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Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)

All black virtues and white vices to day
Point to the reality around the British Empire
Or the famous Great Britain
Or the British Commonwealth
If not the English commonwealth
That its next monarch must be an African
Truly an African without streaks of cosmetic Africanity
Deeply black in colour, ***** in race and African in blood,

The monarchy of England should not be confined
To the parochial and Provencal English blood
Falsely named the royal blood
What a misnomer? For science and religion
Has nothing in history like the royal blood
But only brutal probability of genetics
Ever and ever will befall humanity,

The royalty of blood is only a smokescreen for racism
Or inter European apartheid or apartheid in universality,
The empire of British Commonwealth, Gambia included
Is not about the royal blood of charlese, Elizabeth nor Victoria
It is all about world class cultural inclusivity
Of all the pillars of the English culture,

English commonwealth is of culture, language, attitude and geography
This has to be known devoid of racial biase
And this is the great English empire;
It is a billion African English speakers
Its five hundred million American English speakers
It is a million Australian English speakers
It is a hundred million Indian English speakers
These are the bricks that mould the English commonwealth
Not queen Elizabeth and her son the cuckold of Egyptian mangy dog,
It is the nation of Uganda which is hundred percent African,
No Caucasoids nor Asians but its mother tongue is the British English,
Uganda is crazy; its peasants speak English like Cambridge scholars,
It’s the Nigerian Afro -cinema that promotes spoken English
With the muscle only inherent in the stampede of cultural imperialism,

The royal family is not royal at all in the informed understanding
Or else which family is not royal, show one me please
And I will show you folly of the day
Who wants not to be royal, why not all of us,
Crudeness of culture is the pedestal of reserved royalty
Inclusivity is the contrasting mother of cultural strength
Thus, all English speakers are the royal family
Of the British Commonwealth,
They don’t need royal blood
They already have full amour of the royal culture
Of the English linguistic or mental civilisation,
Please Queen Elizabeth listen to me carefully
Listen with your wholesome body and soul to this song
The song of freedom echoing cultural modernity;
Give to us, we your children of the commonwealth our rights
Include us in our hard earned monarchy,
I also want to be the king of England
I want to fill that royal palace with my dark skin
I want to speak and write English poetry inside the palace
The royal palace of England whose
Whose Golden floor and pavement are  s
Reeking the blood of colonialism
The wood and gold in the palace
Was taken from Africa without any pay
During colonial robbery with violence,
Give me my historical rights to be the king of England
Then my four African wifes; Lumbasi Opicho, Namwaya Opicho, Nangila Opicho and Chelangat Opicho, the most beautiful of all from the heroic Kipsigis
Will be the four queens of England, queens of the English commonwealth
Lumbasi for Scotland, Namwaya for England, Nangila for Wales and Chelangat
For the begotten Ireland,
I have all the virtues in my blood to be the English king
If it’s military, shaka the Zulu is my uncle
If it is wisdom, Nelson mandella is my uncle
If it is intellect Kwame Nkrumah is my father
If it is culture Taban Lo Liyong and Okot p’Bitek are my brothers
Whereas Leopold Sedar Senghor is a son of my father from another mother,
If it is beauty Cleopatra the Egyptian whose beauty killed the Roman king is my mother
If it is science my witchcraft is superior in technology to silicon computing
If it is ***, ask your daughter in law princes Diana
Now what am I missing to become the next English monarch?
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret,Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)
This year has had plethora of public worries in Africa over broken English among the young people and school children. It first started in the mid of the last months  in Nigeria, when the Nigerian government officials displayed public worry over the dying English and the strongly emerging slang known as pidgin English in Nigerian public offices and learning institutions. The same situation has also been encountered in Kenya, when in march 2014, Proffessor Jacob Kaimenyi, the minister of education otherwise known as cabinet secretary of education declared upsurge of broken English among high school students and university students a national disaster. However, the minister was making this announcement while speaking in broken English, with heavy mother tongue interference and insouciant execution of defective syntax redolent of a certain strong African linguistic sub-cultural disposition.
There is a more strong linguistic case of broken English in South Africa, which even crystallized into an accepted national language known as Afrikaans. But this South African case did not cause any brouhaha in the media nor attract international concern because the people who were breaking the English were Europeans of non British descend, but not Africans. Thus Afrikaans is not slang like the Kenyan sheng and the Nigerian pidgin or the Liberian krio, but instead is an acceptable European language spoken by Europeans in the diaspora. As of today, the there are books, bibles and software as well as dictionaries written in Afrikaans. This is a moot situation that Europeans have a cultural leeway to break a European language. May be this is a cultural reserve not available to African speakers of any European language. I can similarly enjoy some support from those of you who have ever gone to Germany, am sure you saw how Germans dealt with English as non serious language, treating it like a dialect. No German speaks grammatically correct English. And to my surprise they are not worried.
