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| Pepetela |
Some of the world’s greatest literary works are books about wars.
One can think about Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms, Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire: A Story of a Squad (1916) and
Robert Graves’ novel Goodbye to All That
(1929) which are about the First World War. Then there is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Kurt
Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.
These
books are about wars as told from the inside by people who saw, felt and
participated. From them we get to know what it is like inside.
For example, in A Farewell to Arms the American Hemingway, an ambulance
driver looks at the war in a cynical way mixing the beauty of romance and the
ugly agonies and senselessness of war while in Under Fire: The Story of a Squad published as Le Feu:
journal d'une escouade, Frenchman Barbusse, a former WW1 soldier, does not
spare any details in his narrative – all the gritty is captured.
British soldier, Graves’ Goodbye to All That captures life in the
trenches and prisoners’ of war narratives. The book also says goodbye to
patriotism, religion and welcome all other –isms.
Second World War brought Catch 22 by Heller which depicts the war
as a lose-lose or a win-win situation.
Southern Africa has seen some of the
most gruesome wars of liberation fought on the continent especially Angola,
Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Namibia.
Although most of the details of how the
war wounded hearts and souls and snuffed out lives are yet to be told, some
ex-combatants in Namibia and Zimbabwe are coming out to speak about their
feelings and experiences.
But maybe, the greatest difference
between European and African war narratives is how tribalism, ethnicity, and
religion play a divisive role even when there is a common enemy to contend
with.
This was the case with the Angolan war
from which one of the most popular war narratives, Mayombe, is set.
While in most cases, the people who join
the war appear to do so for collective freedom, underneath simmers ambition and
search for personal glory.
Angola has been at war longer than
any other southern African country. Apart from the war of liberation from the
Portuguese which started in 1961 and ended in 1975, a civil war started between
the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) and the Movement for the
Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
The civil war was in essence
between the southerners (Unita) and the northerners (MPLA). These parties were
also caught between the warring west and apartheid South Africa and the
communist states (Cuba and the former Soviet Union).
The civil war stretched until 2002
when Unita leader Jonas Savimbi was gunned down.
One of the most popular books about the
Angolan civil war, Mayombe was
written by Pepetela, a former MPLA fighter. Although the book was later
published in 1980, Pepetela started writing the short stories in 1970.
The book depicts life among a
guerrilla detachment fighting in an area called Mayombe in northern Cabinda province. The guerrillas are drawn from
Angola’s different ethnic groups.
Although they were drawn into the
war to fight a common enemy, the guerrillas found themselves caught up in their
ethnic, tribal and cultural differences.
The divisions along ethnicity
overshadow the bigger picture of nationalism. It narrows collectivism and gives
advantage to the common enemy.
In one heart-rending incident, the
guerrillas refuse to help one of their own – Muatianvua because he is not
Kimbundu or Kikongo. A commander, Fearless remarks: “Were Muatianvua Kikongo or
Kimbundu four or five would soon have come forward . . .”
Apart from ethnicity and
tribalism, the guerrillas too have difficulties in reconciling with each other
because their reasons for joining the war are different.
Take Gabela, for example, who
joins the war because he wants to be regarded as an Angolan and not a coloured.
His motive is identity. Another guerrilla, Struggle, joins the war because
people in his area – Cabinda – are regarded as traitors.
Struggle says: “How to convince
the guerrillas . . . that my people are
not just made up of traitors? I shall have . . . to assert myself, by being braver
than anyone.”
Yet another guerrilla, New World, is
a Marxist and for him, man as an individual is nothing, only the masses can
make history.
“The Revolution is made by the mass of the
people, the sole entity with leadership capacity . . .” he says.
Fearless is fighting for heroism
and he remarks: “What I am doing has a selfish purpose . . . No-one is
permanently unselfish.” And that selfish purpose leads to his death while
saving a Kimbundu.
Before his death, Fearless had
said: “I do not care if someone is Kikongo or Kimbundu . . .”
But among these over ambitious
individuals can be found some sensible individuals. In case of Mayombe, João pushes forward
nationalistic values where people cease to be Kimbundu or Kikongo.
In Mayombe, Fearless and João symbolise national unity and
multi-culturalism which are always, in some cases, the desired end results of
armed struggle against colonialism.
For Angolans just like for the
rest of Africa, wars bring together people from different walks of life but
when it’s over, each pursues their own personal, tribal, ethnicity, religious
and regional interests.
Tribalism, which Senegalese Leopold
Senghor described as the balkanisation of Africa, is responsible for the bulk
of Africa’s problems today.
In most, if not all cases, Africa
does not take advantage of its tribal diversity to advance itself but only for
its destruction. Look at Kenya, instead of using the advantages tribes bring,
it went through a brutal post-election period.
In a nutshell, Mayombe then is not an Angolan war
narrative but Africa’s.
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