Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies

The essay explores Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s and George Lamming’s disenchantment with the political dispensation of their countries with flag independence as opposed to actual liberation. The paper adopts a comparative approach to analyze the neocolonial predicament in Kenya and the legacies of the slave trade in the Caribbean through their respective novels Petals of Blood and Natives of My Person. A close examination of both novels reveals that the writers focused on the histories of Kenya and the Caribbean, attributing the predicament of the modern period to the past. The two writers, the essay will reveal, offer diagnoses of the problems of society and of human beings with Ngugi attributing malignancy to the political structures in Kenya, and Lamming arguing that malignancy is embedded in the human personality. While Ngugi’s radicalism sees hope for social change through a political revolution, Lamming’s psychological orientation as a novelist upholds internal change as a panacea for the Caribbean post–colonial predicament. In Kenya, the journey to Uhuru failed to materialize in the same way that the voyage to San Cristobal was aborted. Despite the author’s differences in political orientation, both novels draw upon historical and cultural experiences between Africa and the Caribbean providing a powerful assessment of the shared neocolonial condition.