Black Panther Party of Northern California - Freedom Archives

DRUM - Contint.ed BLACK POW~t : .~ PAGE 11
has become a ~-amil ar'experience to . to shrink f~`om the bewil.caei.'pd
watch society crush the writer un- ,tare of the South African, knowing
der . a load o~ guilt for his darixlg that he, the supposed2y .free mind
outlook " apax~.~: ~ .' ."rom and' independent who .once symba''l zed a lgophole for
rf the .mass ~c:_rc~ction . 'TYie~'~evolu- tf~e ,dead end of the South . African
tionary mood in society is a, par- d~,lemma, has himself become the
Licularly potE~n~t tyrant in this re- Creature of despair . The change in
::pect and s~.nce the writer is, at circumstances is quite direct . The
'': :ze . very lea~t, sensitive to mood, background begins at the united op--
', e respects ~oho demand of the mo- posit on . of the colonized to the
:~1ent and effects his definition as external tyrant . Victory, of,sorts .,
a writer by an act of choice .t And ,,came and the writer submitted hi. :-~
Ln the mode :.n African state espe- i.ntegrity to the monolithic stxecs~-
:~ially, the position of the writer
?gas been such that he is in fact
"~:hnn very Pro~~ of state machiner~r .
".°dependence in every instance had
: .Lent an emergency pooling of every
:~.ental resource . This writer must,
:or the mom ant at least (he per-
:~uades himself), postpone that ua~ique
reflection on experience and
"events which is wha~ : makes a writer
-and constitute himself into a
7aart of the machine ,~y that will ac-
~~ually shape events . Let this im-
??ulse be clearly undexstood and
valued for itself ; the Black
~~riter found that he could not deny
"ais society ; he could however, tem-
;;~oraLily at least, deny himself .
.-~o therefore too, his place in the
l~ew state -as a privileged person,
personallq placed above the effects
cf the ,narrow~~wis}on which usually
accompanies the 5:~patience of new
rations . He, the special eye and
r?ar, the special knowledge and re-
~pdnse, lost eve's his recreative
consciousness, wk~ieh, from time to
time, left active and alert in his
creative'"work, mig :Zt have demanded
a reexamination o .f his own position
.
If he has not al :~:eady arxived at
- .his discovery, the writer from
~;ast or freest A:~rican states is coming
closer to the terrible understanding
that it is not his South
~~frican comrade who is the creature
of compassion . Already he has begun
' .
,,es of the time . For this any man-
~ifesto deemed valid, any ,-ism cou_~~;i
~be embraced with a clean cor_sc~eet ;cc> .-
.With few execptions the writer di-
." rected his energies to enshr n :an -.
victory, to reaffirming his ident~.ficatian
with the aspixations ,~`
nationalism and the stabili~ats.o~
of .society . ;
The third stage, the st:~ge at
,which we find ourselves .naw, is the
stage of disillusionment, and it is
this which . prompts an honest exam .motion
. of what has been the fail,ure
of the African writer, as a
writex . , And this is note o say
that if the Black writer` ~hac~ tru
ly responded to the political mw
, ; agx~ssive national consciousnes> .
Reality, the . ever-present fe;rtiie