by Jonathan Paul Loomis

The African Writer

Doctor Debo

November 18, 1998

For years there has been a significant lack of literary criticism of southern Africa's best poets. By writing this essay I am proposing that the work of one of these poets, Frank Chipasula of Malawi, is worth the attention of literary critics. I have selected one of Chipasula's more complex poems as the subject of my reading because I would like to demonstrate both the linguistic quality of the poetry that is being written by southern Africans like Chipasula and the complexity of the issues they have chosen to face. This essay is therefore more than just a reading of one poem, but also an attempt to heighten the literary world's awareness of an entire genre of southern African literature.

Before presenting my reading of the poem, I feel that it is important to address the reasons behind the lack of criticism for the particular author, and southern African poetry in general. My search for criticism done by others encompassed the MLA guide, the Proquest online periodical guide, and the entire Washington Regional Library Consortium. I searched each of the locations for work done by or about Chipasula. I found only one that specifically addressed his work. This article was published in a book which none of the Washington Consortium libraries own. What I did find dealt either loosely with southern African poetry or with protest writing in Malawi. Chipasula has also written a number of selections of criticism himself dealing with the poetry of the British Isles.

I feel one can attribute this lack of criticism to a number of factors. First is the fact that Chipasula wrote from and about a nation that was cut off from the western world for many years. During most of this time, Malawi was ruled by a dictator who was openly friendly towards the white South African regime. Few western readers and critics would have been interested in Malawian literature for this simple political reason. Second, southern African poetry has not been well received by any audiences as a genre until just recently. This is primarily due to cultural and political conditions in the subcontinent.

Frank Chipasula's native country of Malawi, like all other southern African nations, is culturally dominated by the nation of South Africa. It is necessary therefore, that South African poetry be read before the poetry of Malawi. The fact that South African poetry has only come into an international spotlight after the Apartheid system was deconstructed in the early 1990's, indicates to me that poetry from the other southern African nations was probably passed over as well. As Kelwyn Sole notes in his essay on recent trends in South African poetry "there has been a fascinating, if quiet, upwelling of new expression in a genre to which little attention is given by literary commentators: poetry" (NA). Although southern Africans have been producing poetry for years, their work has only recently garnered attention in the West. Literary critics now face the challenge of interpreting a backlog of years' worth of literary production in order to make sense of the region's contemporary poetry.

Frank Chipasula is one of southern Africa's finest contemporary poets. He fled Malawi and lived in exile for many years due to the dictatorship of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, a western educated and eurocentric doctor who ruled with an iron fist from independence in 1964 until 1994. Most of Chipasula's work revolves around two themes: either the years of dictatorship or the exile's experience. "Ritual Girl," the poem I have selected for my reading, beautifully address both. Chipasula is also demonstrative of the emerging southern African poetic style which seeks "to combine sociopolitical commitment with a concern for appropriate poetic style" (Sole NA). I will address both the "sociopolitical commitment" and the "concern for poetic style" in my reading.

Chipasula's poem "Ritual Girl" is a complex mixture of both a critique of the post-colonial regime in Malawi and lament that those who fled into exile did not do more to save Malawi from its fate of dictatorship. While making it clear that he stands against the Banda dictatorship the author is also looking introspectively and critiquing himself for not doing more to prevent it.

The poem begins with an image of an African girl dancing under heavy foot-chains with her wrists bound by barbed wire. The collected image of the dancing girl being cut by sharp objects symbolizes the post-colonial rule of Malawi by Banda. Although this is not obvious from a simple reading of just this poem, it becomes clear after reading more of Chipasula's work. The dancing African girl being injured by sharp objects is one of the author's favorite images and it is repeated in many of his poems. In his poem "Talking of Sharp Things," he uses the same image in direct connection with Malawi. "I think of the great sorrows of flesh / Of the country with my face mapped / with bullet-holes, machete and knobkerrie / scarred, bleeding, the arrow quivering / in its torn heart that still dances" (Maja-Pearce 166). This particular passage, although not from "Ritual Girl," is indicative of the way in which Chipasula uses the images of dancing African women and sharp objects to refer to an injured Malawi. Similar passages can be found in "My Blood Brother," "My Friendly People," and especially in "Because the Wind Remembers" where he describes Banda's dictatorship as "the huge teeth of the whip / biting into the flesh of our country" (Maja-Pearce 173). So, although "Ritual Girl" does not actually state that the dancing African girl and her pain in the first stanza is representative of Malawi, I have concluded that it is based on Chipasula's other work.

