Short Rant on Naipaul's Africa

One of the most disturbing aspects of V.S. Naipaul's high esteem is the likelihood of casual readers interpreting his travel writing or fiction on Africa as possessing the necessary depth to explain the problems facing postcolonial Africa. Since Naipaul has traveled to and Africa since the 1960s, and traveled throughout the continent, I cannot dispute his experiences, but his Conradian image of Africa is arguably worse than Conrad. Conrad’s famous novella, at least, could possibly be read as an anti-imperialist text. Instead, Naipaul, as Walcott once said, writes what the Western powers want to read in true postcolonial mandarin fashion. This is not to say that postcolonial Africa (or anywhere else, really) did not face several internal contradictions or problems not entirely reducible to imperialism, but Naipaul’s fiction and nonfiction often rearranges complex historical and political developments in such a way to fit his rather dismal, fundamentally undemocratic view of the world, best seen in A Bend In the River.

As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illustrates in “Americanah” some Americans and Europeans who read Naipaul's writings set in Africa may interpret Naipaul's ahistorical reduction of ethnic and political conflict in African countries like Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo as legitimate explanations for modern developments and conflicts. In short, under colonial rule, the endless warfare of the 'warrior tribes' against the weak were abated, but as soon as colonial rule ended, warfare resumed. This kind of ahistorical reading of Africa, which appears in Naipaul's "In a Free State" and inspired by travels to East Africa and the Congo, is pervasive in Naipaul’s fear of the ubiquitous bush and its African villagers, who, despite being rendered as beyond the pale of history, at least know who they are. In his own characteristically way, Naipaul will criticize white colonials and their fantasy of Africa, but the “real” Africa is nothing more than bush gradually reconquering the colonial towns, African tribes against other tribes. While some may interpret his Africa fiction as positing an even more dystopic worldview than only rehashing the “benighted Dark Continent” trope, a disturbing and seemingly casual racism also makes it hard to take him seriously. 

For anyone really interested in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, or, especially, the Congo, the setting of Naipaul’s most famous work, Mahmood Mamdani does a much better job explaining what really transpired in, Rwanda, for example, which led to the genocide. The very role of colonialism itself in structuring and restructuring ethnic difference is not present in Naipaul’s fiction, save his last two novels, which are based on Mozambique. There, I’ve said my piece and established, I hope, some reasons why Naipaul’s Africa is so “problematic.”