This document summarizes Kolawole Ogungbesan's article "Politics and the African Writer". It discusses how Chinua Achebe's conception of the writer's role and duty changed over time with the changing political situations in Nigeria. Originally, Achebe saw the writer's role as explaining African culture to outsiders and helping Africans regain their dignity after colonialism. Later, as Nigeria faced political crises, Achebe took on additional roles as a social critic and revolutionary, aiming to expose injustice and transform society. By examining Achebe's writings and statements over time, the article shows how African literature reflected the continent's changing political phases.

1. Politics and the African Writer
Author(s): Kolawole Ogungbesan
Source: African Studies Review, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Apr., 1974), pp. 43-53
Published by: African Studies Association
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2. POLITICS THE
AND AFRICAN
WRITER
Kolawole Ogungbesan
The African writer has been very much influenced by politics,
probably because the African intellectual is a part of the political
elite. The writer is a sensitive point within his society. Thus,
African literature has tended to reflect the political phases on the
continent. Chinua Achebe is a very suitable example. Beginning during
the colonial days his writing spans the succession of political crises
which has beset Nigeria. Also, more than any other Nigerian writer, he
has made statements on the role of the writer in his society. His con-
ception of the writer's duty has also tended to change with the polit-
ical situation in his country. By examining both his creative writing
and his pronouncements, we can obtain an interesting picture of how the
quality of a literature can be directly influenced by the degree of the
writer's political cammitment.
Achebe's first statement on the social responsibility of the
African writer was made in a lecture entitled "The Role of the Writer in
a New Nation," delivered to the Nigerian Library Association in 1964.
Although he had cast the title of his lecture in rather general terms,
Achebe talked specifically about the role of the writer in what he called
the new Nigeria. The major problem all over the world, he said, was the
debate between white and black over black humanity, a subject which pre-
sented the African writer with a great challenge:
It is inconceivable to me that a serious
writer could stand aside frcn this debate,
or be indifferent to this argument which
calls his full humanity in question. For
me, at any rate, there is a clear duty to
make a statement. This is my answer to
those who say that a writer should be
writing about contemporary issues--about
politics in 1964, about city life, about
the last coup d'etat. Of course, these
are legitimate themes for the writer but
as far as I am concerned the fundamental
theme must first be disposed of. This
theme--put quite simply--is that African
peoples did not hear of culture for the
first time from Europeans; that their
societies were not mindless but frequently
had a philosophy of great depth and value
43

3. 44 AFRICANSTUDIESREVIEW
and beauty, that they had poetry and, above
all, they had dignity. It is this dignity
that many African peoples all but lost in
the colonial period, and it is this dignity
that they must now regain. The worst thing
that can happen to any people is the loss
of their dignity and self-respect. The
writer's duty is to help them regain it by
showing them in human terms what happened
to them, what they lost. There is a saying
in Ibo that a man who can't tell where the
rain began to beat him cannot know where he
dried his body. The writer can tell the
people where therain began to beat them.
After all the novelist's duty is not to beat
this morning's headline in topicality, it is
to explore in depth the human condition. In
Africa he cannot perform this task unless he
has a proper sense of history (Achebe 1964,
p. 157).
Thus, the African writer should be both a cultural nationalist,
explaining the traditions of his people to a largely hostile world, and
a teacher, instilling dignity into his own people. Achebe reaffirmed
this position later the same year at the Conference on Commonwealth
Literature held in Leeds. Although his paper, entitled "The Novelist as
Teacher," was largely a restatement of his earlier stand, Achebe was
more eloquent and more assertive, perhaps because he was arguing his
case before an international audience.
He refused to believe that an African writer could be alienated
frcm his society. In spite of the fact that the education of Africans
was largely Western-oriented, the relationship between European writers
and their audience will not autamatically reproduce itself in Africa.
In Africa, Achebe said, society expects the writer to be its leader. He
revealed that many people have asked him to bring out more forcefully
the lessons to be learned from his stories. Not that Achebe writes to
please his readers; indeed, he believes that no self-respecting writer
will take direction from his audience and that he must remain free to
disagree with his society if it becomes necessary. However, the writer's
duty is more fundamental than that of the journalist. The period of
subjection to alien races has brought disaster upon the African psyche.
In fact, all over the continent people still suffer from the traumatic
effects of their confrontation with Europe:
Here, then is an adequate revolution for me
to espouse--to help my society regain its
belief in itself and put away the complexes
of the years of denigration and self-denigra-
tion. And it is essentially a question of
education in the best sense of that word.
Here, I think, my aims and the deepest aspira-
tions of my society meet. For no thinking

