African writers of English expression mostly tend to focus on themes which adversely affect people who live in squalor both inside and on the periphery of cities and towns. On the other hand, writers of a vernacular orientation expend their literary energies largely on folklores, telling stories handed down from centuries-old human experience.
The case of Daniel Fagunwa of Nigeria’s Yoruba stock would suffice here. The false start in most African states has created an imbalance in human development giving birth to an emergence of two class divisions of the cash-strapped poor and the enviably rich. At independence there was an influx of the rural inhabitants to towns attracted by job opportunities in mines and plantations.
However, the situation began to change after independence due to population growth and other factors; job opportunities dwindled pretty fast. The change in the environment gave rise to a preferred cadre of workers with some basic education. This development necessitated the rise of slums as more and more rural immigrants were pushed on to the fringes of towns and cities.
Inadvertently, the bright lights of the city grew dimmer as economies faltered and vices such as corruption crept in and posed challenges in providing people with basic needs for their survival. The imaginative minds of poets have explored themes to this effect and in this week’s column we would like to consider these critical leitmotifs. Winston Mulalami, writing in the 70s took up the theme of rural-town drift in a poem called ‘Bamba Zonke’ and this is how he paints the picture:
She sucked the rurals dry of their able-bodied
Drawing them into her concrete and steel bowels
Of confusion.
With a promise of opportunities overnight
And the rainbow—colored life of the night.

There weren’t enough office vacancies though
The factories couldn’t take them all
And the city seethed and swirled inside, moaning
And sick with the extra load of casual idlers

Slowly the seams broke loose
Spilling the vomit all over the myriad slums
The receiver buckets that will swell like dams
Hungry, they wonder why in hell they ever came!

The rural-urban drift is the theme of this poem which the poet approaches in a subtle but simplified manner and discharges its detailed inconsistencies leading to the spill of slime vomit. There is a double-sword effect of the drift which leaves the rural communities bereft of any sign of development. The rural poor experience a harshly broken support system with the departure of the able-bodied men.
Unfortunately, since not all that glitters is gold, they plunge into untold misery caused by the concrete and steel bowels of confusion of the city. The promise of a rain-bow life is but a mere mirage, their hopes are dashed on the concrete walls of modernity. The factories do not offer any hope, resulting in more unemployed people.
Not only does the industrial collapse cause the problem of unemployment but also there is a dire need for accommodation. As the seams get loose and finally snap, the inevitable happens—sprawling slums of the likes of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya and other great cities of Africa including Zambia emerge.
It is interesting how the poet likens the dams to slums in a rhymed fashion to heighten the severity and mockery of the situation. Imminent poverty with its attendant impact on a lack of sustained infrastructure on water supply and strained social amenities give way.
The result is a cry of hopelessness and regret for having ever left the rural communities. Another poet, Maude Muntemba discusses other aspects of this social dislocation in a poem ‘Daughters of Africa’:

Go to the market and hear them swear;
Go to the bars and see them tear;
Turn to the Saloons and see them dye;
Turn to the roads and see them die—
Daughters of Africa: where are you going?

Turn to the roadside and see them kill;
Turn to the house and see them steal;
Go to the houses and find them sell;
Sell what—beers, food, bodies, and all—
Daughters of Africa: where are you going?

Look at the family and see children starve;
Look at the family and see a mother fight;
Ask for a husband, you’ll find he is not there;
Mother and Father don’t care anymore—
Daughter of Africa: Pause yet a while—
Could this be your father’s heritage?

This is not the sort of verse that would excite a serious poetry reader. The use of imagery is rather weak; the piece sounds plainly simple. This is, however, not so say that verse should necessarily be difficult in order to conform to literary standards, but the form and style it assumes should be artistically fulfilling; this one does not. Look at the lines and notice almost whole sentences as one would find in prose. I have argued before that it would still serve the purpose if the writer could use prose for communication. However, for purposes of our discussion the theme is applicable.
The rural-urban drift has had a great negative impact on the lives of people. Although Africa experiences poverty in almost every area including the rural communities, the creation of slums in towns has been a devastating phenomenon on families.
Signs of poverty are mirrored in almost all facets of social life: bars, markets and homes.
There is a sense of weakened family ties and incidences of irresponsibility and a lack of support for the family values. In fact, it does not call for the question as the speaker-cum-poet suggests: could this be your father’s heritage?
It certainly does not! Back home where the able-bodied of Mulalami come from the cultural heritage could not call for this type of social collapse.
It is essential to mention that both poets, Mulalami and Muntemba belong to an older generation of the after-independence-era. What is also noteworthy is that only a few years after Africa’s colonial liberation the gap between the rich and the poor has astronomically widened. Rodgers Malenga, another poet, belongs to the younger generation but his frustration is equally noticeable about the decadence in African societies. In his poem Slum Life he quips:

It’s our home
Where youths take drugs
For breakfast, lunch and supper
Schools are dotted
Teachers are demoralized
Our parents, scavengers, servants and guards
Yet across the big river
Life blossoms every second
Youths go to nice schools, libraries, beaches
And protected night clubs

The juxtaposition of slum and town life is clear from Malenga’s lyrics. In my earlier literary review of his works I made it clear that what Malenga writes is a kind of verse that can be understood by any one with some decent education. Though less imaginative and a little literary naïve, Malenga’s poetry brings to mind Okot p’Bteck’s poetry of the likes of Song of Lawino.
But there is no mistaking the themes he handles in his scathing view of a society organically disintegrating— whose center has ‘fallen apart,’ to borrow an expression from the title of Achebe’s classic fiction. Malenga’s style is fast and furious and sometimes one would sense a gasp for breath. He mentions dotted schools: there is an unexpected pause to allow for a need to find out what this would mean but shortly after the reader is listening to a demoralized teacher. Let us hear him pour torrential vile on lazier faire civil servants:
A cleaner at a clinic
Start cleaning at nine hours
A nurse reports at nine thirty
Ten hours tea and chatting session
A medical man calls first on line
At ten thirty hours hardly showing his teeth
Starts lunch hour at twelve
A line of the afflicted long
Like railway lines making bends
In agonizing pain, full of women and children
To wait for after lunch hour
It ends at fifteen hours
Sixteen hours doors closed

Malenga’s verse is better read like one long winding sentence broken up into a wave of enjambment requiring an equally long held store of breath.
Poets explore many themes and the more the reader engages in the study and reading of literature the more knowledgeable he/she will become and use the experiences as safety- valves for keeping the social seams on check for a better Africa and its people.–ofpoetspoems@mail.com–