Abstract
In The Wretched of the Earth (1963), Frantz Fanon holds an optimistic view of the intellectual in the colony, as one who plays a key role in confronting the colonial administrators and addressing them on level intellectual turf. Long after African countries have gained independence, university campuses continue to sprout and grow on the continent. The intellectual finds their position changed. Now, intellectuals are under scrutiny more than ever, pressed to illustrate their relevance to the continent, to indicate how their expertise is not limited to the professing of theory in university corridors. The discourse has been ongoing in various disciplines. This essay examines the area of poetry, arguing that this domain illustrates the continent’s disillusionment with the place of the African intellectual in relation to their immediate world and indigenous knowledge production within it. In poetry, we find insightful critiques of as well as recommendations for the role of the African intellectual. Through an exploration of several poems that touch on the academy and the intellectual, the essay illustrates how these poems fit into the ongoing discourse about the indigenization of knowledge vis-à-vis the pedagogy imported from the West.
Introduction
From the onset of the independence of African countries, many scholars have debated the role of the intellectual in their nations. In the period before independence, Frantz Fanon theorized that African intellectuals would play a key role in ensuring the liberation of their country. It is these “native intellectuals [who would] mobilize the masses and bring pressure to bear on the colonial administration” (Fanon, 1963: 107–108). This is indeed something we have witnessed among the first presidents of several African nations such as Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, who were fiercely and intellectually articulate in their visions for their nations. However, Fanon also warned that African intellectuals might experience a divide between them and their compatriots. They might also encounter a gulf between their ideals and those held and exercised by those who assume power, who are not necessarily intellectuals themselves. This gulf has characterized the experience of the African intellectual from the moment of independence up to the present day. Although various universities have sprung up on the continent, African intellectuals still struggle to make themselves relevant. This conflicted position of the African intellectual is manifested in the world of poetry.
Since most African countries started gaining independence, the genre of poetry has competed closely with that of the novel. In this article, African poetry is focused on primarily due to its timeless nature, unlike that of the novel, which, more often than not, has a specific historical and geographical context. To illustrate this timelessness, the poetry explored in this essay is drawn from a broad historical expanse, featuring poets writing in the 1980s as well as in the new millennium. One could argue that the writings of poets hardly translate into action in the academy. After all, as Chidi Amuta opines, written poetry is often deemed “the exclusive preserve of the intellectual arm of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois classes” (2017: 176). However, the optimism in this article is drawn partially from the historical conferences held in the 1960s in Dakar and Freetown, the result of which was a determination to transform the literature curricula in African universities by integrating more African works written in English or French (Hossmann, 1963: 14). Today, apart from the odd department of English or Literature, African university campuses hardly pay any attention to the writings of poets as material that is key to transforming institutions. The conferences are evoked here as a historical attempt to integrate the experiences of Africans into the academy, through literature syllabi. Similarly, the essay is concerned with the place of the African intellectual in their immediate world. An argument from Moradewun Adejunmobi is worth bearing in mind here, specifically that rarely do critical approaches to African cultural production highlight its relevance to other domains of experience within the continent (2015: 53). This essay is a step in that direction, albeit through its aim of highlighting the poets’ cynicism concerning the African intellectual’s place.
Firstly, to define the African intellectual, we may adopt the words of Joseph Ki-Zerbo, who observes: The title “intellectual” is generously distributed in Africa and jealously guarded. Strictly speaking, producers of scientific, literary or artistic works could be considered as intellectuals. An exceptional police officer can very well meet this requirement. In a broad sense, however, everyone who earns a living mainly from intellectual activities could be viewed as an intellectual. (2005: 78–79)
Ki-Zerbo’s definition helpfully recognizes the intellectual as a producer of knowledge. I would add that the African intellectual, in particular, is an individual given the social responsibility of producing knowledge useful for development of their nation and the minds within it. In this article, the term academic, also found within the poetry, is used synonymously with intellectual (although if one wishes to split hairs, as Bright Molande observes in his poem “The Wise One from the Asylum”, the academic may not necessarily be an intellectual). Ki-Zerbo’s description above, broad as it may be, highlights the central place of the creative writer. Scholars have identified a number of dominant concerns in anthologies of African poetry, including history, culture, and in more recent years, gender and migration. The notion of the African intellectual, on the other hand, often goes without discussion in poetry, taking a rear position in comparison to these more “pressing” concerns of the poet. In contrast, this essay marshals together selected poems to pursue the argument that the verse form illustrates the continent’s disillusionment with the place of the African intellectual in relation to their immediate world and indigenous knowledge production within it.
