{UAH} What they won’t say about Oulanya
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By Amos Kasibante
What they won't say about Oulanya
Can Themba was a black South African teacher, journalist and story writer who wrote for the Drum magazine in the 1960s. His short and powerful stories are preserved in a book entitled, "The Suit", an enlarged edition of "The Will To Die".
The stories written in the context of the oppression, discrimination and humiliation of Apartheid are of the quality of those of famous earlier African novelists such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Camara Laye, Peter Abrahams, Ezekiel (Eskia) Mphahlele or William (Bloke) Modisane.
Themba died in Manzini (Eswatini) in 1967 aged only 43 years. In his eulogy, the writer, Lewis Nkosi, said of Themba: "We mourn what might have been".
He observes that Themba was a writer of genius, one of the best black minds South Africa had produced. He was a master of the English language and his capacity to write about the lives, tribulations and humanity of ordinary people oppressed by the system was phenomenal. He notes that the daily strain took a toll on his life, making him disillusioned and taking to the bottle. It might have accounted for his early death.
Lewis Nkosi mentions other black writers whose death was untimely even when they lived outside South Africa. Nat Nakasa, for example, committed suicide in New York(USA).
The death of Jacob L'Okori Oulanya, former classmate to some of us, brought back memories of Can Themba whose book of stories I first read in 1983 and of Lewis Nkosi's eulogy. "We mourn what might have been".
These words could be said of Oulanya today. But they could also have been said of him 30 years ago when, as Speaker of Makerere students' Guild, he had succumbed to the gunshot wound he sustained when the police shot him during a student's' peaceful demonstration following the NRM government's scrapping of BOOM. Two other students did not survive.
This detail will most probably not be mentioned in the various eulogies and tributes for Oulanya. But given what Oulanya then went on to achieve - as we mourn him, we should also, like Lewis Nkosi did, mourn "what would have been", for those whose lives have been cut short, not necessarily by cancer or other fatal disease, but of those killed by the security forces.
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-- What they won't say about Oulanya
Can Themba was a black South African teacher, journalist and story writer who wrote for the Drum magazine in the 1960s. His short and powerful stories are preserved in a book entitled, "The Suit", an enlarged edition of "The Will To Die".
The stories written in the context of the oppression, discrimination and humiliation of Apartheid are of the quality of those of famous earlier African novelists such as Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Camara Laye, Peter Abrahams, Ezekiel (Eskia) Mphahlele or William (Bloke) Modisane.
Themba died in Manzini (Eswatini) in 1967 aged only 43 years. In his eulogy, the writer, Lewis Nkosi, said of Themba: "We mourn what might have been".
He observes that Themba was a writer of genius, one of the best black minds South Africa had produced. He was a master of the English language and his capacity to write about the lives, tribulations and humanity of ordinary people oppressed by the system was phenomenal. He notes that the daily strain took a toll on his life, making him disillusioned and taking to the bottle. It might have accounted for his early death.
Lewis Nkosi mentions other black writers whose death was untimely even when they lived outside South Africa. Nat Nakasa, for example, committed suicide in New York(USA).
The death of Jacob L'Okori Oulanya, former classmate to some of us, brought back memories of Can Themba whose book of stories I first read in 1983 and of Lewis Nkosi's eulogy. "We mourn what might have been".
These words could be said of Oulanya today. But they could also have been said of him 30 years ago when, as Speaker of Makerere students' Guild, he had succumbed to the gunshot wound he sustained when the police shot him during a student's' peaceful demonstration following the NRM government's scrapping of BOOM. Two other students did not survive.
This detail will most probably not be mentioned in the various eulogies and tributes for Oulanya. But given what Oulanya then went on to achieve - as we mourn him, we should also, like Lewis Nkosi did, mourn "what would have been", for those whose lives have been cut short, not necessarily by cancer or other fatal disease, but of those killed by the security forces.
"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"
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