The point is that Africans must not and should never be worried of a dying colonialism like in this case the conventional experience of unstoppable death of British English language in Africa. Let the United Kingdom itself struggle to keep its culture relevant in the global quarters. But not African governments to worry over standard of English language. This is not cultural duty of Africa. Correct concerns would have been about the best ways and means of giving African indigenous languages universal recognition in the sense of global cultural presence. African languages like Kiswahili, Zulu, Yoruba, Mandiko, Gikuyu, Luhya, Luganda, Dholuo, Chaka and very many others deserve political support locally as well as internationally because they are vehicles that carry African culture and civilization.
I personally as an African am very shy to speak to another fellow African in English or even to any person who is not British. I find it more dignifying to speak any local language even if it is broken or if the worst comes to the worst, then I can use slang, like blend of broken English and the local language. To me this is linguistic indicators of having a decolonized mind. It is also my hypothesis that the young people who are speaking broken English in African schools and institutions are merely cultural overtures of Africans extricating themselves from imperial ploys of linguistic Darwinism.
There is no any research finding which shows that Africans cannot develop unless they speak English of grammatical standards like those of the United Kingdom and North America. If anything; letting of English to thrive as a lingua franca in Africa, will only make the western world to derive economic benefits out of this but not Africa to benefit. Let Africans cherish their culture like the way the Japanese and the Chinese have done, then other things will follow.
abolitionism
absenteeism
absolutism
abstractionism
absurdism
acad­emicism
academism
achromatism
acrotism
actinism
activism
adoptian­ism
adoptionism
adventurism
aeroembolism
aestheticism
ageism
agis­m
agnosticism
agrarianism
alarmism
albinism
alcoholism
aldosteron­ism
algorism
alienism
allelism
allelomorphism
allomorphism
alpini­sm
altruism
amateurism
amoralism
anabaptism
anabolism
anachronism­
analphabetism
anarchism
anecdotalism
aneurism
anglicism
animalis­m
animism
anisotropism
antagonism
anthropocentrism
anthropomorphi­sm
anthropopathism
antialcoholism
antiauthoritarianism
antiblacki­sm
anticapitalism
anticlericalism
anticolonialism
anticommerciali­sm
anticommunism
antielitism
antievolutionism
antifascism
antifem­inism
antiferromagnetism
antihumanism
antiliberalism
antimaterial­ism
antimilitarism
antinepotism
antinomianism
antiquarianism
anti­racism
antiradicalism
antirationalism
antirealism
antireductionis­m
antiritualism
antiromanticism
antiterrorism
aphorism
apocalypti­cism
apocalyptism
archaism
asceticism
assimilationism
association­ism
asterism
astigmatism
asynchronism
atavism
atheism
athleticism­
atomism
atonalism
atropism
atticism
autecism
authoritarianism
au­tism
autoecism
autoeroticism
autoerotism
automatism
automorphism
­baalism
baptism
barbarianism
barbarism
behaviorism
biblicism
bibl­iophilism
bicameralism
biculturalism
bidialectalism
bilateralism
­bilingualism
bimetallism
biologism
bioregionalism
bipartisanism
b­ipedalism
biracialism
blackguardism
bogyism
bohemianism
bolshevis­m
boosterism
bossism
botulism
bourbonism
boyarism
bromism
brutism­
bruxism
bureaucratism
cabalism
caciquism
cambism
cannibalism
cap­italism
careerism
casteism
catabolism
catastrophism
catechism
cav­alierism
centralism
centrism
ceremonialism
charism
charlatanism
c­hauvinism
chemism
chemotropism
chimaerism
chimerism
chrism
chroma­ticism
cicisbeism
cinchonism
civicism
civism
classicism
classism
­clericalism
clonism
cockneyism
collaborationism
collectivism
coll­oquialism
colonialism
colorism
commensalism
commercialism
communa­lism
communism
communitarianism
conceptualism
concretism
confessi­onalism
conformism
congregationalism
connubialism
conservatism
co­nstitutionalism
constructivism
consumerism
controversialism
conve­ntionalism
corporatism
corporativism
cosmism
cosmopolitanism
cosm­opolitism
countercriticism
counterculturalism
counterterrorism
cr­eationism
credentialism
cretinism
criticism
cronyism
cryptorchidi­sm
cryptorchism
cubism
cultism
cynicism
czarism
dadaism
dandyism
­defeatism
deism
demonism
denominationalism
despotism
determinism
­deviationism
diabolism
diamagnetism