Felix Mnthali, in his essay “Change and the Intelligentsia in African Literature: A Study in Marginality”, holds that a common feature of the depictions of intellectuals in African literature is as follows: The person who by reason of his “reading” or formal education appears to stand above and apart from his fellow men is subtly compared and contrasted with those of his fellow men (or women!) who may on the surface appear less gifted, less noble and even venal but who on closer look are in many ways stronger, more intelligent, wiser and perhaps more humane than we were originally led to think. (1988: 8)
It is in this light that we may read Wole Soyinka’s Lakunle (The Lion and the Jewel, 1962) and Okot p’Bitek’s Ocol (Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, 1989), as Mnthali indeed does in his work. This essay extends Mnthali’s discussion by focusing solely on poetry as a medium that reveals the contradictory position of the African intellectual as an individual who balances local concerns with prescriptions obtained from Western training. On the one hand, African intellectuals often wish to use their learning to improve their societies. However, this same learning threatens to alienate them from those societies. On the other hand, there are those African intellectuals who, in their desire to be clearly different from their Western counterparts, have become champions of indigenous knowledge. These are the individuals that Fanon wrote of, as those who dig into their national histories for evidence of cultures that existed before colonialism (1963: 209). At this point, notwithstanding the evidence from the poetry, I must voice a caveat about this presumed binary between African and Western epistemological paradigms, which has already been questioned by various scholars. Achille Mbembe, for instance, drawing upon Fanon, warns that emphasis on Africanization often devolves into racism (2016: 34). Similarly, Kwasi Wiredu challenges such misleading comparisons, arguing that features commonly associated with African thought are also often found in Western thought (1980: 41–42).
In pursuing its objective, the essay draws upon several poems. The list is not exhaustive, given the breadth of poetic creativity across the continent. However, the selection deliberately focuses on two different periods — the 1980s (a period associated with experiments with language, coupled with pro-democracy agitations in African nations), and the 2000s (often associated with “contemporary” African literature). Although the essay does not adopt a deliberately chronological approach, this sampling nevertheless affords a comparative view concerning campus dynamics, especially in relation to concerns about the intellectual and the nation. Among the poets whose work is discussed are Niyi Osundare, Bright Molande, Stanley Onjezani Kenani, Kofi Anyidoho, and Okot p’Bitek. 1 The discussion of the poetry is formed on the background of current scholarship on the role of the African intellectual.
Intellectuals and politicians
Could it be true, as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o suggests, that the aim of the African intellectual has mainly been to achieve a status of equality with their Western counterpart? Is that all there is to it, a need “to wear the same clothes and shoes, get the same salary, live in the same kind of mansions as their white counterparts of similar qualifications”? (1972b: 12). In the present day, there should be more to it than this rather limited desire. Ngũgĩ himself answers this point, stressing that African intellectuals must align themselves with the struggle of the masses for a meaningful national ideal […] must strive for a form of social organization that will free the manacled spirit and energy of our people so we can build a new country, and sing a new song. (1972a: 50)
This last statement from Ngũgĩ highlights the ideal of the African intellectual as a key player in the development of the nation. In reality, rarely do intellectuals and politicians see eye to eye. We can immediately see the frayed relationship between the two in Stanley Onjezani Kenani’s poem, “The African Leader”, which features a speaker — most likely an African president — who mocks the attainment of degrees in foreign countries by the nation’s intellectuals: Two degrees still baby-sitting in Berlin Even peddling drugs in Amsterdam Washing dishes in homes of the rich Mimicking false accents to bury their Africanness Two degrees serving beer in nightclubs Playing the gigolo Two degrees?? (Kenani, 2005: 45)