4. AND
POLITICS THEAFRICAN
WRITER 45
African can escape the pain of the wound in
our soul....The writer cannot expect to be
excused fram the task of re-education and
regeneration that must be done. In fact he
should march right in front.... I for one would
not wish to be excused. I would be quite
satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I
set in the past) did no more than teach my
readers that their past--with all its imperfec-
tions--was not one long night of savagery frcm
which the first Europeans acting on God's be-
half delivered them. Perhaps what I write is
applied art as distinct fram pure. But who
cares? Art is important but so is education
of the kind I have in mind. And I don't see
that the two need be mutually exclusive
(Achebe 1965, pp. 204-205).
Two years later Achebe published his fourth novel, A Man of the
People. The tone of this book was foreshadowed by an article entitled
"The Back Writer's Burden," which Achebe wrote for Presence Africaine
in 1965 but which was not published until after the novel came out early
in 1966. Presence Africaine was founded in 1917 by a group of African
and West Indian blacks to propagate African culture. Achebe's burning
zeal in his article matches that of the founding fathers of that maga-
zine. He opens on an avowedly militant tone:
Without subscribing to the view that Africa
gained nothing at all in her long encounters
with Europe, one could still say, in all
fairness, that she suffered many terrible and
lasting misfortunes. In terms of human dig-
nity and human relations the encounter was
almost a ccanplete disaster for the black races.
It has warped the mental attitudes of both
black and white. In giving expression to the
plight of their people, black writers have
shown again and again how strongly this trau-:
matic experience can possess the sensibility.
They have found themselves drawn irresistibly
to writing about the fate of black people in
a world progressively recreated by white men
in their own image, to their glory and for
their profit, in which the Negro became the
poor motherless child of the spirituals and
of so many Nigedan folk tales (Achebe 1966,
p. 135).
Obviously, the need for the writer to lead his people to reclaim
their dignity has became even more urgent. However, Achebe goes further,
by saying that now the greatest task confronting the African writer is
that he should "expose and attack injustice" all over the world, but

5. 46 AFRICANSTUDIESREVIEW
particularly within his own society in Africa. African writers should
be free to criticise their societies without being accused of supplying
ammunition to the enemies of Africa. "Wemust seek the freedon to ex-
press our thought and feeling, even against ourselves, without the
anxiety that what we say might be taken in evidence against our race."
Africans have for too long behaved as criminals in a law court. "We
have stood in the dock too long pleading and protesting before ruffians
and frauds masquerading as disinterested judges" (Achebe 1966, p. 139).
Thus, Achebe has given the African writer a second duty, that of
the social critic. As in 1964 it was the condition of his society that
moved him to assume this second role. The situation in Nigeria in 1964-
1965 can best be summed up in the words of a character in Wole Soyinka's
novel, The Interpreters (1965): "Next to death, shit is the most ver-
nacular atmosphere of our beloved country." Achebe wrote A Man of the
People under this disgusting atmosphere. Here he has forsaken his
earlier duty to give back to his people their dignity; now he focusses
his gaze on the evils inflicted on African societies, not by an alien
race, but by Africans themselves. Yet the fundamental belief remains--
that the writer can and must influence his society. This would explain
the much-vaunted prophetic ending of the book: "But the Army obliged us
by staging a coup at that point and locking up every member of the Gov-
ernment." The point is not so much that in January 1966 this became a
prophetic statement, but that the writer, like a journalist, is so con-
scious of his role in his society, and his involvement in its fate, as
to put forward solutions to the problems facing his people.
Achebe may have foreseen the military coup of January 1966, but
there is very little doubt that subsequent events caught him, like
everyone else in the country, unaware. In May several hundred Ibo were
killed in parts of the Northern Region. In July a counter-coup overthrew
the government of General Ironsi; most of the military officers who were
killed were Ibo, including Achebe's brother. In September there was
another massacre of Ibo in the North, and Colonel Ojukwu asked all Ibo
people to return to their homes in the East. As events moved inexorably
towards war, Achebe became an Ibo nationalist. When war actually broke
out, he became a diplomat, acting as one of the roving ambassadors for
the Republic of Biafra.
Achebe now said that the role of the African writer should be that
of a social transformer and revolutionary. In a paper presented at a
political science seminar in Makerere in 1968, entitled "The Duty and
Involvement of the African Writer," he said that a writer is only "a
human being with heightened sensitivities" and, therefore, "must be aware
of the faintest nuances of injustice in human relations. The African
writer cannot therefore be unaware of or indifferent to the monumental
injustioewhich his people suffer." African writers are committed to a
new society which will affirm their validity and accord them identity as
Africans, as people; "they are all working actively in this cause for
which Christopher Okigbo died. I believe that our cause is right and
just. And this is what literature in Africa should be about today--right
and just causes" (Achebe 1970, p. 163).

