GATHERING SEAWEED: AFRICAN PRISON WRITING
It was striking to read Jack Mapanje's deeply impressive collection of 20th century African prison writing at a time when British newspapers were devoting so many columns to the vaporous 'prison diaries' of one Jeffrey Archer. The contrast, not least in the likely respective financial rewards for Mapanje and Archer, is stark, and not one which reflects well on either our society or its values. Jack Mapanje, Malawi's foremost poet, was imprisoned for over 3 years by Life President Banda for his elliptical depictions of life under a brutal dictatorship in his first book, Of Chameleons and Gods. His subsequent, post-prison writing (The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison and Skipping Without Ropes) brilliantly portrayed life in that claustrophobic and fear-ridden society. Gathering Seaweed - whose title is derived from a piece by Nelson Mandela about Robben Island - is a collection of writings by political prisoners from across the African continent. The authors are an interestingly varied lot - prisoners who became presidents (Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Kaunda, Neto, Mandela); politicians (Kariuki, Odinga) who were imprisoned both by colonialists and by ex-prisoner presidents turned jailers; and poets, playwrights, novelists, sculptors, lawyers and political dissidents. Some are writers who wrote in order to survive, creating poems in their heads or writing novels on hidden scraps of toilet paper. Others were activists who wrote simply to record their captivity for posterity. What shines through this book is a common, radical vision of what Africa might and should become.
GATHERING SEAWEED: AFRICAN PRISON WRITING
Edited by Jack Mapanje
http://www.heinemann.com/shared/products/91211.asp
Jack Mapanje (Ed), Gathering Seaweed: African Prison Writing (Oxford, Portsmouth NH, and Johannesburg: Heinemann African Writers Series, 2002, pp.xxii + 328, £9.95. ISBN 0 435 91211 9).
It was striking to read Jack Mapanje's deeply impressive collection of 20th century African prison writing at a time when British newspapers were devoting so many columns to the vaporous 'prison diaries' of one Jeffrey Archer. The contrast, not least in the likely respective financial rewards for Mapanje and Archer, is stark, and not one which reflects well on either our society or its values.
Jack Mapanje, Malawi's foremost poet, was imprisoned for over 3 years by Life President Banda for his elliptical depictions of life under a brutal dictatorship in his first book, Of Chameleons and Gods. His subsequent, post-prison writing (The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison and Skipping Without Ropes) brilliantly portrayed life in that claustrophobic and fear-ridden society.
Gathering Seaweed – whose title is derived from a piece by Nelson Mandela about Robben Island – is a collection of writings by political prisoners from across the African continent – from the Cape to Cairo of Cecil Rhodes' railway fantasy. The authors are an interestingly varied lot – prisoners who became presidents (Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Kaunda, Neto, Mandela); politicians (Kariuki, Odinga) who were imprisoned both by colonialists and by ex-prisoner presidents turned jailers; and poets, playwrights, novelists, sculptors, lawyers and political dissidents. Some are writers who wrote in order to survive, creating poems in their heads or writing novels on hidden scraps of toilet paper. Others were activists who wrote simply to record their captivity for posterity. What shines through this book is a common, radical vision of what Africa might and should become.
A collection such as this could easily be depressing. In fact it is quite the reverse – it is affirming (of the old cliché about the pen and the sword), uplifting, inspirational and truly radical. It is certainly not, as Mapanje insists at the very beginning 'another anthology calculated to negate Africa' (p.xiii). It reminds younger generations (who might need reminding) of just how nasty and vicious 'even' British colonialism was – the moderate Kenneth Kaunda was told in 1950s colonial Zambia that he could not enter shops by the front door, but only be served through a hole in the wall at the side, while one of his colleagues was beaten up by a police superintendent who told him, 'I say, you cheeky nigger, you cannot call a European (= white) lady a girl or a woman.' (pp.4-5). There are similar stories from other supposedly 'civilising' colonial empires.
Mapanje has divided (somewhat arbitrarily, as he acknowledges) his collection into 5 headings: (colonial) origins; arrest, detention and prison; torture; survival; and the release. Not all whose work appears here were released; most notably Steve Biko and Ken Saro-Wiwa. It is a useful division, allowing some familiar themes to emerge - the shock of the initial arrest and the prison cell; the despair at what might lie ahead; trying to endure both torture and the callous indifference of prison doctors in apartheid South Africa and elsewhere who chose to see no evil; making intimate acquaintance with cohabiting insects; enjoying a brief moment of sun each day; seeking comradeship wherever available; demanding civil rights and insisting that they had committed no crime. There is also affirmation of the work of organisations such as Amnesty and International PEN, reminiscent of Mapanje's earlier poem about an unknown Cecilia from the British Council, whose postcard miraculously escaped the censors and reached him in a moment of despair:
'somewhere someone we do not know cares – and that dear
Cecilia is all the prisoner needs to know!' (Skipping Without Ropes, p.19).
Gathering Seaweed is the first attempt to compile a representative collection of African prison writing over the past 50 years (it would have been helpful to have dated each piece of writing). It succeeds triumphantly in depicting both the courage of those who stood by their convictions and their hopes for their countries and continent, and the moral squalor of those who colluded with oppressive regimes, including doctors and psychiatrists. The South African, Caesarina Kona Makhoere, scornfully tells one of the latter that rather than tend to her needs, 'a psychiatrist might be more useful in treating the mad apartheid dogs.' (p.243).
Jack Mapanje is currently Wordsworth poet in residence in Grasmere. He is a hero in his own country. He has now done the African continent proud. Buy this book; not Jeffrey Archer's! It will endure, like so many of these African prisoners of conscience.
Robin Palmer
Oxford