Literature in Postcolonial Africa

Literature in Postcolonial Africa

Literature has been an extraordinarily influential institution in postcolonial Africa, and African writers have been prominent in the struggles to build modern democratic societies on the ruins of the colonial state and against the brutalities of the many dictatorial post-independence regimes of the continent. (I shall be talking of literature from sub-Saharan Africa in this piece, with only passing references to writers from North Africa. This is less a matter of ideological persuasion than, alas, of professional ignorance.) A great number of African writers have had their works banned by these regimes, many have been jailed for long terms, and not a few have been killed or hounded into involuntary exile. (Among the prominent African writers who have suffered detention or been forced into exile are Mongo Beti, Breyten Breytenbach, Dennis Brutus, Nurrudin Farah, Bessie Head, Festus lyayi, Abdelatif Laabi, Jack Mapanje, Micere Mugo, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Maina wa Kinyati, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Nawal El Saadawi, and Wole Soyinka.) The South African apartheid state, Idi Amin’s Uganda, Kamuzu Banda’s Malawi, and Daniel arap Moi’s Kenya have been the most repressive for the arts and the life of the imagination, but literature has also been embattled in the most “benevolent” or paternalistic regimes, like those of Houphet-Boigny’s COte d’Ivoire, Kenneth Kaunda’s Zambia, and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

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