Title: The Other Crucifix
Author: Benjamin Kwakye
ISBN: 978-0-9562401-2-5
Publisher:Ayebia Clarke
The Quarrel of Brothers
LS Mensah explores Kwakye's latest novel, The Other Crucifix
Set in the 1960s Benjamin Kwakye's third novel The Other Crucifix interrogates the Black immigrant experience from more than one point of view. It is especially significant that the sixties were a tumultuous decade in both Ghana and America. In Ghana our protagonist Jojo Badu's country of origin and the first Black African state to attain independence, the euphoria and headiness were gradually replaced by dissatisfaction with Kwame Nkrumah’s increasingly autocratic government, resulting in several attempts on his life. Unsurprisingly Nkrumah’s response was harsh, and in the ensuing crackdown, many opponents and critics were imprisoned, others killed, while resisting arrest (as the character Uncle Kusi), Still others, like J B Danquah, died in prison. Kwame Nkrumah himself was finally overthrown in a February 1966 coup. In America where Jojo first travels to study and eventually decides to stay, the Civil Rights Movement, with its sit-ins and marches, leaders like Martin Luther King articulated the hopes and dreams of millions of Black Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, was an attempt to correct the systemic discrimination against America’s Black population. Eventually first Malcolm X and then Martin Luther King (who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts), were both assassinated.
Against this background of blacks from different parts of the world finding their voice, discovering, as George Harris, that dreams do not always come true, at least not in the way one may have expected, we witness our protagonist on his own journey of self discovery, along which way he is also to be tested. He doesn't always rise to the challenge, and sometimes has to be prodded to a decision, but by the novel’s end, he emerges as a person more attuned to political realities, a man who makes his own decisions.
Inset within the larger narrative often in the form of flashbacks, we come across characters, who like Jojo Badu, also struggle to negotiate the troubled paths of identity and alienation. Where is home, the novel asks of us? Are we bound by our race to a particular geographical space? Is the Black African in the West expected to assume the rage and anger of the Diaspora Black?
Just as Jojo has to come to terms with living in America, so does the African American who makes a decision to return to Africa, the continent he regards as his original home. George Harris, whose daughter Fiona eventually marries Jojo had, in answer to Nkrumah's call, relocated to Ghana, only to find that people in Ghana regarded him as a foreigner, and to fight this isolation, was forced to seek the companionship of other Black Americans who had also made the same journey, “each expecting a home, each disappointed in his or her own way, each reckoning one way or the other with the reality that was not the dream.” Harris later returns to America with a new wife and a baby on the way.
On a university campus in America Jojo is subjected to different pressures. Dwayne Dray, an African American student, first reproaches him mildly him a day after the orientation for not stopping by the Black Students' desk. He again accosts Jojo for giving an interview to The University Review. Dwayne also expresses his dissatisfaction when Jojo starts dating Norah Turner, a white American girl. Dwayne's concern for Jojo, misplaced or not, points to the unease expressed by some when relationships cross the racial divide. Curiously enough Dwayne does not express the same concern over Jojo's friendship with his room mate Ed. It is for the Black woman that Dwayne raises these objections: “You're insulting every black woman on campus. You hear me? You're saying they're not good enough for you. You're telling your own mother, your own sisters, that they ain't worth what a white woman's worth.” This was after Dwayne had failed to convince him that for a white woman he is only a sex object.
Two events in the book illustrate, in interesting ways, Jojo Badu’s character development. The first was the protest organised by the International Students Association, demanding that the name of the Students’ House be changed from Brewer House to Fidel Castro House because Charles Brewer, the man after which the building was named, was a slave owner. The students take a page out of the Ku Klux Klan notebook, set up and burn a black cross in the yard of the University president's residence. William Redford the International Student's Advisor, whose main ambition was to become Dean of Students, pressured Jojo (who by the way, took no part in the confrontation with the University president) to negotiate a different solution. Both Redford and the president threaten Jojo with the potential loss of the financial support he receives from the University, if he doesn't persuade the International Student body to apologise. Yannis then student leader is forced to give up his position to Jojo, who becomes the new head of the ISA, though briefly.
A second demonstration takes place in The Law School where Jojo, together with his three friends, Dwayne, Ed and John enrol after graduating from The University. In a lecture, the students are roused by Walter Sithole, an anti apartheid activist to pressure the school to divest from then Apartheid South Africa. The Group of Four, end up forcing their way into the Dean’s office, and in the confrontation which ensues, Jojo assaults the Dean. By the time this second situation is resolved, Professor Janet O’Grady who defends the four friends loses her tenure.
By the novel’s end, we find out that skin colour is the other crucifix that the black person bears, and he may not necessarily know this until he leaves home, One does not however need to leave home to find this out. In his own land, the Black South African is forced to live as a second class citizen, in his own land. The Black African, born in Africa but who travels to the West for whatever reason, suddenly realises that he too has to deal with the consequences of his skin colour. But Blacks people do not need to bear this burden alone, for beside Jojo and Dwayne were Ed, our protagonist’s former room mate and John, who used to write for The University Review, who by the way, never manages to hang his unicorn straight. Perhaps the most painful experience of all is that endured by the Black American, who is not always given a warm reception if, like George Harris, he should ever desire to return to Africa. It is not an easy topic for discussion even among blacks and it takes a character to be shorn of his familiar surroundings to acknowledge this. By experiencing Jojo's loneliness in America, our eyes are opened to Harris' in Ghana. Finally this condition is not limited to the man on the street. After the 1966 coup, President Kwame Nkrumah was never to set foot in his Ghana ever again. He died in exile in 1972, and his body returned and reburied in Ghana years later. The grand strategist of the Pan African ideal was to himself suffer the afflction of exile. The diasporic conditions and its attendant disruptions, Kwakye's book says, is the great leveller. Again ''Travel and See''
Have a good read.
