(Being text of a lecture delivered by the literary activist and critic, Ikhide Roland Ikheloa at the inaugural James Currey Literary Festival held Sept 1-3 at the University of Oxford. The lecture was originally titled “For Onyeka Nwelue: The times they are A-Changing”)
‘Social media offers writers of African descent the opportunity to graduate from writing about historical conflicts in Western coffee shops to writing and doing something about it – in real-time. As we speak, in a democracy, hundreds have been slaughtered and writers and journalists routinely disappear, with not a word from our woke voices of conscience. These things keep me up at night. Why are we like this? Why are things the way they are?’
GOOD evening, all. I would like to start this evening on a somber note. This past month, we lost two distinguished sons of Africa, who simply got their things and left to join our ancestors – The Honorable Chief Sam Nwelue, and the one and only Biyi Bandele. I would like us to observe a moment of silence for these two great sons of Africa.
Biyi Bandele was not just a playwright, he was truly a scholar and a gentleman, and when he left us, it was as if a great library had been burnt to the ground. I did not know him intimately, but he presented himself as a class act and when he left, the global literary community would not be consoled. Biyi had a reputation for being cool, calm, and collected. I didn’t know him personally, but he was a class act, conducting himself with uncommon dignity and grace, regardless of the provocation. Well, almost. I have the dubious distinction of being one of the few to ever ruffle his feathers. I had reviewed his book, Burma Boy, a review to which he responded with studied indifference. He was unhappy with my review. After I reviewed Obioma Chigozie’s book, The Fishermen, a review shared on Facebook by the writer Pearl Osibu, on August 11, 2015, he responded with a carefully worded salvo of exquisite prose-poetry thusly:
“I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading Chigozie’s book, but his agent Jessica Craig was my agent when Burma Boy was published. She is a fantastically talented agent and isn’t known to represent rubbish. Pa Ikhide is a seemingly nice and avuncular windbag who is neither nice nor avuncular but every inch the windbag. Go read The Fishermen, people.”
I spent days before the mirror muttering to myself: “I am not a windbag.” Biyi’s missiles were rarely deployed, when they were, they were accurate in locating their target. Rest well, Biyi. You came, and you conquered. We will continue the journey. We will miss you, Biyi.
Chief Sam Nwelue is Professor Onyeka Nwelue’s father. We all love Onyeka, the irascible legend, but it must have taken a lot of courage to be Onyeka’s parent and from all indications, Chief Sam Nwelue performed his fatherly duties beautifully and with uncommon dignity and gifted us Onyeka, a portrait in courage, grit, determination, and a fearless urgency to stand stale tradition on its silly head!
Everyone has a story about Onyeka, and of course, it’s not all good, but Onyeka would give his haters the middle finger and take another selfie to post on social media. He is quite the enigma, but we thank our ancestors for the gift that he is. I am quite literally a student of his, following not only his writing but his documentaries, and his posts on social media that we all – lovers and haters die for every day. You must watch his documentary on Flora Nwapa, you must follow his work and loving relationship with the great Professor Wole Soyinka, and you must applaud his ongoing work rescuing young creatives in Africa and helping to resettle them in the West. He would probably be the first to tell you that it is good to take them away from Africa, one day, they will go back stronger and continue the good fight for the heart and soul of our continent. Finally, Onyeka is a disrupter, and a great one. When I think of him, I think of that famous quote attributed to Steve Jobs:
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Onyeka, I salute you.
I WANT to thank the James Currey Society and The University of Oxford for the incredible honor – and for inviting me to Oxford one of my favorite places on earth because of course I am a nerd and Oxford makes nerds look really cool, because, well, we are cool! The University of Oxford has a cherished place in the history of African literature – You all know of course that the great Dambuzo Marechera was here, and for many years, this was the place where the Caine Prize awardee was announced. The University of Oxford has been a huge ally in promoting African literature, for which we are grateful. If you want to get a sense of the role of this university and of Professor James Currey’s larger than life role in supporting African literature, you must read Helon Habila’s colorfully epic essay: On Dambudzo Marechera: The Life and Times of an African Writer. Professor Currey was his publisher and reluctant guardian. Don’t worry, young ones, it is not behind a paywall, it is free!
I must confess that when I was asked to give The James Currey lecture, I was flattered and deeply honored. Then panic set in! OMG! Why me? What am I going to say that would sound remotely intellectual? This is a problem, people will understand me, and they will go, that was terrible, we understood him! I briefly practiced before the mirror, using contrived sentences like, “Today’s African writing privileges the semiotics of yen yen yen.” But then I’d been given 30 minutes to speak. That’s a lot of time to make up bullshit. That’s like 30 centuries on Twitter! And we all have ADHD on Twitter so we politely say, ah this thread is long, I will read later lol!!!
