A search for the beautyful ones

With his first novel, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, published in 1968, Ghana’s Ayi Kwei Armah suddenly became a household name across the world until to this day. Seeing that sexy title for the first time in high school, I actually thought this was really a love story! Expecting steaming romance, I actually came face to face with the naked sociopolitical realities of independent Africa! This is a novel about a man who navigates the morally compromised world of independent Ghana. The protagonist, known simply as “the man,” works at a railway office, where one day he is offered a bribe from a merchant. He declines. When his wife hears about this, she is deeply displeased. This is one of the earliest novels in Africa to tackle the issue of African self-rule, often called “independence.” Ghana got independent from Britain and became the first African country to acquire such a status in 1957. However, in 1966, there was a coup in Ghana. The general and often simple argument is that this coup was due to President Nkrumah’s corruption. Immediately after the coup, the Ghanaian situation sparked debates and questions across the world: were Africans capable of self-rule? Was it necessary to grant Africans self-rule after all? When will we have a successful African government? Was Ghana merely a bad example of black rule or some international movements had anything to with it? When The Beautyful Ones was published it immediately draws attention because it is decidedly about the problems of Ghana’s independence and more acutely, the period just before and during the coup itself. There have been questions to how useful this novel is in explaining the immediate troubles and challenges of Ghana’s and African independence in general. The Beautyful Ones has been described in some circles as a novel of ennui, a novel of malaise, and a novel of boredom. It is all because it depicts characters who have lost interest in the present, past or future because of the total breakdown of the social fabric during Nkrumah’s days. The main character is simply called ‘the man’ throughout. He moves across society just like an aimless ghost. He is aware of the material demands of life but he tries to remain detached. His immediate family would have him participate in the primitive accumulation of wealth like everybody around him but he remains aloof, seeing, thinking, meditating but taking no action and making no clear cut decision. He cannot take a bribe but often his family is hungry and sometimes he has to depend on his mother-in-law for basics. That is why his wife thinks he is like the bird called the chichidodo, a funny bird that feeds on maggots that come from excrement and yet the bird hates the same excrement with all its heart! As the novel begins, the man’s eyes are open in his sleep, looking without seeing the conductor counting his loot as if to imply that while people are stealing, Africa is asleep. The man has a friend. He is called the teacher. The teacher is in many ways just like the man. He has run away from the commitment of family. He is always alone in his room, naked, reading books and listening to rhumba music. He has stripped himself down to some serious individuality. He is resigned. He represents the death of ambition and intention. He knows much about what is wrong about the people around him. The images of rot, dirt and corruption are everywhere and they reach both physical and spiritual proportions. Ghana has become suddenly sterile and old and the man has an intense consciousness of it that borders on naturalism. For example he looks at the banister and reflects deeply on the dirt that is deposited on it by people who hold it as they go upstairs: “…apart from the wood itself there were, of course, people themselves, just so many hands and fingers bringing help to the wood in its course towards putrefaction. Left-hand fingers in their careless journey from a hasty toiletry sliding all the way up the banister… Righthand fingers still dripping with after piss and the stale sweat from the fat crotches. The callused palms of messengers after they had blown their clogged noses reaching for a convenient place to leave the well-rubbed moisture… The wood would always win.” He is also assaulted by the constant image of the overflowing bin. There are also moments to reflect on the traveller’s vomit. Then there is the overriding presence of the occupied toilet with all its stink: “Past the big public lavatory the stench claws inward to the throat. Sometimes it is understandable that people spit so much, when all around decaying things push inward and mix all the body’s juices with the taste of rot… Hot smell of caked shit split by afternoon’s baking sun, now touched by still evaporating dew. Across the aisle on the seat opposite, an old man is sleeping and his mouth is open to the air rushing in the night with how many particles of what?” The rot is so overpowering that it sucks everyone to its own centre. This is the picture of corruption’s ability to be everywhere. Even the character called Krishna has his soul eaten up by worms as he meditates. Chapter six of this novel is extremely outstanding. It is a modernist meditation on African history with a language that flows like TS Eliot’s The Wasteland. The sad past, present and future are brought together. The climax of this sadness is the failure of black rule and the laughable level at which the black man apes his former colonial master. On the flipside, this novel has been perceived in some circles as the enemy of African independence. The reason is that Armah’s book is pessimistic in that the characters are not equipped to deal with the issues in their country. They wallow helplessly in their problems. More specifically, the man allows one of the corrupt officers of the deposed government to escape through his very own house. After such a contradictory act, the man goes back home to face all his old troubles. That is when he sees a bus with an inscription “The beautiful ones are not yet born.” It is as if the implication is: Africa’s genuine leaders are still to come! In this novel, African leaders are attacked for wanting to be like the former colonial masters. However, unlike what we see in Ngugi’s novels or Fanon’s essays, Armah does not attempt to connect the corruption in Ghana with international capitalism. Armah appears to suggest that corruption is necessarily Ghanaian. You also wonder what makes the man stand outside the rot around him. Is he born clean? What is the source of his consciousness? You keep on walking down the same road of despair, anger and regret. Ayi Kwei Armah was born in Ghana in 1939. He is the author of The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet born (1968), Two Thousand Seasons (1973), Why Are We so Blest (1974), The Healers (1979). He is also an essayist and has written poetry and short stories. Memory Chirere