AFRICA
11. Mansa Musa of Timbuktu B
12. Amda Sion: The Power of Confidence A
13. The Swahili Poets of East Africa A
14. Slavery D
15. Nation Builders: Dingiswayo, Shaka, and Mizilikazi B
16. From the Great Trek to Apartheid C
17. Their Own Way--Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and Haile Selassie C
18. The Voice of New Africa A
19. Additional Topics
a. Dr. Livingstone C
b. Cecil Rhodes C
c. Dr. Schweitzer C
d. The Zanzibar War A
Key:
A Additional information very hard to find
B A moderate amount of additional information should be available
C Plenty of stuff available--an easy job
D Too much information available--this will require a lot of sorting
Africa may well be the next
great
world civilization. For
African
people seem to be entering a new Artistic Age of self discovery and
self
expression. An excitement throbs in the air--much like Renaissance
Europe must
have throbbed.
Historians are just beginning to realize that Africa
already went through
the first stage of civilization before white men arrived to interrupt
the
process. Africa
deserves more space
in the history books than it is getting here.
But the research has barely begun.
In
a few years, when we know more, we can write a much fuller history of
African
civilization.
11.
MANSA MUSA OF TIMBUKTU
Forget Tarzan, Africa is not one big jungle.
Desert covers almost half of the continent, and open
grassland covers
almost another half. Less
than
one-tenth is jungle, and less than one-tenth is mountainous.
Not many creatures can find food in the jungles, except
monkeys and
birds. The big game
animals live in
the grasslands. So
did the people
who built the first African cities.
In west Africa, the city of Timbuktu became a great
trading center
between the salt mines of the desert to the north and the gold mines of
the
jungle to the south. At
least three
empires rose and fell in the grasslands surrounding Timbuctu.
The empire of Ghana had already flourished for several
centuries when
Arab traders arrived about the year 1050.
Arab
raids eventually destroyed the empire, and missionaries converted the
next
rulers to Islam. But
Ghana was pure
African. Its people
worshiped in
the African religion.
One religious belief covered most of Africa, It was a
belief in one god,
who lives in the sky. Legends
say
that the sky once hovered much closer--so that children wiped their
greasy
fingers on the sky, and anyone who felt hungry took a bite out of a
cloud.
People pestered and abused God so much that he climbed a
spider web up to
where the sky is now. With
God so
distant, it becomes necessary to have messengers.
The spirits of dead ancestors could carry the messages.
So could the king, who was treated like a god.
But if the king acted badly, or even if his health failed,
it was obvious
that he had lost touch with heaven, and it became the duty of every
citizen to
remove the king.
Another part of African religion lay in their concept of
time.
Time had three dimensions: present, the past within living
memory, and
the distant past. When
a person
died, he moved into the remembered past.
When
his last acquaintance died, he moved into the distant past. The future did not exist
yet; it was only potential time.
Early visitors to Africa thought the natives wasted a lot
of time sitting
together in the shade each day. Actually,
they were very busy creating time--taking something which had not
existed
before, and making it a memorable part of their lives.
African religion
needs much more research,
When Ghana fell, the empire of Mali (MAH-lee) sprang up in
its place.
It was one of the largest and wealthiest countries in the
world at that
time. The rulers of
Mali became
Muslims, but most of the people kept their African religion.
Kankan Musa (MOO-sa) ruled as emperor, or Mansa, in the
early 1300s.
As a good Muslim, Mansa Musa made a pilgrimage to Mecca,
He took with him
sixty thousand bodyguards and servants, and eighty camels to carry five
million
dollars worth of gold. He
ran out
of spending money, and borrowed more in Egypt.
Never had the people of Europe or Asia seen so much wealth
and power.
They quickly added Timbuktu on the far corner of their
maps.
Mansa Musa built the mosque of Timbuktu, and made that
city a great
center of learning.
Then the Songhoy tribe revolted and took over the empire.
About 1500, Askia the Great reorganized the tribal
governments of west
Africa into a single Songhoy nation.