I also briefly thought about politely declining the invitation to come to Oxford. My view of course is that we should be having conferences on African literature in the continent. Sadly, not much has changed since the first African Writers Conference, held in June 1962 at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda. But then, it occurred to me, this should not be about me, it should be about celebrating the resilience of our stories, it should be a marker of that transition between contemporary African literature as the West knows it and what is playing out today on the Internet and social media, a vibrant movement gunned by the energies, passions, and intellect of young Africans, the ones the late great Pius Adesanmi called Pa Ikhide’s children. I am only 29 years old, but I think it is an honor to be associated with the coolest generation of writers and thinkers since Professor James Currey and his army of visionaries created a space for African writing and African writers.
And this is where I think we should give Professor Currey a lusty round of applause. My generation owes you a huge debt of gratitude for giving us all those beautiful writers who wrote for us because we needed books written for us. Books were our social media space, and I honestly do not know where I will be today, if the books of the African Writers Series had not taken me off the streets. My haters would probably say, “Too bad Professor Currey took Pa Ikhide off the streets, we would all be at peace today!” Whatever!
WHAT is my central thesis today? There should be two take-aways tonight: The greatest tragedy of modern literature is that those who are invested in the past, those who are welded to the book, hold strong sway over the trajectory of the world’s stories. These powerful keepers of the gate of stories insist on reading to a bored, disengaged world, one-dimensional pap, milled from a flat world. Imagine where the world would be today if mathematicians had insisted on feeding us faded truths from the slide rule. Computers would be relegated to third class status to be patronized by the mummified wealthy. And we would not be here today. The world of literature is changing. Think about it, Bob Dylan got the Nobel Prize in literature!
On balance, the West has been supportive of African literature, but the Internet and social media house authentic African narrative, unlike the sanitized gruel from many traditional Western publishing houses. We must revive African narrative organically. Long live social media!
What should we be reading? So, first, let’s debunk one myth. Yes, we do read. Africans read. A lot. Still do. The first thing we need to debunk is the notion that Africans do not read. It is true that we no longer read books like we used to, we simply read. On Twitter, we read the equivalent of several book chapters daily. The question should therefore be: What are you reading? NOT, what book are you reading? Memo to writers: Please turn your books into tweets. We will pay for your thoughts. This is my central point tonight: There will never be another Things Fall Apart, that’s not a bad thing. The future of reading is digital. There is an opportunity here to address the equity gap. In Africa, many people are reading bad content because they can’t afford good content housed in books. We need good books, and we need affordable good reading online. #GoDigital
In summary: There is a crisis, as writers, we are at best irrelevant to Africa, our writing is irrelevant to Africa, as books and paywalled journals amd newspapers have become priced out of reach, Africans are now reading and writing to themselves. On social media. This equity gap presents an opportunity to reintroduce good content to Africans. Literally free.
Why should we read the right things? Words are powerful, ignore them at your peril. These days, much of English literature in books written by Africans seems to remind those who are called Africans that they are the conquered. Makes sense. Over the years, literature has served to document the humiliation of the conquered. The narrative is not ours, even when we are the ones writing it. Once the mind is held captive, no prose is powerful enough to hide the chains.
Those who traipse the word writing for and about Africa must reflect on the power of their words. If white folks were keeping cows and chicken as beloved pets, and feasting instead on grilled cat and dog cutlets, Africans would be derided for eating grilled chicken and beef by African writers in Europe chomping on grilled cat and dog cutlets. That is what books like Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 have taught me.
We must think hard about the power of our single stories: Our self-loathing is documented in these texts that mock our food, our women, and our children, what is left of our religion and way of life. This is cultural appropriation of the worst kind. It is perhaps a good thing that most Africans cannot afford these books written by their own that mock them relentlessly.
And yes, as readers, we have a right to prescribe what we want to read. As a writer, you have a right to reject our preferences. Above all, it is important to write, just write. But you are not writing for anyone but yourself. You are definitely not writing for Africa. The real problem is that all of us who deign to think about the fate of “Africa” now live abroad in the West, and I am including those who physically sleep in “Africa” but spend their days and night mimicking everything in the West. We have been indoctrinated to be enamored of the West’s values, norms, and culture. Everything else is a pejorative. That is why we are so apologetic about our food, our ways, and ourselves.
As thinkers we are flung all over the West creating self-serving communities of intellectuals and writers enabled by lush funding from Western liberals. From there we pontificate and fight over literary grants and prizes. I know many writers who say they are apolitical, will not say boo about a massacre anywhere inside Africa, but their books are not wholesome bedtime stories, instead they are about the massacres that they would not comment on six years ago. They do find time to rail loudly against Donald Trump. The brand must be maintained: Be fire-breathing political dragons in the West but stay silent on Africa’s issues. There are many reasons for that. It is about fame and fortune.