The speaker carefully denies responsibility for the failure to develop the nation. The poem therefore stands as a response to all the criticism that has been levelled at neocolonial self-serving leaders who plague the continent’s nations. The poem is ironic, but it nevertheless raises the suggestion of the complicity of various stakeholders in the failure to develop the nation. The section of the poem that is most relevant here is the one where the leader points a finger at the African intellectuals who have amassed degrees but remain unable to assist their nation, choosing instead to stay in the Western metropolis, reduced to working menial and degrading jobs. This is not an entirely surprising position, given the observation that, in Africa, as far back as the early period of independence (and indeed during the colonial period) politicians and intellectuals have never experienced harmonious relationships (Mkandawire, 2005a: 23). According to the speaker, we should not blame him for the nation’s problems, but must instead Blame the African who can’t read for knowledge and pleasure Whose thinking is whitewashed by imported religions Poverty? Blame the Useless African Academic Two degrees still wiping old people’s Bottoms for a living Cleaning the toilets of London Sweeping the streets of New York (Kenani, 2005: 44–45)
The imaginary academic in question is unable to render any service to the nation. Among the ongoing debates in the African academy today is the question of the relevance of specific degree programmes. In May 2019, for example, the Government of Zimbabwe commenced a process of abolishing “irrelevant” programmes in some of the country’s higher learning institutions. In relation to this topic, Thandika Mkandawire observes that one of the repeated arguments from African governments has been that “universities [are] not carrying out relevant research, or [are] undertaking research that [is] not immediately usable in policy matters” (2005a: 28). This is the case when one thinks of the intense theorizing that characterizes the academy, often seen at conferences or in other forms of discussion that academics partake in among themselves.
This critique of jargon is also addressed by the Ghanaian poet Kofi Anyidoho (1984: 37) who, in “My Mailman Friend Was Here”, observes that half of the books that intellectuals read are “Mere verbiage or hot dog shit […] the other half | Are strict matters of cold Theory”. This directly highlights the alienation that occurs between the intellectual and their immediate world, with which they cannot effectively communicate. Such is the level of reading that the scholar’s Pride is now become the fierce logic of swift and violent thought: Analytical categories. Hypothetical constructs. Functions. Paradigms. Parallel structural theses. (Anyidoho, 1984: 37)
Note here the deliberate mockery of the language used by academics, which remains abstract, failing to translate into the language used by the general populace.
The subject matter of this poem also evokes the figure of the African intellectual in the diaspora, and the debates over whether or not diasporic intellectuals are still rooted to the continent, and indeed questions about the degree of influence they possess over the growth of their birth nation. Mkandawire argues that “Africa’s diaspora […] was central in the construction of Africa as an idea, as an object for study, in the establishment of Africans as academics and pan-Africanism as a project” (2005b: 8). A good number of the most renowned African academics are currently operating from outside the continent. These are people who have found themselves outside their countries due to the attraction of the diaspora and/or to the unfavourable — usually politically and economically — situation at home. Nevertheless, Mkandawire argues that these intellectuals make a significant epistemological contribution to the continent, or to the growing body of knowledge that can be claimed by it (2005a: 16). What we are witnessing here is what Edward Said calls an “intellectual politics of blame” (1986: 60) between academics and those who are actually in positions of power. Such a discourse is an indicator of stagnation, boiling down to the exchange of accusations. The government accuses the academics of not producing relevant knowledge, while the academics claim the government is not always willing to heed their advice.