Doctors,
judges, teachers, and writers abounded in Timbuktu.
By 1600, Arab raiders with guns had captured Timbuktu. They cut off the trade
routes, and prosperity ended.
Timbuktu has crumbled, so that today it remains little
more than a mud
village.
But some of the glory of west African civilization can
still be seen in
their bronze statues. The
best came
from the Benin people in the jungle just south of the empires.
They first carved wax paper-thin, then made molds around
it and filled
the molds with metal. It
is
probably the most skillful metal casting the world has ever known. African woodcarvings have
rotted in the dampness, but some
tribes still carved excellent masks in the 1800's.
12.
AMDA SION--THE POWER OF CONFIDENCE
On the east coast of Africa, Ethiopia has been a Christian
nation for
over sixteen hundred years--longer than any other country in the world.
It is a mountainous land.
So
when the Islamic religion swept down through east Africa, the Ethiopian
Christians remained tucked away in their mountain safety.
Almost. In
the early 1300's, the Muslims decided to squeeze out this
last pocket of Christianity in Africa.
The
emperor of Ethiopia at that time was Amda Sion I (AIM-da TSEE-own).
He had already ordered the beginning of the Royal
Chronicles--a running
account of Ethiopian history which has been continued down through the
centuries.
The Chronicles do not mention that Amda Sion was a
troublesome young man
who seduced several girls, including his sisters who loved him dearly.
When priests objected, he threatened to throw them out of
the country and
tear down their churches. The
Chronicles would have us believe that Amda Sion straightened up in the
face of
national disaster, and became a good Christian leader.
Perhaps a different interpretation could explain these
same facts:
Amda Sion had faith in one thing--himself.
He made a lot of religious speeches to rouse up the
enthusiasm of his
soldiers. But for
himself, he
needed nothing. He
ate and slept
hardly at all. He
drove his
soldiers on to battle after battle.
He
liked to march in a large circle, rather than return through safe
territory.
Then the Muslims pulled all of their armies together.
The Ethiopian army marched through the lush green
mountains to stop them
where the mountains meet the desert.
They
heard a noise like thunder, and saw Muslim soldiers as far as they
could see.
Amda Sion's soldiers panicked and ran away, leaving just
Amda Sion and
his six generals. So
he told the
six to attack the right side, and he would take the left.
Amda Sion reached the desert first, and rode out against
the huge
invading army. The
Muslims could
not believe their eyes. They
thought that only a devil would dare to ride out against
them alone. Panic
seized them, and
they wheeled their horses around.
Single-handed,
Amda Sion drove them out of the country.
By the time he got back to his soldiers, the priests were
already
proclaiming a miracle--that God and all his host of angles rode with
Amda Sion,
and that was why the Muslims fled.
(The
priests did not explain why the Muslims could see the angels, but the
Christians
could not.)
Even Amda Sion began to wonder if he had done it alone, or
if he had been
helped. His
self-confidence had
been stretched beyond belief. Doubts
began to bother him. From
then on,
nothing went right. His
power
crumbled away. He
spent the rest of
his troubled life wondering, doubting...
13.
THE SWAHILI POETS OF EAST AFRICA
In the year 1300, the language situations in Europe and
Africa were about
alike. If Europeans
wanted to write, they could only do it in the
Latin language. If
Africans wanted
to write, they could only do it in the Arabic language, (Ethiopia was
an
exception.) Then in
the 1300s,
Europeans learned to write their own languages in the Latin alphabet. You are reading an example
of that now. At
about the same time, Africans learned to write the Bantu
language in the Arabic alphabet. They
called that written language Swahili.
Swahili
spread through most of eastern Africa.
But in western Africa (where many Americans trace their
ancestry) people continued to speak in African languages and write in
the
separate Arabic language.
High civilization developed in east Africa, but Western
historians have
not studied it as much as they have west Africa.
Eastern cities of stone have been discovered, but not very
thoroughly
investigated yet. The
greatest of
these cities was Zimbabwe (zim-BOB-way), far to the south.
