The Tribune

“ The white man had indeed brought a lunatic religion, but he had also built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great price, and much money flowed into Umuofia.”

(Things Fall Apart).

By IAN BETHEL BENNETT

One of the pioneers of the literary post-colonial struggle died this week. Chinua Achebe, Nigerian writer and activist was a formidable influence in the world of literature with his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart. Achebe claimed that we are all responsible for the condition of the post-colonial states we inhabit. That we have not held political, religious, financial leaders, accountable, nor have we held ourselves nor our actions responsible for our leaders’ corruption and lack of accountability. They laud their brutal wealth over us, and we celebrate them, he said, speaking of the masters of postcolonial governance, men without integrity, who can kill and rape and are encouraged to do so. In his work, Achebe spoke of how society has lost its way and will destroy itself.

Things Fall Apart was a mind-changing text of the post-colonial push to independence and the battle between the local and the global that is fought in our daily lives without us being aware of it, Things Fall Apart was extremely influential in my own educational experience. It featured high on my reading list, first with Telcine Turner-Rolle and then in graduate school when read next to Mariama Ba’s Si longue lettre. It was a shocker to see how strictly coded society was, but also how utterly patriarchal.

Women were subjects of men, but men, governed by strict moral and ethical codes, had to defend, provide for and look after ‘their’ women. One of the worst things a man could do was fail to provide for his family. So, men ‘owned’ women and had multiple wives, as long as they could care for them. One of the main character’s concerns upon his return to his native land after a forced seven-year absence was how utterly the clan had deteriorated, how men had become soft like women. Colonialism had destroyed the community.

“And it was not just a personal grief. He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart, and he mourned for the warlike men of Umuofia, who had so unaccountably become soft like women”.

The book’s title is literally about the unravelling of a way of life in a Nigerian community through the influence of European colonialism and consumerism. Sadly, the elders, as Achebe hinted at, fell into ill-repute and were concerned exclusively with the search for the dollar. When captains of industry can destroy the lives and property of the communities they lead, the codes have been broken. Men are meant to lead through example, according to Achebe, not through force.

Achebe is unflinching as the work peels back the layers of influence into the destruction of traditional life, balance and harmony of individual and nature that allowed the community to thrive. Achebe’s death is not only sad for Nigeria but for all countries like the Bahamas still contending with the postcolonial battle. The battle has changed, though, and is no longer about the impact of direct colonisation through political and economic rule, or is it? It is now about the destruction of the fibre of the community through such trends as gang violence and rampant materialism. Yet we do not stop its advance. The Bahamas has opened its arms to the demise of community and the rise of gang life and death. Men are told that to be respected one must have conspicuous wealth and kill others from rival gangs and rape women. Yet, we claim to have progressed into an age of civility.

Achebe certainly sends some strong messages about gendered roles in society and the social constructs that govern them, but he also showed how young men and women within the community were meant to think and act with pride and integrity.

These beacons to progress, have now passed away into the shadows of consumerism and neocolonial control. One no longer has to look at a central place for power, rather, that power has encouraged people, akin to 1950s anti-colonial struggle in Nigeria to willingly destroy their own communities. Violence proliferates yet no one is concerned, except for their personal safety; men rape and kill women and we are not alarmed, as long as it does not happen to us.

Life has become so cheap that death results from perceived disrespect. A man must defend his honour and if another man dirties his shoe, bam, his life could hang in the balance between lucid thought and gun-powered masculinity. Achebe was tragically right about things falling apart.

The spokespeople for the masses have become drunk on the power of the dollars that flow in. As Achebe showed, the destruction of the community is our responsibility. What is more, we are being helped by the ubiquitous presence of a pervasive neocolonial power that is bread in the minds of the youth through everything they see and hear. It is sad that Achebe has died, but what is more devastating is our self-destruction and the dim hope in that more Achebes sit among the young boys or girls in classrooms and are being encouraged to think or perhaps challenge the prison of the neocolonial paradigm.

• Dr. Ian Bethell-Bennett, Associate Professor in the School of English Studies at the College of the Bahamas, has written extensively on race and migration in the Bahamas, cultural creolisation and gender issues. Direct questions and comments to iabethellbennett@yahoo.co.uk.