In 1975, I walked into Government Secondary School, Fadan Kaje, a former Catholic mission school once called St. Joseph. The principal was Reverend Father John Haverty. Catholic priests ran the place. Among our Nigerian teachers was the current Emir of Birnin Gwari, Alhaji Zubair Jibril Maigwari II. Another was a young NYSC teacher, the late Dr. Sule Bello, whom we nicknamed “Weazacap” – short for “With the cap.”
But no teacher left a deeper mark than a British man we called “Titomthy.” In Form Two, he read aloud to us from an abridged edition of E.A. Ritter’s Shaka Zulu, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, James Ngugi’s Weep Not, Child, and Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country.
Those novels changed me. I had grown up in makaranta allo, the Hausa “school of the slate,” where memorizing the Quran was the path to learning. So memorization came naturally. But these books taught me something else: how to feel history in my bones.
Things Fall Apart showed me a precolonial Africa of greatness, peace, and order. I admired Okonkwo’s bravery, his industry, his wealth. But I wept when he joined the killing of Ikemefuna, the boy who called him father. Why, Okonkwo? Why? I still hear Obierika’s words as he pointed to Okonkwo’s dangling body: “That man was one of the greatest men of Umuofia. You drove him to kill himself and now he will be buried like a dog.”
For me, that novel was not just literature. It was African history. A lesson in courage when courage is needed, and cowardice when wisdom demands it. I memorized every proverb.
Weep Not, Child opened my eyes to British settler colonialism. I felt the sting of stolen lands, of Africans working coffee farms for white enrichment while their own children went hungry. What pained me most was the lack of unity among Africans, while the whites stood together. But the mention of Jomo Kenyatta and the Mau Mau uprising gave me hope. The lesson was clear: ancestral land is not just dirt. It is wealth, identity, history, culture. It must be defended, by arms if necessary.
That poem still echoes in my mind: “Weep not, child. Weep not my darling. With these kisses, let me remove your tears. The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, they shall not long possess the sky.”
But Cry, The Beloved Country moved me most. Paton’s lyrical, biblical prose, his rich imagery of trees, birds, hills, and rain, captured my soul. Why did Teacher Titomthy spend so much time explaining this novel? Was he trying to show us the evil of apartheid? Was he a radical?
Whatever his intent, the novel laid bare South Africa’s rot. Everything good belonged to whites. Everything bad, to blacks. Young men went to Johannesburg, got lost in urban decay, became drunkards, prostitutes, murderers. They abandoned their children to aging parents. Families broke apart.
So why should we not cry for Black South Africans? “Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved.”
Independence in 1994 did not end the rot. Riches, land, minerals, banks remain with whites. Black families are still broken. Children grow up without parents. Wives flee rascally husbands. Mothers are bitter at themselves, their children, society, life itself.
With the broken tribe and the lost custom of Ubuntu, why are we surprised that frustrated, hopeless lumpens are mobilized against fellow Africans? The rest of Africa must understand, sympathize, forgive the unemployed and unemployable Black South Africans who turn against their own.
But we must hold the ANC and Nelson Mandela responsible for the Afrophobia and xenophobia. They threw the Freedom Charter into the dustbin of history and left the masses with nothing.
We must hold our own governments responsible. If they had democratized, developed, humanized our countries, why would citizens flee to South Africa only to be chased like dogs, beaten like donkeys, killed like flies?
Yes, the World Bank and IMF forced loans that led to devaluation, deindustrialization, mass migration. But did the working classes, students, and intelligentsia not warn against those loans?
Why should our countries not fall apart? Why should we not weep? Why should we not cry for South Africa? Why should we not cry for ourselves?