The passage cited above illustrates how language can be a key marker of alienation between the intellectual and the rest of the populace. Anyidoho is keenly aware of language as a signifier of identity, but also of its potential function to clearly communicate ideals, including intellectual thoughts, between the academic and their world. The focus on language regains emphasis in another section of “My Mailman Friend Was Here”, where the speaker is a character communicating in pidgin. This character’s maize is getting stolen. He is advised to go and seek an audience with a college professor, who may explain the cause of the problem, and perhaps offer a solution: Make you go hask Plofessor Kesedovo Haskam say na which people tief our corn? First, igo tell you somting for som sakabo man Dem callam Kominizimu. Den igo tell you something too For some lie lie tiefman dem callam Demoklashi. De big bookman go spiti im rotten salava for your face And make som long long talk about cockloach and housefry. (Anyidoho, 1984: 33)
As Emmanuel Ngara observes, one of the key points in this poem is the poet’s use of the pidgin language (1990: 174). It is reminiscent of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Sozaboy, and of course of Amos Tutuola’s writings. Significantly, this language is not academic (Lèfara, 1997: 149), yet the poet deliberately employs it to discuss the role of the African academic. It captures the speaker’s attitude towards the professor, who vainly attempts to explain to the peasant that what he is experiencing is not theft per se, but rather the effects of communism, and its close cousin, democracy. Pidgin works as a kind of “fragmentary writing [that] is the manifestation of the decolonized people’s freedom of speech” (Lèfara, 1997: 149). As we read the poem, we recognize the irony that oozes from it, as the peasant is repeatedly assaulted with citations from academic sources and theories: Accorling to Disguintis Plofessor So so and so, and so and so, Accorling to meditasion espelmentasion and Sciefitic obsavasion invastigasion, Accorling to hleflence page so, palaglaf so so and so, Articre one-and-half minus tree-one-qwata, Accorling to accorling and accorling… (Anyidoho, 1984: 33–34; ellipsis in original)
The professor in the poem represents the African academic, unable to articulate themselves in a language that their countrymen can appreciate, and comfortable instead hiding away behind academic citations. Anyidoho ridicules intellectuals such as the professor through the scornful treatment of their mannerisms.
The intellectuals who have been fed on Western epistemology have always been regarded scornfully in African literature. Spouting Western philosophies, they are seen as traitors to their people, when they were supposed to support them and espouse their philosophies. The most memorable of such characters in African literature include Okot p’Bitek’s Ocol in the famous poem Song of Lawino, one of those African men whose “testicles | were smashed | with large books” (1989a: 117). In his poetry, through the voice of Lawino, p’Bitek decries the brainwashing of Africans with Western knowledge, to the extent that representations of African cultures appear backward and primitive to them. These particular words from Lawino equate the African man’s masculinity with his intellectuality. In her opinion, the studying of Western intellectual content destroys what she regards as respectable masculinity, but also alienates the African man from his context. This relates to a point that Said raises about some of the venerated scholarship that is produced in the West, and which has now become part of the global epistemological canon. Making reference to Michel Foucault and Raymond Williams, Said argues: “for both of them the colonial experience is quite irrelevant and that theoretical oversight has become the norm in all cultural and scientific disciplines except in occasional studies of the history of anthropology” (1986: 62). Said’s words echo the point Ngũgĩ makes that African intellectuals need to be able to develop and use their own theory, instead of continually borrowing existing theories from the West.
Lawino’s voice therefore becomes “a simple but effective way of explaining how African intellectuals who are educated in western-schools become helpless victims of neo-colonialism” (Ngara, 1990: 72). If we turn to Song of Ocol, we find the counterpoint to the argument presented by Lawino, which nevertheless is an important one to consider. Its crux is an attack on the decolonization project in the African academy, which, despite the deprioritizing of Western paradigms of theory, continues to produce academics who are experts in irrelevant material. Such is the anger against the new intellectuals that Ocol proclaims: To the gallows With all the Professors Of Anthropology And teachers of African History, A bonfire We’ll make of their works, We’ll destroy all the anthologies Of African literature And close down All the schools Of African Studies. (p’Bitek, 1989b: 129)
Ocol’s position is a representation of the African petty bourgeoisie who “want to destroy all things African, anything that reminds them of their African past” (Ngara, 1990: 64). The violence inherent in Ocol’s expressions bespeaks the need to completely erase all vestiges of this past, which he associates with primitivity. This is not a far-fetched sentiment, the idea that focusing on indigenous epistemologies has the effect of leading Africans on a retrogressive, and perhaps essentialist, path. 2 Ngara argues that in his poetry, p’Bitek is attacking the “African political and intellectual elite that has allowed itself to become the vehicle of neo-colonial culture” (1990: 66). This reads like a passage from The Wretched of the Earth, especially regarding the role of the intellectual. In their search for an anchor within the histories, the traditions, and the myths of their people, intellectuals “experience what seems to be a banal search for exoticism” (Fanon, 1963: 221).
