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INTRODUCTION
In this unit we shall examine the concept of social reality in African novels. Social realities include those prevalent behavioral and social factors that reveal to a large extent the social make-up of the African people. One of these strong social realities is religion. Religion is a key factor in the definition of Africa’s social development. Religion here comes in two ways: the traditional original practice of Africans and the foreign religions of the colonialists and the invaders of Africa’s entity. Other social realities include politics, rites of passage like birth, death, marriage, community relations and cohesion. Most African novels focus on these issues and more in order to expose certain facts about Africa with regards to her social structure and existence.
African Marxist writers attacked a lot about religion. They believe that the worker under the capitalist regimes was miserable and alienated, religious beliefs were sustained. Religion, according to Marx was the response to the pain of being alive, the response to earthly suffering. Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances.” Marx indicated in his writing that the working class, the proletariat, was a true revolutionary class, universal in character and acquainted with universal suffering. This provided the need for religion. Thus, religion becomes a tool for achieving political motives. What about religion in the traditional setting before colonialism? What about politics in the Traditional setting? Do the people believe in religion as escapism or as a part of their worldview and necessary rite of passage? By examining religion and politics as social realities in select novels in this unit, we shall give answers to these questions.
General Overview
Religion and politics are two social factors that affect the social structure of any society. They are both linked and are tied to the proper management of the spiritual and spiritual well-being of individuals in a community. Religion is the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life. In the beginning of history, it was the forces of nature which were first so reflected and which in the course of further evolution underwent the most manifold and varied personification among the various peoples. At a still further stage of evolution, all natural and social attributes of the numerous gods are transferred to one Almighty God, who is but a reflection of the abstract man.
Within a purely African philosophical context, man is a political animal embellished in religious thought system. If we assume that the religion of any population have become co-coordinated to individuals and the various levels of grouping that include them as a result of a process of selection or politics based on perceived relevance to particular goals at particular levels of structural reference, we can expect to find meaning in the existence of the people as some implication of relevance in the particular social context where it has become fixed. So, politics and religion are interlinked in the development of every nation and African states are part of these developmental frameworks that shape the social realities of the people and development.
Most African novels have elements of religion and politics in them. The reasons are not far-fetched. African states before the advent of colonialism had strong religious and political structures that were strong and made the inversion of colonialism difficult at the early stage. There was resistance because there was a structure on ground. Africans have strong religious and political structures that worked for the people. Chinua Achebe tried to a very large extent to reveal these structures in
Things Fall Apart as a reaction to the insinuations by the Europeans that Africans did not have culture, religion or political structure before colonialism. And in his subsequent novels, he gradually exposed how colonialism destroyed these structures in Africa. Ngugi wa Thiong’o amongst others also towed the line of exposing European destruction of African value system.
We shall use Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine, a novel set in pre-colonial times, to examine the true structure of religion in Africa before colonialism while we use Debo Kotun’s Abiku in examining the political structure of Africa after colonialism. Thus, a comparative presentation of African religion before colonialism and African politics after colonialism would be thoroughly exemplified for proper understanding of Africa’s historical experiences and the writers’ burden transmitting these values for posterity.
CONCLUSION
Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine presents pure African religious realities before colonial time. We see a society that is enmeshed in religious beliefs about everything around them. Everything within the African society has religious attachment which determines the way the people react to their environment and to their social cohesion. All aspects of African belief system revolve around religion. African religious rites of passage are a social factor that brings the people together in all their beliefs and practices. This novel exemplifies this social reality.
In a final consideration, Kotun’s convergence of history and fiction, in Abiku, although not the first, represents a major voice as he reveals his perception of the political anomy in Africa. Kotun’s novel demonstrates the back and forth of Nigeria’s history, and locates the solution to the imperatives of “the drama of existence which compounds the drama of being’’ within the Nigerian society. Undoubtedly, this novel reveals the immediate engagement with history in order to unveil political truths and odds about Africa. The self apprehension of the African world in terms of concepts and categories can be embodied in properly placed African forms which can be considered to have artistic merit for its true revelations. In the novel, we see military politics as it gradually destroys the stronghold of the people’s social being. Every aspect of human rights is destroyed thereby destroying the people’swell-being.
SUMMARY
Religion and politics as social realities have been examined in the two novels under study. All aspects of traditional religious beliefs are revealed in The Concubine by Elechi Amadi. We see a people with defined religious beliefs in God, gods and other elemental forces. There are patterned modes of worship. There are natural phenomena which have meaning in the religious lives of the people. All these worked until the invasion of Christianity. In the novel, we see a pure African society before colonial invasion which corrupted the people’s beliefs. The novel reveals that Africans have a workable religion that sustained the people’s social structure. In Debo Kotun’s Abiku, we see a strange political setting where force and other forms of anarchy were the order of the day. Human values were destroyed because the government practises politics of bitterness. As military rulers, they applied all manners of severe rules to destroy the people’s well-being. Here, the social realities are harsh as the people lived in fear of the unknown. These two novels have shown to a large extent, how the African novelists have recorded the social realities of the African people from different dimensions.