Shane Moran - Alternation Journal

osition of dependency and penury.
hen one acqulres power and the economic success that goes w~th tt, one becomes
honoured and often one 1s not shy to perform one's success Thus in a post-colony,
'~nater~al prospellty IS one of the chlef pohttcal vlrtues rather than [the] oblect of
disapproval' (Bayal-t 1993 242) Wh~le wrltlng Devzl Ngugr must have been conscrous
of the fact that boasting about one's wealth m Kenya is past of the soc~al norln As
Angelique FJauge~ud (199.5 I) reinlnds us, 'Exuberant showmansh~p is one endurtng
face ot Kcnyan polit~cal I~fe' Tt is not unusual to come actoss poltt~cians boast~ng about
tlie~~ wealth and wlth great admn-at~on fioin the people Very much In the eally days of
Kenya's ~ndependence, Jomo Kenyatta-the first president of Kenya-ndlculed the
rad~cal natlonaltst opponent, Bildad Kaggla, for Ca~hng to amass wealth fol 111mselF
'Look at Kuiigu Kaiumba', Kenyalta told Kaggta 'He has ~nvested In buses and has
earned money, but what have you done for yourself stnce independence?" About two
decades later, Mr Oloit~pt~p, one of Pres~dent Mol's ministeis, boasted to h ~s pol~t~cal
opponents in pal llament In sent~lnents very si~nllar to Kenyatta's when he declared
I've got money. J don't sell chickens .... I am able to spend 150 million
sliillings from nly own pockct for the marriage of niy son .... 1 Ilave six cat-s,
two big houses, twelve wives and sixty-seven cllildren.
Turning to his opponents, he reminded thein that they 'are not small men, they are men
of big bellies like Oloittptip' (The Weekly Revlew March 30 1984 if). Forty years later
the populist deputy J M Kariuki had absolutely no need to disguise his wealth 111 order
to win credibil~ty wlth the citirens-the 'wananchi' (see Odinga 1992.63). Thus the
'politics of the belly', to use Bayart's phrase, is very much in the iinag~nation of
Kenyans and is notjust a fictive creation ofNgugi.
Ngugi's intervention lies in his insistence that the 'politics ofthe belly' ought to be
the object of ridicule rather than emulation. The belly which the rulers in particular
encode as a sign of success exposes the parasitic nature of the local comprador In a post-
colony. Thus far from confirming their authority, the grotesque image of rulers like
Oloitiptip, should serve to undennine the power of the iulers by turning them into
pitiable objects of ridicule. After all 'the body ~tself is the pr~ncipal locale of the idioms
and fantasies used in depicting power' (~bembe 1992:7).-1f~en~ans ~n thelr igrtorance
have associated 'the big belly' with power, then Ngugi is forcing them to debunk the
myth, and to real~se that the authority ofthe local rulers IS borro\ved
It 13, therefore, to the natute of the locitl comprador bourgeoiste that Ngugt
dtaws our attentlo11 by ustng the grotesque mode in his depiction of them Indeed
grotesque characters, marked as they are by bodily defic~encics or delormation, ~vould
seem to offer Ngrlgl a perfect means of figuring the qual~ties that have tended to
'
Tilt. T~P~~Ps 11 fZp~.il 1900. Nairobi, as quoted in Odinga (1967:3 10). Sce also Ngugi
(1 98 1 a:8L)) and his rcScrencc to Kenyalta's upl.aidingofKaggia.
char-acteTtse either the local comprador or the ruling el~te In the post-colon~al state in
Africa2 The use ofthe grotesque mode draws the readers' attention to the body as a slte
upon wh~ch power is contested If the Kenyan government had ~ntended to subdue
Ngugi's body, he turns the butt on them. 111 Detazned, he talks of his objective:
I would chcat them out of that last laugh by letting my imagination loose
over the kind of society this class, in nakedly treacherous alliance with
imperialist foreigners, were building in Kenya in total cynical disregard of
tlie wishes of over fourteen lnillioli Kenyans (Ngugi 198 1 a: 10).
Yet, the fill significance of the grotesque image in the text only makes sense when
linked to a couple of sub-narratives in Devil.
The first is derived fi-om Wariiiiga's nightmare. In the grotesque image of the
Devil that Wariinga sees, Ngugi seems to suggest a linear and continuing relationship
between the Devil (read colonialism) and the black elite (read colnprador bourgeoisie)
that takes over at independence. Ngugi further suggests that the desire ofthe comprador
class which rescues the devil, thereby introducing a new form of colonialis~n, is to
inherit the Devil's worst qualities. The second consists of three stories that Gatuiria
relates to his fellow passengers on their way to Illnorog in a nznturu. Common to all the
stories are the themes of avarice and conceit. The first story is about the peasant farmer
that was turned into a beast of burden by an ogre (Ngugi 1987:62). The second story is
about the black and beautiful girl who rejected all the men in her country and took to the
first young lnan from a foreign countly. The young foreigner turned out to be a maneating
ogre who tore off her 'limbs one by one and ate them' (Ngugi 1987:62). The third
and last story that Gatuiria relates is about an old man called Nding'uri who had a soul
that was richly endowed. He was well respected, hardworking and displayed neither
desire nor greed for other people's property until, one day, 'a strange pestilence attacked
tlie village' and destroyed all his possessions (Ngugi 1987:63). Nding'uri was forced to
turn to the evil spirits. 'At the entrance to the cave', we read, 'he was ]net by a spirit in
the shape ofan ogre'. We are further told that the ogre
had Lwo mouths. one on his forehead and tlie other at thc back ofllis llcad.
The one at the back oi'his head was covercd by his long hair. and it was only
visible wlie~i thc wind blew the hair aside (Ngugi 1987:61).
The thlust ofthenarrat~ve IS that Ndmg'ur~ surrenders hts soul to the ogle who demands
it 111 exchange for riches Ndmg'urt is tu~ned 'mto an eatel of human tlesh and a dl inker
of human blood' (Ngugi 1987 64) And m a typ~cal Bakht~nlan conceptlor1 of the
glotesque image ot the body-the
t evol t~ng, we read that
body as a site for defecation-both laughable and
This also resonates with Fanon's (1968: 120) characterisatioti of tliis class as decadent and
parasitic, uncreative and 'co~npletely canalized into activilies of tllc intet-medial-y type'.
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