Isms are every where
ESSAYS ON
LEADERSHIP FRONTIERS OF AFRICAN LITERATURE
By
Alexander   k   Opicho




Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents                                                                                                                Page
TABAN MAKITIYONG RENEKET LO LIYONG AND PREFECTURE OF AFRICAN LITERATURE 4
THE CURRENT EAST AFRICA IS NOT A LITERARY DESERT 27
AFRICAN WRITERS HAVE CULTURAL RIGHTS TO FORMULATE AND CREATE ENGLISH WORDS 31
LIKE PUSHKIN, AFRICAN WRITERS MUST CREATE THEIR OWN PROFFESSION OF LITERATURE 35
THERE IS POWER IN THE NAME ‘ALEXANDER’ 40
KENYAN COURTS AND PARLIAMENT ARE BETRAYERS OF HUMANE GOVERNANCE 47
AFRO-CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO RADICAL LITERATURE IS GOOD AND SWAGGERISH 50
YUNUS’S SOCIAL BANKING IS A GOOD BENCHCMARK FOR THIRD WORLD ENTREPRENEURS 54
HEROISM IS NOT GREATNESS BUT HUMILITY IN SERVICE TO HUMANITY 57
KENYAN STUDENTS; YOUR MOBILE INTERNET CULTURE IS ANTI- ACADEMICS 61
WHAT IS THE MAGIC IN THE WORD ‘DRINKARD’ OF AMOS TUTUOLA 63
SOCIETIES IN AFRICA HAVE TO MENTOR BUT NOT CONDEMN THE LIKES OF JULIUS MALEMA 66
AMERICA WILL NOT WIN THE WAR ON GLOBAL TERRORISM 69
AFRICA CAN OVERCOME A MENACE OF **** IN EVERY 30 MINUTES 71
COMPARATIVE ROLES OF AFRICAN-BRAZILIAN LITERATURE IN THE POLITICS OF RACIAL AND GENDER DEMOCRACY 76
NEO-COLONIALISM IS NOT THE MAIN VICE TO THE GAMBIAN POLITICS 85
RELATIVE MEDIA OBJECTIVITY IS ACHIEVEABLE IN AFRICA AGAINST POWER CULTURE AND TYRANNIES OF TASTE 89
READING CULTURE IS GOOD FOR BOTH THE POOR AND THE RICH 96
VIOLENT DEATH IS THE BANE OF AFRICAN WRITERS AND ARTISTS 100
AFRICAN WRITTERS AND ARTISTS MUST ASPIRE BEYOND A NOBEL PRIZE 104
WHAT ARE CULTURAL RIGHTS OF AFRICAN ENGLISH SPEAKERS? 109
WHY IMPRISONMENT OF WRITERS CONTRIBUTED MOST TO AFRICAN LITERATURE 113
DORIS LESSING: A FEMINIST, POET, NOVELIST, WHITE-AFRICANIST AND NOBELITE UN-TIMELY PASSES ON 121
Amilcar Cabral: Beacon of revolutionary literature and social democracy 127
How the State of Israel is brutally dealing with African refugees 131
Historical glimpses of language dilemma in Afro-Arabic literature 146
THIS YEAR 2013; IS THE YEAR OF GREAT DEATHS 153
AFRICAN LITERATURE WITHOUT POETRY IS LIKE LOVE WITHOUT VAGINAL *** 156



















PROLOGOMENA
BARRACK OBAMA READS MOBY ****
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
American president is reading Moby ****
Ja-kogello is reading Moby ****
Ja-siaya is reading Moby ****
Ja-merica is reading Moby ****
Jadello is reading Moby ****
Ja-buonji is reading Moby ****
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you reading?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death took his father
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death took his mother
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death to his brother
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because untimely death took the grannies
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman  
And what are you reading?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Baba Michelle is reading Moby ****
Baba Sasha is reading Moby ****
Baba Malia is reading Moby ****
Baba nya-dhin is reading Moby ****
Sarah’s sire is reading Moby ****
Ja-sharia is reading Moby ****
The ****** is reading Moby ****
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you reading?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes audacity of hope
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes dreams of fathers
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes yes we can
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because here ekes American dream
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you readings?

Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because American president is like whale hunting
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because Obama is a money making animal
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because hunting Osama is whale riding
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because hunting Gaddaffi is whale riding
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because coming to Kenya is whale riding
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because Guantanamo prison is a bay of whales
Barrack Obama is reading Moby ****
Because Snowden is a Russian whale
Because launching drones is whale riding
His lovely Oeuvre of Melville Herman
And what are you reading, Moby ****?














