Annual conference of the African Literature Association

In this feature the pattern followed will be a discussion of selected African (mainly Anglophone, otherwise translated) novels. In this instalment, the pattern is interrupted to report on the annual conference of the African Literature Association which was held in Fez, Morocco, from March 10 — 13, 1999.

The conference theme was “Continental North” — South and Diaspora Connections and Linkages and it was compared to the previous A.L.A. conference (held at the University of Texas in Austin, USA), a noticeably more varied gathering — linguistically, culturally and ethnically.

It opened literally with a grand fanfare by Moroccan trumpeters and a dance and music display in the conference foyer of the luxurious Hotel Palais Jnan, where the more well-heeled of the conference delegates were lodged.

It must be acknowledged that the conference setting — the magnificent city of Fez, chief of the four imperial cities of Morocco, and a United Nations World Heritage site — somewhat overwhelmed the academic gatherings. Fez is a living medieval Muslim city and a visit to the “medina” — the central trading area with its innumerable intertwining alleyways, donkey-borne transport of goods and its abundance of sights, smells and sounds, crowded with beautiful handmade craftwork — is an unforgettable experience.

Yet the papers, panels and discussions (formal and informal) were enriching and offered a particularly wide range of topics. Besides the traditional ‘one author’ or ‘one text’ papers, the conference theme inspired unusual combinations of texts, or recontextualisations, or other modes of representing African realities.

An Ethiopian delegate had had his conference paper confiscated at Addis Ababa airport on his way to Fez, and was told that his name proved him an Eritrean (implication: not a trustworthy Ethiopian).

An English-speaking Cameroonian gave an impassioned description of the oppression of, and discrimination practised against, English-speaking Cameroonians by their French-speaking compatriots.

We also heard of the (probably state-initiated) assassination by car bomb of a courageous Burkino Faso novelist, and the conference launched a letter of appeal against the sentencing to execution of the African-American broadcaster Mumia Abu-Jamal in Pennsylvania, USA.

African writing is constantly involved in, and by, the local political realities of the continent, with little chance of emotion recollected in tranquillity.

Panels of particular interest related to:

• texts by and about slaves of African origin;
• Moroccan writing (both Leila Abouzeid and Abdellatif Laabi were specifically honoured by the conference);
• recovered histories by and about women in Africa;
• figurations of Africa in diasporic texts (i.e. re-imagining an African setting that is distant in time and space);
• as well as the ways in which texts reflect, and reflect on, the violence in many parts of the continent.

This diversity probably indicates a growing confidence that the ‘big-name’ writers are well enough ‘established’ for attention to broaden out to newer areas and less (internationally) well-known authors.

A performance of Jane Taylor’s Ubu and the Truth Commission had been commissioned by Prof. Edris Makward, co-convenor of the conference, and was greeted with general acclaim and a great deal of interest. A dissenting voice was that of the Moroccan co-convenor of the conference, Prof. Ahmed Saber, who asked (in seeming perplexity and perhaps indignation): “But where is apartheid in this?” Both fascination with, and bafflement by, South African realities and reflections were still in evidence at this gathering.

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