Black Hate in Southern Africa

The Kwerekwere Testament: The Complete Chronicles by Kenneth Chukwuka Madiebo; ArtRelated, Surulere, Lagos, Nigeria; 2011; 401 (pp)   

Let’s just start with a very fundamental definition. “Kwerekwere” is the derogatory term that black South Africans and indeed sundry black Southern Africans use when referring to unwanted foreign blacks especially Nigerians.

            The Kwerekwere Testament: The Complete Chronicles is autobiography-disguised-as-fiction. Its author Kenneth Chukwuka Madiebo is the son of Major-General Alexander Madiebo (rtd), the Nigerian military’s first Artillery Commander and Biafran Army Commander who authored the pivotal book The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafra War. It’s crucial to get the pedigree of the author especially as he earned his degree in veterinary medicine in Nigeria before venturing into Swaziland to sell clothes only to end up in Southern Africa for all of thirteen-and-a-half years! He lays it all bare at the end of the book with these words: “I should know all this, because I was a kwerekwere for thirteen-and-a-half years.”

            In the prologue, it is explained that another alias for a foreign unwanted person other than Kwerekwere is “Ngangawane” but both terms translate to insults such as white South Africans calling the blacks “Kaffir”, or whites generally addressing blacks as “Niggers”. The darker the person’s skin is the worse kwerekwere he becomes such that “even bona fide black South Africans especially from the Venda and Pedi tribes, have been arrested for being too black, with the immigration officials labeling them Zimbabweans.” The xenophobia in South Africa is such that Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka was in 2005 denied entry at South Africa’s Airport for eight hours until Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel had to intervene.

            The protagonist of The Kwerekwere Testament Orakwe flies into Swaziland at noon on December 13, 1994 to sell Nigerian traditional attires in the company of his friend Tony Okereke who had snared him into the profitability of the trade. Tony’s contact in Swaziland, the Tanzanian Mohammed, who had earlier said he would pay cash for the goods ducks out of the deal thus leaving the duo stranded. In his thatch mud habitation in rustic Swaziland a distraught Orakwe ruminates on what his dad had told him: “This is a senseless move you are about to make, son.” He recalls also how his father had advised him back in Nigeria not to undertake an Alsatian puppies’ business that doomed him to bankruptcy. Actually he had in 1993 secured provisional employment in the Drug Enforcement Agency of Nigeria as a dog veterinarian only to be denied and kicked out unceremoniously. It is against this background of graduate unemployment that exporting traditional attires and even snake skins to Swaziland becomes a veritable lure.

            Orakwe resorts to basically hawking the wares with his companion Tony when no big-time buyer could step forward. He desperately had to make a phone call to his Swazi in-laws who had only recently been in his Nigerian hometown of Awka to see their daughter married to his cousin, but no dice was forthcoming. Now trapped and knowing that his plans to be back in Nigeria for the December 1994 celebrations is at best unreasonable, Orakwe decides to survive on the brink with shady characters like Saul Slave-Trade who is involved in human trafficking of the sex trade variety. Orakwe gets the task of travelling into Mozambique to ferry back the prostitute Patricia who had some immigration problems, but comes back empty-handed and unrewarded as the girl Patricia had somehow found her way into Swaziland.

            He meets up with 30-year-old Ndubuisi Akunwata who sold off his two restaurants and transport buses in Aba for the journey to South Africa. Ndubuisi’s friend, Okoroafor Freedom, in South Africa to whose family in Nigeria he had paid $1000 reduces the man to a slave before kicking him out in the cold, but the man from Aba had managed to pilfer his master’s $5,000 with which he runs to Swaziland and back to Aba. Orakwe becomes exposed to the mules on the drug runs to Brazil and Europe such as Chima who gets jailed in England and later in Columbia.

