AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD? POVERTY, DISABILITY AND DEPENDENCY DEMYSTIFIED: INTERROGATING THE SYSTEMATIC IMPOVERISHMENT, DISEMPOWERMENT AND PARALYSIS OF AFRICAN COMMUNITIES IN SELECTED FICTIONAL NARRATIVES ON EASTERN AND SOUTHERN AFRICA

Abstract

Using literary depictions of the African condition in the pre- and post-independence phases, the article examines what it views as the conundrum of the  "triplets of poverty, disability and dependency‟ associated with, and characterising most post-independence African communities and societies. These creative works are: Charles Mungoshi's Waiting for the Rain (1975); Lauretta Ngcobo's And they didn't Die (1999); and Ngugi wa Thiongo's Petals of Blood (1977), Devil on the Cross (1982), and Mashingaidze Gomo's A Fine Madness (2010) respectively. The article argues that unlocking and unbundling the sociology of underdevelopment that underpins the negation of African human worth would be key to the preferred solutions towards reducing and eradicating disability, poverty and dependency in Africa today, contradictions notwithstanding.