David Diop's Africa

David Diop's "Africa" celebrates the typical love of the African for their motherland and the ancestors. The Africa the poet speaks of deals with proud warriors in Ancestral Savannahs; the Africa of whom his grandmother sings. It is not only with the present but also with the past. Not only in the remote past, but also in the near past represented by the grandmother. Thus the love is not something infected but transmitted in the blood and can never be evaporated till death. The greatest irony is that though he has never seen his ancestors, their blood flows in his veins and thereby he can feel their love for his country and their adoration of tradition. It is their black blood that irrigates the fields thereby enriching nature.

The poet attacks the world's theory that Africa does not possess a history. It is a kind of history that the colonizers refuse to acknowledge. It involves the blood of their sweat, the sweat of their work and the work of their slavery. It is not any slavery, but the slavery of the children of Africa. And thus Africa's back is bent in misery and humiliation preferring to break than bend. The back trembling with scars has its wounds afresh and raw. Never did the sentiments of the natives submit so indifferently to oppression of the colonizers. They are still pained by the experiences and continue to be so. The poet laments the fact that earlier while they worked under the mid-day of their own will, now the Africans were forced to do so. However, a ray of hope appears in the form of a grave voice. It may symbolize the ancestors or some African god. It ascertains to the impetuous son that the tree still stands there young and strong and is capable of spreading its branches and reaching out to new horizons.