             Orakwe fortuitously makes contact with his classmate Mike Dagogo who had graduated at the top of the class but is now a big Johannesburg baron who advises that he should immediately cross over to South Africa. The crossing to South Africa is done by Osaze “Swaz”, past the dangerous pass at Ermelo and onto Johannesburg. The beauty of the white cities does not hide the ugliness of the black shanties even as Orakwe gets a heroic welcome from Mike Dagogo only to soon learn that everything for the kwerekwere comes down to survival of the fittest on “The Streets”. It’s instructive to note that his lecturer “Dr. Azubuike, who has PhD in veterinary pharmacology from the University of the South-East, sells pinches of cocaine in Berea.”

            Mike Dagogo organizes his procurement of the paper to move around South Africa atop which is printed “Temporary Permit to Prohibited Person”, thanks to Section 42 of the United Nations. His mentor Mike has a shouting match with the white receptionist of their lodgings, Melanie Kruger, over arrears of rent, and she invites the police bursting in on the Nigerians at 4AM. After a thorough search no cocaine is found. Then the Nigerians eventually get thrown out of the 905 Apartment. Mike who earlier would not reduce his bosom classmate Orakwe to hustling drugs on “The Streets” now declares that he is “broke too” such that everybody has to find ways to survive.

            Orakwe goes back to Swaziland when his old friend Tony informs him that a surefire job for a veterinary doctor is there for the taking. The job does not manifest and he tries out the business of the Croydon Diamonds. He does eventually go back to South Africa where he is nearly beaten to death by racist white cops at Jan Visser Square where he had gone to save his acquaintance Romanus. He is charged with dealing in drugs which becomes reduced to illegal possession and, finally, bribery. He is granted bail for 3,000 Rands. He is reduced to starting literally afresh. He then learns that his friend who made him to come South in the first place, Tony Okereke, had got lucky by being handed cocaine sent through a courier company.

            Orakwe makes much money through the forging of documents. In short, he becomes the most artful forger in the land. He indulges in 419 letter-writing, duping the South Korean businessmen Kwon and Kim in league with the tag team of Oga-Yawe and Benita who would eventually cheat him out of the deal. Ogo-Yawe then travels to Nigeria to marry Benita on Easter weekend of 2001, then the couple would travel to Dublin then London only to return to South Africa, broke.

            In the bid to make something of his life after all, Orakwe abandons “The Streets” for admission into the prestigious College of Medicine of the University of the West for a Master’s Degree in Public Health. His troubles do not end as he tangles up with the racist Professor “Asbestos Killer”. The racists attempt to make him not to graduate by not giving him a supervisor. He writes a protest letter to the black vice-chancellor and all hell is let loose. He then graduates in June 2007.

            A remarkable incident in The Kwerekwere Testament is when Orakwe runs into his friend Obi Obiora leading others in the initiation rituals of the Inagba cult where a baby is killed, his heart eaten and he is pounded on a pot with pestles. Orakwe refuses to be a part of it all and ends up killing Obiora with the pestle in self-defence.

            After the killing, Orakwe goes to Durban to stay with his girlfriend Nosipho and then travels to Johannesburg Airport for the travel back to Nigeria with only 20 Rands in his pocket. He is nearly prevented at the airport from travelling back on account of his “cack” Study Permit extension. His vigorous protests attract attention until he is allowed to travel at the very final boarding announcement. Orakwe gets picked up at the Lagos airport by his brother Ugonna, the wife Ifeoma and the human rights lawyer Ekundayo in a Toyota Prado 4x4.

            In The Kwerekwere Testament: The Complete Chronicles Kenneth Chukwuka Madiebo has done a great and courageous duty to the unsaid truths beneath our existence. The authorities and the establishment may not like to hear this testament, but it remains a bulwark for the march of civilization. South Africa needs to change its ways. No nation in history has ever made it through insularity and exclusion. Here is a grand historical document that needs to travel.

            However, there are niggling editing errors in regard to punctuation and quotation marks, capitals, and the spelling of names like Mohammed as “Mohamed” in some places etc. All these can of course be tidied up in the next edition.

            All these do not detract from the fact that Kenneth Chukwuka Madiebo poured it all out straight from the heart. It is through such a conviction that the course of history is changed. May his tribe increase!