The year is 1884. Somewhere in Central Africa is a vast Bantu kingdom known as luBemba. The people are abaBemba. Somewhere else, and unbeknownst to abaBemba, European nations are sharing African land including that of abaBemba. Consequent to this “scramble for Africa,” abaBemba find themselves in an arbitrary amalgamation of 70-plus ethnic groups. The amalgam is Northern Rhodesia. Bemba sociopolitical systems collapse. Young men are forced into mine labor for tax money. Mine townships bring together cultures from Africa, India, and Britain. For abaBemba, this experience is characterized by a multilayered psychological destabilization. Taking advantage of the onset of the written text, Bemba authors delineate for their kinsfolk an Afrocentric space around their new sociopolitical reality. These novelists are neither psychologists nor conventional philosophers; yet their literary treatment of the African psyche is profound. From one such novelist, this article draws insights for Afrocentric psychology.
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