By
Obododimma Oha
There are
some of us who feel that a poem is just a poem, that a figure of speech is not
a handful of sand thrown at anybody’s face and which may put the target’s
vision in jeopardy. Normal thing on the playground: the target should learn to equally arm himself with handsome quantity of sand and throw back. The target should not just come crying! That sand throwing or its playground weaponization is one of the lessons of growing up! There are some of us who feel that all those metaphors used
by poets should not be taken seriously, for instance, making anyone lose sleep.
Even the untying of those wrapped-up images! Why bother your head? And in case
a judge misinterprets them (assuming they can be unwrapped easily), do you want lay
people to laugh at the luminary? Thank God that meanings in many poems are
masked in terrible images. That is a mad fellow’s writing. Why bother? But
things do change and attitudes, too. And I hope my students are reading this. Presidents and judges and security people now read poems and they bother their
heads with the decoding of masked images. So, a poem is not merely for the
classroom. It has been eventually recognized out there as a powerful
weapon. If I give you assignments on a poem’s style and you decide to curse me
below your breath, may God forgive you; just wait and you will eventually understand what I am
training you to be able to do when a poem takes you to the courtroom.
At least, if
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was never my stylistics student and was not one of
those who cursed me for giving my class an assignment on style on the poetry of
abuse, he is blessing teachers like me now. We are learning so many things in my
class about poetry and presidents in Africa and courts. A recent trial of Dr.
Stella Nyanzi and her incarceration in Uganda prove that a poem is not just a
poem, a president’s interpretation is the privileged one, and, above all, you
have asked for Hellfire if, in your abusive poem, you mention vagina. How and
why are you linking your president with smelly things, what more the mysterious
cave, vagina? Are you calling him a caveman indirectly? Do you want want him to return crippled
to that cave and be choked up by the terrible weeds growing there since all life
escaped from it?
There is yet
one dimension that worries me. No; it is not gender and all that talk about the oppression by men or about literature and morality. It is rather about vanishing African literary
practices of satire which Stella Nyanzi may have tried to resuscitate at the
wrong time and wrong place. In our Uri culture, there is the tradition of the
poetry/song of abuse (and I believe it can be found in some other African
cultures, too) in which women are permitted to say terrible things to satirize a
ruler or dispensations. And their satire won’t go to court. They can even expose their sexual
organs to drive home their poems. Who is the Igwe or titled elder to head to
court later? It is the modern-day Africans that are nowhere and are creating
problems. They are not fully Western but have imposed their half-internalized
Western practices on local African people. The satire was a mere reformation! Was it
not Hegel in his Philosophy of History that
stated that Africa breeds tyrants and promotes that and we are asking for his
head? O kwuo arụ (He has uttered the
abominable).
Now, Museveni
is an African ruler but we want European culture to define him and his government. Not
that his government can even pass European standards! Yes; the poem is a powerful shot, but it is a great success (as even testified by Museveni's reaction and the court action). A great success in its genre! But Museveni the African is not with
Africa. He is not with African satirical traditions and could take a poem to
court for satirizing him and being offensive. You only need to elevate your
president beyond satire and make him a god. That way, you can try, imprison and
deal with any poet who satirizes him. The new tradition of satirical poem that
reforms the African society is reserved for ordinary, powerless folks. If
Museveni were a mere auto-mechanic looking for daily bread, would he go to
court because of a poem says he is wearing rags? His being privileged allows
his reading of the poem to be important and privileged. If a decoder says it is
offensive and not reformative, then it is offensive. Stella Nyanzi should learn
to teach satirical poems, not write them!
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