Mourn Achebe but read his books as well

By Tom Odhiambo

There has been a flood of eulogies for Chinua Achebe. Most of them have talked about the man’s greatness. Yes, the man. Few have bothered to talk about his books. Not his philosophy. Not his celebration of the Igbo culture. Not his commitment and loyalty to Nigeria. Not his undying defence of Africa.

I only met Achebe once, in Johannesburg, several years ago. There was an adoring crowd encircling him but I managed to push through and say a greeting. I got a response. That was the closest I came to the now departed Achebe.

So I will not pretend to extol the man’s virtues and legendary personality. I speak of him from what I know of his thinking as conveyed to us through his writing, both fiction and non-fiction. For it is only through his novels and essays that many know and will know Achebe.

Political writer

His Nigerian brethren, friends and peers will tell us more about him, especially now that his latest book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (2012) has re-ignited a soul-searching debate about the unity of the Nigerian nation-state.

Indeed, a brief look at There Was a Country is quite apt right now. Achebe’s writing was very political. By political I mean that he deliberately wrote to achieve some social end — he intended to change people’s perceptions about the world.

Achebe did not write simply for the literary sophistication of the text. This is what he says about the role of the (African) writer in There Was a Country: “What was our role in our new country? How were we to think about the use of our talents? I can say that when a number of us decided that we would be writers, we had not thought through these questions very clearly. In fact, we did not have a clue what we were up against.

“What I can say is that it was clear to many us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories — prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.”

If you read the entire collection of Achebe’s writings you will have no doubt that he has remained quite faithful to this goal. In fact, the controversy surrounding There Was a Country is due to his loyalty to his Igbo people. Achebe strongly felt that the Nigerian state has been unfair to the Igbo people, alienating them more than appreciating their talents.

For a country that is struggling to remain united, Achebe’s exhumation of the Biafra history is not just meant to remind the rest of the world of the injustices that his people suffered, but it may as well be a warning to other countries on the dangers of civil war.

Cultural crossroads

I choose There Was a Country as my reference in mourning Achebe because this book summarises his life and philosophy. It is about his birth at a moment he calls “… a world at a cultural crossroads.”

It is about the cultural richness and material wealth of his Igbo people. It is about the intrigues that gave birth to Nigeria, with British colonial manipulation bequeathing the country ethnic and regional suspicions that haunt it to date.

There Was a Country is a eulogy to Nigerian nationalism and pan-Africanism. The implied question in the book is: How did egotism and ethnic self-entitlement dash such noble dreams as inclusive nationalism and pan-African humanism?

I urge those who mourn Achebe to (re)visit his books, to read beyond Things Fall Apart. To re-examine why African states are No Longer at Ease, decades since the end of colonial rule. If Achebe warned of the corrupting influence of the new work conditions that the African had to adapt to as the coloniser departed, then how did we end up institutionalising what Francois Bayart calls ‘the politics of the belly’, best symbolised by Chief Nanga in A Man of the People?

Had many educated Africans internalised the most read African novel, Things Fall Apart, would Africa have fallen so low morally, economically, culturally, spiritually or politically?

Okonkwo’s life is a spectacle on how Africans should deal with matters, from farming, worship, resolving disputes and socialising to acculturating the young. So, how did it happen that nearly every African who has studied beyond the elementary level knows of or cites Things Fall Apart yet ‘things are falling apart’ around them, literally?

I say that Achebe was a very political writer because beyond his excoriation on African politics in The Trouble with Nigeria, Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah calls on the educated elite to take a keen interest in the workings of politics.

This is a debate that has been clichéd in Kenya. There is talk of the ‘middle class’, which, I suppose, includes the educated elite, not showing interest in politics.

Achebe has been a living-ancestor of African literature; his books will remain the starting point for a discussion on African literature for many years to come.

But it is now the turn of those who have survived him not just to contest the myths and stereotypes about Africa, which was his lifelong pursuit, but to create new myths of a progressive, just, inclusive, accommodating, humane and more worldly Africa.

The writer teaches literature at the University of Nairobi. Tom.odhiambo@uonbi.ac.ke