Why writers like Ngugi wa Thiong’o are not likely to win the Nobel Prize for Literature soon

In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about the Nobel Prize for Literature being conferred to an African writer.

The name of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the Kenyan playwright, novelist and scholar, has been bandied around as a possible contender for the award.

From CNN, BBC, The Guardian, The New York Times and The Observer, Ngugi’s name has been widely mentioned amid speculation that this time round, the name in the magic envelope will indeed be Ngugi’s.

The results have always been predictable. The Nobel Committee has always created a false trail for African literature only to award it to a select few from the West or those with ideological inclinations that have come to define the prize.

This standpoint must now be fundamentally reconfigured.

The same atmosphere was stage-managed in 2010 to fool the world that Ngugi would win the Nobel.

Indeed, both local and international media went into frenzy on the issue, in complete disregard of the fact that the choice of the winner is a well-guarded secret until the name is released.

Journalists from around the world jammed the University of Nairobi ostensibly to interview some literature professors, some who had worked with Ngugi many years earlier.

Talk of counting chickens before they hatch!

What followed left a bitter taste in the mouths of many when Ngugi lost to the famous Peruvian novelist, Mario Vargas Llosa.

HEAVILY POLITICISED

But what seems to be the motivation that has defined the award?

One of the main tenets that define the Nobel Prize as envisioned by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel in 1895 was in recognition of advances in culture and sciences.

Literature and Peace have come to stand out as the most prestigious in a line-up that includes Physics, Chemistry, Economics and Medicine, hence the first two have come to be heavily politicised.

In 2014, as the year before, Ngugi was touted as a front runner with the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

It therefore sounded quite scandalous to hear the name of the so-called French historical writer, Patrick Modiano, released without much ado as the ultimate winner.

Frankly, the game and tempo of this prize begs for scrutiny and this must begin with a question: is the Nobel Prize for Literature meant for African writers as well? The answer is no.

The only African to ever win the award is Nigerian playwright and poet Wole Soyinka.

The other winners are Nadine Gordimer, a white South African, and Mahfouz Naguib, an Arab from Egypt. Is this not making a mockery of African literature?

The continent has produced great novelists like Chinua Achebe, great poets like Léopold Sédar Senghor and great playwrights like John Ruganda.

ALMOST CAME TO BLOWS

Are African works ever considered by the Academy?

A close look at some of the leading African writers missing out in this award will shed light on the motivation behind it.

In a plenary session of literary minds at Leisure Lodge, Mombasa, in 2011, a Kenyan scholar based at the University of Madison in the US almost came to blows with delegates from Nigeria over his remarks on Chinua Achebe’s writings.

The most sonorous Nigerian delegate even reminded the scholar that his presentation on Achebe’s No Longer at Ease was part of the larger scheme by the big brothers to deny Achebe the Nobel.

Achebe’s writings have always galled the Western psyche and he is a marked man.

In one of the most candid attacks on the white supremacist superiority complex, Achebe described Joseph Conrad, one of the most celebrated European novelists and the author of The Heart of Darkness, as a bloody racist.

This attack, and subsequent ones, ruled him out of this coveted prize.

As for Ngugi, it is obvious that he has long been considered a rebel without a cause. His inclinations about the humanity of the African people cannot be over-emphasised.

Ngugi presents the moral decay of the colony as propagated by the Europeans in his earlier writings like Weep Not, Child, A Grain of Wheat and The River Between.

It is decadence beyond measure that is presided over by the European overseers and he dares to shoot from the hip against the exploiters.

In his later works, Ngugi propagates the politics of language by loudly saying that literature in its purest form should be written in mother tongue and not the colonisers’ languages.

In doing so, the servant pricked the master and he was out of contention.

Mr Bernard Nyantino is a graduate student of Literature at the University of Nairobi while Jason is a public policy analyst and communications consultant.