6. POLITICS ANDTHEAFRICANWRITER 47
In a period of conflict, priorities change, and people tend to
reinterpret their lives and roles in new lights. In an interview at the
University of Texas at Austin in November 1969, Achebe gave a new reading
of his novels, calling himself a protest writer. Indeed, all African
literature, he said, is protest writing.
I believe it's impossible to write anything
in Africa without some kind of commitment,
same kind of message, some kind of protest
....In fact I should say all our writers,
whether they are aware of it or not, are
committed writers. The whole pattern of
life demands that you should protest, that
you should put in a word for your history,
your traditions, your religion, and so on
(Lindfors 1970, p. 18).
Achebe has moved from criticising his society to directly taking
a hand in remoulding it. He claimed that, in addition to recording the
past and the current revolutions and changes that are going on, the
African writer has a great influence in determining Africa's future, for
by recording what had gone on before, he is in a way helping to set the
tone of what is going to happen. "This is important because at this
stage it seems to me that the writer's role is more in determining than
merely reporting. In other words, his role is to act rather than to
react" (Lindfors 1970, p. 18).
Achebe is consistent in his belief that the writer has a function
in his society, that he could and diould influence his society. Yet
some sort of revolution has taken place in his view of his society.
Whereas in A Man of the People Achebe had called the ccamon people "the
real culprits" of the social malaise in Nigeria, two years later he saw
them as the vanguard of the revolution; if anything, it is now the turn
of the artist to learn one or two things from his society:
This has been the problem of the African
artist: he has been left far behind by
the people who make culture, and he must now
hurry and catch up with them--to borrow the
beautiful expression of Fanon--in that zone
of occult instability where the people dwell.
It is there that customs die and cultures are
born. It is there that the regenerative
powers of the people are most potent. These
powers are manifest today in the African revo-
lution, a revolution that aims toward true
independence, that moves towards the creation
of modern states in place of the new colonial
enclaves we have today, a revolution that is
informed with African ideologies.
What is the place of the writer in this

