Children of the Land (A Sequence for African Liberation) is from Kofi Anyidoho’s third collection of poems, Ancestrallogic and Caribbeanblues (sic). It is representative of his freedom poetry and was composed at the request of the Ghana Commission on Children for a performance commemorating the flag-raising ceremony at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Accra in July 1984.

The poem was originally performed by five groups of school children (symbolically representative of the five regions of the continent—North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa). The work exists in two versions. The original version is longer, with child-speakers representing each country making an appearance, while the revised version preserves only the sequence of regions. The two versions appear in the collection.

As an occasional poem, Children of the Land celebrates the shared aspiration of African freedom and seeks to invent a common dream from the diverse struggles for self-determination in Africa. It promotes the ideals of African liberation and the spirit of brotherhood that the Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union) stood for. It celebrates the beauty that comes from the various cultural and historical experiences in the different parts of the continent and creates an admirable vision of Africa by carefully evoking its beauty as revealed in its physical and cultural geography and in the resilience with which it has withstood external intrusions and internal crises. It consequently underscores the paradox that underlies the African identity: the reality of its unity and diversity.

This poem, essentially Pan-Africanist, celebrates Africa through its children, as symbolizing the hopes and possibilities that exist for the continent. In a sense, it is the dreams that the children hold for Africa that inspire hope. Otherwise, there will be little or nothing to celebrate about contemporary Africa, whose leaders must take responsibility for its many failures and woes. Positive legacies exist to inspire them. In this sense, the poem must not be read as pretending that all is well with Africa.

It relies on an effective adoption of imagery drawn from the common historical, cultural, and geographical indexes of identity in the five regions of Africa that it identifies in imagining Africa and the possibilities that exist for it. The five movements logically coincide with the appearances of the five groups representing the various regions. The beauty of this poem is most apparent in performance, where the closing lines at the end of each movement are chorused by children holding flags of the various countries they represent.

Categories: British Literature, Literature

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