Chuma Nwokolo revisits a childhood library and is shocked at its deterioration. 'It is great to have a completed central bank project and a new airport, but how about a time frame for a public library?'

Chuma Nwokolo invites Pambazuka readers to view his film , which is 'dedicated to one of the most hospitable people in the world'.

Lamenting the greater insecurity and civil unrest provoked by African governments’ excessive spending on defence, Chuma Nwokolo argues that arms stockpiles act as a central obstacle for countries’ development and stability. Emphasising that the practice of supplying African territory with arms remains a throwback to the slavery era, the author highlights the high proportion of GDP spent on arms and the military by particular African governments such as Angola and Eritrea. In a bid to catalyse effective action, Nwokolo calls upon people to support the worldwide .

African Writing is a literary paper with an online presence. It is the first open sales publication of its kind with an All-African perspective, offering new writing from, and information on, the literatures of the continent.

African Writing is interested in the literary lives, literary work and thoughts of those who make writing happen in the African world, and in the organizations and circumstances which support or affect the processing, appreciation and study of their work. Catering for the varying levels of readership interests, our literary paper, and its online edition, will offer interviews and reviews, literary profiles, some criticism and political commentary, new poetry and fiction, creative non-fiction, performance sketches and visual arts work. We will reflect the faces, controversies and peculiar flavour of the African writing world, a world increasingly inclusive in the processing of its familiarisation with other world writings and writers.

For us at African Writing, this has been a journey of discovery. Encounter the fifty representative writers of our ‘Profiles’ pages, follow the narratives, utterances and reported achievements of the many other poets and story-makers in this introductory issue, and, perhaps, you will agree with us that even for the expert much of contemporary writing in Africa awaits discovery. Join us in that journey of discovery.

African Writing is edited by Afam Akeh, and is available monthly on subscription and from selected bookshops from September 2007. The debut issue of African Writing is now online at Online submissions of new writing and all letters responding to our work may be addressed to [email][email protected] Enquiries from advertisers, and promoters of literary activities or products intended for our readership can be directed to [email][email protected]

Today I feel no kinship with the human race.
I’m sorry,
but today I feel affinity with clotting blood
smeared on a pitted ghetto street,
beside the broken skull of an alien child,
barely ten winters old.
crushed by the triumphant indifference
of the ruling race

I’m sorry. For I know how infra dig this sounds,
especially when I estimate
the days and months of blinkless surveillance
you’ll now invest in me;
but up there in the cynic skies
I see your rockets’ frozen flatulence
and wonder what you sought,
so far above the earth,
when everywhere I turn
the cries of dying children fill my ears…

Today! I feel no kinship with the human race
for when his alien scream perjured the air
my heart confessed its truth!
That’s how I know I’m alien too,
like him, an outsider
There are many, many restless aliens
stalking all your streets

Tonight, when claret dams rupture,
don’t expect squeamishness from me,
when grey wakes end in the mist of flashing skies…
I know how terrorist this sounds!
coming from one so conformist!
…but I have seen polished members of the human race
dining with dismembered portions of the avian race.
I have seen courteous, lipsticked, napkined smiles,
pausing awhile to masticate
- and know that norms of decency
have no bearings beyond the pale of race…

Tonight! When I steer angers into crimson streams,
don’t expect decency when brooks begin to brim,
for your pacifists will turn their backs to the butchers,
only to belly up to the dinner
once the gory deed is done…

Tonight! I’ll feel no kinship with the wicked race
when judgement’s angel stalks,
but heed this warning; let every quickened man beware.
For every clotted drop will tell its tale to me,
‘and I’ll raise every sleeper of your race
to come account to Me.

Tonight’.

* From Chuma Nwokolo: ‘Memories of Stone’. Lagos: Villagerhouse 2006. Reproduce with the permission of the author.

* Chuma Nwokolo is a writer and advocate from Jos, Nigeria, and is writer-in-residence at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England.