Book Review: What God Has Put Asunder by Victor Epie Ngome
(Spears Books, 2021, 80 pp. Paperback $18.00. ISBN 978-1942876809)
Reviewer: Peter Wuteh Vakunta, Ph.D.
Ngome’s fictional work titled What God Has Put Asunder is a parody of a contemporary postcolonial African country, perhaps the Republic of Cameroon. Set against the backdrop of conflictual co-existence within the confines of an orphanage, this skillfully crafted drama takes the reader down memory lane. Ngome conveys his vision of postcoloniality and its vestiges throughout the play by means of two compatriots, namely Reverend Gordon, rector of the orphanage and Sister Sabeth who serves as Gordon’s assistant. These individuals run the orphanage according to their whims and caprices to the utter detriment of inmates.
The play eggs the reader onto drawing some significant parallels between the messy governance of the orphanage under the aegis of Reverend Gordon and Sister Sabeth on the one hand, and the murky political status quo in the post-colonial country on the other hand. What God Has Put Asunder thrives on the literary technique of parallelism, a trope that enables the playwright to underscore the irksome theme of contradistinction between people who belong in oppositional camps. The world inhabited by the likes of Weka and her children, and Emeka is characterized by poverty and hardship. This world is the antithesis of the terrestrial paradise in which Reverend Gordon, Sister Sabeth, Garba, Sani, Kinge and Fatou cohabitate.
From the onset, the playwright portrays Weka as a depressed character: “I am sorry Sister Sabeth. I could hardly sleep all night. Just tossing and turning until the small hours of this morning…I don’t know, Sister. I just felt so low all night. As if something really depressing has just happened or was about to happen.” (p.1) This portrait serves as a prelude to the matrimonial hurdles to which Weka shall be subjected in the course of the narrative. Ngome uses the Weka-Sabeth rapport to rein in on the colluding role played by Christianity in the so-called European civilizing mission to Africa. In the face of Weka’s psychological torments, Sister Sabeth finds religion to be an efficacious antidote: “You remembered to pray at least, I trust?” Weka’s swift response debunks the religious myth: “Of course, yes. Many times. But it did not help.”(p.2). It is tempting to read into this dialogue Ngome’s attempt to portray religion as an opium of the colonized peoples of Africa. Weka’s response sheds ample light on the disillusionment that characterizes the thought patterns of some Africans who have rejected religion as a panacea to their ailments.
Ngome seems to have written What God Has Put Asunder as a treatise on the nefarious role played by ethnocentrism in sustaining the status quo in Africa as seen in the following dialogue between Weka and Sister Sabeth:
Weka: “I know. But this fellow comes from the Njanga clan as well…. I am Njanga, yes, but that does not make him my…”
Sister Sabeth: “Well, I thought that in Africa everybody is everybody’s cousin, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, father, mother.” (p.3) The epithet ‘Njanga’ seems to be a thinly veiled allusion to Cameroon. The ubiquitous theme of tribalism is broached once again when Garba, the businessman-cum- politician is introduced as an indigene of the Delta clan: “Yes, he comes from the neighboring Delta clan. He has a tongue-twisting name.” (p.4) It is remarkable how Ngome uses the trophe of nomenclature to introduce critical themes into his play. Citizens of Njanga who hail from the Delta Clan are portrayed as “enterprising people” (p.5) spontaneously, some readers/viewers might associate this epithet with the Bamileke ethnic group in Cameroon.
Gerrymandering and influence peddling in the political arena constitute sturdy leitmotifs in Ngome’s play. It is noteworthy that the playwright portrays Miché Garba as a political heavy-weighty based on nothing else but his ethnic origins. What God Has Put Asunder, it seems to me, is a lampoon on the unresolved conflict between the British Southern Cameroons and the French-speaking La République du Cameroun. The playwright dexterously weaves history into drama as seen in the allegorical representation of the Foumban Plebiscite[1] as a sort of match making that Reverend Gordon contrives between Garba (Francophone) and Weka (Anglophone). It is significant that the matchmaker (Gordon) is an outsider (European). The role played by Gordon is analogous to the role played by the United Nations during the Foumban Conference.[2]
In this incisive play, Ngome revisits the nagging theme of the Manichean stigmatization of the African continent. As Mudimbe (1988) notes, Western presumptions about Africa justify the process of inventing and conquering a continent and naming its “primitiveness or disorder as well as the subsequent means of its exploitation and methods for its “regeneration” (p.40).” In Ngome’s drama, Sister Sabeth plays the role of Africa’s doomsayer as seen in the following excerpt culled from Weka’s remarks directed at Reverend Gordon: “Of course, Reverend Gordon. How could I have forgotten that? Hasn’t Sister Sabeth always reminded me how primitive we are?”( p.10). The playwright seems to argue that the characterization of Africans as primitive savages; Africa as an uninhabited wilderness where courageous Europeans could go on exciting adventures; served as justification for the European broad daylight fleecing of Africa.
