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General Overview
The French began colonizing parts of Africa in the mid- 19th Century. The areas they occupied covered most of West Africa—including what is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal—as well as Madagascar. By the 1960s almost all the French territories had gained independence. After independence Négritude came under severe criticism from young Francophone intellectuals who regarded its adulation of blackness as out of place. These critics felt that a continent beset with severe social, political, and economic problems was in need of self-criticism and calls to action instead. In response, the tone of Francophone prose shifted to match a growing disillusionment and recognition of the need for change.
African fiction in French emerged in the 1920s, with the publication in Senegal of Ahmadou Mapaté Diagne’s Les trois volontés de Malik (Malik’s Three Wishes, 1920). The novel tells of a hard-working youth whose diligence, combined with a benevolent colonial atmosphere, brings all his wishes to fruition. This book, like Ousmane Socé’s Mirages de Paris (Mirages of Paris, 1937), is typical of early Francophone fiction in its admiration of the French. These works were superseded in the years leading to independence by fiction with a markedly different attitude toward France, including Une vie de Boy (1956; Houseboy, 1966) by Ferdinand Oyono of Cameroon and Le pauvre Christ de Bomba (1956; The Poor Christ of Bomba, 1971) by another Cameroonian writer, Mongo Beti. Both books direct merciless satire at French colonialism.
In fiction as in poetry, writers turned their attention to social problems soon after independence. A good example of this shift is Xala (1973; translated 1976), by Senegalese writer Ousmane Sembène, which presents a denunciation of corrupt government officials. Other works attest to the increasing visibility of women on the Francophone literary scene. They include Une si longue lettre (1980; So Long a Letter, 1981) by Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ and La grève des bà ttu (1979; The Beggars’ Strike, 1981) by Aminata Sow Fall, also of Senegal.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1
Discus the characteristics and emergence of Francophone prose fiction.
Colonial Francophone Experience in Oyono’s House boy
In Houseboy, Oyono tells the story of Toundi Joseph, a boy from French Cameroon who flees his father’s brutality to become the houseboy of a priest at a Catholic mission in a nearby town. The book is structured like a diary. The story starts in Spanish Guinea with a Frenchman on vacation, who finds a man named Toundi. He has been injured and soon dies. The Frenchman finds his diary, which is called an "exercise book" by Toundi. The rest of the story is of the diary (exercise book) that the Frenchman is supposedly reading. There is no further discussion of the Frenchman after this point.
The first "exercise book" starts with Toundi living with his family. His father beats him constantly, and one day he runs away from his home. He runs to the rescue of Father Gilbert, a priest who lives nearby. His father comes back for him, telling Toundi that everything will be alright if he comes back. He denies his father's offer and after this point he no longer acknowledges his birth parents. Toundi treats Father Gilbert as his new father. Father Gilbert teaches Toundi to read and write, and he teaches Toundi about Catholicism. Toundi believes in Catholicism, but as the story progresses he drifts from his beliefs until the end, when he does not believe in God.
Father Gilbert dies in a motorcycle accident a few months after meeting Toundi. Toundi is eventually taken to live with the Commandant, a religious man who tours the countryside to spread religion. He serves as the houseboy for the Commandant, and later Madame, the Commandant's wife. It becomes very clear that the events that go on in the house are more important to Toundi than his own life. After about six months since Toundi comes to live with the Commandant, Madame, the Commandant's wife arrives from France. She initially is a warm and caring woman, who is very beautiful. She catches the eye of almost everyman in town, much to the Commandant's excitement.
Soon after Madame arrives the Commandant leaves to go on tour again. Toundi is left with Madame to take care of the house. As time goes on, Madame becomes more and more hostile and disrespectful towards
Toundi. When the Commandant returns, she is portrayed as a ruthless woman. While the Commandant was still on tour, it becomes obvious that she is bored with her life. She begins to have an affair with M. Moreau, the man in charge of the prison. M. Moreau is perceived to be ruthless against the Africans. One of Toundi's first experiences with M. Moreau had him whipping two other Africans nearly to death.
The Second Exercise book begins as the Commandant returns from touring, and it is later discovered that he knew about his wife's affair and returns because of it. The Commandant has a terrible argument with her, but after a few days they are getting along again. Madame becomes very disrespectful towards Toundi, partly because she does not like being there anymore, but mostly because she knows that he knew about her affair. She informs M. Moreau that he was stealing from the salaries from the other workers in the house, and he is dragged away, as Madame Skips back into the house in excitement.