CHAPTER ONE
TABAN MAKITIYONG RENEKET LO LIYONG AND PREFECTURE OF AFRICAN LITERATURE

I am writing this article from Kenya on this day of 23 September 2013 when the Al shabab, an Arabo-Islamic arm of the global terrorist group the Al gaeda have lynched siege on the shopping mall in Nairobi known as the West Gate where an average of forty people have been killed and a hundreds are held hostage. The media is full of horrendous and terrifying images. They have made me to hate this day. I hate terrorism, I hate American foreign policy on Arabs, I hate philosophy behind formation of the state of Israel and I equally hate religious fundamentalism. Also on this date, all the media and public talks in Kenya are full of intellectual and literary tearing of one Kenyan by another plus a retort in the equal measure as a result of the ripples in the African literature pool whose epicenter is the Professor Taban Lo Liyong .He is an epicenter because he had initially decried literary mediocrity among the African scholars and University professors, Wherein under the same juncture he also quipped that Kenya’s doyen of literature Ngugi wa Thiong’o never deserved a Nobel prize. Liyong’s stand has provoked intellectual reasons and offalities to fly like fireworks in the East African literary atmosphere among which the most glittering is Chris Wanjala’s contrasting position that; who made Liyong the prefect and ombudsman of African literature? This calls for answers. Both good answers and controversial responses. Digging deeper into the flesh of literature as often displayed by Lo Liyong.
Liyong is not a fresher in the realm of literary witticism. He is a seasoned hand .Especially when contributions of Liyong to east African literary journal during his student days in the fifties of the last century during which he declared east Africa a literary desert. In addition to his fantastic titles; Another ****** Dead and The Un-even Rips of Frantz Fanon, Professor Taban Lo Liyong also humorously called Amos Tutuola the son of Zinjathropus, what a farcical literary joke? I also want to appreciate this Liyong’s artfulness of language in this capacity and identify him in a literary sense as Taban Matiyong Lo   Liyong the son of Eshu. He is an ideological and literature descended of the great West African Eshu. Eshu the god of trouble which was dramatized by Obutunde Ijimere in the imprisonment of Obadala and also recounted by Achebe in the classical essays; Morning Yet of Creation Day. I call him Eshu because of his intellectual and literary ability to trigger the East and West Africans into active altercation of literary, cultural and political exchanges every other time he visits these regions. Whether in Lagos, Accra or Nairobi.
Now, in relation to Ngugi and intellectual quality of Kenyan University literature professors was Liyong right or wrong?  Does Liyong’s stand-point on Ngugi’s incompetence for Nobel recognition and mediocrity in literary scholarship among Kenyan Universities hold water. Are Liyong’s accusations of East Africa in these perspectives factually watertight and devoid of a fallacy of self-aggrandizement to African literary prefecture as Professor Chris Wanjala laments. Active literary involvement by anyone would obviously uncover that ;It is not Liyong Alone who has this intellectual bent towards East Africa, any literary common sense can easily ask a question that; Does Ngugi’s literary work really deserve or merit for Nobel recognition or not ? The answers are both yes and no. There are very many of those in Kenya who will readily cow from the debate to say yes. Like especially the community of alumni of the University of Nairobi who were Ngugi’s students in the department of English in which Ngugi was a Faculty during the mid of the last century. Also the general Kenyan masses who have been conditioned by warped political culture which always and obviously confine the Kenyan poor into a cocoonery of chauvinistic thought that Ngugi should or must win because he is one of us or Obama must win because he is one of us or Kemboi must win because he is the son of the Kenyan soil. These must also be the emotional tid-bits upon which the Kenyan Media has been based to be catapulted into Publicity feat that Ngugi will win the Nobel Prize without reporting to the same Kenyan populace the actual truths about other likely winners in the quarters from the overseas. I am in that Kenyan school thought comprising of those who genuinely argue that Ngugi’s literary work does not befit, nor merit, nor deserve recognition of Nobel Prize for literature. This position is eked on global status of the Nobel Prize in relation to Ngugi’s Kikuyu literary and writing philosophy. It is a universal truth that any and all prizes are awarded on the basis of Particular efforts displayed with peculiarity. Nobel Prize for literature is similarly awarded in recognition of unique literary effort displayed by the winner. It is not an exception when it comes to the question of formidability in a particular effort. However, the most basic literary virtue to be displayed as an overture of the writer is conversion of theory into practice. This was called by Karl Marx, Hegel, Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire, especially in Freire’s  pedagogy of the oppressed as praxis.History of literature and politics in their respective homogenous and comparative capacities has it that ;There has been eminent level of praxis by previous Nobelites.Right away from Rabitranathe Tagore to Wole Soyinka, From Dorriss Lessing to Wangari Mathai.Similar to JM Coatze ,Gao Tziaping,Alexander Vasleyvitch Solzhenystisn and Baraka Obama.This ideological stand of praxis is the one that made Alfred Nobel himself to to stick to his gun of intellectual  values and deny Leo Tolstoy the prize in 1907 because there was no clear connection between rudimentary Tolstoy in the nihilism and Feasible Tolstoy in the possible manner  of the times .In a similar stretch Ngugi wa Thiongo’s literary works and his ideological choices are full of ideological theory but devoid of ideological praxis. Evidence for justification in relation to this position is found back in