Eunuchs in the master’s chamber

Criticism like the plague, contending myself with the more palatable prose of African, European and Soviet Literature in English (and, of course, there was no escaping the tedium of George Elliot, Charlotte Bronte et al!).
For some strange reason, many of our teachers did not steer us to the simpler poetry that I subsequently stumbled upon.
Such as “Song of Lawino/Song of Ocol”.
Of course, Okot p’Bitek’s 1966 offering relies on a lot of symbolism, but it is a symbolism that is easier to chew and digest.
Take for instance this line in the epic poem: “There is not one single true son left/ the entire village has fallen into the hands/ Of war captives and slaves/ Perhaps one of our boys/ Escaped with his life!”
Pretty straightforward stuff and applicable to whatever social and historical context one is operating from.
But my appreciation of “Song of Lawino” is not only in its simplicity.
Rather, it is in its power.
The general agreement is that p’Bitek was writing about the struggle between African and European culture in his poem. It is a lament for the manner in which at independence Africa totally forgot about its own roots, what Ayi Kwei Armah would call “the source”, and how we rushed headlong into embracing the trappings of power while neglecting our duty to develop our nations.
In one of the more powerful exchanges in the poem, Ocol declares quite forcefully: “For all our young men/ Were finished in the forest/ Their manhood was finished/ in the classrooms/ Their testicles/ were smashed/ with large books!”
Much has been written about the role of education in conditioning the colonised to be an agent in his/her own continued exploitation.
Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, Samora Machel, Amilcar Cabral and a host of others have all competently dealt with this issue. But none have ever expressed as resonantly as Uganda’s p’Bitek did back in 1966.
“Their manhood was finished/ in the classrooms,/ Their testicles/ were smashed/ with large books!”
In that quest for knowledge, in that desire to succeed and make it to the top, many big books have been devoured by Africa’s men. But instead of edifying us in the way education should, it has made us eunuchs in the service of foreign gods.
That is why despite African leaders knowing that they must democratise their economies, empower their people and improve their standards of living, they cower in the shadow of the West and mouth platitudes on how they will “protect foreign investment”.
That is why there has been no real discourse in mainstream South African and world media about the underlying causes of the Marikana massacre.
The men’s testicles have been crushed by big books and they differ to “conventional economic wisdom” that dictates that capitalism should be left as is and the “invisible hand” will find its own balance.
Their testicles have been crushed to such a pulp that even though deep down they know that Marikana is the result of centuries of un-checked exploitation, they will obscure matters by focusing on issues of “criminality” and “unionism”.
The men of crushed testicles will allow many more Marikanas to happen, with the active participation of our fellow Africans in this exploitation, without ever lifting a finger to set things right.
The matter is simple. People are hungry. They are hungry because they spend all their time working to ensure that a few privileged people get even more to eat for themselves. The solution is equally simple.
Make sure that the person who works gets to eat that which he is working for.
There is no need to obfuscate matters by bringing in high-sounding nothings like nationalisation, foreign direct investment, indigenisation and private property.
We don’t need economists, development theorists, political philosophers or international relations experts to tell us that when people are hungry they must eat.
All these men of crushed testicles are simply muddying the waters because as eunuchs, they have no say in what happens in the master’s bedroom chamber — the boardroom of corporate politics.
But let these men of crushed testicles remember the words of Jean-Jacques Rosseau, which should not be too hard for them after their harrowing encounters with large books.
He said: “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”
And when they eat the rich, we shall see more of the Song of Marikana.