It flourished through trade with Arabia, India, and China.
The first Europeans who arrived were not yet advanced
enough to
understand how commerce works. They
interrupted the flow of trade, and Zimbabwe crumbled in
poverty.
Slavery destroyed civilization in west Africa.
But since European slave traders seldom reached east
Africa, some parts
of the culture continued there for a few more centuries.
One part was Swahili poetry.
Swahili poetry has much stronger rhythms and pauses than
the poetry of
other languages. For
many
centuries, it was written only for use in the Islamic mosques.
But in the 1800s, poets began to write about African
religions, and about
non-religious subjects, The most important person to bring about that
change was
Muyaka bin Haji (
)
of Mombasa. Here is
one of his
poems:
SILENCE
HAS A MIGHTY NOISE by MUYAKA BIN HAJI
Silence
has a mighty noise
so
say the elders
Silence
needs girdles*
for
you to wind round your loins+
Despise not silence
nor have I despised it
Silence has a future
so
take care of silence.
Silence
is a sudden chance
happening
to the very ones concerned
Silence will bring forth smoke
so don't open your eyes
Silence may mean deceit#
for ever and ever eternally,
Silence has a future
so take care of silence.
Silence,
lift up your eyes
lift
them up and look
Silence
brings battles
so
wherever you go
don't
vaunt yourselves@
Silence
catches the breath
it
glides around like a soaring bird
Silence has a future
so take care of silence.
*sashes
+wrap
yourself in silence
#falseness
@brag
Many
Swahili poets flourished. Mwana
Kupona (MWAH-na koo-PO-na) was the widow of a famous
rebel chieftain. Her
long poem to
her daughter contains much advice.
This
is typical of Swahili poetry.
from
POEM by MWANA KUPONA
My
child, be not sharp-tongued
be
like me, your mother
I
was married ten years
Yet
we did not quarrel one single day.
I
was wed by your father
with
happiness and laughter
we
did not abase* our mutual respect
all the days that we lived together.
Not
one day did we quarrel
he
met with no ill from me
and
from him none did I encounter
until the time when he was chosen.+
And
when death came
he
repeatedly told me his content
and resigned himself in peace to God
while my heart was filled with grief.
From
that time unto this day
I
yet cease not from lamentation#
when I remember the ease
and plenty of our accustomed life.
If
people heed one another
for
ever they share fond memories
but those who strive against each other
regret it for eternity.
*lower
+by
death
#crying
Rhythm has always loomed important in African culture. Drum rhythms pulse through
African music.
This can still be heard in modern jazz.
And body rhythms--dancing--have always figured importantly
in African
life. One
interesting modern
example of African music is the Missa Luba–the
Catholic Mass sung in
Latin, but with music of the Congo.
14.
SLAVERY
Slavery
is not pleasant. And
the facts
about it are not pleasant.
The African tribes had always practiced slavery.
Captives in any tribal war became slaves until the next
war.
Slavery was an accident which could happen to anyone.
And it might well be temporary.
A
slave still got respect as a person.
This type of slavery had been common in most
civilizations--especially in
Greece and Rome. It
had nothing to
do with race. For
centuries, the
Arabs had bought girls from Africa and other places to fill their
harems.
This too had nothing to do with race or inferiority.
In fact, some Italian cities in the 1200s became the first
governments in
all the world to see anything wrong with slavery, and prohibit it.
This small slave trade formed a part of African life, and
continued down
to the 1930s. But
with the
discovery of America, a new type of slavery began, which would destroy
the great
civilizations of west Africa.
The American Indians had died by the millions from
European disease.
The Spanish and other conquerors wanted to fill their
empty new lands.
Some African chiefs near the coast agreed to sell their
extra slaves, and
the American
slave
trade began.
England did most of the slave shipping, followed by France
and Portugal.
Holland and Denmark did some too.
But Europeans did not actually catch the slaves, They
waited on islands
off the coast, while coastal chiefs sent raiding parties inland.
Some chiefs even sold their own tribes into slavery.
