By Onyango Charles
“You’ll be surprised, no doubt, to receive this letter. But I couldn’t leave your beautiful world without saying goodbye to you who are condemned to live in it…. However, for me, this letter is a celebration, a final act of love, a quality which, in spite of my career, in spite of tomorrow morning, I do not possess in abundance, and cherish…”
Whenever I read these mind blowing, mouth drooping and tail wagging opening remarks of an epistle that Bana penned down to his girlfriend, Zole, on the eve of his public execution, I often pause and salute the prophetic eye with which Ken Saro Wiwa coined the award winning title for his short story, “Africa Kills her Sun“. Originally,Bana had the intention of naming the story
“Africa Kills her Sons” but after a deep analysis of the absurdity that is about to befall them, he thought it wise and stuck with the term sun because in killing her sons, Africa was steadily and ignorantly dimming the brightness of her sun.
The sad reality that we have to accept is that the Sons of Africa are facing the hangman’s noose.
With the courage and the optimism of facing death, Bana unblinkingly tells Africa the truth. As the orb of the sun reddens at sunset kissing the western horizon with sparkles as if in a celebration to welcome darkness, I see the boy child drowning in the dark abyss of neglect and uncertainties.
It pains that the power of the pen and ink has been used tactfully by the executioners of the boy child to rivet nail after nail into the boy child’s coffin of oblivion.
Over the years, set books have been carefully selected, with the influence of a global clarion call to uplift and unyoke the girl child from the patriarchal chains of oppression. The move has succeeded in the killing of sons for daughters to prosper. All literary scholars will agree with me that murder is a vice and cannot be used as a means of propagating a virtue.
In Margaret Ogolla’s novel The River and the Source, the boy child ceased to be the rock of the father’s sling and the girl child became the source of the spring from which the river of the family lineage flowed to prosperity.
In this thrilling novel, the author deliberately killed and maimed the boy child for the girl child to prosper. The most dramatic death of all deaths was the choking of young chief Owang’ Sino with a fish bone!
The novel was so powerful in achieving women empowerment that even after it ended in 2002, it found its way back in our classes in 2014.
“The Burdens” by John Ruganda presents Wamala as an alcoholic father. Glory is given to the selfless sacrifices made by his wife Tanka for the wellbeing of their son Kaija and their daughter Nyakake.
Marjorie Oludhe’s novel, “Coming to Birth” presents Martin Were as an intolerant husband to Paulina, who is glorified to stardom of prosperity once she leaves her marriage.
Henric Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” brings out the animal out of Helmer Torvald for the benefit of his wife’s promotion to heroism and independence.
Henry Ole Kulet’s novel, “Blossoms of the Savannah” is another orchestrated piece of art that creates monsters of men in Oloisudori and Ole Kaelo for the empowerment of women such as Resian, Taiyo and Minik ene Nkoitoi. Men from this novel are portrayed as vagabonds, rapists, assassins or utterly corrupt. Some like Joseph Parmuat are sacrificed to save the girl child, Taiyo.
In all these cases, Africa is bent on killing her sun (read sons) from their formative stages to become puppets and mere statues in a female dominated society that is deliberately being created by suffocating patriarchy to death.
At the end of the sad and captivating letter Bana writes to Zole, my heart melts at the favour he requests from Zole. He asks that after they have been publicly executed by the firing squad in the stadium and the photos appear in the newspapers, she should make a cutting of Bana’s photo, give it to a sculptor and ask him to make a stone sculpture of Bana as he appears in the photograph.
“He must make as faithful a representation of me as possible. I must be hard of feature and relentless in aspect. I have a small sum of money in the bank and have already instructed the bank to pay it to you for the purpose of the sculpture I have spoken about…”
My appeal to curriculum developers is that as we wait for the introduction of new set books in 2023, they should note that the boy child is in the stadium facing the firing squad.
The stadium is fully parked by disillusioned eyes of sympathizers, trigger happy fingers of boy child executioners, celebratory heaving chests of the conspirators and the sweat-decorated faces of grave diggers awaiting the death Africa’s sons. If the sons must die for the daughters of Africa to live, then their faces should at least be on the newspapers.
I beg that we should be allowed to contract the West African greatest sculptors to carve these faces for remembrance. Let us erect those statues in major avenues in capitals and the inscription AFRICA KILLS HER SUN should be bold. Let the statues become mementos of the sad reality that Africa, our mother, killed her sun (sons), for her daughter to live without brothers, husbands and fathers.
The writer is a poet and teacher of English and Literature at Moi Nyabohanse Girls in Migori County.
