the first turning, my men would grab hold of the protester and beat him to death. I would come back, take my place again amidst the courtiers, and Djigui wouldn’t ask me the slightest question. No one would mention the visitor or my crime. Djigui never referred to it, so that I still wonder, even though it’s highly improbable, if the Age Old Man knew what was going on. I never found either in his tone or in his eyes any signs of approbation or disapproval of my acts.” He sounds like a familiar character, doesn’t he?
In the post-World War II years, the French colonisers employ demagogy on the African, reminding him that he is now a French citizen following his defeat of Hitler and fascism. Djigui, like an old dog that knows its fleas, is not fooled. “Just as the field rat can’t be got out of his hole without smoke, the per capita tax and forced labourers cannot be extracted from the niggers without torture and fires,” he says to the white commandant.
This book highlights the post-independence situation where the free African still looks up to his old colonial masters instead of taking his own initiative; the classic situation of the animal that has been caged for so long hesitating to walk to freedom when the gates have been finally thrown open.
