• It jeopardises our cultural well-being even as it offers literary inspiration
Image: Moses Mwangi
The Caine Prize for African Writing is one of the most prestigious literary awards today. It recognises new African short story writers since the beginning of the 21st Century.
The first prize was awarded in 2000 to the famous Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela for her short story titled, “The Museum”, at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in Harare, Zimbabwe.
All four Nobel Prize for Literature laureates from Africa have helped in establishing the prestige of this coveted prize as patrons. These are Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, Naguib Mahfouz of Egypt and two South Africans — Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee.
Since its inception, four Kenyans have bagged the prize. The first was Binyavanga Wainaina, whose first memorial anniversary is coming up next month. His debut short story, called ‘Discovering Home’, emerged the winner in 2002 and set off his epic literary career.
In 2003, his counterpart Yvonne Owuor clinched the prize, making Kenya the first country to win the prize twice in a row. Her short story, ‘Weight of Whispers’, is a haunting tale of aristocratic, ill-fated Rwandese refugees, who fled to Nairobi in the wake of the genocide of 1994.
Two other female writers from Kenya eventually cemented our presence in the hall of fame of the Caine Prize: Okwiri Oduor in 2014 for her story ‘My Father’s Head’ and Makena Onjerika for her story ‘Fanta Blackcurrant’ just two years ago.
Many creatives are viewing the outbreak as a great inspiration to new literature and narratives. Songs and poems are being composed on the topic of the pandemic already. Yet the pandemic places a real dilemma on the table as to the welfare and prospects of events of this year’s calendar on matters literary. Will the Caine Prize for African Writing be awarded in 2020? Will there be the annual gala as usual? What about the Nairobi International Book Fair or that of Zimbabwe or SA?
Caine Prize has shaped the trends of recent African writing in an indelible and palpable manner. Besides launching the careers of Binyavanga and Yvonne, the prize has established other African voices now luminary across the continent and abroad.
On top of prestige and success in literary excellence, the prize comes with lucrative monetary value of about Sh1.5 million (£10,000). The deadline for entries for this year was the end of January 2020. The award itself will be given in July of this year, assuming the Covid-19 global pandemic will not deter the organisers.
Already, other significant cultural events across the world have been cancelled/postponed, most notable being the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, which has been moved from July this year to the same time in 2021.
Closer home, it is not clear whether literary scholars and researchers of oral literature and folklore will still attend the 13th International Conference of the International Society of Oral Literature in Africa (Isola). This was to occur at the KICC also in July, under the aegis of Moi University.
The impact of Covid-19 and the novel coronavirus currently tearing the nations of the world apart at the socio-cultural level will be assessed for years to come. However, it is obvious that the magnitude of disruption is already evident. Cultural practices associated with death and other rites of passages in our communities are at a crossroad, yet they are the veritable platforms for the composition and performance of our folk lives and values.
Funerary rituals in Nyanza have been placed under an embargo by the Ministry of Health in the interest of public health and national health security. The same applies for the initiation rites of Bungoma and Trans Nzoia county, which were poised to begin in August, mainly among the Bukusu section of the Luhya nation.
Writers’ clubs and societies that hold meetings across the city and country have had to resort to remote communion through social media platforms, such as WhatsApp and Facebook. The Creative Writers’ Association of Kenya (CWA-K), for instance, has set up a new Facebook page for its members, both established and new, to keep the literary fire in this age of corona, under its chairman Prof Egara Kabaji.
Indeed, whether it is the awarding of national or continental prizes or the hosting of international sports extravaganza; whether it is the perpetuation of ancient ritual processes of traditional societies or international conferences on folklore and its research, it is clear that the cultural disruptions caused by Covid-19 this year will be inevitable, manifold and unprecedented.
Covid-19 is a Janus-faced pandemic. It poses a real danger to the cultural well-being of our nation and the world, even as it offers a fertile hunting ground for literary inspiration, in terms of themes and topics for narrating to future generations what is happening now.
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Dr Makokha teaches Literature and Theatre at Kenyatta University. He is a member of the Creative Writers Association of Kenya (CWA-K). Visit us on Facebook.