Re-asserting Cultural Perspectives: Old People and New Ideas in Bole Butake’s Lake God and The Survivors and Sankie Maimo’s Succession in Sarkov

African cultures have undergone transformations from the colonial period to the present, often to the
detriment of its cultural evolution and within the larger global community. As it were, colonial
education subordinated African communalism and created in its place an anti-African spirit evident in
the assimilation of western values. This did not only end up in a kind of cultural betrayal, but also
posed as a serious threat to the dignity and identity of the people. Those who fall prey to this kind of
cultural imperialism are the young people who are often irrationally carried away by western fashion
and modes that they tend to neglect and/or forget their cultural ways of life as they join the race of
“progress.” This situation has given rise to a conscious effort by creative writers to re-assert and
protect African values while at the same time liberating themselves from the longstanding western
effort at suppressing, controlling and dominating their thoughts particularly through neo-colonialism.
These writers focus on the need for Africans to rediscover who they are, especially in relation to their
cultural values. It is not just rediscovering themselves, but it is also using this rediscovery to
reconstruct that unique part of their culture that has almost been annihilated through external
influence. The old people who have not yet acquired western/colonial education and who still stand
firm on the practices that hold their communities together are the major medium through which the
above mentioned writers envisage an emergence of a new vision of Africa. They act as conscientising
forces to the younger generation who are intent on obliterating their values and giving up their
identities. It is at the backdrop of this that I seek, in this paper, to show how the old are represented as
custodians of African cultural wisdom in Bole Butake’s Lake God (1999), and The Survivors (1999)
and Sankie Maimo’s Succession in Sarkov (1986). In this role, the power of the myths of old reemerges
and is handed down to ensure social and political stability of the land. Hence it is believed
that Africa can plan its future through its indigenous cultural traditions at least in the aspects that are
compatible with the newly acquired western perspectives.