OKOT p'BITEK

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.