7. 48 AFRICANSTUDIESREVIEW
movement? I suggest that his place is right
in the thick of it--if possible, at the head
of it. Scne of my friends say: "No, it's
too rough there. A writer has no business
being where it is so rough. He should be on
the sidelines with his note-paper and pencil,
he can observe with objectivity." I say that
a writer in the African revolution who steps
aside can only write footnotes or a glossary
when the event is over. He will became like
the contemporary intellectual of futility in
many other places, asking questions like:
"Whoam I? What's the meaning of my exis-
tence? Does this place belong to me or to
somebody else? Does my life belong to me or
to same other person?"--questions that no
one can answer (Lindfors 1970, pp. 16-17).
Immediately after the war ended, Achebe was faced with the problem
of reconciling his different positions. He sought to establish same
sort of continuity in his ideas by viewing the civil war as only a crisis
which has brought out more nakedly the dilemma between the African writer
and his society. He attempted to adapt his latest position, that of the
writer as a revolutionary, to the situation in postwar Nigeria. "I have
come to the belief that you cannot separate the creativity from the revo-
lution that is inevitable in Africa. Not just the war, but the post-
independence period in Africa is bound to create in the writer a new
approach. This, maybe, was sharpened by the war, but in my case it was
already there" (Emenyonu 1972, p. 25). African literature in its present
form, he said, is really not sufficiently relevant to the issues of the
day. "I think what is meaningful is what takes into account the past
and the present." African writers cannot forget the past because the
present ccmes out of it; but they should not be mesmerized or immobilized
by their contemplation of the past to the exclusion of the contemporary
scene. "The most meaningful work that African writers can do today will
take into account our whole history: how we got here, and what it is
today; and this will help us to map out our plans for the future" (Emenyonu
1972, pe 25).
Nonetheless, Achebe has been chastened by the war. Now, he claims
to understand the plight of South Africans who used to say that they could
not afford to write novels--only poetry or short stories. During the
war, he had found, like them, that there was no time, everything was too
pressing, novel writing was a luxury, and poetry seemed to meet the de-
mands of the time. Even two years after the end of the war, Achebe has
not felt the urge to write a novel. "I'd like to try my hand at a play."
On the relationship between politics and the writer, he says that scene
measure of politics is bound to intrude into writing, especially in
Africa. He himself could not abstain, although he would not deny the
right of any writer to do so. For him, however, "one can only avoid can-
mitment by pretending or by being insensitive" (West Africa March 3,
1972).

8. POLITICS ANDTHEAFRICANWRITER 49
Achebe is correct that politics and social affairs cannot be kept
out of literature in Africa, at least not for same time. Yet the writer's
approach to these issues will be crucial to the quality of his work. In
order to be objective, he must be detached, must not become emotionally
involved. This is the case with Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, the
two books on which Achebe's reputation still rests. Achebe realised that
the writer as a teacher must watch his attitudes very carefully. There
would always be a strong temptation for him to idealise his past--"to
extol its good points and pretend that the bad never existed." This is
where the writer's objectivity comes in. If he becomes emotionally can-
mitted to the extent of selecting only those facts that flatter him, he
will have branded himself an untrustworthy witness. More important, he
would thereby flaw his art. "The credibility of the world he is attempt-
ing to recreate will be called to question and he will defeat his own
purpose if he is suspected of glossing over inconvenientfacts" (Achebe
1964, p. 158). Viewed objectively, the African past will be seen, not
as "one long, technicolour idyll," but possessing, like any other people's
past, its good as well as its bad sides.
Objectivity is not the preserve of the writer, but is a prereq-
uisite in all intellectual pursuits. Indeed, the writer as teacher was
in very good canpany, for his task, "to help my society regain its belief
in itself," was not exclusively that of the creative writer. There were
other intellectuals to whma objectivity mattered as much as to the
writer--historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scien-
tists--who were devoted to the task of giving back to Africa the pride
and self-respect it lost during the colonial period.
The African writer's role as a teacher, as Achebe himself real-
ised, could only be a temporary measure, sacmething dictated by the polit-
ical logics of the time. Once the lesson had been learned, the teacher's
duty falls into abeyance. In 1964 Achebe was not saying that he did not
accept the present-day as a proper subject for the novelist. After all,
his second book, No Longer at Ease, had been about the present-day, and
as he promised then, the forthcaning one, A Man of the People, would
again came to date. "But what I mean is that owing to the peculiar
nature of our situation it would be futile to try and take off before we
have repaired our foundations. We must first set the scene which is
authentically African; then what follows will be meaningful and deep"
(Achebe 1964, p. 158).
Thus, the writer's role as a social critic is a logical sequence
to his role as a teacher. Having repaired the foundations of his society
by establishing the validity of African traditions, the writer can now
afford to take an unflinching look at his society and its shortccmanings.
However, the writer's role as a social critic is higher than his role as
a teacher, since it can go beyond the requirements of the moment. Writ-
ers all over the world have always been called upon to play this role.
But it demands more of the writer than the role of a teacher. It demands
more than objectivity; it demands considerable detachment. The writer
may not have found it difficult to be detached when writing about the
past, but this quality becomes doubly necessary when writing about the

