Various African governments have been called upon to create the needed environment for African literature to thrive so as to ensure that the fight against terrorism and the fostering of unity on the African continent can be achieved, just as this would aid the better representation of Africa’s interests in the global space.
This charge was given by the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) which was part of a team of panelists at the last edition of the Toyin Falola Interview Series held on Sunday, August 7, 2022, and aired on various social media platforms. The panel was chaired by Professor Toyin Falola. An African intellectual legend on both the continent and in the world, Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
While the panel— Dr. Wale Okediran, medical doctor, former member of the Nigerian Parliament, author of several novels, and Secretary-General of the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA); Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, an Egyptian poet, novelist, cultural journalist, president of the Asia Journalist Association, and Editor-in-Chief, The Silk Road Literature Series; Monica Cheru, Vice-President of Pan-African Writers’ Association (South African region), chair of the Zimbabwe Writers’ Association, and author of short stories and anthologies; Dr. Cherno Omar Barry, Vice-Chancellor of the International Open University, and President of the Writers Association of The Gambia; and Mwamwingila Goima Peter, who is an author/writer of children and adult literature using Kiswahili— touched on various issues such as the place of language in African literary expression, accessibility of African literature by children, women writers and African female emancipation, prize-obsession by African writers, Dr. Okediran and Dr. Omar Barry harped on the need to utilise the instrumentality of literature in fostering unity and development on the African continent.
According to Dr. Okediran, “PAWA is the umbrella body for all the national writers in Africa, and the headquarters is currently based in Accra, Ghana. In the last 30 years, the association has been coordinating the activities of African writers all over the continent. This has been possible because of the vision of the association which believes that literature can be a very important tool in the promotion of African culture. What PAWA has been doing is to coordinate African literature in five major languages; some people call it call it colonial languages: English, French, Swahili, Arabic, and Portuguese. There has been a clamour of recent for us to go into indigenous African languages. But we all know that this would be a very big task because of the multiplicity of African languages. We coordinate African literature by organising seminars and conferences; we institute literary prizes; we also assist in sponsoring literary events, including residency programs. By and large we have formed ourselves into a literary think-tank for Africa and we hope that in the nearest future we will be able to do more. We had a congregation of writers from about 40 countries at the University of Ibadan. We believe that this congregation of writers is strong enough to move ahead with the agenda of using literature to promote African unity and fight against terrorism and insurgency on the continent.”
On his part, Omar Barry, who represented The Gambia, strongly held that: “Story-telling is a powerful tool for bringing about change because of its ability to move and transcend pain, victimisation, to empowerment and extinguish darkness… One story is not enough to explain the current state of affair; it has to be supplemented by various stories and images that either support or drive a movement to change. The general public is growing to the awareness of the powers of these stories.
“African literature is being defined by many writers today. Young writers, women writers are emerging: like Chimamanda Adichie, Teju Cole and many others. Disruptive narratives are present in emerging works of African writers that will create their canon with time.”
Asked if the social media and internet were not eroding the spread of the paperback, Mwamwingila Peter strongly opined that there is a continuous lack of investment in books and the lapse in the general reading culture. “I don’t believe that social media has become more popular than paperback. In Tanzania, I couldn’t be reached sometime ago by Whatsapp message because I was in a remote area. We still have a market for these books. The internet bandwidths are very expensive. If you move out of Dar es Salaam to the remote areas in Tanzania, you will find that we still suffer with the internet. The major issue is what we are taking as gift to our children. We can’t put blame on social media; the truth is that we don’t want to invest in books, even physical books. A very simple survey in one of our regions in Tanzania showed that every parent who got my story book for their child, they came back asking for the continuation of the book. We have not been sending home gifts such as books; we have been sending home chocolates,” he said.
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