THE AFRICAN JEREMIAD AND THE PROPHETIC ARCHITECTURING OF THE FUTURE IN THE WORKS OF NGUGI AND ARMAH

Abstract

This dissertation is about the jeremiadic discourse that underlies the works of Ngugi Wa Thiong’ O and Ayi Kwei Armah. The recurrent African predicaments, from slave-trade and colonialism to neo-colonialism, have made an urgent appeal to the public role of these African intellectuals. Their manifest awareness of the destructive consequences of the scriptural narratives brought by Muslims and Christians to Africa led them to attempt a spiritual decolonization through a typological reproduction of biblical narratives in their works; these narrative reproductions are part of a deconstructive reading of the scriptures, a reading that can be termed “hermeneutics of revolt”. Narrative adaptations and subversions of biblical accounts are performed through typology, parody, irony and satire. While Armah’s fictions tend towards the typological, those of Ngugi are more ironic and satiric. Due to the crisis of leadership in Africa, Ngugi and Armah have endowed their protagonists with prophetic characteristic features. In The Beautyful Ones, Armah expressed his disillusionment about the possibility of the emergence of a committed leadership in Africa. However, in his later novels, he opts for the figure of the prophet as a suitable form of leadership in a community in crisis. While Armah supports this idea through his retelling of the biblical story of the Exodus in Two Thousand Seasons, he warns against the false prophets and charlatans who intend to lead Africa and its people astray. Ngugi offers a powerful representation of leaders who become prophetic saviours as a result of the popular imagination. He points to the importance of hearsay in the construction of the authoritarian personae. The Ruler, in Wizard of the Crow, is a dramatization of the process of deification of leaders by the community. Likewise, in A Grain of Wheat, Mugo, in spite of his act of betrayal, becomes a prophetic saviour in the eyes of people. Prophecy constitutes the central part of the religious discourse that informs the works of both novelists. Being a persuasive rhetorical device, the prophetic language informs the narratives of Ngugi and Armah with authority mainly because of its power to endow their protagonists with authenticity. Knowledge of the future makes the prophet the transcendental person that he might become. In Two Thousand Seasons, Anoa becomes a prophetess only after the fulfilment of the first part of her prophecy, namely the one thousand season of slavery. To fulfil the second part of this prophecy, Armah makes use of what Thomas Merton has termed the “Self-Fulfilling Prophecy”. Although this kind of prophecy is mainly rhetorical, it can be fulfilled without divine intervention. This prophecy is hypothetical in the sense of convincing people to work for a possible future utopia. Ngugi also opens his novels with prophecies that are to be realized in the course of the events of their stories. The plots of The River Between and A Grain of Wheat are part of this proleptic narrative scheme. The prophecies that shape Armah’s and Ngugi’s plots define African history as a necessary apocalypse for a coming Afrotopia. The latter can never take place before a redemptive chaos that redeems the evil committed by blacks against themselves. This redemptive interpretation of African history shows Armah’s and Ngugi’s conviction about a metaphysical form of social justice, a justice that makes blacks worthy of the future one thousand years. This millennialist thinking is also part of Ngugi’s worldview. Ngugi considers popular revolts as the necessary Armageddon for a classless socialist heaven.