Before the slave trade ended, approximately twenty million
people had
been shipped from Africa. The
organized society could not function with so many people
gone, and the empires fell apart.
The slave trade destroyed African civilization in another
way too.
The slavers clustered along the underside of the "bulge'
of the
African continent. This
was the
jungle fringe between the ocean and the empires of the grasslands.
These jungle peoples had never been as civilized as their
northern
neighbors. With
European guns, they raided the settled cities and
farmlands. Educated
and advanced
Africans either scattered or were enslaved.
More rowdy and brutish Africans terrorized the continent.
During the Enlightenment, some Englishmen (especially the
Quakers) argued
that slavery was wrong. One
Englishman named Granville Sharp bought some African land at Sierra
Leone
(see-AIR-a lee-OWN) and made plans for a model community where black
people
could return to their homeland. Sharp's
plans included a tax on anyone rich enough not to work, and a model
prison
system where a wife might visit her husband overnight.
The first boat of settlers brought black Englishmen and
their white
girlfriends. They
soon discovered
they could make easy money by selling the native tribes into slavery. Poor Sharp; he had planned
a perfect community, but had not
counted on human imperfection.
White settlers soon brought more slavery and a lot of
drunkenness to
Sierra Leone. Then
came black
Canadian farmers who had once lived in the United States, but had
fought on the
British side in the Revolutionary War.
Also
a band of black outlaws which had been kicked out of Jamaica. England decided to stop
all slave traffic on the seas; every
time the English navy found a ship of slaves, it set them ashore in
Sierra
Leone. The colony
grew, but the
white English government officials never let the black people rule
themselves
until 1961.
After the French Revolution, France also stopped ships
full of slaves,
and set them free at Gabon. But
the
French government kept control there until 1960.
By the early 1800s in the United States, one-fifth of all
black people
had achieved their freedom--half a million of them.
Government leaders decided it would be better to have
these
free black people out of the way in Africa.
So they established an American colony at Liberia, next to
Sierra Leone.
There was continuous trouble between the black settlers
and the natives
who did not want to give up their land or their profitable slave trade.
In the 1840s, the United States had worsening slave
problems at home--so
it tried to get rid of Liberia. Since
Sierra Leone did not want to take on any more problems, the Liberians
declared
their independence and wrote a constitution patterned on that of the
United
States. Liberia and
Ethiopia were
the only two African nations to hold onto their independence during the
colonial
period which followed.
In the twentieth century, Liberia has prospered from
American rubber
plantations. In the
1930s, after
slavery had been stamped out through the rest of the world, there came
an
embarrassing discovery that black Liberians of American descent still
sold
native tribesmen into slavery.
So
the modern slave trade ended where it had begun four hundred years
before.
15.
NATION BUILDERS: DINGISWAYO, SHAKA, AND MZILIKAZI
The slave trade did less damage in the eastern half of
Africa.
So civilization limped on, and continued to develop there.
By 1800, eastern Africa began to enter an Artistic Age.
Swahili poetry threw off its religious limitations and
became pure
literature. Strong
kings with
colorful personalities began to organize nations.
It was the same process that had occurred in the growth of
most other
civilizations.
About 1800, down in the southeast corner of Africa, two
sons of a chief
tried to revolt. One
was killed,
and the other fled. He
changed his
name to Dingiswayo (ding-gis-WHY-o), which means "the wanderer."
He visited many tribes.
He
made friends with European explorers and learned everything he could
from them.
On the coast, he probably met traders from Arabia, India,
and China.
When his father died, Dingiswayo returned home with grand
ideas of
building a nation.
He organized his tribe into a strong army.
Then he invited other tribes to join him.
Sometimes he used force, but usually the neighboring
tribes
could be persuaded to live under the kind and generous rule of
Dingiswayo.
He built a small and secure nation before he was captured
and killed by
an enemy--an enemy whose life the kindly Dingiswayo had already spared
three
times.
Dingiswayo's greatest general was Shaka (SHAH-ka).
He came from the Zulu tribe.