The theme of feminism is ubiquitous in What God has put Asunder. In many respects, Ngome portrays his protagonist, Weka, throughout the play as an unfazed feminist. She fights back against Reverend Gordon’s scheme to hand her over to Garba as wife in spite of her opposition as seen in the dialogue below:
Gordon: “I order you to shut up, child!”(p.10)
Weka: “Of course, you do. That is all it takes—an order, and the Rector’s holy will is done. Aren’t you lucky?”(p.11)
This conflictual verbal exchange between Weka and Reverend Gordon bears testimony to the woman’s determination to free herself from masculine predation. This force of character is also evident when Weka verbally fights back her husband’s condescension and bullying as seen below:
Garba:” … Weka, do you realize you are not my only wife? Your mates never question what I do, but you…” (p.39)
Weka: “That’s their funeral. I was brought to ask questions about everything I don’t understand. You should have known that before saying your hasty ‘Yes I do’. Now let me see what’s in there.” (40)
It is noteworthy that this altercation degenerates into divorce when Weka quits her matrimonial home taking along all her kids. The historical veneer that connects Weka’s divorce from Garba on one hand and the de facto political divorce between British Southern Cameroons and La République du Cameroun is hard to dissimulate. This becomes more patent when Weka underscores Garba’s totalitarian comportment as one of the reasons in her plea for divorce in court:
“Once the festivities were over, he brought a fleet of trucks and bundled my children and me out our house. His drivers gathered all our stuff, trampling and damaging many things, etc.… and so he forced me to settle with him. Thenceforth he took to forcing my children to learning his mother tongue and forget mine with which they were raised. I have had to abide by the customs of his clan, not mine, and … in short he has simply been breathing down my neck since then.” (p.71)
It bears emphasizing the fact that there is an ongoing civil war in Cameroon at present, the principal cause of which is language disharmony between the Anglophone and Francophone constituents of the Republic of Cameroon. In this light, What God has put Asunder is without any shred of doubt a parody of the status quo in Cameroon. This play is a parody of the notorious Francophone-Anglophone conundrum. Ngome’s voice seems to be the voice of the voiceless in Cameroon. He bemoans the fate of the `lost’ generation of Cameroonian youths who serve as sacrificial lambs on the altar of nefarious politicking. One of the major institutional problems underlined in this play is the perpetration of corrupt governance from the top to the bottom in Cameroon. Garba is a prototype of the African lumpen bourgeoisie, a bourgeoisie that produces nothing. In short, What God Has Put Asunder is the cry of a dissident whose heart throbs for his downtrodden brethren.
The captivating in several respects but the aspect that is attention wrenching is the playwright’s careful choice of rhetorical devices that enables him to weave themes into stylistics. The play is woven around the metaphor of a contrived marriage, better still, a marital simulacrum between two antagonistic partners. The playwright chooses his stylistic devices very carefully. Satire comes in handy in the play, and is intended to chide and deride the hypocritical intent of the colonial mission in Africa of which Reverend Gordon and Sister Sabeth seems to constitute the bull’s eye. Of great significance is the repeated use of tropes such as parallelism, symbolism, allusion, and suspense that endow the play with the exuberance that it exudes. Humor serves as comic relief in throughout the play. Emeka’s tinkering with the English language certainly offers some cause for laughter as seen in the excerpt below:
“Reverend Gordon, so you have resident in Africa for so many ages and yet you does not know that Africa marriage start in the childhood? Is it because of dowry or… as you calls it, pride brice? When I was a childhood my papa forgive, even if it was quantums of cows and goats. But even as he was not alive, Chineke keep his dear soul, I for do it myself when I growed up small. Only she too have no father, and I cannot give dowry price bride to you since you…” (p.25)
Readers without a smattering of Pidgin English would be hard pressed in their attempt to unravel the signification of Emeka’s discourse. Another bombastic utterance attributed to Emeka is as follows: “Eh? Look at me proper. If you does not conconise me then you are suffer magnesia. Anyway, my nomination is Emeka. Emeka Nwachukwu of Umudele, Delta clan.” (p.21)
What God Has Put Asunder is replete with these kinds of semantic shifts that lend credence to the assertion by Chinua Achebe (1975) that the price a world language such as English must be prepared to pay is submission to many kinds of use. Achebe further notes that the English spoken by Africans is still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings.” (pp. 61-62)
There is not a single page in this play where one does not find an African expression, word, sentence or turn of phrase culled from the native tongue of the playwright and judiciously transposed into English. Ngome indigenizes the English language in What God Has Put Asunder for providing a cultural backdrop for his fiction.
Briefly, this play is a compelling narrative directed at a global audience. It reveals the socio-economic and political conundrums existing in our contemporary society. The play also lays bare the intricately woven interrelationships between the rich and the poor, the well placed and the wretched of the earth. It is a satire on the contraptions employed by the ‘seemingly’ rich who have a dereliction for manipulating the poor in order to further their quest for wealth and dominance. Most importantly, What God Has Put Asunder is a parody of the political status quo in the Republic of Cameroon. It is a play worth watching. A must-read for all literati in Cameroon and in the diaspora.
Works cited
Achebe, Chinua. Morning yet on Creation Day: Essays. London: Heinemann, 1975.
Ngome, E. N. What God Has Put Asunder. Denver: Spears Books, 2021.
Mudimbe, V.Y. Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
Vakunta, P.W. “The Manichaen Stigmatization of Africa.” Pambazuka. 2013.
[1] The constitutional talks held in Foumban in 1961 to determine the fate of French-speaking République du Cameroun and British Southern Cameroons.
[2]Awasom (1998, 2000) and others, including Fossung (2004) have argued that the decision by the UN and the UK to dispense of British Southern Cameroons was against the wishes of the people of that territory.