9. 50 AFRICANSTUDIESREVIEW
present.
This is where Achebe as social critic fails. His righteous in-
dignation with his corrupt society, however justified, does not permit
detachment. A Man of the People is an authentic picture of the Nigeria
of 1964-1965, as would be confirmed by anyone who had lived in the
country or, for that matter, anyone who has read the newspapers of the
time. But the authenticity of the novel is that of journalism rather
than that of creative literature. Achebe had said in 1964 that "the
novelist's duty is not to beat this morning's headline in topicality, it
is to explore in depth the human condition." Less than a year later he
seemed to have forgotten this. As he was writing A Man of the People,
Achebe must 1ave been repeatedly muttering to himself with impatience:
"Perhaps what I write is applied art. But who cares?"
The logical conclusion of his efforts at producing applied art
are the poems and short stories Achebe wrote during the war. The role
of a freedom fighter has very little to do with creative writing, as we
can see by the example of Achebe's fellow countryman, the late Christopher
Okigbo, who stopped writing poetry during the war, took to running guns,
and finally met his death on the war front. Unable, or unwilling, to
make the distinctions which seemed so clear to Okigbo, Achebe was forced
to term as creative any activity engaged in by a creative writer. This
is nothing short of denigrating the creative impulse itself. Achebe
labelled as half-truth the belief that creativity is saomething that must
ccne fran a kind of contemplation, quiet, or repose; and that it is dif-
ficult to keep the artistic integrity of one's writing while being totally
involved in political situations:
I can create, but of course not the kind of
thing I created when I was at ease. I can't
write a novel now; I wouldn't want to. And
even if I wanted to, I couldn't. So that
particular artistic form is out for me at
the mPnent. I can write poetry--scmething
short, intense, more in keeping with my
mood. I can write essays. I can even
lecture. All this is creating in the con-
text of our struggle. At home I do a lot
of writing, but not fiction, scmething more
concrete, more directly related to what is
going on. What I am saying is that there are
forms of creativity which suit different mo-
ments. I wouldn't consider writing a poem
on daffodils particularly creative in my
situation now. It would be foolish; I
couldn't do it (Lindfors 1970, pp. 17-18).
Achebe seems here to be confusing the words "creative" and "use-
ful." It is only by stretching the meaning of the term "creative litera-
ture" to the point of absurdity that we could apply it to the propaganda
which Achebe wrote for Radio Biafra or the lectures he delivered in

10. POLITICS ANDTHE AFRICANWRITER 51
Europe and America during the war. Okigbo's gun-running and enlistment
in the Biafran army were more concrete than anything Achebe ever did and
were '"more directly related to what was going on." Yet the poet would
have disdained to call his efforts "creative" in any artistic sense.
There could be no poetic way of firing a gun. In an interview in 1965,
Okigbo had said that he took his work seriously because it was the only
reason he was alive.
I believe that writing poetry is a necessary
part of my being alive, which is why I have
written nothing else. I hardly write prose.
I've not written a novel. I've not written
a play. Because I think that somehow the
medium itself is sufficiently elastic to say
what I want to say, I haven't felt the need
for some other medium (Whitelaw 1970, p. 37).
So during the war we had the ironic situation whereby Okigbo the poet,
realising that this was not the time to say anything, foresook his medium
for more direct intervention, whereas Achebe the novelist took to writing
poetry.
Achebe's war poems, such as "Air Raid," "Refugee Mother and Child,"
and "He Loves Me: He Loves Me Not," show a closeness of observation and
an intense emotional involvement in the situation. The same could be
said for the short stories "Girls at War" and "Civil Peace." Achebe has
minutely recapitulated the ugly facts of life in Biafra during and
immediately after the war. Unfortunately, neither a photographic atten-
tion to details nor an emotional involvement in people's suffering is
sufficient in itself to make a good work of art. Achebe's "creative"
efforts--whether they be pure propaganda, poems or short stories--on be-
half of Biafra invite comparison with the products of newspapermen, radio
and television journalists who recorded what they saw in the beleaguered
enclave. A work of art should create, not just copy.
The mood of anger, frustration, and despair which Achebe has dem-
onstrated since 1965, and which he finds in South African writers, is
characteristic of the intelligentsia--not just writers--all over Africa
today. Yet it constitutes a serious danger to art. Righteous political
indignation as the primary impetus for writing belongs more to the world
of propaganda than to creative literature. In the writer, it accentuates
the personal impulse to write protest and militates against detachment.
One way out, if the situation beccnes too oppressive to allow
roam for detachment, is to suspend writing and take a direct hand in in-
fluencing the situation. This was Okigbo's solution. This was the solu-
tion recommended by the South African writer-in-exile, Lewis Nkosi, who
advised his fellow countrymen to stop writing until the political problem
in the country is solved rather than continue to grind out third-rate
hackneyed stories (Nkosi 1965, p. 132). Another way out is that followed
by Nkosi himself and a host of South African writers--Mphalele, Abrahams,
Hutchinson, amongst others--who have quit their country and settled else-
where, although, significantly, none of them is now living in an African