The corridors of knowledge
Most of the current African universities are modelled on American and British education systems (Mkandawire, 2005a: 26; Mazrui, 1975: 191). They are mostly “colonial in origin and disproportionately European in tradition” (Mazrui, 2005: 62). This has ensured a continuity of pedagogical traditions, but has also led to some degree of confusion in attempts to bridge indigenous knowledge systems and Western ones. Several poets note this factor of teaching using received traditions. Ngũgĩ’s (1995) famous essay, “On the Abolition of the English Department”, is an attempt to address this matter, recognizing the need for African intellectuals to focus on material that is immediately relevant to their contexts.
On the one hand, African academics generally acknowledge the university as a centre of knowledge production, even though the growing argument is that this knowledge is mostly irrelevant. As Ali Mazrui (2005: 58) notes, “[p]ost-colonial African university campuses were once the vanguard of intellectualism”. However, this majestic stature has waned. There are increasing complaints about the low intellectual capacity of graduates, the decline in critical thought, the proliferation of diploma mills, and the increasingly questionable relevance of the academy to the nation. Additionally, the exclusivity of the university as a knowledge production centre may also be challenged, with relevant knowledge production emerging from various individuals and bodies not associated with the university. One of the crucial things to note about most of the poets discussed in this essay is their engagement — through their poetry — in a form of self-reflexivity, having been part of university faculties at some point in their careers. 3 The poets themselves are therefore implicated as the targets of the criticism they voice. They too have been party to the pedantry they critique in the existing verse. Tanure Ojaide, for instance, observes that poets such as Niyi Osundare are among the few who engage in self-critique, condemning “their middle-class, university ivory tower status” (1995: 11). This is not so much a paradox as it is a move by the poets to shift their gaze inwards, in an attempt to question their own relevance before they condemn society’s treatment of its writers.
Among the poets who critique the academy, Osundare stands out, with several scathing poems in his collection Songs of the Marketplace (1983a, 1983b, 1983c). His view of the academy is an extremely negative one, in line with the overall postcolonial vision in his poetry. Like Anyidoho, Osundare is both poet and academic. However, as Stephen H. Arnold observes, “[b]eing a man of mighty intellect, [Osundare] is far from being anti-intellectual. Rather, he is anti-sham-intellectual, anti-irrelevant intellectual” (1989: 4). In “Excursions”, for example, he situates university students within the general picture of gloom that makes up the city. This is one among several poems in which Osundare highlights contradictions in the social system, contrasting the “rank poverty of the masses with the opulent life of those who do not produce but who, as organizers of labour, appropriate everything to themselves” (Bamikunle, 1995: 122). For Osundare, students identify their lecturers as “threadbare gurus | Recycling worn traditions? Dreading change like despots” (1983b: 13). This is obviously in reference to the epistemological baggage that the academics have inherited from their Western education, which even the students are able to recognize as outdated material. It highlights an academy that is resistant to change in a decaying system (Oloko, 2017: 71). The pretence of academics is captured in their description as dons Pawning wives for chairs Then slouching into glamorized mediocrity Breeding flat minds Diplomaed with slavish stamp Of received gospels. (Osundare, 1983b: 13)
From such a description, there is not much to praise about the African university, which does not seem to offer any home for the people. One gets an impression of the academics as a lazy (“slouching”, “breeding”) lot, automatons long lost to a lethargic system. Such a description is a commentary on the state of the university today, and the fact that many politicians decry the tendency of the university to produce knowledge that is not impacting on the world they live in. “Excursions” captures this disconnect very well, since the university dons are located amongst corruption, poverty, disease, and other social problems that they appear unable to solve.
