Kintu

"Isn’t this a fun read? Just the ambition of it, and the sweep of it, and the depiction of these ancient African kingdoms that you don’t really get anywhere else in popular culture. For me, Kintu works really well in exposing or bringing about a history of Buganda. It really goes against that idea that Africa didn’t have a history before colonialism. I think that is the central importance of it. But, also, the acceptance of these cultural elements as the norm. We have this thread, of Kintu’s curse, going through generation after generation. It’s just part of the culture and, as the reader of the novel, you just have to accept it. I believe that in certain African cultures, twins weren’t allowed to live because there was a superstition that there was something spiritually off with them. What’s also interesting about Kintu for me is how it pretty much skips over the colonial period as a mere historical blip. So, essentially, you come from the pre-colonial period and then before you know it, you are in Idi Amin’s Uganda. I thought that is really very interesting – the fact that you could have colonialism as a huge chunk of the book but she completely just slides through it, ‘okay it does happen but there were these kingdoms, these cultures, and they have endured.’ And then, things are back on track as it were. It’s had to be reprinted several times and several print runs have sold out. It is really loved across east Africa, where it was published. I think the passion for the book itself in east Africa is just a reflection of what folks think and how they hungry they are for those aspects of their history that might not be so easily accessible to them. “What’s also interesting about Kintu for me is how it pretty much skips over the colonial period as a mere historical blip.” In many ways it speaks to—being a black person—seeing yourself depicted in history. If I watch a BBC historical film, if there’s a black person in there they’re going to be a slave or a servant or something. That’s pretty much guaranteed. That’s all you’re going to ever see. And so, reading these texts, it is empowering. Seeing that we do have a history and stuff was going on, that we don’t just appear in history as servants or slaves. I think that’s very important to one’s psyche and one’s construction of one’s own self-identity. I think it speaks for itself that such a fine novel could not, for all the money in the world, find a western publisher until fairly recently when a small American independent press decided to take it on. There was just the idea that there wouldn’t be a market for it. There are very wide gaps. I think it’s only now that there are attempts to fill it out. But some of these things are pretty insidious. For example, Zimbabwe is named after the Great Zimbabwe ruins. This was a big medieval city—from around the 12th century to the 16th century or thereabouts—before it collapsed. It was about the size of London then—around 20,000 people lived there. It was the centre of a big empire that traded in gold and ivory. But one of the first things that happened, as soon as we were colonised, is that you had these white historians coming in and saying that it couldn’t have been built by black people—it must have been built by the Queen of Sheba, or there was a white tribe in Africa that got wiped out. Or it could have been the Arabs. So, it could have been anyone else. “It shows really well how history isn’t just a static force. You can’t just say that stuff happened and then it’s over and it’s gone. The effects of these things that happened long ago still reverberate today.” Despite the oral traditions of the people who lived there, one of the first archaeologists that got to the city dug through layers of material and broke and discarded priceless historical artefacts because he was looking for proof that it was built by Europeans—which he didn’t find. Luckily, the British sacked him and they got another guy in who took over. But, by then, a lot of very important historical material had been destroyed. But up until now, these myths persist that it wasn’t the Shona people who built it. They are all over the internet. I have the idea of an epic fantasy series set in that historical period in Zimbabwe. Again, it’s getting to the stage of doing the hardcore historical research where you understand what the customs were at that time, what the economy really was like, because Great Zimbabwe itself was just one city among forty or fifty other smaller Zimbabwes that were there. So, it’s trying to fit it in in relation to these other cities and really getting a sense of the place before you go off and write something. One has to make sure that the work that one writes is fairly historically accurate, and then you fill in the gaps with semi-plausible happenings. No. Now, what I’m supposed to be working on is a novel that I told my agent would be ready last spring. It’s a contemporary novel, set in a village that’s not named, and none of the streets are named. I’m trying to write about this modern sense of alienation which might be a result of technology or the way culture has changed. So it’s just about a dude who is alienated, who is failing to make fundamental meaningful connections. It sounds a bit miserable and solipsistic. At some point, I will get round to doing it. It’s just getting the will to grind through. I’m from a small mining town called Bindura. It was going to be the setting of my historical novel, because we have got our own small set of ruins that the local chiefs built. The reason it got settled is because the settlers thought there would be a lot of gold there. In fact, when they got there, they called it the Kimberley Reef because Kimberley, in South Africa, is where they got a lot of gold and diamonds. Unfortunately, Bindura did have gold, and it did have nickel, so it’s got two really big mines that are the reasons it exists. But not as much gold as they hoped. It certainly didn’t become the new Johannesburg. So, what I was doing was trying to link up Kimberly in South Africa to this Kimberly reef in Zimbabwe by a set of really interesting sort of historical coincidences. I may get back to it at some point but not just yet."