Soon
Shaka took over Dingiswayo's lands and enlarged them tremendously.
Shaka was one of the world's military geniuses.
He never lost a battle.
He
changed African warfare from distant spear-throwing to close stabbing.
He made his soldiers throw away their sandals because they
could run
faster barefoot. Always
he set the standards for great endurance.
His favorite battle plan was to completely surround his
enemies so that
none could escape alive. The
disciplined Zulu army spread fear wherever it marched,
As Shaka's power grew, so did his cruelty.
He ordered mass executions simply because he felt angry.
It is estimated that Shaka and his army caused two million
deaths.
When people could stand it no more, his brothers
assassinated him.
But Shaka did feel kindly toward his favorite general,
Mzilikazi (mzil-i-KAH-tsee).
When Mzilikazi broke away to form his own Ndebele
(ndee-BEE-lee) nation,
Shaka did not bother to stop him.
Mzilikazi
ruled the huge area which today forms Rhodesia and most of Botswana and
the
Union of South Africa.
When white settlers penetrated northward from South
Africa, Mzilikazi
learned that his efficient army could not stand up against guns. After disastrous battles,
the sad king moved his people
farther north where they lived peacefully until he died in his eighties.
During the reign of Mzilikazi's son, the white settlers
invaded Rhodesia
too, and took over the remains of that black nation.
There was a fourth nation-builder--King Moshoeshoe
(mo-SHWAY-shway) of
Lesotho (Les-SUE-tu). Other
African
leaders despised him because he would not make a fight against the
invading
white men. But sly
old Moshoeshoe
quickly saw that he would get more protection from missionaries than he
would
from armies. So he
invited European
missionaries in (though he never became Christian), and played off one
European
nation against another. By
the time
he died. Moshoeshoe
had negotiated
a guarantee that tiny Lesotho would remain a black-ruled nation.
16.
FROM THE GREAT TREK TO APARTHEID
During the Baroque age, a group of Dutch Puritans fled to
the southern
tip of Africa. European
disease
killed off most of the nearby tribes, so the white settlers considered
it their
land. They planned
to stay.
They called themselves "Boers," which is Dutch for
"farmers." After
many
generations, they began to call themselves "Afrikaners."
With slave labor, they created large and prosperous farms.
A hundred and fifty years later, Napoleon got control of
Holland, so
England quickly seized all of the Dutch colonies before France could.
After Napoleon's downfall, England gave back most of the
Dutch
colonies--but not South Africa. England
freed the slaves and gave all citizens the vote,
This so angered the Afrikaners that many of them decided
to leave and
start a new country to the north.
In
long wagon trains, they made the Great Trek.
They founded two independent republics: Transvaal and
Orange Free State.
The Afrikaners were not able to set up slavery again, but
they did not
allow black people any equality or a vote.
Meanwhile, another migration was happening.
The Zulus and other tribes had gradually been moving
southward.
The two migrations smashed into each other during the
Great Trek.
The guns of the white Afrikaners destroyed the black
armies.
The lands of the black newcomers became the lands of the
white newcomers.
In the 1880s and 90s, European nations grabbed up all of
Africa except
Liberia and Ethiopia. England
captured the two Afrikaner republics during the Boer War, and made them
part of
British South Africa. One
British
army leader, Lord Baden-Powell, noticed that his black soldiers could
take care
of themselves far better than the white soldiers could.
He studied the survival games which African boys learned.
Back in England, he taught these survival skills to other
boys, The idea
spread all over the world, and was called the Boy Scouts.
Meanwhile, the Afrikaners bitterly waited for the day when
they could
throw off English rule and once again set up their own racist society. Some tried to revolt
during World War I.
Later, many admired Hitler's racial policies, though they
did not gather
enough votes to put them into effect until after World War II.
Then in the late 1940s, South Africa began the policy of
racial
separation known as "Apartheid."
According to the theory, black tribes would be given back
their native
lands, with the freedom to establish their own independent nations. But it never worked that
way.