the 70’s and 80’s of the last century, When Ngugi was an active communist theoretician of Kenya. His stature as a Kenyan communist ideologue could only get a parallel in the likes of Leon Trotsky and Gramsci. This ideological stature was displayed in Ngugi’s adoration of the North Korean communism under the auspice of the Korean leader Kim Yun Sung. This is so bare when you read Ngugi’s writers in politics, a communist pamphlet he published with the African red family. By that time this pamphlet was treated equally as Mao tse Tung’s collected works by the Kenya government which means that they were both illegal publications and if in any case you were found with them you would obviously serve nine months in prison. And of course when the late Brigadier Augustine Odongo was found with them he was jailed for nine months at Kodhiak maximum prison in Kisumu ,Kenya .O.K, the story of Odongo is preserved for another day. But remember that, this was Ngugi only at his rudimentary stage. But when Ngugi got an opportunity to get an ideological asylum, he did not go to Russia, nor East Germany, Nor Tanzania, nor China but instead he went to the USA , a country whose ideological civilization is in sharp contradiction with communism; a religion which Ngugi proffessess.In relation to this choices of Ngugi one can easily share with me these reflections; is one intellectually  honest if he argues that he is a socialist revolutionary when his or her employer is an American institution like the university of California in Irvine ?
Ngugi was not the only endangered communist ideologue of the time. There were also several others. Both in Kenya and without Kenya. They were the likes of; Raila Odinga, George Moset Anyona, ***** Mutunga and very many others from Kenya. But in Africa some to be mentioned were Walter Rodney, Yoweri Museven,Isa Shivji,Jacob Tzuma ,Robert Mugabe and others. The difference between Ngugi and all of these socialist contemporaries of him is that; Ngugi went to America and began accumulating private property just like any other capitalist. But these others remained in Africa both in freedom and detention to ensure that powers of political darkness which had bedeviled Africa during the last century must go. And indeed the powers somehow went. Raila has  been in Kenya most of the times,Anyona died in Kenya while in the struggle for second liberation of Kenyan people from the devilish fangs of Moi’s dark reign of terror and tyrany.Walter Rodney worked in Tanzania at Dare salaam University where he wrote his land mark book; How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Later on he went back to his country of birth in Africa, Guyana where he was assassinated while in the revolutionary struggle for political good of the Guyanese people. Yoweri Museven practically implemented socialism by fighting politics of sham and nonsense out of Uganda of which as per today Uganda is somehow admirable. Isa Shivji has ever remained in Dare salaam University, inspite of poverty. He is now the chair of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere school of Pan African studies. Jacob Tsuma and Robert Mugabe they are current presidents of South Africa and Zimbabwe respectively. The gist of this reference to African socialist revolutionaries as contemporaries to Ngugi wa Thiong’o is that a socialist revolutionary must and should not run away from the oppressor in to a zone of comfort. But instead must remain and relentlessly fight, just like in the words of Fidel Castro; fight and die in the battle field as long as it is a struggle against the enemy of the revolution. This view by Castro is pertinent as it’s a Revolutionary praxis which actually is redolent of practice of an ideology that has to be held for ever above ideological cosmentics.Ngugi scores badly on this. So if the Nobel academy looks at Ngugi in terms of defending human rights then it must be reminded that Ngugi have no marks on the same because he only ran away from the practical struggle. Anyway, Politics and ideology has its own fate. But let us now come back to literature. Ngugi and his books. As at  this time of writing this essay  Ngugi has published the following works; Weep not Child, The River Between, A Grain of Wheat, Black Hermit, Petals of Blood, Devils on the Cross,Matigari,Homecoming,Decolonizing the Mind, Writers in Politics, Ngugi Detained, Pen Points and Gun Points, Wizard of the Crow,Globalectics,Remeembering Africa, Dreams in Times of War and I Will Marry When I Want as well as the Trial of Dedan Kimathi which he wrote along with Micere Githae Mugo.Out of this list the only works with literary depth that call for intellectualized attention are ;A Grain of wheat, Wizard of the crow and Globalectics. The Grain of wheat is simply a post colonial reflection of Kenyan politics. Its themes, plot, lessons and entire synechedoche is also found in Wole Soyinka’s Season of Anomie as well as Achebe’s Anthills of the savannah. My argument dove-tails with those of Liyong’s stand that rewarding Ngugi’s Grain of wheat and forgetting Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah and A man of the people would be a literary ceremony devoid of literary justice. Wizard of the Crow is indeed a magnum opus. I am ready to call it Ngugi’s oeuv
I often remember with a lot of thrill in my spine every time I reflect on the Writings of Miguna Miguna in his book peeling Back the Masks, a certain sub-plot that most of Kenyan students in Canada, America, Britain, Germany or Australia often fail to go through pre-university examinations and then they opt for faculty friendly courses like carpentry and electrical-wire man offered at some polytechnics in this countries. Then these students end up living as informal sector workers in the Diaspora, and hence putting themselves into a cash strapped condition that they don’t easily come back home. This is also the same texture of revelations I have been encountering for the past five months of my regular reading of the literary pages of The Saturday Nation, in which a most of Kenyans write alongside some foreigners, but notably Professor Austin Bukenya as the foreign writer, Bukenya himself being a Ugandan.
