Ebrahim Hussein

Ebrahim Hussein
Born	1943 (age 80–81) Lindi, Tanganyika Territory
Occupation	Playwright, poet
Period	1967 - 1997
Genre	Swahili theatre
Notable works	Kinjeketile

Ebrahim Hussein (born 1943 in Lindi, Tanganyika Territory) is a Tanzanian playwright and poet. His first play, Kinjeketile (1969), written in Swahili, and based on the life of Kinjikitile Ngwale, a leader of the Maji Maji Rebellion, is considered "a landmark of Tanzanian theatre".

Hussein's work stands in a literary tradition expressed in the national language Swahili following the country's independence from the United Kingdom in 1961. Since his works, with the exception of Kinjeketile and another play, have not been translated, his work has not become well-known outside of East Africa.

Works and importance for Swahili theatre

Hussein was born in Lindi, a town on the Swahili coast on the Indian Ocean in 1943. He was educated at the Aga Khan Secondary School in Dar es Salaam and at the University of Eastern Africa's campus in the same city, where he studied French literature and theatre arts. Hussein's work stands in a theatrical tradition that was created after the country's independence from Great Britain in 1961. The decision for Swahili as the national and official language of Tanzania in 1964 created an independent literature, which took a middle way between the traditions of the Swahili-speaking peoples of the coast and Zanzibar and the conventions of the European theatre.

Starting in 1967, he wrote his first short plays, Wakati Ukuta (Time is a Wall) and Alikiona (Consequences). These early works focus on tensions between the old and new generations and the social tensions resulting from European colonialism. Although he accepted elements of the European notions of a "well-made play" in the tradition of Aristotle, like the picture-frame stage, he was also interested in traditional African theatrical forms and the expectations of the audience. Some of his early plays, like Alikiona, incorporate elements of kichekesho, which is a comical interlude found in the middle of many taarab performances. Other plays include Mashetani (1971), an overtly political play, Jogoo Kijijini (1976), an experiment in dramatic performance, and Arusi (1980), in which Hussein expresses disillusionment with the Tanzanian political theory of ujamaa. Hussein also wrote his poetry in free verse, a new poetical form for Swahili literature that was also read in the schools and universities of East Africa. His literary works written in a poetic and, at the same time, modern language became an ideal model for the socialist cultural policy of Tanzania, even if they contained ambiguous heroes, who sometimes doubt their actions.

In 1969, Hussein wrote Kinjeketile, based on the life of Kinjikitile Ngwale, a leading figure of the Maji Maji uprising during German colonial rule in East Africa. The play was directed by the German literary scholar Joachim Fiebach at the theatre of the University of Dar es Salaam and immediately became a model for the new East African theatre. Hussein himself translated Kinjeketile into English, and through the publication by Oxford University Press in Dar es Salaam, the play also became known abroad.

During the early 1970s, Hussein studied at the Humboldt University in East Berlin and wrote his PhD dissertation "On the development of theatre in East Africa". Starting with Kinjeketile, he employed elements of epic theatre as developed by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. In his later plays for a single actor Jogoo Kijini and Ngao ya Jadi, he used Swahili traditions of storytelling (hadithi). In 1975 Hussein began teaching theatre studies at the University of Daresalaam and temporarily directed their theatre group. Until his departure in 1986, he taught as a professor of theatre studies at this university. Since then, he has led a life without many contacts in his house in the district of Kariakoo.

Works

Plays

• Kinjeketile, 1969
• Michezo ya kuigiza, 1970
• Mashetani, 1971
• Jogoo Kijijini and Ngao ya Jadi, 1976
• Arusi, 1980
• Jambo la maana, 1982
• Kwenye ukingo wa Thim, English translation At the edge of Thim, 1988
• Ujamaa

Short plays

• Wakati Ukuta (Time is a Wall), 1967
• Alikiona (Consequences), 1969

Ngao ya Jadi

Hussein's play for one actor, Ngao ya Judi, tells the story of Sesota, a serpent, that terrorizes a village, so a young peasant is called upon to defeat Sesota. The peasant succeeds and the village rejoices. Over time, the evil the serpent brought grows again, causing the village to become more and more depraved. Eventually, Sesota returns, with no-one to challenge him.

This text is a retelling of a Swahili folk story in which Sesota is defeated by being trapped in a pot rather than killed and who eventually returns. In Hussein's version, Sesota represents colonialism that the "peasant" desperately tries to fight. Hussein speaks about how the remnants of colonialism still remain and that any amount of Western influence on African culture brings back that evil. Through this, the retelling also shows that there is no "good vs. evil" like in traditional stories, but that the world is rather morally grey. One significant moment is when the village is celebrating after Sesota's death; names of a variety of famous African writers and artists are listed. Here, Hussein seems to be criticizing his fellow artists, saying that their work only comes during moments of joy, rather than being used to combat oppression.

