Ryszard Kapuscinski, the Polish writer and journalist
As a foreign correspondent for PAP, the Polish News Agency, until 1981, Africa was like a second home to Ryszard Kapuscinski.
He was an eyewitness to revolutions, coups, and civil wars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Experience is the best teacher, they say. His life experience in Africa has given him one of the finest books ever written by a white journalist.
The shadow of the Sun (My African Life) covers Kapuscinski's experience in Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, etc, making the book brilliant and interesting for anyone interested in great humanitarian writing.
The book was actually published first in Polish before translation. He writes, "I lived in Africa for several years. I first went there in 1957. Then over the next forty years, I returned whenever the opportunity arose."
"I travelled extensively, avoiding official routes, palaces, important personages, and high-level politics. Instead, I opted to hitch rides on passing trucks, wander with nomads through the desert, and be the guest of peasants of the tropical savannah. Their life is endless toil, a torment they endure with astonishing patience and good humour."
On his visit to Accra-Ghana, Kapuscinski writes, "The street is a road delineated on both sides by an open sewer. There are no sidewalks. Cars mingle with crowds. Everything moves in concert: pedestrians, automobiles, bicycles, cars, cows, and goats.
On the other side of the sewer, along with the entire length of the street, domestic scenes unfold. Women pounding manioc, baking taro bulbs over the coals, cooking dishes of one sort or another, hawking chewing gum, crackers, and aspirin, and washing and drying laundry."
The description of activities in Accra by Kapuscinski is actually Europe's image of Africa. More is hunger, disease, and skeletal children. However, he failed to ask or write the reason Ghana or Africa in general has been in such an appalling state for ages.
Before the colonial masters scrambled over Africa, I might say Ghana was under development. Then, many years after European occupation, they left the countries they had occupied after independence, leaving the countries in the same way.
In this case, why did they go to Africa at all? Is it right or wrong when one says they were only interested in the continent's rich mineral resources? To loot but nothing else. They looted the continent to build Europe, and they left the countries in a deplorable state.
Kapuscinski should have known better as a journalist. Was he expecting Ghana to be like a modern European country when, for a very long time, the country has suffered from the criminal activities of colonial rule?
The British and the Dutch were both in Ghana before the country attained its independence in 1957. The Ghanaians also moved in concert with cars, bicycles, cows, and goats.
Even though Kapuscinski's book is an interesting book about Africa, he should have commented deeply on the mistakes and crimes the Europeans committed in Africa during the colonial era.
The Shadow Of The Sun is available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Sun-Ryszard-Kapuscinski/dp/0679779078/
Chinua Achebe
Achebe's third and most ambitious novel takes us back to the setting of his first novel, "Things Fall Apart". Eweulu, the chief priest of Ulu, the god of the villages, is totally against a war that is brewing between his people, Umuaro, and a neighboring people.
He respects the white man's power and sends his son to a missionary school so that he may know the secret of the white man's power.
His son, with the zeal of a new Christian convert, shuts a sacred python in a box to kill it. This attempt to kill a sacred snake does not improve relations between Ezeulu and his enemies, who already suspect that he has become the white man's friend.
Another incident that lowers his public esteem is his detention by the white regional authority. In detention, he is offered the chieftainship, which he declines.
This enforced stay away from home has meant that Ezeulu has missed eating two of the thirteen yams he had to consume, one at each new moon, before the new yam festival at the end of the year.
Chinua Achebe's book is intended to give the intelligent reader a map of themes and styles of African writing in verse, prose, and proverbs.
African writers, whether they use metropolitan or indigenous language, have assimilated many of the mannerisms and assumptions of their particular medium, to say nothing of the social, economic, and political systems of the West, which the Africans have absorbed.
Chinua Achebe's books available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Chinua-Achebe/e/B0045671ES
Patrice LUMUMBA
On January 17, 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the first elected Prime Minister of Congo, was murdered. The circumstances leading to his death remained a mystery until forty years later, when the secret started unfolding.
Fresh scrutiny and those around at the time have revealed that Belgium, the Congo's colonial masters, were behind his assassination.
After the election in June 1960, Lumumba's National Congolese Movement won and emerged as the first Prime Minister of Congo. After the independence celebration of June 30th, Belgium's hostility to Lumumba deepened. Lumumba denounced the harshness, brutalities, and indignities suffered by the Congolese under Belgian colonial rule.
A strong friend of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Lumumba, made a similar statement to Nkrumah. "You must have strong and visible powers". Lumumba expelled all the Belgian diplomats and called on the United Nations to defend the newly independent state.
The action affected Belgians to the extent that the king was very angry with Lumumba. The British Foreign Office requested the elimination of Lumumba. The statement read, "I see only two possible solutions to the problem. The first is a simple one: the removal of Lumumba from the scene and killing him.
Almost fifty years after his assassination, the sons of the Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba are seeking war crime charges against twelve Belgians for their involvement in their father's assassination.
His youngest son, Guy Lumumba, told reporters, "We are targeting the assassins. In Belgium, there are twelve of them still alive, and we want them to answer for their pathetic acts before justice. The twelve Belgians were in the province of Katanga when Lumumba was killed.
As if the spirit of Lumumba were taking revenge, it was reported that one of the twin brothers involved in his killing had gone insane. Lumumba's family lawyer Christophe Marchand said the sons will file a charge against the yet to be named twelve of war crimes in a Brussels criminal court in October.
Even though Belgium has since apologized to its former colony, no legal action has been taken afterward.