The revelations are that the writers who were regularly writing on these pages sometimes ago have gradually waned up, not because of anything but due to their intellectual irrelevance. Mostly caused by a defect of intellectual inferiority. They were the likes of Evans Mwangi; Mwangi was forthrightly coming up with a tribally fine-tuned niche in the name of being Ngugi wa Thiong’o scholar. He had a specialization in writing about Ngugi because Ngugi is his tribesman, they are both Kikuyu’s.He also had substantial writings on Ngugi’s children; Mukoma, Lee, Nducu and Wanjiku wa Ngugi, who are in similar stretch of their father struggling to be established as writers. But all in all, Professor Evans Mwangi has already ended up as an intellectual without consequences.
Another writer in point was one; Dr Tom Odhiambo, who also teaches literature at the University of Nairobi. He had been writing on the same pages but with a strong bent towards Luo Chauvinism and stark Conspiracy against Luhyia veteran literary Critic Professor Chris Wanjala.
The only Kenyan literary activist who has been trying to remain globally vogue in his literary writings on this platform is Dr Godwin Siundu; he often displays Global relevance through his pataphorous approach to literary appreciations and criticism.
But whatsoever the case, professor Bukenya has towered seriously above these Kenyans.Bukenya’s command of English language and literary command has no match on the Kenyan literary market. Bukenya Tackles globalectics of literature as Kenyans struggle with tribalism of their home literature.Ethinicity is the enemy of Kenyan literature and as well an established foe of any other Kenyan professional perspective.
Why Kenyans are threatened with intellectual suffocation when exposed to otherness is because of a few reasons. As cited above ethinicism remains a dominant factor. But also, lack of homogenous public language, absence of ideology in their political history, failure of politics to achieve common nationalism and corruption in the public sector are contributing forces among others.
Your consecutive  look at the literary pages of  the Saturday Nation of the previous three weekends will be an empirical testimony to this position.Bukenya’s stories have surveyed dialectics of English language, aging of African literature , translation and greatness of Uganda orature with a focus on Okot P’ Bitek. And this weekend he has beautifully lime-lighted on Julius Nyerere’s Intellectual tigritude. Nyerere’s as the killer of colonialism but while at the same time he lingered as the staunch lover of Shakespeare.
This is simply a farcical repetition of the previous tragic history, as reflected in the words of Karl Marx in his 18th Brumaire, which made the Ugandan educated Sudanese Poet, Taban Reneket Makititiyong Lo Liyong to look at Kenya’s literary poverty and then take a synechedochal stand to decry that east Africa is a literary desert. He was right, but in a sense he did not mean east Africa per se, he meant Kenya .Kenya at that time had only an English Department at the University of Nairobi. The department was poorly performing in terms of research. It was desperately tethered duplicating of the European classics as its literary overture.
But when the foreign and radical blood came to Kenya, in guest of helping Kenya to overcome the fog in the seasons end from colonial mire to literary and cultural freedom, Native Kenyans were surprisingly never friendly to them at all at all. Some of the intellectuals who had come to Kenya that time were the greats like :Ezekiel Mphalele from south Africa, Okot p’ Bitek from Uganda,Okello Oculii from Uganda,Ayi Kwei Armah from Ghana, Joie De Graft from Ghana, Walter Rodney from Guyana, Austeen Bukenya from Uganda and Taban Lo Liyong from Uganda.
All of these foreigners in Kenya have later on been absolved by time and history  as literary greats.They have proved clear intellectual and literary superlativety  over and above all Kenyans. The point of contrite is that, Kenyans of that era did not give them a chance to share their intellectual resource with the peasants and masses of Kenya. Instead Kenyan bureaucrats began their usual came of intimidation and tribal nagging whenever intellectually outshone.
