The Greedy Barbarian: Book review

By Dr. Anna Grace Awilli

Kakwenza Rukirabashaija has written a fantastic book in The Greedy Barbarian; a work of political fiction that was ferreted out of the literary underground by agents of the political henchmen it offended. It was taken in such ill-humor that, following its publication, Kakwenza was arrested, detained and tortured –the blood curdling account of which is the subject of his second book: Banana republic: Where writing is treasonous. He has paid a very heavy price for both books. Both have also been gifts that keep on giving- in both directions: his fans on one end buying and making recommendations, and his detractors on the other end, well, detracting.

It is easy to understand why the book caused the storm that it did. The Greedy Barbarian is salacious, hilarious and fantastic. The small 178-page book, whose second edition is published by Kitara Nation and edited by Renown Ugandan writer and poet Kagayi Ngobi, is very much in appearance what its author is in form- superficially harmless but unsettlingly unrestrained. The cover illustration is incisive and hilarious- as it should be, especially because one of Uganda’s best cartoonists Atukwasize Chris Ogon made it.

In writing the story, Kakwenza espouses the spirit of the irreverent village drunkard who, unencumbered by the limitations of hypocritical civility and self-awareness, holds himself and takes aimless piss at everything and everyone, that fortunately and unfortunately land with necessary and deserving accuracy. And just like the irreverent village drunkard, he makes embarrassing revelations. In many parts, the tone of the book comes across as flippant; even lackadaisical. Yet Kakwenza is anything but a drunkard and much less lackadaisical. The man himself has the reputation of being a rather fastidious feeder: he is a known vegetarian- which in Uganda, his country of origin, is a kind of elitist stance. It is thus inconceivable that a man of Kakwenza’s intelligence and wit is capable of taking aimless piss. One will quickly discern that this is not a drunkard at all but one feigning drunkenness to tell a story that absolutely must be told.

It is an age-old strategy that replays itself in literary characters over and over. For example in the classic, To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, the specific use of drunkenness as a ruse to ensure safety is observed in the character of Dolphus Raymond. Mr. Raymond, a cultural renegade of his time, lives on the outskirts of Maycomb town, where the story is set, with his black girlfriend with whom he has several biracial children. Whenever he comes into Maycomb, he pretends to be drunk. He in fact does not drink alcohol, but Coca-cola out of a bag which he pretends is whiskey to give people a reason which makes sense to them as to why he would live the way he does: choosing to live and have children with a black woman. It is how he survives; the community dismisses him as a drunkard and leaves him alone.

To write a book like The Greedy Barbarian, one has to feign drunkenness to let it pass. Its insinuations are simply too uncomfortable and too deeply disturbing to present them as they are. This, Kakwenza does exceptionally well. In what is perhaps his most powerful exhibition of writing excellence, Kakwenza infuses magical realism in the storytelling in way that demands he is paid attention as a writer worth his salt. He sets no line between the magical and the real or between the good and the bad. All the characters are at once immoral, amoral and moral. Kagurutsi, the only one who leans towards morality is a shape-shifting demi-god. Yet towards the end of the story, not even his spiritual powers save him from the indignity of abject poverty. The rest of the characters struggle under the plague of being human.

Kakwenza points to, with the same “oh-by-the-way” absentmindedness the inability of ordinary humans to execute life with the fine-ness of gods. He takes this further by highlighting the even deeper inability of the main character, Kayibanda, to rescue himself from the flaws of his origins. He seems to suggest that the faults that we see in Kayibanda were a predestination which were wrought in his physical and spiritual DNA and from which he cannot extricate himself. Not even interaction with his gregarious Uncle Bamwine or his kind, semi-god step-father Kagurutsi could save him. Kayibanda can simply be nothing except his deeply flawed self. This flawed nature apparently actively rejects any form of redemption and attracts its kind in the woman he eventually marries. Kayibanda is seemingly so averse to purity that he kills it when it presents itself in the form of kamagoba, his first wife. He eventually has children with the less-than-desirable and equally irredeemably flawed Kembaga by whom he concentrates this flaw in his children.

The Greedy Barbarian, as one reads it and puts the pieces together, is a clarifying illumination that initially grows on you slowly, rising from the back of the head like a forgotten ember in the fireplace, then suddenly cackles to life when re-considered with a handful of twigs- present day parallels. For example, the recurrent theme of an incorrigible familial, genetic and spiritual character flaw is only the more glaring, when considered with parallels from the present day, such as the embarrassing incompetence with which certain so-called generals waddle like ducks over diplomatic issues. It is almost as if they were inherently incapable, until you read The Greedy Barbarian and discover that they are, in fact, inherently incapable.

The roundedness of their physical edges then become a forewarning to their dulled wits that, lacking sharpness but bearing incredulous arrogance, confer upon their possessor the ill-luck of being both a bumbling bloke and a stumbling block. Like Kayibanda before them, this is a thing from which they cannot rescue themselves and will probably pass onto their own off-spring. There simply is no solution other than to uproot them- a thing that happens at the end of the book, finally setting the Kalengans free.

Many Ugandans will be familiar with the third part of the book as the story enters the modern years. This is where the book takes on its greater effect when one considers that, based on the comparable factual parallels of this latter third, the preceding two parts must also be true. The implications are precarious. Even more precarious is the allusion that Kayibanda is inherently incompetent and his only qualifications for the presidency are the Bachwezi powers that he possesses. In the end, one is left wondering if the Bachwezi powers that Kakwenza so leisurely throws about are fact or sarcastic jibes. Either way, the truth is terrifying- a semi-human president is just as concerning as a charlatan one and the inability to know for sure which one the Kalengans are dealing with is disorienting.

The Greedy Barbarian establishes Kakwenza as being not only a great writer, but also a skilled conversationalist and a man of strategy in tune with the zeitgeist- the spirit of the times. Now in exile in Germany, Kakwenza Rukirabashaija has sustained global interest for an unprecedented length of time for a young writer. For a man who it seems torture is his muse, he is lending credence to the power of literary meritocracy; a thing that, as history and precedence have demonstrated, outlasts even the demi-gods of our human history; both the metaphorical and the literal ones.

Regards,

Anna Grace.