Reception

Not least because of his political statement in the context of the Maji-Maji uprising, Hussein's first play Kinjeketile became one of the standard Swahili texts in Tanzanian and Kenyan schools and was reprinted several times.

German literary scholar Joachim Fiebach directed a production of Kinjeketile and published a German translation in his anthology of African plays in 1974. He described Hussein’s style as a “dramaturgy that seems to merge or mix adopted European models of an intimate theatre with non-Aristotelic and completely unique techniques.”

In his study on Hussein's importance for Swahili theatre, the French scholar of African literature Alain Ricard wrote, "Ebrahim Hussein is the best known Swahili playwright, and Tanzania's most complex literary personality. Known first and foremost as a dramatist, he is also a theorist whose dissertation on the theatre in Tanzania remains the standard reference work. His plays are a corpus of theatrical material with great significance to an understanding of Tanzania's political and social development in relation to the Swahili/Islamic coastal culture, of which he is a part."

While Hussein focused on research at the Humboldt University in East Berlin for his PhD thesis from 1970 to 1973, the first scholarly study of his work, Drama and National Culture: a Marxist Study of Ebrahim Hussein, a PhD thesis was published in 1989 by the US-American literary scholar Robert M. Philipson. In his 1999 review of Alain Ricard's study on Hussein, Philipson wrote: “Ebrahim Hussein is a difficult case. After Wole Soyinka and Athol Fugard, he is the most interesting and talented dramatist that Africa has produced, but his name is rarely mentioned in European studies on African literature. [...] The reason for this is simple: Hussein writes in Swahili, and his dramatic work, with the exception of Kinjeketile, has not been translated into a Western language.”

Ebrahim Hussein Poetry Prize

The Ebrahim Hussein Poetry prize is an honour awarded annually since 2014 to the winner of the poetry contest under the same name. The contest was created by Safarani Seushi in line with the wish of the late Canadian filmmaker, Gerald Belkin (1940–2012). Belkin was in the process of creating this award, to be named after "his friend and renowned filmmaker and playwright, Professor Ebrahim Hussein", when he died. His goal in establishing the award and prize fund was to foster the careers of Swahili literary authors. The selected poems were published as Diwani ya tunzo ya ushairi ya Ebrahim Hussein (Anthology of Ebrahim Hussein Poetry Prize) in 2017.

Ebrahim Hussein Fellowship

The Ebrahim Hussein Endowment for research in African expressive cultures was established in the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2003, thanks to the generosity of Robert M. Philipson, an alumnus of the college (PhD, 1989). The college awards up to $7,500 each year to one or more full-time graduate students in there to carry out research on African expressive cultures and/or archives outside of the United States. Winners of the fellowship include Vincent Ogoti, a Kenyan playwright.

Further reading

• John Githongo (8 May 2023). "Prof. Ebrahim Hussein: Kiswahili, Poetry and Freedom - The Elephant". Retrieved 23 December 2024.
• S. O. Solanke. 2013. “Deploying Myths through Facts and Fictions in the Struggle for Tanzanians’ National Soul in Ebrahim N. Hussein’s Kinjeketile.” Venec 4 (1): 106–21.OCLC 8539661746
• Affiah, Uwem, und Patience George Eni. Drama and the Revolutionary Archetype: Ebrahim Hussein’s Kinjeketile and Wa Thiong’o And Mugo’s The Trial Of Dedan Kimathi. European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies 2.3 (2018).
• Mwaifuge, Eliah S. German Colonialism, Memory and Ebrahim Hussein’s Kinjeketile. 2014, (pdf)
• Kuloba, Agnes N. Translation inadequecies in the English version of Kinjeketile. Diss. University of Nairobi, 2013.
• Alamin M. Mazrui (2007), Swahili Beyond the Boundaries: Literature, Language, and Identity, Ohio University Press, pp. 34–35, ISBN 978-0-89680-252-0
• Martin Banham, Errol Hill, George Woodyard (4 August 1994), The Cambridge Guide to African and Caribbean Theatre, Cambridge University Press, pp. 115–116, ISBN 978-0-521-41139-4{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Lihamba, Amandina (1992). "Popular theatre in Africa". Voices from Africa (4): 53–64. OCLC 1248428484.
• Lihamba, Amandina (1985). Politics and theatre in Tanzania after the Arusha declaration, 1967–1984 (Thesis). Leeds. OCLC 1184537252.
• Mlama, Penina Muhando (1985). Tanzania's cultural policy and its implications for the contribution of the arts to socialist development. Dar es Salaam: Utafiti. OCLC 61749373.

External links

• Ebrahim Hussein in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

• Kinjeketile – English translation and analysis