Austeen Bukenya was condemned into poverty at Machakos girls high school to be an English teacher or a teacher of English without a salary. Liyong and Pitek were perpetually witch-hunted out of University of Nairobi by Ngugi and Wanjala. Rodney and Armah were frustrated until they desperately moved to Tanzania from where they wrote their respective oeuvres. Armah wrote Why are we Blessed, While Rodney wrote the world famous book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Mphalele was frustrated to oblivion, only for him to die mysteriously when on a literary tour in West Africa.
But sadly enough, the Kenyans who were seriously illiterate, in the  likes of : Daniel Moi, Jomo Kenyatta, Ezekiel Barengtunny  and many intellectuals so-so’s shamelessly made themselves to be  chancellors of the Universities .They were chancellors who never went beyond class seven of primary schools in their child hood. They then became bovaristic if not atavistic only to begin writing lame books like Nyayo Philosophy, Suffering without Bitterness, Facing Mount Kenya and other literary trash of the same calibre. It is this intellectual sludge that they again turned to impose as compulsory reading materials on sons and daughters of poor Kenyans.
By
Alexander K. Opicho
Eldoret, Kenya.
response to literary journalism in east africa
In response to a sardonic essay written in the recent Saturday Nation by Proffessor Ekara Kabaji, wryly  disregarding the position of Kwani in the global literary movement within and without Kenya , I beg to be permitted a leeway  to observe that any literature, orature, music,drama,cyborature,prisnorature,wallorature,streetorature , sculptor  or painting can effortlessly thrive and off course it has been thriving without professors of  literature, but the reverse is not possible as a proffessor of literature cannot be when literature is not there. Facts in support of this position are bare and readily available in the history of world literature, why they may not be seen is perhaps the blurring effects from tor like protuberant irrelevance of professors of literature in a given literary civilization.
A starting point is that literature exists as a people’s subculture, it can be written or not written like the case of orature which survive as an educative and aesthetic value stored in the collective memory of the given people. The people to be pillars of this collectivity of the memory are not differentiated by academic ranking for superlativity of any reason, but they are simply a people of that place, that community, that time, that heritage, that era and that collective experience. Writing it down is an option, but novels and other written matter is not a sine qua non for existence of literature in such situations. This is not a bolekaja of literature as Proffessor Ekara Kabaji would readily put, but it is a stretch towards realism that it is only people’s condition that creates literature. Poverty, slavery, colonialism, ***, marriage, circumcision, migration, or any other conditions experienced as collective experience of the people is stored or even stowed away in the collective memory of the people as their literature. Literature does not come from idealistic imagination of an educated person.
Historical experience of written literature informs us that the good novels, prose, drama and poetry were written before human society had people known as professors of literature. I want you my dear reader and You-Tube audience to reflect on the Cantos of Dante Alighieri in Italy, novels of Geoffrey Chaucer in England, Herman Melville and his Moby **** in Americas, poetry of Omar khwarisim in Persia, Homeric epics of Odyssey in Greece and the Makonde sculptures of Africa and finally link your reflections to Romesh Tulsi who grafted the Indian epic poetry of Ramayana and Mahabharata. At least you must realize that in those days literature was good, full of charm, very aesthetic and superbly entertaining. This leads to a re-justification that, weapon of theory is not useful in literature. University taught theories of literature have helped not in the growth of literature as compared to the role played by folk culture.
Keen observation will lead you dear reader, down to revelations that; professors of literature squarely depend on the thespic work of the people who are not substantially educated to make a living. Let me share with you the story about Dr. Tom Odhiambo who went to University of Witwasterand in South Africa for post graduate studies in literature only to do his Doctoral research on books of David G Maillu. Maillu is a Kenyan writer, he did not finish his second year of secondary school education but he has been successfully writing poetry and prose for the past three decades. His successful romantic work is After 4.30, probably sarcasm against Kenyan office capitalism, while his eclectic, philosophical and scholarly work is the Broken Drum. Maillu has many other works on his name. But the point is that Dr. Odhiambo now teaches at University of Nairobi in the capacity of senior lecturer in Literature. What makes him to put food on the table is the effort of un-educated person in the name of David Maillu. Dr.Odhiambo himself has not written any book we can mention him for, apart from regular literary journalism he is often involved in on the platforms of the Literary discourse in the Kenyan Saturday Nation which are in turn regular Harangues and ripostes among literature teachers at the University of Nairobi, the likes of Dr Siundu, Proffessor wanjala Chris and Evans Mwangi just but to mention by not being oblivious to professors; Indangasi and Shitanda.
