Ignorant, arrogant readers and leaders are not exiling writers

Peter Oduor, in this very space a couple of weeks ago, posed a foolish question: Is the era of dissenting writers gone?

Perhaps he meant to ask if the era of dissident writers — the types autocrats and dictators loved to put in protective detention all over the continent — was over because dissenting writers, those who write against the accepted canon, are still aplenty. Some of us have even been called literary gangsters for the internal exile experiences we convey.

But to get back to Mr Oduor’s opinions, whatever happened to external exile for writers who angered regimes?

Where are the new Ngugi wa Thiongos writing on toilet papers in prison, eating raw onions off the field as they serve long sentences, and as soon as they are freed, sprinting off to Norway?

The answer is that political regimes no longer bother to ban books here because the world has fundamentally changed. With things like blogs and Twitter, criticism against the regime(s) has gone viral, and every mwananchi can be a dissident writer. Why bother running after a Mochama with his Road to Eldoret from 2009 when you have a Robert Alai annoying you as a government with his tweets every nine seconds?

To wit, in South Africa, why bother with a Dennis Brutus’ complex poetry when you have a nitwit like Julius Malema brutally attacking you as Zuma, until one feels like yelling “bring me my machine gun”?

And when Oduor yearned for a Léopold Senghor with his call for negritude, what is negritude in the global village?

LITERARY WAILS

A month ago, with Dr Tom Odhiambo of the University of Nairobi, we sat in a panel at the Big SAS festival in Bayreuth, Germany and listened to a bunch of Nigerians’ literary wails about the Kaiser’s German genocide in Namibia in 1904.

Yet in 2014, black overlords are robbing the populace clean of their oil. Why fight century old white ghosts, when black modern-day devils are eating your intestines? An accusation was further made that we — new writers — do not work on material to cause a ruckus in the public ear.

Two years ago, I recall writing a book called Princess Adhis and the Naija Coca Broda about dirty politicians, drug lords and sex tourists. Once it hit the shelves, several folks told me how “entertaining” it is, and I despaired.

But I guess in a country where the daily headlines from the Coast are about Al Shabaab/MRC merger massacres, and State Security and “Intelligence” seem hapless and helpless, sex molestation can seem trite or at least a backburner —  not burning issue, especially in a book.

Writers here have not lost their moral cause or compass.  Binyavanga Wainaina a few months ago came out and very bravely defended gay rights in Kenya and was the flavour of the week, before being eclipsed by, I dunno, Vera Sidika’s bottom?

What this tells us is that with Instagram and WhatsApp and other new media platforms, the age of the Big Reflective Book is giving way to 140 characters as the Attention-Grabber and a shorter concentration span on big issues in society. This then means thinkers need to tinker with their literary methodology.

Last century’s causes belonged to other old voices, and this century’s causes need a new language. This is our challenge as writers. Hearkening to the past would be like growing an afro and putting on a pair of tight trousers and big shoes, then screaming for the return of 1974.

Moving to New York, London or Paris does not mean a lack of moral commitment as Mr Oduor suggests.  It just means writers go where the money is. Because they are human. When a Zukiswa Warner moves from her native South Africa to Zimbabwe to Kenya to Zurich, she may be a wandering minstrel, yes, but you cannot eat books, as they say.

Erring political elite

“Kenyan writers should address political strife, security and the economy instead of talking to themselves,” Oduor angrily charged. Yet I remember seeing Kenyans at the play Six and the City a couple of months ago, where Billy Kahora had a piece on politics, Andia Kisia on insecurity and Kevin Mwachiro on the economy. And half the audience there was German.

So perhaps Oduor has a point when he says we are writers whose “effect is assumed by themselves, forgotten by the public and contemptuously despised by the erring political elite.”

KILLER PARTY

One can pen a play like Percy’s Killer Party as I did, to re-imagine the demise of Mercy Keino and know it will be ignored by the erring political elite. They attend fundraisers and funerals, not theatre plays.

Certainly there is no journalist who does not feel insulted when this elite contemptuously refers to newspapers as only good for wrapping meat. And that is the internally exiled writer’s issue — ignorant readers and arrogant leaders.

When even a Senator like Anyang’ Nyong’o complains in that same Sunday paper (July 13) that the State ignores the Arts, after he attended a government-free cultural festival in Washington, then, you know — Houston, we’ve got a problem.