Living in Hope and History Read Online Free PDF Page B

and peoples re-creating themselves.
    Finally, at home in Africa, in the countries of our continent, let Rosa Luxemburg’s definition be at the tip of our ballpoint pens and on the screens of our word-processors as we write: ‘Freedom means freedom to those who think differently.’ Let the writer’s status be recognized as both praise singer and social critic. Let’s say with Amu Djoleto:
    What you expect me to sing, I will not
,
    What you do not expect me to croak, I will
.
    â€”2nd PAWA Annual Lecture, Pan African Writers Association

5th International African Writers’ Day Celebration

Accra, Ghana, 1–7 November 1997

TURNING THE PAGE:
AFRICAN WRITERS AND
THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    W riters in Africa in the twentieth century, now coming to an end, have interpreted the greatest events on our continent since the abolition of slavery.
    We have known that our task was to bring to our people’s consciousness and that of the world the true dimensions of racism and colonialism beyond those that can be reached by the newspaper column and screen image, however valuable these may be. We have sought the fingerprint of flesh on history.
    The odds against developing as a writer able to take on this huge responsibility have been great for most of our writers. But as Agostinho Neto, Angolan poet and president, said, and proved in his own life: ‘If writing is one of the conditions of your being alive, you create that condition.’
    Out of adversity, out of oppression, in spite of everything . . .
    Looking forward into the twenty-first century, I think we have the right to assess what we have come through. Being here; the particular time and place that has been twentieth-century Africa. This has been a position with particular implications for literature; we have lived and worked through fearful epochs. Inevitably, the characteristic of African literature during the struggle against colonialism and, latterly, neocolonialism and corruption in post-colonial societies, has been engagement—political engagement.
    Now, unfortunately, many people see this concept of engagement as a limited category closed to the range of life reflected in literature; it is regarded as some sort of upmarket version of propaganda. Engagement is not understood for what it really has been, in the hands of honest and talented writers: the writer’s exploration of the particular meaning his or her being has taken on in this time and place. For real ‘engagement’, for the writer, isn’t something set apart from the range of the creative imagination. It isn’t something dictated by brothers and sisters in the cause he or she shares with them. It comes from within the writer, his or her creative destiny, living in history. ‘Engagement’ doesn’t preclude the beauty of language, the complexity of human emotions; on the contrary, such literature must be able to use all these in order to be truly engaged with life, where the overwhelming factor in that life is political struggle.
    While living and writing under these conditions in Africa, we have seen our books banned—and we have gone on writing. Many of our writers, including Wole Soyinka, have been imprisoned, and many, including Chinua Achebe, Dennis Brutus, Nuruddin Farah, have been forced to choose exile. I think of immensely talented Can Themba, Alex La Guma, and Dambudzo Marechera, who died there; lost to us.
    Â 
    â€¢Â Â Â Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â Â Â Â â€¢
    What do we in Africa hope to achieve, as writers, in the new century? Because we are writers, can we expect to realize literally, through our work, that symbol of change, the turning to a fresh page?
    What are the conditions under which we may expect to write—ideological, material, social?
    It seems to me that these are the two basic questions for the future of African literature. I think it’s generally agreed that