No study has yet been done to establish the role of university professors on growth of African literature. One is overdue. Results may be positive role on negative role, myself I contemplate negative role. Especially when I reflect on how the African literati reacted on the publication of Amos Tutuola’s book The Palm Wine Drinkard. The reactions were more disparaging than appreciative. Taban Lo Liyong reacted to this book by calling Amos Tutuola the son of Zinjathropus as well as taking a self styled intellectual responsibility in form of writing a more  schooled version of this book; Taking Wisdom up the Palm Tree. Nigerians of Igbo (Tutuola being a Yoruba) nation cowed from being associated with the book as it had shamefully broken English, broken grammar etc. Wole Soyinka had a blemished stand, but it is only Achebe who came out forthrightly to appreciate the book in its efforts to Africanize English for the purpose of African literature. Courtesy of Igbo wisdom. But in a nutshell, what had happened is that Amos Tutuola had taken a plunge to contribute towards written literature in Africa.
One more contemplated result from the research about professors and African literature can be that apart from their role of criticism, professors write very boring books. A ready point of reference is deliberate and reasonless obscurantism taken Wole Soyinka in all of his books, Soyinka’s books are difficult to understand, sombre, without humour and not capable to entertain an average reader. In fact Wole Soyinka has been writing for himself but not for the people. No common man can quote Soyinka the way Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is quoted. Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart when he had not began his graduate studies. However, he did not escape the obvious mistake of professors to become obscure in the Anthills of the Savanna, the book he wrote when he had become a proffessor. This is on a sharp contrast to entertaining effectiveness, simplicity and thematic diversity of Captain Elechi Amadi, Amadi who studied chemistry but not literature. He does not have a second degree, but his books from the Concubine, The great Ponds, and Sunset in the Biafra and Isibiru are as spellbinding as their counterparts in Russia.
Kenyan scenario has Ngugi wa Thiongio, he displayed eminence in his first two books; Weep not Child and The River Between. These ones he wrote when he was not yet educated, as he was still an undergraduate student at Makerere University. But later on Ngugi became a victim of prosaic socialism, an ideology that warped his literary imagination only to put him in a paradoxical situation as an African communist who works in America as an English teacher at Irvine University. His other outcrops are misuse of Mau Mau as a literary springboard and campaigning for use of Kikuyu dialect of the Gema languages to become literary Lingua Franca in Kenya. Such efforts of Ngugi are only a disservice to Kenyan literature in particular and African literature collectively. Ngugi having been a student of Caribbean literature has failed to borrow from global literary behaviour of Vitian S. Naipaul.  Ngugi’s position also contrasts sharply with Meja Mwangi whose urban folksy literature swollen with diversity in themes has remained spellbinding entertainers.
The world’s literary thirsty has never failed to get palatable quenching from the works of Harriet Bechetor Stowe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shakespeare, Alice Munro, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, John Steinbeck, Garcia Guarbriel Marguez,Salman Rushdie, Lenrie Peters, Cyprian Ekwenzi, Nikolai Gogol,I mean the list is as long as the road from Kaduna to Cape town. Contribution of these writers to global literature has been and is still critical. Literature could not be without them. Surprisingly, most of them are not trained in literature; they don’t have a diploma or a degree in literature, but some have won literature Nobel Prize and other prizes. Alfred Nobel himself the author of a classical novella, The Nemesis, does not have University education in literature. What else can we say apart from acceding to the truth that literature can blossom without professors, the Vis-à-vis an obvious and stark impossibility.
I do not see space travel
as an evolutionary event
I look at it as an excess
of dissociative disorder
colonialism and the making
of whiteness
whiteness
justifying the guilt
by searching
and searching
somewhere else
not somewhere better
just somewhere else
there is nothing better
than how we evolved
are place within experience
all that surrounds
us is intimately woven with
our sheer experience
that has evolved
without the possibility
of memory
or redundancy
or even a pattern or repetition
to desire somewhere else
is to leave the best
most evolved experience
of being human
organic intelligence
artificial intelligence
has patterns that are not evolution
or the experience there of
they are patterns that are also
of this desire to be some where else
where ever it may be a space
or an entity
an other
counter-transferance
aliens
colonization
product of whiteness
excess
the profit of colonization
dissociative disorder
from the experience of being human
if you teach people that evolution
is something related to a process
that is merely the documentation
of the desire to be somewhere or something else
slavery is a combination of somewhere else and something else
it is like aliens
inherently under control
of a powerful military
actually the alien extracted from
their home
all mighty whiteness
is the most powerful
dissociative power
evolution did indeed give us the possibility to dissociate
but is was designed for empathy
not as a tool to be somewhere
or something else
the experience of
the dissociative human
declaring whiteness
has other opportunity
but to experience slavery
since it is a dissociation
it is delusional
and although the human
dissociating may not be within
the structure of slavery they conceive
they are without
the original
experience
I notice them
organic intelligence resumes
http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Liberty-Elan-Gregory-ebook/dp/B01B8XQYBG?ie=UTF8&keywords;=elan%20gregory&qid;=1459178234&ref;_=sr_1_1&sr;=8-1

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