Osundare continues the onslaught on sham-intellectuals in “Publish or Perish”, an example of verse that comments on the tradition of valuing Western knowledge over that from other spaces. In the poem, the persona questions the appropriateness of studying African authors Wole Soyinka and Elechi Amadi, instead of well-known names in the Western literary canon such as Geoffrey Chaucer. The discussion in the poem can be connected to the history of Literature departments in most African universities, where the earliest poetry on the syllabi was European. Most of the anglophone African universities have since undergone much de-anglicizing of the syllabus (Lindfors, 1990). The changes in the Department of English at the University of Nairobi in the 1970s are often cited as an example of “Africanizing” the academy. Mamdani also gives the example of Makerere University, which rapidly Africanized after independence (1993: 9). However, as K. M. Lillis notes, in the early days of the literature syllabus in the African university, [i]ts Eurocentric focus and its consciously or unconsciously insensitive disregard and contempt for the existence of African literature, the complacency and arrogance of its assertion that European literature was best and alone good enough for Africans, was characteristic of the attitudes of pre-Independence agents of cultural imperialism. (1986: 65)
Consequently, as Bernth Lindfors observes, in most African universities at present, there is a preference for including African literatures. This move by the universities could very well be a way of addressing Ngũgĩ’s concern: “Why can’t African literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relation to it?” (1995: 439). The worry of the persona in Osundare’s poem is one that may not be as grave in the present African academy. The poet critiques not just the tradition of mass-producing papers in the academy, but more specifically, the trend of producing material that does not speak to an African audience, papers that are “foreign” and “arcane” in the name of “[strengthening] our claim | To erudite universality” (Osundare, 1983c: 25–26). The poem adopts a mocking tone, and hints at how academics become focused on publishing material that has hardly any bearing on their own lives, while already heavily burdened by the rigours of teaching.
In “Publish or Perish”, we recognize the way the African academy has fallen into the trap of generating publications for the sake of promotion, with no clear concern for the quality of those publications, or the possibility that they contain plagiarism (Odinye, 2014: 19). The poem captures the anxiety of an academic who fears that their material for study may not be deemed relevant enough to secure a promotion. It participates in ongoing debate about the indigenization of knowledge, specifically within the university (Dei, 2014). It attacks an academy filled with professors who value Western literature. It is in that light that the persona worries that their article will not be accepted for publication because it bears a “home smell”, and is Not referred in New York Printed in Yokohama Published in London Frozen with the imprimatur Of an Oxonian emeritus. (Osundare, 1983c: 24–25)
The question of local journals is one that is disputed even in the present day, when the academy has formed canons of journals in pretty much every discipline, with web aggregators used to rank them.
Osundare’s ridiculing of the academy continues in “At A University Con-Gre-Gation”, where he focuses on a key ritual in an institution of higher learning — the conferment of certificates, degrees, and diplomas. In many African countries, this ceremony serves as an indicator that a person is educated, and, importantly, employable. However, Osundare treats the ritual with measured contempt, seeing it as a moment of pretence and posturing. As graduands converge during their graduation ceremony, Jargons take over the podium And slogans rumble The belly of the hall Fustian grenades detonate And eggheads explode With barren approbation. (Osundare, 1983a: 28)
The “jargons” here represent the spouting of academic language that we have also observed in Anyidoho’s critique. The scholars present during the function desire to display, through academic lingo, their elite position in society. Osundare captures the excitement of the graduation — the “detonat[ion]” and “explo[sion]” of academic pomp and praise. However, the poet finds it all pretentious, or “barren”. In this case, the university becomes something that alienates the citizens outside the university, who are supposed to benefit from the learning. This auspicious occasion is reduced to buffoonery.
Intellectuals and “madmen”
A common thread among the poets is disillusionment with university education, with at least one poet likening it to “madness”. One writer in particular, the Malawian poet Bright Molande, continually draws comparisons between insanity and intellectualism in his poetry collection, Seasons (2010a, 2010b, 2010c). Molande is among those that could be deemed contemporary poets, and his verse helps to illustrate the pervasive nature of the discussion of intellectuals in African poetry, even as this discussion follows new directions. The collection has been described as a documentation “of the poet-persona’s experiences with living in a world that is full of cynicism, opportunism, social anomie, bloated egos, economic ruination and senseless greed” (Tembo, 2012: 20). It is easy to locate the African intellectual within these concerns. The insane figure in Molande’s poem personifies the future of an academia that continues to parrot the knowledge passed down to them by the colonialists. At the end of one poem, Molande asks, “When did university lunatics possess wisdom?” (2010c: 69). These are words in which he blends insanity and intellectualism, a trend that continues in several of his poems.
