Djibril Tamsir Niane, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. G.D. Pickett, translator. Longman African Series, 1960/1965.
After The Last Temptation of Christ, I wanted to read something shorter, so I poked around my bookshelves and found a stash of African literature behind a loveseat I don’t use much anymore. Reminded of once upon a time when I taught a few African writers (Bessie Head, Gabriel Okara, Miriama Ba, Chinua Achebe, Richard Rive) and came to really like those Heinemann and Longman books.
This story is told by the griot, Mamadou Koyaté, and written down (transcribed, edited) by D.T. Niane. It is about Sundiata Keita, the 13th C founder of the Mali empire. Having just finished Nikos Kazantzakis’s fraught story of the final years of Jesus, I find Koyaté’s hero story to be much cleaner and streamlined. For the obstacles Sundiata faced, in Koyaté’s story Sundiata marches through them all with the sunny determinism and historical inevitability of a man who seems to be always aware of his own rightness and willing to assert it. Sundiata is legend, a piece of the cultural bedrock on which Mali’s existence, its past and present, have been built.
Some of the conventional aspects of the story: Sundiata is of royal blood; he has almost superhuman strength; he is a great hunter and warrior; he is loyal; his virtues function as the aspirant model for Malian culture; they also make him enemies of those who are jealous of him and fear his power; he faces a very powerful adversary; he must live in exile, many exiles, before engaging in battles that allow him to return home, become the great leader that he is supposed to be, and unify the nation.
One of the aspects of the story that I find fascinating is that both Sundiata and his mother, Songolon, are disabled. She is hunchbacked, and he does not walk on his two feet, but on both feet and hands, until he is seven years old. Disability here has a hybrid function: it is weakness, something to be overcome, and source of power. Songolon is a debased outsider, a foreigner, ugly, a wraith spirit, who is given as a gift by two hunters to Sundiata’s father, the king, Maghan Kon Fauta, who marries her, takes her into the royal household, fathers children by her, and promotes Sundiata be his successor rather than the eldest son of his first wife. On all fours, Sundiata is seen by the other members of the king’s court as laughable, scornable, and subhuman. Feeling the sting of that scorn for herself, Songolon asks Sundiata to stand up straight, which he does by grasping an iron bar to help him up and which he shapes into a bow as he stands. Unexpectedly, Sundiata demonstrates an unsuspected strength, which makes Sundiata and his mother suddenly powerful and feared, rather than maligned, in the court. This shift from demeaned to privileged, weak to powerful at the core of Sundiata’s story is a sign of inclusivity and broad social experience that is important for how Sundiata proceeds in the rest of the story.
Sassouma had successfully worked against Maghan’s preference for Sundiata as his successor and had her son installed as king after the death of Maghan. But when it is clear that Sundiata and Songolon have become powerful enough in the court to be a threat to her dominion, the Machiavellian Sassouma acts quickly against Sogolon and Sundiata, and they go into exile. Because Sassouma fears their power, she works hard to drive them as far from Sundiata’s father’s kingdom as possible. But Sundiata is very good at making friends and forming alliances, and the more he travels the more friends and alliances he makes. It’s a kind of grass roots power move.
In the meantime, while Sundiata is in exile, another king, Saumaro Kanté, used sorcery, deception, and violence to subjugate or kill the other kings in the region to become king of kings. He is not elevated to such a height by the mutual agreement of his fellow kings, but by subordinating them violently to his will. Saumaro is a tyrant, and as a result the social order is dangerous and destructive. It is out of balance, and someone needs to make the world right again: Sundiata. When Saumaro drives Sundiata’s half brother, Touman, from power and burns down their father’s city, Niani, Sundiata acts. It is important that he is almost supernaturally strong and a brilliant tactician, but what is most important are the friendships and alliances he has made during his time in exile, so that he can call upon the kingdoms and peoples of greater Mali to rise up and put an end to Saumaro’s tyranny. The small-minded, malevolent, power-hungry Machiavellian individual who doesn’t know how to interact with others equitably and compassionately–that is, humanely–is forced from power by the people, led by someone who understands and respects them.
After the defeat of Saumaro, Sundiata does not claim the lion’s share of the spoils, does not try to claim a superior position or assert his dominance over the other kings, warriors, soldiers, and people who were part of Saumaro’s defeat. Instead, the spoils are shared, as are the powers and positions of a new, flatter, more egalitarian social order. Sundiata becomes king of kings, not by tyrannizing other but through the recognition and respect of equals. A national myth can’t be based on the deeds of a self-absorbed, punitive tyrant, can it?