White people ruled and black people suffered
terribly-even though the
population is 66% of African ancestry, 20% of European ancestry, 30% of
Asian
ancestry, and 11% of mixed ancestry.
Only
white people could vote. The
areas
set aside for black reservations were tiny and strictly regulated.
People of Asian or mixed blood had no vote and no place to
go.
People could not travel freely from one area to another. Every person had to carry
an identity card stating his race.
(This classification was done by guessing from a person's
appearance.
This haphazard method separated many brothers from
sisters, husbands from
wives.) Interracial
marriage was
outlawed. Busses,
trains, park
benches, bathrooms, restaurants, and schools were segregated.
The United Nations condemned South Africa for violating
human rights, and
tried to get all nations to cut off trade relations.
The plan did not work--mainly because the United States
refused to
cooperate.
17.
THEIR OWN WAY--NKRUMAH, KENYATTA, AND HAILE SELASSIE
Most nations of Africa regained their independence in the
1960s--after
about seventy-five years of European rule.
The independence movement probably began in the 1940s
among a small group
of African students in London. From
west Africa, the group included the young and ambitious Kwame Nkrumah
(KWAH-me
n-KROO-ma) who later became the first president of Ghana.
From east Africa was the older and cultured Jomo Kenyatta
(ken-YAH-ta)
who later became the first president of Kenya.
And from South Africa came Peter Abrahams, the writer.
(See the next chapter.) This group tried to figure out
ways for Africa to
become itself--not just a copy of Western civilization.
When Nkrumah returned to Ghana, he grew into a popular
speaker.
He was a superb showman.
He
offered a mixture of Christianity, Communism, and tribal magic.
He became prime minister.
England
had scheduled Ghana to be the first colony to gain independence. Nkrumah worked to speed up
the process. After
Ghana became independent, Nkrumah broke the ties with
the West, and moved closer toward Communism.
He made speeches which fired the spirits of freedom-loving
people all
over Africa. But
Nkrumah the great
speaker had little ability as an administrator.
He thought he had to do everything himself, and soon
became a
dictator. He
erected a statue of
himself forty feet tall. As
the
voice of greater Africa, he went to Viet Nam to settle a dispute
between the
Communist world and the Western world.
While
he was out of the country, the Ghanaian army removed him from office.
By then, the Ghanaian people felt happy to be rid of him.
---------------
Independence came violently in Kenya.
A terrorist group called the Mau-Mau murdered black and
white citizens.
Kenyatta had been organizing a political party.
He spoke for Independence and against the Mau-Mau.
But to many frightened white people, black rule seemed the
same as black
terror. Kenyatta
was accused of
being a Mau-Mau leader, and sent to prison.
When independence finally came eight years later,
politicians refused to
cooperate under anyone except old Kenyatta.
He was released from prison to take ever the government.
Kenyatta would not follow the West or the Communist world. Instead, he slowly
educated his people to discover their own
potentials and their own forms of society.
Some people criticized that Kenya was not moving forward
as fast as other
nations who adopted foreign ideas.
Kenyatta
often smiled and reminded them of an old African sayings "When
elephants
fight, it is the grass that gets hurt."
---------------
When independence suddenly swept across Africa, only
Ethiopia had long
experience in orderly self-rule. Many
new African presidents looked to the Emperor Haile Selassie (HY-lee
sel-LAH-see)
for guidance. He
had been involved
in politics since the reign of his distant cousin, the Emperor Menelik
II
(MEN-e-lik). In the
late 1800s.
Menelik had modernized Ethiopia and fought off the
Italians who tried to
make it a colony. The
next emperor was Menelik's grandson who converted to
Islam. This was too
much for the
Christian nation, so Haile Selassie helped lead a revolt which made
Menelik's
daughter the Empress Zauditu (
). She
was the first woman
ever to rule the country. When
she
died, Haile Selassie became emperor for a short time before the
Italians drove
him out. He
appealed before the
League of Nations, but nothing happened.
During
World War II he was able to return.
One
of his first acts as emperor had been to grant a constitution to the
Ethiopian
people.