I am tempted to argue that in our current dispensation art is not only irrelevant but is in the way. We keep telling the same stories of despair and dislocation over and over and over again. Nothing changes; indeed, it is the case that many of the storytellers are in bed with our oppressors and/or traducers. What is the point of these stories? What is art to many of us is becoming bullshit to the poor and dispossessed. This is a crisis of narrative.
Don’t get me wrong: Contemporary African writing has its challenges, but I do passionately believe that it is undergoing a quiet revolution. Of course, it depends on what is used to judge my conclusion. Literary gatekeepers in the West largely determine what is and what is not good “African writing” and the book, not the sum of the writer’s ideas, is their yardstick. I have a problem with that. My honest view is that in the 21st century, one must not judge the worth of African writers by their books alone. You must look at their other works – their experiments on social media, online magazines, oral engagements, etc. The book remains an important part of literary media, but it is waning in influence largely due to social media and other avenues of expression. I’m fascinated and engaged by online media and innovation in presenting narrative. There are exciting opportunities to bridge the narrative equity gap in creative ways by going online where most young Africans in the continent are. In a free space.
For most young African writers, especially those living in Africa, social media is the publisher of choice for practical reasons. Publishing in much of Black Africa is mostly a loose term, a euphemism used to describe enthusiastic stapling guns. The best publishing is in the West, however hoping to make it into one of those publishing houses is a bit more realistic than hoping to win the Nobel prize. The few writers who do are understandably lauded and treated as the voices of an entire continent. They are important voices but are not the only voices of a vibrant continent. But then if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it fall? History is thus distorted. Again, the vast majority of writing by Africans, especially of those who physically reside in Africa is now on the Internet. If you survey the writers who are published in the West, most of them live abroad. More importantly, many of them have lived abroad for decades, rarely visiting home. One could argue that they no longer have much to say that is fresh, informative, and entertaining.
Don’t get me wrong, I love reading the books of my childhood repeatedly. Unlike many of the books of the new writers that I have read, I love to return to the world of the old masters – Achebe, Okigbo, Nwapa, Ngugi, Aluko, Ike, Ogali A. Ogali, etc. etc. But in a sense, it is not their books I want to read again, it is the ideas in their fecund minds as expressed in their books that I want. In those days, the book was the only medium and they used it effectively. Today, there are many other ways to access the brilliant minds of our writers. The book is just one medium. I salute our new writers, especially those who fearlessly toil to entertain us with bold, new, and innovative writing. It is all good.
How do we tap into the online reading market, to be crass? The challenge is not just with writing, but also with how we deliver instruction in the classroom. Many societies are grappling with that, reconfiguring libraries into media centers and e-libraries, etc. The book is gradually becoming an archival tool. I don’t see the book going away in a very long time. The book is dying, yes, it is dying a slow death and reappearing in different forms. What we call opportunity is reality. There is no digital divide, there’s a digital bridge. Let’s use it.
We must thank our ancestors for social media, the book that in real time tells the world how children are faring in those “endless conflicts in Africa.” If you can’t see the pain of young Africans on Twitter, why would you see it in a book written years after the pain is buried in unreliable memory? In any case, how many Africans in the continent can afford these books? Let’s stop being performative and self-serving. I return to this again and again. I do want to say that there are anxieties about the honesty and the agenda of the stories and the storytellers. The Nigerian literary community as an example has lost its credibility and integrity as its leaders now use their gifts to write talking points for thieves, murderers, genocide enablers and the corrupt. They wink at the disappearances of critics of their friends in government, gaslight those who criticize state-sanctioned criminality – all while insisting on being the moral voice of Nigeria. The Nigerian literature that the West sees is thus not the benign or wholesome narrative that it evokes. It hides a dark history of betrayal by Nigerian writers. We must talk about these things.
Social media offers writers of African descent the opportunity to graduate from writing about historical conflicts in Western coffee shops to writing and doing something about it – in real time. As we speak, in a democracy, hundreds have been slaughtered and writers and journalists routinely disappear, with not a word from our woke voices of conscience. These things keep me up at night. Why are we like this? Why are things the way they are?
Let me not be too sad. I salute the courage of the young Nigerians of Twitter, their loud voices are making a difference, one day, they will rise like those young Americans and chant, “We are not our ancestors, we will fuck your up! We are not our writers, we will fuck you up! We are not our intellectuals, we will fuck you up!” I salute all of you.
The writer Mitterrand Okorie argues on Facebook, “Be your own platform.” He says quite brilliantly, “Technology has democratized the business space. Social media has enhanced the marketing space for the individual. I agree that limitations persist, but the field is yours to mine.” And I return to the great griot, our father, Chinua Achebe who used the book, the Internet of the time to tell us wondrous stories of our lives. Today, he would tell you, the Internet is the new book, write your stories on it. And I say to you, each time you read a book that has no hot link to another world, you hold back the trajectory of our stories. Read. Click. Read. And click away, you have no choice. Welcome to the real world.
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