“The motif of the African “been-to” as a failed bohemian “revolutionary” appeared earlier in Armah’s Fragments. We remember that in this novel, Baako, unlike other “been-tos” returned home wearing jeans, and carrying a guitar and a typewriter as sole luggage. Right from the beginning, he isolated himself from his community, which reproached him the fact that he did not bring the cargo expected from “been-tos” like him” (Riche & Zerar, 2013).

My life. I feel like I now fully understand my mother’s deep concern – if not a kind of fear – for the kind of being I’ve taken over the last bit of time. I’m also convinced that if I return home with the guitar I got this year and don’t unequivocally state that I will be graduating and continuing on to become a successful person in life, my mother will forcibly hold me down and cut my hair in a last desperate bid to save me from a trajectory which in some sense is only futile and ill-fated.

I’m angry and hate the fact that I seem to be living through South Africa’s version of the 60s-80s in East and West Africa. But what may be worse is knowing in some sense what you’re caught in and also having the privilege to lament historical experiences others have already been through whilst simultaneously using the very same ideas – decolonisation and Pan Africanism as an example – as propping up tools to try and look ahead. What is particularly frustrating is not only not being able to see beyond what has already happened, but that from a historical perspective the ideas we currently hold and draw inspiration from are seen to be or appear naïve and unrealistic juxtaposed against the collective experiences of the African continent.

Beyond that, however, I am a fan of Armah’s writing for similar reasons that Chinua Achebe rejected his seminal work The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Achebe decried Armah’s first book as overly pessimistic and a mere transposition of the latter’s own existential angst and despair. In fact, in describing why he writes, Armah says bluntly “I write books because I tried to do something more useful and failed. And since I’ve been trained to write, I do that as a defence against total despair.” Personally, I find this mark of humility to add to Armah’s allure and charm.

More than that, this particular character which Armah holds in relation to existentialism means that he has already studied the traditional body of work and writing which ground existentialism as a philosophy – notably Sartre, Nietzsche and Albert Camus – in relation to revolutionary praxis. But he is misunderstood by Achebe because his reference to existentialism in his work isn’t to offer it as a potential solution to the African crisis, rather he does it to demonstrate its impotence and failure.

In Why Are We So Blest? Armah reaches the conclusion that not only existentialism but other traditional western schools of thought like Marxism are inevitably part of the cannon fodder which can never be revolutionary. He seems to draw the conclusion that this particular thought is an inherent aspect of liberal democracy which has been “created for its discontented youth spaces and times of rebellion before their final adjustment to adult mainstream capitalist culture”. Their Euro-centricity makes them irrelevant for real revolutionary change in Africa.

We are living in a period of modernity modelled off Western democracies and perhaps South African metros closely embody Western civilisations and Euro centricity best, compared to other parts of the continent. Everything cool and hip seems to come in from America – from technological advancements and even if it is pop culture from Black America. Consequently, it would stand to reason that the youth spaces described in the above paragraph could very well exist within our own context, particularly in relation to the current student movements.

The rise of the cool kids is perhaps the best example of this, more so in Cape Town, which has a long tradition of the hipster vibe and whose towns are plagued with gentrification – which some would argue is attributable to the “Bohemian” culture – in particular, current or former university students moving to otherwise unattractive and by extension inexpensive areas and making them “cool” and attractive thus attracting “investment” and upscale markets.

With a focus on university students, this understanding of the current rebellious energy and the ideas we have drawn to as being buffers until we all “grow up”, perhaps explains the lack of serious and radical revolutionary commitment, and particularly a lack of will to apply and sustain long term thinking to programs. Rather, at the moment all the work being done seems to be sustained by the current popular energy or discourse around it.

So whether the current cool thing is being involved in the student movements, the primary thing directing any meaningful participation is the extent to which the trends and hype allow. But more than this, the adaption to mainstream capitalist culture is often explained in what is known as “politics of the stomach” or politics of bread and butter. Survival. Growing up and adulting.

Of course, these critiques can easily be dismissed as a-contextual, nonetheless I think there’s something to think about in relation to asking what informs and drives rebellion and how we are located within that framework.

I think of my own life here for a bit, and how I worked hard to get into university and run away from that hard life towards easier comforts and security. It’s really funny how having a degree is the thin line between relentless desperate uncertainty and an attainment of basic everyday necessities. Alienation aside because arguably that’s only a privilege university students can afford to cry over; knowing what I know now – despite never having actually wanting to come to university – I would still decide to come to one because in some part I am ‘better’ for it. I can never know what would have happened had I chose a different path, but what I can contemplate are the existing avenues before me now; limited and narrow as they may be.

And for those who read the posts I put up, this idea may seem boring now and old and you may be confused why I return to the same basic point time and time again. For one, I too am just another confused person trying to make sense of things. Perhaps more importantly, however, whilst I can decide to do what appears best having considered different arguments and perspectives, one can hope that with continuous reflection and thinking on the issue newer and perhaps more creative ideas and innovations will open up.

In similar ways to how the ideas of Thomas Sankara and many others always hold grains of inspiration and hope despite the failed contexts they still exist in, so too perhaps in our always trying every day, and walking against the tide, there remains a reason to try and do better. Because despair I think, true despair, is the complete resignation from life. As long as you still wake up every day, get up to dress and go out into the world going about your life, there still is some hope and potential to yet perhaps find meaning or do something meaningful, to simply just be.

Despair though has a particularly unique relationship with hope for black people. In the sense that “the force for our own death is within us. We have swallowed the wish for our destruction”.

The double edged sword of the desire born out of despair to destroy the structures which oppress us, is that in some sense we wish for our own destruction too – the deep desire to ease the suffering until one feels nothing and to wish away the very consciousness we have, is embedded deeply with wanting to unmake the destruction we have known at the hands of imperialism. In this sense, and the lesson is that though our work may be born out of angst, pain and despair, those tools alone cannot long sustain it and one must look to that elusive idea of hope. But hope I think sometimes need not be that difficult to find. I think one wakes up every morning because one still has hope.

I cannot say I have yet located my own role within this unfolding moment nor do I have a plan or know what I will do. But even if it is returning home with my guitar and laptop to just write – something which if I did I’d probably not live with for very long because I’ll likely feel disappointed in myself and try again – in our little moments daily we seem to always fight against despair. I would, however, hope that I can draw the lessons I need to learn without having to repeat them.

1. Riche, B. & Zerar, S., 2013. AYI KWEI ARMAH’S WHY ARE WE SO BLEST? AS AN AFRICAN IDEOLOGICAL NOVEL. Journal of Teaching and Education, 2(4), pp. 233-248.