As the senior statesman of Africa, Haile Selassie helped
to set up the
Organization for African Unity. From
his own pocket, he built a meeting hall for the OAU in Ethiopia. But Ethiopia remained one
of the poorest countries in Africa.
People grew bitter because their emperor was spending his
money on
others, instead of giving it to them.
Through
history, the emperor had protected the people from the land-owning
lords.
They wanted Haile Selassie to equalize the wealth of lords
and people.
But he had already given his powers to the people, and
they had not yet
learned how to use them. Discontent
grew, and in 1974 young army officers removed the
old emperor from leadership.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the
Rastafarians of Jamaica
had long revered Haile Selassie as the promised black messiah.
Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and Haile Selassie were men of
vision--greater vision
than their people had, greater vision than powerful outsiders had.
They saw the future of what Africa can make of itself.
18.
THE VOICE OF NEW AFRICA
In the twentieth century, African art has had a strong
influence on
Western art--particularly the mask-like faces by abstract artists like
Picasso.
African music, transplanted in America, has grown into
worldwide jazz.
With independence in the 1960s, Africans began a rapid
self-discovery--political and artistic.
The
artistic self-discovery most often took the form of literature.
But even before independence, two African writers achieved
worldwide
fame:
ALAN
PATON (PAY-ton)--a white South African who disagreed with the unequal
treatment
of black people. His
novel, Cry
the Beloved Country, shows how the policy of hatred keeps
good people apart
and makes them suffer.
JEAN-JOSEPH
RABEARIVELO (
)--He was born in an Asian family on the island of
Madagascar, just off
the coast of Africa. He
wrote in
French. Since his poetry is difficult to describe, here are two
examples:
FLUTE
PLAYERS
Your
flute,
Cut
from the thigh bone of a mighty bull,
Polished
on the bleak hillsides
Scourged*
by the sun.
*beaten
Her
flute,
Cut
from the reed that quivers in the wind
Pierced
on the banks of running water
Drunken
with moonlight dreams.
In
the deeps of evening, play them together
As
if to right the sphered canoe+
+turn
the round boat (the sun) right side up
Capsizing
by the shores of sky
And
keep it
From
its doom.
But
your plaintive incantations#
#sad songs
Do
they reach the wind-gods
And
the earth-gods and the wood-gods
And
the gods of sand?
Your
flute
Draws
out a note where the ear can catch the tread of a maddened bull
Pounding
toward the desert
And
pounding back
Burnt
by thirst and hunger
Felled
by fatigue
At
the foot of the tree without shadow
Without
fruit, without leaves.
Her
flute
Is
like a reed that bends beneath the weight of a passing bird--
Not
a bird trapped by a child
Ruffling
its feathers
But
a bird lost from the flock
Looking
at his reflection in running water
For
comfort.
Your
flute ,
And
hers--
Longing
for their past
In
the songs of your grief.
WHAT
INVISIBLE RAT
What
invisible rat,
Come
out of the walls of the night
Gnaws the milk-cake@ of the moon?
@green cheese
In
the morning
He
will be gone
Leaving
bloodstained marks of teeth.
In
the morning,
Those
who have been drunk all night
And
those who have just left the gaming tables
Seeing
the moon
Will
mutter
"Whose
is that sixpence
Rolling
on the green table?"
"Ah!"
will say one
"He
had lost everything
So
he killed himself!"
And
they all will snigger*
*laugh rudely
And
stagger and fall.
The moon will be gone.
The
rat will have dragged it into his hole.
Around 1960, brilliant black writers popped up all over
the continent.
Here are just a few:
PETER
ABRAHAMS--He grew up in South Africa, but wrote most of his books in
the free
countries of England and Jamaica.
His
book, Wild Conquest, describes the clash between
the Boers on the Great
Trek and the empire of Mzilikazi.
Abrahams
shows both sides of the conflict; some black militants have complained
about
this.
CHINUA
ACHEBE--(CHIN-oo-a a-CHEB-ee)--He is from Nigeria.
