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By Araba Amuasi
Class of 2007
Ayi
Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born
(1968) is a generally pessimistic novel describing the
aftermath of the birth of the nation Ghana in March 1957
after years of struggle for independence led by Kwame
Nkrumah. Armah uses detailed descriptions of filth
comprising human excrement, garbage and dust to paint a
bleak picture of post-colonial Ghana and post-colonial
Africa as a whole. The story, though based on a period
of over ten years, seems to cover merely a few days of
hopelessness with only one flashback. This “blast from
the past” is presented to the reader in the sixth
chapter of the novel and is highly significant in
enlightening the reader about the causes of the decay,
deprivation and poverty within the state of dystopia
that Armah describes so explicitly.
Chapter Six is a chapter
of reflections and of reminiscence on the part of ‘the
man’, who is the nameless main character of the novel.
However, in some ways these thoughts seem to be more of
Armah’s personal experiences and opinions, cunningly
presented through the thoughts of the man. The chapter’s
opening question – “Why do we waste so much time with
sorrow and pity for ourselves?”
– portrays a general sense of lost hope and acceptance
of plight and the writer continues from there to point
out a number of issues, all with the aim of revealing
the roots of this plight.
These are the main events
that the man’s reflections on the past reveal to the
reader: There has been a period of colonialism during
which the Gold Coast is ruled by white men (the
British), a period of great disparity between the rulers
and the ruled; these differences lead to the springing
up of various Gold Coast intellectuals whose aim is to
convince the masses to give them their support in a
quest to claim power from the white men. While these
intellectuals are busy “entertaining” the poor people
with their big talk and big promises, an ordinary,
seemingly down-to-earth young man (Nkrumah) appears,
playing a different tune – “We do not serve ourselves if
we remain like insects, fascinated by the white people’s
power. Let us look inward. What are we? What have we?
Can we work for ourselves? To strengthen ourselves?”
He captures the attention and subsequently the trust of
the people, for as the man puts it, “Here was something
more potent than mere words…the whole crowd shouted. I
shouted, and this time I was not ashamed.”
As recorded in history, Nkrumah leads the Gold Coast to
independence in 1957 and the nation Ghana comes into
existence.
Now, the issue that
concerns the man (and Armah) is what happens in Ghana
after the achievement of independence, when people are
full of hope for a brighter, more comfortable future.
Early in the chapter, the speaker mentions a peculiar
picture that his school mate Aboliga the Frog shows the
rest of the class in their childhood days. This
grotesque picture of the old man-child who completes all
stages of the human life cycle in seven years, parallels
the eagerness with which high hopes are built before
independence and how early they are dashed, resulting in
a hopelessly decadent situation. Another interesting
point to note is that the man arrives at the conclusion
that perhaps people’s disappointment and feelings of
betrayal are unwarranted. This is because the attainment
of independence and subsequent disappointments are
unprecedented and could therefore be natural phenomena
in themselves because “only those who have found some
solid ground they can call the natural will feel free to
call [another phenomenon] unnatural.”
A very vital question that
the man (or Armah) raises in this chapter is this: “How
long will Africa be cursed with its leaders?”
This question, found in this novel written in 1968, is
still pertinent for most Africans and their sympathizers
even as the world enters the twenty-first century
because the issues which led to the asking of such a
question have not been resolved in Ghana nor in most of
the rest of Africa. The man speaks of “a hired place
paid for by the government”,
of Koomson living “in a way that is far more painful to
see than the way the white men have always lived here”
and of the fact that after all the talk, men are only
looking for their own comfort and pleasure. Even at the
time that Nkrumah gives his speech at Asamansudo,
everything seems to be going well until, as the man puts
it, “he spoke about himself. If it could have remained
that way! But now he is up there… not a man with equals
in life.”
In other words, in the end, all African politicians are
self-seeking individuals.
In
Africa today, citizens are bombarded with election
promises – promises of free education, free health,
reduction in unemployment, construction of good roads,
improvement of education systems, reduction of inflation
and clean streets. The vigor with which politicians
propose these solutions is so convincing that it is
impossible for the masses to disbelieve what they hear.
However, as soon as a political party wins elections and
assumes power, these promises are forgotten. And through
the control of some ‘invisible hand’ the masses seem
unable to hold their governments to task in spite of
long periods of strikes and a lot of talk on radio
networks and in newspapers.
The people’s inability to
push their governments to act in their favour can
perhaps be compared with Teacher’s excerpt on Plato’s
cave
in the sixth chapter of Armah’s novel. In most places in
Africa, for each person who sees through these leaders
that Africa is cursed with, there are five thousand
people who refuse to accept the truth of the matter
because they are neither educated nor exposed enough to
understand the politics. Another dimension to the issue
of Plato’s cave is that those in positions of power also
often make a conscious effort to silence those who have
an opinion about their ways. Once in a while, one may
hear rumours of people disappearing mysteriously for
questioning and then reappearing still quite healthy but
with their zeal to oppose quenched almost completely.
On the whole, this chapter
in Armah’s novel is extremely important as a way of
explaining the problems that faced the nation Ghana at
the time that the novel was written. These can be
extended further to explain the roots of the current
problems in most African countries. Greed on the part of
African leaders who want to be the “dark ghost of a
European”,
the confidence with which ignorant men speak of leading
the continent to ‘salvation’ with “Plan R. Plan X. Plan
Z”
and the ignorance of poor, illiterate people who are not
concerned with anything other than food and shelter,
will continue to lead the continent in the general
direction of doom unless a level of awareness and a
change of attitude among Africans is attained.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Armah,
A. K. (1968). The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.
Oxford: Heinemann.
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