Mandela’s Bones
By Sam Omatseye
60pp; Kraft Book
Almost 20 years to the day he walked free through the gates of Robben
Island, the infamous penitentiary in which he was held for the better part of
27 years, Nelson Mandela is once more immortalised in verse by Sam Omatseye.
‘Mandela’s Bones and Other Poems’ is one of several collections of Nigerian
poetry written to celebrate the heroic struggles of the Madiba that would in
1994 put an end to apartheid rule and usher South Africa into the era of
multiracialism. Perhaps the first Nigerian volume in this regard is Wole
Soyinka’s ‘Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems,’ to be followed by J P
Clark-Bekederemo’s ‘Mandela’ and Ogaga Ifowodo’s ‘Madiba’.
‘Mandela’s Bones’ is a collection of 27 poems centred round a miscellany of
subjects. In this collection the poet sticks to the typical issues of Nigerian
poetry: politics, governance, the decay of infrastructure, social anomy and the
pathologies of being a Nigerian and living in Nigeria. But more importantly
this poetry is in one sense an affirmation of the transformative and redemptive
powers of individual exertion on behalf of society.
There is a tendency toward realistic portrayal of issues which would accord
with Omatseye’s approach in ‘Baby Ramatu’, his other collection, also recently
published. In ‘Ita-Oko’, the first poem subtitled ‘Awo Museum at Lekki’, the
poet ruminates on the welfarist and developmentalist legacy of Chief Obafemi
Awolowo as can be gleaned from the tales of skulduggery and cloak-and-dagger
politics of the First Republic told by the pictures, newspaper cuttings,
figurines and other memorabilia that adorn the walls of the museum that was
opened to the public in 2009.
The poet compares Awolowo’s detention
in this swampy, waterlogged, mosquito- and later crocodile-infested island by
the Atlantic to that of the slaves held in the same place by Lequi, the
Portuguese slaver after whom the island – now popularly corrupted to Lekki –
was named: ‘those who wove shadows like/wreaths over blood on the
horizon/brought you here/in chains echoing the chamber century past/of blacks
hemmed in pens for their colour…/in those days bars branded your limits/just as
chains defined the slaves/of master Lequi here at Lekki.’
While evoking Mandela’s detention at
Robben, this poem subtly calls attention to and compares Awolowo’s equally
heroic struggles to the kind Mandela embarked upon to bring freedom to South
Africa. Calling the detention island ‘Ita-Oko’, the awe-inspiring name by which
it came to be known among Nigerians having been turned by the military into its
favourite gulag- referring to the detention place by this name foregrounds the
poet’s attempt to bring to the reader’s consciousness the sheer inhumanity of
the detention and the apartheid-like treatment that was meted to one of the
modern founders of Nigeria right after the dawn of independence.
Thematically, ‘Ita-Oko’ is in sync with ‘Mandela’s bones’, the title poem in
which the poet affirms the primacy of individual will, expressed in diplomacy
and dialogue, as opposed to violence in the dethronement of apartheid. As he
avers: ‘It was silence/not guns/that brought Pretoria/to its knees//mute canon
fire/ like Mandela’s bones/did not need/lips of Roben Island…//so the armoury
did/ not need staccato arguments…/quietly it was language/wombed in the
Greeks/reborn in the enlightenment…’
This same theme of the catalytic power of individual effort on behalf of the
collective is sustained in ‘Tiananmen square’, China’s own ‘Freedom Square’ and
site of the violent suppression of the people power movement led by students in
June 1989. The poet takes a retrospective look at the events of that day even
as he salutes the courage of the anonymous man that stood before armoured tanks
unfazed by the awesome might of the military-backed communist regime. It is
biographical details such as this gives Mandela’s Bones that edge of historical
meta-fiction that lurks between the verses.
The subtext of this detailed recounting of the heroism of this and other
individuals, ‘private rebel’ for a just cause will seem an acknowledgment and
restatement of the time-hallowed verity of the ultimate triumph of good over evil.
The subversion of the early promises of the Nigerian nation as reflected in the
dreams of the ‘founding founders’ is the focus of poems such as ‘What the
prophet said’ and ‘Ibadan’.
In the former poem the poet paints a picture of contradiction presented by
those who lament the state of helpless deprivation in which Nigeria supposedly
languishes and the concrete evidence of nightly carousing in which ‘the whore
has her potion/the liar his profit/a party reels at every turn/every tomb hosts
a feast…’ In ‘Ibadan’ the poet laments the degeneration of this once-proud city
of pathfinders in which ‘history disables prophesy’ and where literally ‘the
thief became the/chief of our narratives’ (‘I should pray for you’).
This was the city of firsts that set the pace of development across Africa
but now reduced to virtual beggary and dilapidation with refuse-strewn streets.
Hostage-taking and armed militancy in the Niger-Delta are the concerns of
‘Kidnapper’ and ‘Bees and the beast’ while ‘This is our land’ affirms the right
and faith of Nigerians as stakeholders in the destiny of the country.
While the title poem seems spare and inadequate to carry the weight of the
entire collection, and enjambment as the most obvious feature of the poet’s
style is sometimes sloppy, Omatseye, now ‘In Touch’ and back to the ‘familiar
eaves’ of his home after years in exile, is the journalist-commentator and
chronicler of contemporary history who takes over the telling of the Nigerian
narrative from the thieves in our midst. Mandela’s Bones in its celebration of
individual heroism and sacrifice points in the direction of the ultimate
triumph of good over evil.
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