His novel, Things Fall Apart, tells
how the missionary teachings
disrupted the vigorous African way of life.
OKOT
P'BITEK--(
)--He
was from Uganda, and wrote originally in his tribal language.
Song of Lawino is a long poem spoken by
a traditional African
woman. She
complains about the falseness of Africans trying to
imitate Westerners--particularly about the modern second wife her
husband has
taken on.
RICHARD
RIVE (reev)--He was from South Africa, and wrote several powerful short
stories. "Resurrection"
is about a girl of mixed race who
hated her black mother, but begins to see life through her mother's
eyes.
AMELIA
HOUSE--To escape the censors in South Africa, she fled to the United
States.
"Conspiracy" is a short story about interracial love in a
police state.
EFUA
THEODORA SUTHERLAND--She studied in the West before returning to Ghana,
to write
for children and adults. "New
Life at Kyerefaso" is a powerful little fable about what people can do
if
they have pride in themselves.
This looks like the beginning of an Artistic Age in Africa.
If the patterns of history hold true, much more will
probably come.
19.
ADDITIONAL TOPICS
DR.
LIVINGSTONE
David Livingstone was a Scotch doctor sent as a missionary
to southern
Africa. Europeans
told horrible
tales of cannibals boiling missionaries in huge pots.
But evidence shows only six missionaries killed by natives
in all of
central and east Africa until European nations seized political control
in the
1880s. Many of the
missionaries
were Victorians who tried to stamp out African dance and make the
people wear
far more clothes than was healthy.
Dr. Livingstone fell in love with Africa and the African
people.
He resigned from missionary work and spent the rest of his
life exploring
the continent, learning as much as he could.
He also wrote many articles to stop the Arab slave-trade.
Then he disappeared into the interior, and people around
the world began
to wonder what had happened. An American newspaperman named Henry M.
Stanley
found him living peacefully in an African village.
Dr. Livingstone did not rejoice at being found.
When he died, the Africans he had loved so dearly
preserved his body and
carried it from the heart of the continent out to the sea, so he could
be buried
in Westminster Abbey with the other great Englishmen.
CECIL
RHODES
Cecil Rhodes was an Englishman who discovered a diamond
mine in South
Africa at age eighteen. He
believed
it was important for England to own all of Eastern Africa.
So he made a deal to work the gold mines ruled by
Mzilikazi's son.
He soon took over the area now called Rhodesia.
He became dictator of South Africa, but had to resign when
he got caught
paying for a revolution in the Boer republics.
This led to the Boer War.
But
Rhodes had moved on to Rhodesia, where he negotiated peace with the
natives by
riding alone into their territory.
Rhodes left his huge fortune for scholarships at Oxford
University in
England. The Rhodes
Scholarship
remains one of the most respected in the world.
DR.
SCHWEITZER
Albert Schweitzer was a French philosopher and organist. In his twenties, he became
the world's foremost expert on the
music of Bach. But
he decided to
devote half of his life to himself, and half to others.
So at age thirty, he gave up his brilliant organ career to
study medicine. He
became a
missionary doctor in Gabon. But
several times he did make concert tours in Europe and America to raise
money for
his hospital. Some
people said he
was old-fashioned because he would allow no electricity in his hospital.
But Schweitzer remained a man of great love who tried not
to disturb the
African way of life any more than necessary.
Near the end of his long life, he was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Peace.
THE
ZANZIBAR WAR
The Zanzibar War took place August 27, 1896, from 9:O2 to
9:4O in the
morning. It lasted
thirty-eight
minutes, and was the shortest war known in history.
Six years earlier, England had taken over the country, but
the sultan
still kept his empty title. When
he
died, his cousin became sultan and declared independence from England.
What he did not know was that the divisions of the British
navy had
challenged each other to a ballgame at Zanzibar, and had gathered in
the harbor.
They immediately bombarded the palace into a pile of
rocks, and sank
Zanzibar's one battleship. The
new
sultan fled to German territory, and the war was over.
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