Fractured Kinships: Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora

Abstract

In an impassioned public lecture at the University of Ghana in late 2016, the Barbadian history scholar and Vice-Chancellor of the University of The West Indies, Hilary Beckles, just barely fell short of accusing Africans on the continent of selling out their kin in the diaspora. He was not referring to the active participation of Africans on the continent in the enslavement of those taken away in slave ships, but in their inactive and sometimes opposing stance to their current demands for reparation. Sitting in the audience, for the very first time in my life, a realization of how very little I personally knew or cared about the cause of Africans in the diaspora, especially as regards their demands for reparations, dawned on me. I also understood for the first time that there is still a deep pain felt by the descendants of Africans forcefully removed from their homes in Africa to strange new lands as slaves. A pain perhaps not shared by contemporary Africans on the continent, despite they also having suffered the indignation of the slave trade and its later twin devil of colonialism. There appears to be a disconnect, or what I am choosing to call a fracture of kinship between Africans on the continent those in the Diaspora. In this paper, I shall examine some representations of this fractured kinship in African literature, particularly in a selection of plays, by Africans both on the continent and in the Diaspora. In examining these texts, it is hoped that the nature and scope of this fracture and possible remedies may be unearthed.