As the poem continues Chipasula invokes the first person by stating "we nicknamed her butterfly" (164). He goes on to describe her but does not yet inform us to whom the we is referring. She has beautiful skin, but is described on the same line as being a fertile land, which supports my reading of her as a symbol for Malawi. Her lips are painted; however, he uses somewhat negative allusions at this point. Her lips are painted like a fresh sore and her hair is scorched. This supports my reading of her as suffering, in this case under the Banda dictatorship.

The following stanza is particularly important in support of my reading of the dancer. Chipasula describes her as a "roadside whore [fainting] under her ninth man" (164). This leads me to believe that the author is really describing the nation and its relationship to its rulers. Before the dictatorship of Banda, Malawi was a British colony, and the image of a whore who can be raped by successive men is concurrent with Malawi's governmental history.

The fourth stanza is unique in the poem in that it is italicized and is actually the voice of the girl herself. In this section of the poem, Chipasula brings in a strong ironic voice. Each line is a command dealing with the processing of a food product. In the first, she asks to be dehusked like corn, in the second line to be washed like millet, and in the third, to be stripped like rice. In the final line the author informs the reader that the result of this national processing is that Malawi would be "burning, spent, and pure" (164). The most important of these is pure because it can allude to literary censorship, one of Chipasula's personal concerns. In college, Chipasula was one of the founding members of a group of emerging Malawian authors who formed the Malawi Writers Group. The group's purpose was to give the members a chance to critique each other's work, but also to seek "to restore a sense of identity and pride in the Malawi student by bringing into the classroom works by African writers" (Lupenga NA). Banda was educated in Britain and had developed a taste for all things European. He dressed in three-piece suits and wore hats of the latest London fashion, even in the most sweltering tropical heat. His eurocentric views transcended all facets of society, so much so that he banned almost all African literature from his nation and Malawian students often knew Shakespeare better than their British counterparts (Lupenga NA). Chipasula and his fellow members of the Malawi Writers Group sought to counteract this censorship, and faced the wrath of Banda for their efforts. Chipasula, along with the other writers, were all banned from publishing in Malawi and eventually all sought exile.

This brings into play the second theme of the poem: the author's guilt for having left his suffering nation. In the fifth stanza, the author returns to the first person reference he left unexplained in the second stanza. Here he tells us that they had nicknamed Malawi butterfly when in college years before the writing of the poem. This, I believe, is a reference to the Malawi Writers Group who was singing the praises of Malawi's Africanness in contrast to Banda's eurocentricity, especially because he goes on to say that "we worshiped" various aspects of the land.

In the sixth stanza Chipasula describes the attractions of leaving Malawi and fleeing into exile. Other nations are richer in both materials and freedom, but as his description of them indicates they are also a trap which will forever separate him from his homeland. They are "frail lecherous flesh, sensuous dimples, / [and an] insatiate grave." He goes on to use the inclusive first person "us" to note that all of his fellow writers suffered the same fate abroad. In the seventh stanza, he cements this image with the following lines. "We loved her as every exile loves the patrie; / Now our laments flow through every poem." Clearly the freedom of living in exile is no replacement for the joy these writers would have felt if they had stayed in Malawi, and helped bring about a change of power.

During the final stanza, Chipasula laments his exile by invoking the voice of those left behind. He says that the lips of the singers, or the Malawian people, "are heavy / with her suitors' names fed to the lions." The lions here are the British lion and the pro-British lion of Banda. The last line reverts to the first of the poem with Malawi dragging her "heavy foot-irons," or Banda's dictatorship, "painfully." Although he knows that if he had stayed in Malawi he probably would have ended up languishing in the "dark dungeons" with the others who opposed Banda he still ends his poem by lamenting the his nation's fate.

"Ritual Girl" is a poem that intertwines both the author's personal feelings of guilt for abandoning his country and his condemnation of its government. It is an example of the fine poetry being written by southern Africans, which has been so unfortunately overlooked in recent years. However, the quality of the work being produced by both Frank Chipasula and the other southern African poets, and the importance of the issues they have sought to address demand that critics begin working through this body of poetry.

Maja-Pearce, Adewale. The Heinemann Book of African Poetry in English. Oxford: Heinemann, 1990.

Mphande, Lupenga. "Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda and the Malawi Writers Group: The (un)Making of a cultural tradition." Research in African Literatures. Vol. 27, Issue 1. (Internet version, no page numbers available).

Ogede, Ode S. "The World of Ngugi wa Thiong'o / Ngugi wa Thiong'o: Texts and contexts" Africa. Vol. 67, Issue 4. (Internet version, no page numbers available).

Sole, Kelwyn. "Bird hearts taking wing: Trends in contemporary South African poetry written in English." World Literature Today Winter 1996: (Internet version, no page numbers available).

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