Chinua Achebe: Africa's great writer dies

RIP Our dear brother

There is a great African proverb:

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."

Chinua Achebe:

Once I knew that I had to be a writer."

For us, the loss of Chinua Achebe is above all else, intensely personal. We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter. Of the 'pioneer quartet' of contemporary Nigerian literature, two voices have been silenced. One, of the poet Christopher Okigbo, and now, the novelist Chinua Achebe.

It is perhaps difficult for outsiders of that intimate circle to appreciate this sense of depletion, but we take consolation in the young generation of writers to whom the baton has been passed - those who have already creatively ensured that there is no break in the continuum of the literary vocation.

We need to stress this at a critical time of Nigerian history - where the forces of darkness appear to overshadow the illumination of existence that literature represents. These are forces that arrogantly pride themselves implacable and brutal enemies of what Achebe and his pen represented, not merely for the African continent, but for humanity.

Indeed, we cannot help wondering if the recent insensate massacre of Achebe's people in Kano, only a few days ago, hastened the fatal undermining of that resilient will that had sustained him so many years after his crippling accident.

No matter the reality, after the initial shock, and a sense of abandonment, we confidently assert that Achebe lives. His works provide their enduring testimony to the domination of the human spirit over the forces of repression, bigotry and retrogression.

Wole Solinka and JP Clark

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/22/chinua-achebe-wole-soyinka-jp-clark