Molande’s comparison of the academician to the “madman” echoes one of the points proposed by Ato Quayson in Aesthetic Nervousness — that so-called madness is often used to represent “inarticulable and tragic insight” (2007: 49). The “mad” person is thus possessed with superior knowledge that is exclusive and understandable to them alone, while sounding like nonsense to those that deem themselves sane. In the first place, Molande hints at the obscurity of theory that is often produced by academicians, and the fact that such theory seems too distant from the situation on the ground. In other words, academics are often seen as being out of touch with reality, as most of their ideas end up in academic papers, and do not translate into the lives of the rest of the citizenry. As a result, the postulations of intellectuals are gibberish, like those of “madmen”. This is redolent of what Mamdani observes about the relationship between Makerere University and its environs: We came to realise that universities have little relevance to the communities around us. To them, we must appear like potted plants in greenhouses — of questionable aesthetic value — or more anthropological oddities with curious habits and strange dresses, practitioners of some modern witchcraft. (1993: 11)
This is also the case with the university in Malawi, and it is a key point that Molande attempts to stress.
The second significance of Molande’s lines lies in the geography and history of Malawi, specifically the location of Chancellor College, a constituent college of the University of Malawi. The college is in Zomba, a city which also houses the country’s largest psychiatric hospital. These two structures — the university and the psychiatric hospital — are therefore key locations in the history of Zomba. Molande is aware of this as he constantly and deliberately entangles the two — intellectuals and “madmen” — in his writing. To the general population of the town, there is hardly any difference between the two categories. The academics are enclosed within their campus corridors, conversing in a language that is just as strange as the murmurings of the “insane” at the hospital. “Imprisonment of a Lunatic” (2010a) engages with this directly, as it is about Blaise Machila, a Malawian academic who was deemed unwell by government authorities, due to defiant statements that he made in public. Specifically, his statements were seen to undermine the authority of the then president, Hastings Kamuzu Banda. He was forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital, then released only to be sent to prison instead (Carver, 1990: 78–79).
The insanity of the intellectual is again captured in the poem “The Wise One from the Asylum”, where Molande adopts the voice of a persona who is a university lecturer, disgusted by the sight of a psychiatric patient standing at the doorway of their office, especially when the “madman” claims that he “used to be a member of this university” (2010b: 23). Echoing Osundare, Molande tries to draw fine points differentiating university teachers, academics, and intellectuals. According to him, academics are distinguished from university teachers by the publication of papers. The irony is in the acknowledgement that even if academics “publish, speaking on behalf of the academia […] what we speak and publish is hollow | And there are no new ideas in our voice. | But you either publish, or perish — the folly of it!” (Molande, 2010b: 24). However, for Molande, the class to be respected is that of intellectuals, who again are separated from mere academics. Molande’s position is more optimistic than that of the other poets examined earlier, since to him, intellectuals are men and women of new ideas They are the fewest refined souls of new thoughts Capable of swaying the world into new frontiers They speak, and the world does not only listen But their words are prescribed books world over; Prescriptions in other universities and wisdom Quoted by the man on the streets. (Molande, 2010b: 24)
Bear in mind that, in the poem, these are words spoken by a “mad” person. It is he who is able to discern that intellectuals are the most needed. This position is rather an idealistic one, given the strained relationship between academics and politicians, who are ultimately responsible for the implementation of policies in the land. What this means is that, even though knowledge generation may happen in university corridors, there is a need for the cooperation of the politician if this knowledge is to be part of national development policy and benefit the masses.
Conclusion
In an interview on Africa in Words, the Nigerian poet Niran Okewole avers that modern poetry ought to engage in “public intellection”, clearly engaging with its context and assisting in the “shaping [of] popular consciousness” (Umezurike, 2016). This is what poems such as those discussed above are attempting to do. By the very nature of their subject matter, poems that discuss the intellectual in Africa tend to resist the temptation to be directed inward, but instead adopt an outward trajectory. That is because the message is intended to be heard, processed, and hopefully acted on by those who hear it. At the beginning of this discussion, it was stated that the dominant position about the intellectual in Africa is one of disillusionment, a sense that they have failed in the duty given to them to produce and impart knowledge that will improve the circumstances of their fellow citizens on the continent. Due to this alleged failure, they are looked upon with scorn and ridicule, as some of the poetry indicates. However, the very fact that these poems are laying bare the assumptions that are held about the intellectual is a point that is not to be taken lightly. The self-criticism contained within the poetry is important. This is the first step, the exposure of the problem, without which the second step — seeking solutions to that problem — may not be embarked upon.