Toundi is held in ahut near the police headquarters. Fortunately he has a friend who works there named Mendim, who is described as a very muscular man. He is feared by most other people but he soon comes to be known as Toundi's ally. M. Moreau orders Mendim to beat up Toundi, but Mendim throws ox's blood on him to make it look like he is injured. They spend the rest of the day playing cards. Toundi becomes sick and Mendim takes Toundi to the hospital. They have to wait a very long time to see a doctor because the black doctor is the only doctor there, the other white doctor was promoted to captain. The doctor finds out that Toundi's ribs are broken and have punctured his bronchi. While still at the hospital, while Toundi is in a dazed state, M. Moreau returns with the white doctor. He talks about punishing Toundi some more. At this point, after M. Moreau has left, Toundi escapes from the hospital, not knowing exactly where to go.
In the work, Oyono showed himself a master of irony, imagery, and keen observation. Toundi’s youth and naïveté are foils for the evils of the colonials, who dominate the natives. Scholars have found the images of physical destruction to echo the colonials’ psychological destruction of the Africans. The book, though short, is layered with irony. One commentator notes, for example, Oyono’s use of the name Joseph as the priest’s name for Toundi, linking it with the Joseph of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, the Israelite who, enslaved in Egypt, rises in the estimation of his masters until he is falsely accused of desiring the wife of an Egyptian. It has also been noted that Toundi enters into his relationships with the colonials with frank admiration, accepting the alleged superiority of Western ways and culture until disillusioned by the truth. Not only is Toundi given a Christian name on joining the church and the colonial world; it is practitioners of Christianity who set him on the path that leads to his destruction in spite of his innocence.
Houseboy reveals insights into the psychology of oppression. At first dazzled by the education his servitude affords and the loveliness of the Commandant’s wife, Toundi is eventually doomed by his close association with the colonials because he learns too much about their real character. Because he knows of the Commandant’s wife’s indiscretion and of the agricultural engineer’s affair, he represents a threat, although his diary reveals no intent to betray anyone. Shortly before his arrest, Toundi writes bitterly of his place in the Commandant’s household: “Kicks and insults have started again. He thinks this humiliates me and he can’t find any other way. He forgets that it is all part of my job as a houseboy, a job which holds no more secrets forme.”
Houseboy reveals the psychological aspect colonialism has on its victims. The story is about a young boy named Toundi who grows up in a small village. Life in the village is rough, but Toundi, who is renamed Joseph, goes to work for a mission led by Father Gilbert as his houseboy. Joseph develops a close friendship with the father and he comes to look up to him. The boy's attitude toward his own people and country is apparent in the beginning: "My ancestors were cannibals."
After the priest is killed in a motorcycle accident, Joseph is sent to live with a commandant and his wife. There Joseph is able to see the peculiarities of the colonialists for whom he works. Joseph falls in love with Madame, but she abuses him and other members of the household staff, and has an affair with another man. The story takes a tragic turn when one of the colonialists is robbed by his lover, whom Joseph also knew. He is arrested and beaten as a conspirator.
Houseboy focuses on the imbalance of political power that the Africans have under colonialism. Joseph is neither given due justice of the law or an attorney, which would have been the due course in France. He is arrested simply on the word of the white lover who was robbed. All throughout the story, Joseph is warned by Baklu, the laundryman, not to get too close to the whites but he does not heed his words until it is too late. As a houseboy, though, Joseph is given a bird's-eye view of the private interactions of the whites. It is while watching the Commandant and his wife that Joseph's opinions begin to change about whites and the values they hold. Yet his closeness to them also puts him in trouble. He is often dragged into their domestic squabbles and is accused of spreading gossip of the Madame's affair with M. Moreau, though it is apparent that her affair is a secret to no one in the village but her husband.
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
Explain thoroughly how religion is used as a weapon of colonization in Houseboy.
Post-Colonial Francophone Experience in Ousmene’s Xala
Xala is the story of El Hadji Kader Beye, a Muslim businessman living in Dakar, Senegal, and the misfortune he suffers after his third marriage. The novel follows several weeks in El Hadji's life and his "rapid decline from affluence to total humiliation and ruin." After the wedding ceremony, El Hadji is unable to consummate his marriage to N'Gone. He believes himself to have been cursed with xala (pronounced "hala") a condition which leaves him impotent. El Hadji agonizes over this dilemma and sees numerous marabouts (healers) suggested by his trusted friends and colleagues. None are able to help him and El Hadji continues to obsess over his sexual loss, ignoring his business and financial affairs, which he discovers are failing miserably. His colleagues pounce on his misfortune and vote him out of their business group.