11. 52 AFRICANSTUDIESREVIEW
country. Abroad, they have been able to write with the leisure and de-
tachment that their country did not permit them. It speaks enough for
their caomitment that even in exile they have all written about South
Africa. But they have been able to produce other art forms longer and
more artful than the short story. Even if their autobiographical works
are considered as anti-apartheid propaganda, it is a better propaganda
than the protest writing they did in South Africa. Paradoxically, at a
distance of several thousand miles frcm their society, they have been
able to see it more clearly and attack it more effectively. Because
they are now better able to restrain their emotions, they are also better
able to discipline their art. As Mphalele said five years after leaving
South Africa, "Excessive protest poisons one's system, and thank goodness
I'm emancipated frcm that. The anger is there, but I can harness it"
(1957, p. 54).
All over Africa, the writer needs to harness his anger in order
to write well. There is a very strong temptation for the writer within
a young literary tradition to embark on a crusade, either on behalf or
against his society, to attempt to educate the world about his people's
civilisation, or to teach his own people how to behave. This crusading
spirit can damage his art as irretrievably as any governmental or party
control in totalitarian states. In order to criticise his society most
effectively, he needs to be detached fram it. With greater control over
his emotions, he can sharpen his focus on his society and aim more care-
fully at his target. For sane time to ccne, the political situation on
the continent would tax to the utmost the African writer's emotional in-
volvement in the fate of his society. Alienation is a much-abused word.
But the African writer needs at le ast to be disengaged, if he does not
necessarily need to be alienated, from his society if he is to produce
a lasting work of art.
REFERENCES
CITED
Achebe, Chinua. "The Role of the Writer in a New Nation." Nigeria
Magazine, No. 81 (June 1964).
"The Novelist as Teacher." In John Press, ed. Ccmmonwealth
Literature. Leeds, 1965.
"The Burden of the Black Writer." Presence Africaine, Vol.
XXXI, No. 59 (1966).
"The Duty and Involvement of the African Writer." In Wilfred
Cartey, ed. The African Reader: Independent Africa. New York,
1970.
Emenyonu, Ernest. "Accountable to Our Society." Interview with Chinua
Achebe. Africa Report, Vol. XVII, No. 5 (May 1972).

12. POLITICSAND THEAFRICANWRITER 53
Lindfors, Bernth. "Achebe on Ccmmitment and African Writers." Africa
Report, Vol. XV, No. 3 (March 1970).
Mphalele, Ezekiel. The African Image. London, 1957.
Nkosi, Lewis. and Exile.
Haome London, 1965.
Whitelaw, Marjory. "Interview with Christopher Okigbo, 1965." Journal
of CaommonwealthLiterature, No. 9 (July 1970).
Department of English and Modern Languages
Ahmadu Bello University
Zaria, Nigeria