By Bamuturaki Musinguzi
On July 20 (2015), the literary world
marked the 32nd anniversary of the demise of the Ugandan writer and poet and
his contribution to literature
Okot
p’Bitek’s 1966 epic poem Song of Lawino,
that he followed up with Song of Ocol in 1970, are his most widely read
literary works that catapulted him onto the global scene.
In Song of Lawino, Lawino takes pride in
her Acholi heritage and rebukes her husband, Ocol, who despises his culture:
“I am proud of the hair
With which I was born
And as no white woman
Wishes to do her hair
Like mine
Because she is proud
Of the hair with which she was born
I have no wish
To look like a white woman.
Husband, now you despise me
Now you treat me with spite
And say I have inherited the
stupidity of my aunt;
Son of the chief
Now you compare me
With the rubbish in the rubbish pit
You say you no longer want me
Because I am like the things left
behind
In the deserted homestead…,” Lawino laments.
On the other
hand, in Song of Ocol, Ocol wants to
see his culture destroyed in favour of that from the West:
“What is Africa
To me?” Ocol asks.
“Blackness
Deep, deep fathomless
Darkness;
“Diseased with a chronic illness
Choking with black ignorance
Chained to the rock
Of poverty…”
“To hell
With your Pumpkins
And your Old Homesteads
To hell
With the husks
Of old traditions
And meaningless customs.”
Both poems,
published by the East African Publishing House, are still being taught in
schools and have got enormous critical responses from a cross section of his
readers.
According to
the East African Publishing House, “…Song of Lawino is a biting, though
profoundly compassionate, satire on modern Africa, in which the author has
almost incidentally evolved a new African form of English literature and
language.”
In regards
to Okot’s legacy, Susan Kiguli, a literature lecturer at Makerere University,
says: “Okot p’Bitek’s legacy is immeasurable and it goes beyond the discipline
strictly known as literature. But if one was to confine oneself to a comment on
his impact on literature, one would note that Okot p’Bitek did a new thing for
East African poetry that has been a driving engine for poets on the African continent.
Besides, Okot is studied on many African studies programmes across the globe.”
In his
dissertation for the award of a degree of Bachelor of Education of Makerere
University, Wirefred George Opiro observes that, “The peculiar complexity of
Okot’s writings, founded on a complex African ideology and tradition, lies, in
part, in unity with traditional elements (oratorial influence) and his own
intellectuality (what could be looked at here as authorial ideology). These two
are synchronised by the texts he produced.”
“…Up to this
day, orature remains a literary record of African ideologies. Okot is driven to
exploit this rich granary of ideas to ratify African romantic humanism, drawing
on its traditional intellectualism.
This has been
possible because he was ready to cast aside his bookish intellectual supremacy
– the new force in power – and associate as freely as possible with his own
kind,” Opiro adds in his dissertation, “The Influence of Acholi Oral Literature
on Okot P’Bitek’s Creative Writing”.
In his book,
Understanding African Poetry: A Study of Ten Poets, Ken Goodwin describes Okot
as “the first major East African poet in English who is a maker of satiric myth
and an author with a mischievous fun. His fun and humour has got informing
principle based on the working of his language and the wealth of his social
experiences and his habitual mode of thought.”
Prof Abasi
Kiyimba, a literature lecturer at Makerere University has translated Song of Lawino into Luganda, which will
be published by Fountain Publishers soon.
Writing in
the Preface of a collection of his essays titled Africa’s Cultural Revolution,
(1973), Okot argues, “...Africa must re-examine herself critically. She must
discover her true self, and rid herself of all ‘apemanship’. For only then can
she begin to develop a culture of her own. Africa must redefine all cultural
terms according to her own interests.”
He adds: “As
she has broken the political bondage of colonialism, she must continue the
economic and cultural revolution until she refuses to be led by the nose by
foreigners. We must also reject the erroneous attempts of foreign students to
interpret and present her. We must interpret and present Africa in our own way,
in our own interests.”
Writing in
the Foreword of the book The Defence of Lawino, S. Raditlhalo notes: “The
battle for an African literary reawakening (renaissance) can never be separated
from orature. More than anyone, Okot p’Bitek realised that only by ‘returning
to the source’ – to use Aime Cesaire’s wonderful phrase – could we ‘rediscover
the ordinary,’ and hence our truer selves. His deeply philosophical outlook
seeks to re-connect us to that which we lose on daily basis by hankering after
European culture…”
Contributing
to the Introduction in Okot’s book Africa’s Cultural Revolution, Ngugi Wa
Thiong’o offers to differ.
“While I
agree with p’Bitek’s call for a cultural revolution, I sometimes feel that he
is in danger of emphasising culture as if it could be divorced from its
political and economic basis. What makes us ape a decadent white culture? What
makes us pattern ourselves on the West? What is the material base for our
apemanship? And how can we seize back our creative initiative? ...,” Ngugi
argues.
He adds: “…In
our present context, we can rightly ask whether it is possible to be ourselves,
an African self, without giving land and what it produces back to the people;
without giving them ownership and control of industries, banking, insurance,
mining… I believe that a people must wholly control all the economic and
political determinants of behaviour. Without a base in our collective self in
turn based on land, how can we seize the initiative to determine our own
cultural patterns and image?”
In the
paper, Indigenous Social ills, Okot observes that: “There is a growing tendency
in Africa for people to believe that most of our ills are imported, that the
real source of our problems lies outside. We blame colonialists, imperialists,
mercenaries and neo-colonialists… Another, but contradictory, phenomenon is the
belief that solutions to our social ills can be imported…”
On this,
Ngugi seems to concur with Okot, highlighting: “I believe that most of our
social ills are indigenous, that the primary sources of our problems are
native. They are rooted in the social set-up, and the most effective solutions
cannot be imported, but must be the result of deliberate re-organisation of the
resources available for tackling specific issues.”
Background. An only son, Okot was born in Gulu,
northern Uganda, on June 9, 1931.
Education.
He studied at Gulu High School and King’s College Budo, from where he graduated
as a Grade III teacher.
He proceeded
to Bristol University in the UK in 1957, from where he obtained a degree in
education.
He also
studied Law at Aberystwyth University, Social Anthropology at the University of
Oxford, where he also received a Bachelor of Letters (BL).
Career. He joined Makerere University in
1963, where he taught in the Department of Sociology.
He was
director of the Uganda National Cultural Centre from 1966 to 1968.
He left
Uganda in 1968 to become a resident tutor at the Department of Extramural
Studies at the University of Nairobi, where he also taught at the university’s
Department of Sociology, Literature and Philosophy.
He was a
writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa, and visiting professor at the
University of Ife (now the Obafemi Awolowo University) at IIe-Ife, Nigeria.
Okot was the
founder of the Gulu Festival. In September 1956, he was part of the Ugandan
football team that played barefooted and defeated the English Olympic soccer
team 2 – 0 in England.
Family. Okot
left behind seven children, of which six are alive today. One of them, Jane
Langoya has published a collection of poems titled Song of Farewell.
His son and
secondary school English teacher, George Okot, describes his late father as a
man who was passionate with the things that he had his mind focused on.
* Courtesy of Daily Monitor
Studies:
The poetry of Okot p'Bitek by G. A Heron
Thought and Technique in the Poetry of Okot
p'Bitek by Monica Nalyaka Wanambisi,
Oral Traditions As Philosophy: Okot P'Bitek's
Legacy for African Philosophy (2002) by Samuel Oluoch Imbo.
