Awoonor’s Festival of African Reality

One of the most tragic occurrences in the annals of African literary history was the murder of the Ghanaian writer and diplomat Kofi Awoonor by Al Shabab terrorists in Nairobi on September 21, 2013. 

Awoonor was one of the most incisive poets to emerge in the early group of practitioners of creative English language expression in post-colonial Africa.

He was also one of the most loyal Ghanaian intellectuals to the father of the nation, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, and when that heroic leader was overthrown in 1966, the event clearly traumatised him.

Shortly after Nkrumah was removed from office, Awoonor went into exile in Europe and later in the United States of America, which lasted for nearly a decade.

In that very sensitive period of intellectual ferment in the West, he became well-known on the poetry reading circuit in the USA.

He was also very preoccupied with establishing the commencement of academic studies of African issues in the American university system at that time. When I first met him in late 1966, he had embarked on a career as a university lecturer at the University of Ghana, and we agreed on one thing, which was that the military overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah was a tragic mistake.

I was not, therefore, surprised when I heard only a few months later that he had absconded and taken up residence abroad.

The next time I met him in person was in the mid-1990s when I visited him in Accra under very changed circumstances. By that time, Kofi had served his homeland for several years as a diplomat.

Rainbow Book Festival

He was also widely regarded as one of Africa’s most innovative novelists and articulate essayists. We encountered each other again several years later when he participated in the Rainbow Book Festival in Port Harcourt in 2009 and he gave me a copy of a collection of his essays entitled The African Predicament.

As I commenced reading this ample anthology of ideas and opinions, I discovered that the extent of its contents could stretch the average reader’s expectations and anticipatory outlook because of the incredible variety of his concerns.

This perception led me to read the book in very short bursts of selective discretion.

As a consequence, I opened it often but rarely in sustained sessions and read only a few excerpts over the next four years.

When the news came of his unfortunate demise, I regretted this practice, because the purpose for which he had written the various essays that make up this remarkable volume was clearly to provoke precise discussion on the relevance of African reality in the contemporary world.

Because of this, I had intended to tell Professor Awoonor that I found the title of his book inadequate.

Instead of The African Predicament being the core issue of its concern, I found that it focused on a globally comprehensive consideration of Pan-African realities.

Because of this, I had decided that after a proper and more fulsome reading of the book, I would tell him that I thought The African Reality would have been a more accurate title.

The exchange of ideas with Kofi had been one of the most enjoyable activities in which I engaged on my visits to Ghana when I was younger, because he was a very argumentative and articulate conversationalist, and we had become very close friends.

Awoonor

As I contemplate the ideas advocated over a broad spectrum of concerns by Awoonor in this volume, especially now that I am an octogenarian and must, therefore, consider the legacy that our generation will leave behind for our offspring, I believe it is an important document for the general reader in both Africa and the African Diaspora.

This book is an impressive festival of literate concern that could provide valuable insights and effective suggestions on how to perceive the inheritance of post-colonial existence in the modern world.

Although it is not a narrative record of his life, the intellectual process of narrating experience was the central value of his entire career and that was the core discipline of his essay writing.

As a result, the exemplary ideas expressed by him as he observed American society and its handling of the race problem are highly instructive for both observers and participants in contemporary times.

Kofi Awoonor’s life was an adventurous one and while he does not burden the reader with tales of his exploits, this book excites because of his innovative assumptions and visionary arguments.

Vision

That vision is sustained throughout the book by adherence to the literate values of stylistic language and the public interest of a writer whose vision was both professional and popular. One of the major essays here is a study of why Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown.

This should be a compulsory reading for young Ghanaians who wish to have a wholesome perspective on the history of their nation, but it should also be widely read in countries where the true perspective on colonial liberation must be understood. 

For this reason, it is to be hoped that this book will continue to be published and distributed all around the world for a long time to come, even though the author was taken away from us so brutally and in such an untimely manner eleven years ago.

The writer is a Jamaican born writer and photographer has lived and worked as an independent journalist in West Africa for nearly 60 years.