The next morning, a beggar comes to El Hadji's door. He's the same beggar who has haunted El Hadji's office building for several years. The beggar is accompanied by other diseased beggars who pillage the villa. The beggar reveals to El Hadji that it was he who cursed him with the xala because El Hadji had ruined his life years before. The only cure to the curse is for all the beggars to spit twice upon El Hadji while he stands naked. Desperate, El Hadji agrees. As El Hadji endures this abuse, the police, expecting a riot, surround the house with loaded guns.
Like in Things Fall Apart and Agatha Moudio's Son, Xala represents a culture changed by Europeans. The novel centers on El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a successful businessman in Dakar, Senegal. He believes himself untouchable, refusing the superstitions of his culture until the curse of the xala is placed upon him. El Hadji has assimilated into a successful westernized businessman - power hungry, and seeking to restore his power he has lost under the curse.
There is Class Divisions in post-colonial French. El Hadji, as a successful and wealthy man, has separated himself from many others in his community. Because of his wealth and power, he has chosen to alienate those in lower socioeconomic classes than himself. He has turned his back on the poor men of his community. Unlike the strong Efuru who does not allow class differences to affect her, this stress between socioeconomic classes creates the hole into which El Hadji allows himself to fall. His alienation of the lower classes is similar to those of characters in some Indian novels such as The Painter of Signs and God of Small Things. The curse of the xala that has inflicted impotence on El Hadji…takes on a symbolic connotation as the impotence that afflicts the emerging Senegalese bourgeoisies becomes apparent. El Hadji represents, experiences, and eventually articulates the impotence of his class.
Hadji's business group, as he recognizes himself, is corrupt. He knows that it works as a social system in which he and his business partners profit from the poor, but El Hadji also realizes that there is a Colonial empire profiting off of his group. "The colonist is stronger, more powerful…hidden inside us" (Sembène 93). He recognizes that to succeed, he must assimilate to the Colonial power using "the Englishman's self-control, the American's flair, and the Frenchman's politeness" (Sembène 85). El Hadji is stifled as in his business as much as he is by his xala. The only cure is from the beggar who placed the xala on him.
The novel then becomes a story of independence, of uprising and revolution by those who are oppressed against their oppressors. Sembène does not leave his novel to tie itself so easily at the end. The battle against the colonist is not yet won. The beggar and the other oppressed are surrounded by the police, who "outside…raised their weapons into the firing position" (Sembène 114).
SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3
Assess the effect of colonial education on the ruling class as exemplified in Xala.
CONCLUSION
From the two novels under study, we have been able to examine a typical Francophone colonial and post-colonial situation. In Houseboy, we see the indoctrination of the young African to the fact that anything African is barbaric. Joseph is a victim of indoctrination of western values. He never believed in his Africanness and as a result he became a victim of a western culture that places him in a bad state. He was condemned even while innocent. Xala epitomizes the class differences created by western education on Francophone Africans. Those at the top maltreat those below and make it impossible for the poor to have basic conveniences. Thus, western education creates a wide gap between the educated and the uneducated, the rich and the poor and the peasants and the rulers. Sembène is a noted independent film director. He attended school only briefly before taking work as a fisherman and trying his hand at other manual labour jobs. While working as a stevedore, he wrote his first novel, Le Docker Noir (The Black Docker), opening his future in the arts. He is known not only for his literature, but also his films. He is a product of the peasant situation in Francophone Africa and reenacts that in his works.
SUMMARY
The Francophone African states have been under severe identity problem. The blacks are meant to see themselves as poor, underdeveloped and without a thought system. The novel Houseboy reveals to a large extent, the maltreatment of the blacks during the colonial era. It showshow uncaring the colonists were to the Africans. It also exposes the trauma of the blacks in the hands of the whites who perpetuate evils in the name of religion. Xala is a call to black sanity. It calls on the black elite to avoid colonial behaviours of class consciousness. It calls for the need to bring in the real African communal living where the rich and the poor co-exist in harmony. It attacks the rulers who want to hold firmly to power in order to achieve more economic advantage. The xala disease is a reaction by the people, a response by their gods and a revelation of impending tragedy in the people’s polity if things are not properly done. Francophone African experiences, as revealed in these colonial and post colonial novels, are not easy traumas by which the French colonials acting on economic pretences enslaved them.
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