TITLE: Inheritance
AUTHOR: Daid Mulwa
PUBLISHER: Longhorn Publishers
REVIEWER: Thomas King Oloo
African countries have experienced a protracted period of foreign dominance even when it is evident that they can rely on themselves. Many a wise man has said that we were better off with colonisers controlling us than we are with self-rule.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Inheritance is based in Kutula colony in its earliest years; particularly during the dying years of colonisation. King Kutula prides himself in the fact that Africa may be poor but it is a happy kingdom that knows nothing like suffering. Suffering, the king postulates; is a foreign idea that is finding relevance in Kutula. The text has a direct relevance with Kenya of the 1950s. The Kenya of Sir Evelyne Barring as Governor and the likes of Jomo Kenyatta, Oginga Odinga, Martin Shikuku et al, striving to gain control over the country.
Drama begins to take shape when Lacuna Kasoo takes over as leader of the people. The colonisers settle on Lacuna after studying him and it is laughable how he is equated to Nero and Calligula all wrapped into one.
Education has been weaponised to control the mind of the native. The native is to be lost in the libraries, buried deep trying to find knowledge that has evaded even the best minds. So is the western religion that bends the mind of the native to accommodate a lot of the atrocities perpetrated by the white men.
The text harnesses creativity, tapping into the rich background of a people, so deeply moved by issues of leadership, to a point where any gathering must always be guided by conversations of leadership-good or bad. Lacuna Kasoo ascends the throne at a time his people crave for a leadership fashioned in the manner his father envisioned. However, he becomes the very serpent the people never imagined. Mulwa molds the image of an African Nero, the very choice of the White man; a leader so engrossed in amassing wealth so much so that he is lost in it the same way he is drunk with power.
Lulu, Tamima’s daughter is at pain, she has to drop out of school since education has become so expensive in Kutula. Education ought to be what every learner gets in the most painless way yet here, it is a commodity far too expensive.
Throughout the text, satire has taken center-stage in opening the window through which we see the institution of leadership, responsible adulthood, poverty, elections, corruption among many issues in the society.
Bengo lives in constant fear, his brother has to constantly check if the leader’s men are following him. It becomes a great concern when one Robert Rollerstone expresses shock that the leader wants ammunition to maim and kill his people. The text examines premise for business with Africans, the imbalanced nature of the business environment and the sad reality that Africa has not a single thing to offer the rest of the world.
The closing pages of the book give a beautiful summation that is to a greater extent a resolution for the problems that have gored the mind of the reader down the journey of Inheritance. It is the young, through Sangoi, that give the country a sensible solution. It is the academicians, in the person of Sangoi, that give the people hope. It is women, through the substantive example of Sangoi, that lead the people to a meaningful solution. The money advanced to the leaders and not used beyond the walls of the leaders’ palaces will be repaid by the leaders themselves. The writer lends Sangoi his opinion on the issues at hand causing her to make elaborate proposals on foreign debts among African countries, culture and even Neo-colonisation.
Mulwa teaches us that we can have a revolution that is completely devoid of bloodshed. We can correct our mistakes as a people without feuding. It is through Sangoi’s call for peace that we read logic; the fact that it is a woman that gives it the weight that twenty first century ideologies ought to fashion themselves along.
Thomas Babs Oloo is an instructor in literature in English working with young boys and girls.