African Literature and Vision Amidst Insecurity

Abstract

I am a writer and scholar and have dealt with insecurity in many of my literary writings. In The Activist, I dealt with environmental insecurity and the cultural ways of resolving it in the planned nude protest of the elderly women which resulted in the deaths of Bell’s CEO and the military leader! Literature is a cultural production and its works in fiction, memoirs, and poetry are cultural works fashioned to create awareness of and occasionally be prescriptive on the problems of society. These problems often arise from different manifestations of insecurity. Writing itself is a source of insecurity. There are dangers in being a creative artist. We should be aware of the fate of Ken Saro-Wiwa in this respect. We also know how at different times, governments have detained Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, Ngugi wa Thiong’o of Kenya, Kofi Awoonor of Ghana, and Jack Mapanje of Malawi, among many others. Kano State has a Censorship Board and that poses a sense of insecurity to imaginative artists, especially writers who have to be careful that they do not fall foul of the censorship laws. In Africa, the writer is seen as a threat to those in power who practice tyranny, corruption, and other types of misgovernment. The writer’s gaze tends to rattle politicians who are not doing what they swear or promise to do in their national constitutions. Literature is often a torment to deviants in traditional and modern forms of literature. Literature, as in Africa, can act as a counter discourse to corrupt and bad leadership by promoting visions of an ideal society, fairness, justice, and democratic principles, and eliminating class exploitation and antagonism.