SOURCE: “The Writer as Physician: The Therapeutic Vision in Ayi Kwei Armah's The Healers,” in Neohelicon, Vol. XXII, No. 2, 1995, pp. 141-54.

In my conclusion to a recent essay on Two Thousand Seasons, I posited that Ayi Kwei Armah “situates the African tragedy within the context of the loss of ‘the way’ as a guiding ethos and suggests a return to this moral anchor and revitalising essence as a sine qua non in the process of charting a new course for the ideal Africa of the future”. I suggested also that in The Healers, Armah extends the frontiers of his proposition in his suggestion that the work for the future, the assignment for the healers, is the cultivation of the awareness that can ensure a complete return to the ethos of “the way”, connectedness and reciprocity. For the fall of the Ashanti empire in The Healers is shown to be a consequence of both the colonial enterprise and the role of divisive manipulators like Ababio. With the projected exit of such people in the wake of a return to ‘the way’, therefore, it is hoped that the society would be healed once again of its most serious ailment, disunity, which is one major consequence of the colonial experience （Nwahunanya, 1991: 559）.

There is a sense in which The Healers is a fictional discourse on the nature and control of political power. Therefore, O. S. Ogede （1993: 46） would be correct in seeing as significant what he identifies as “the political credo of healing” in the novel. In fact Ogede sees Armah's position as “political ideology, … a new philosophy of power—that of inspiration—to which Armah is committed, as opposed to dictatorship or rulership by tyranny or brute force”. While we concede the possibility of pursuing this interpretation, our focus in this essay is determined by Ogede's earlier observation that Armah “generally conceived his writing in therapeutic terms, as an attempt to heal the wounds of colonialism …” （Ogede, 1991: 531）.

Armah's therapeutic vision has influenced both his overall analysis and the language, and his main textual strategy is the language of the physician. The Healers is in fact one of the few contemporary African novels in which a conscious attempt is made by the author to match theme with language, for Armah in this novel looks at Africa's past and present predicament, and the implied options for the future from the point of view of a physician doing a diagnostic examination of a diseased organ or organism, an examination followed by adequate prescriptions after the cause of the ailment has been identified.

By the time we get to The Healers from Armah's synchronic analysis of Ghana in The Beautiful Ones are Not Yet Born, the problems of the Ashanti society which we see as the causes of communal tragedy in Two Thousand Seasons are still present, possibly to a higher degree. The selfish appetites of the leaders have been whetted the more, colonialism having established itself better; and egocentric considerations are seen to underlie the drives of most people in the society. But like in Two Thousand Seasons the few people who do not identify with the prevailing ethos opt for seclusion, having become alienated; and they adopt a curative approach to the society's problems, hence their name, “the healers”.

The Ashanti society of The Healers is shown to be replete with mechanisms that ensure that every shade of political opinion is fully represented in the polity. But, as a carry-over from what we find in Two Thousand Seasons, certain positions have become hereditary. This hereditary is what accounts for the succession of Koranche by his invalid son Bentum （renamed Braford-George）. While the problems of succession among the aristocracy remain, the main problems with the Ashanti society in The Healers derive from its martial outlook which makes the youth to be brought up to prize competitive engagements and martial arts, since winners usually acquired an enhanced social prestige/status.

With the predominant spirit of competition that encourages people to outshine and supplant others, we have the growth of personal ambition. The effect of this on the society is negative, for it extends to the political arena and causes internal dissension and distrust. This enables people with similar aspirations and ambitions to team up against others either out of sheer envy, inferiority, or both. The society's material outlook thus encouraged a dangerous spirit of competition in which perpetual losers or the weaker ones developed a natural hatred for the regular winners and the strong. This created a favourable context for intrigue which was easily exploited by the whites when they came.

From the individual drives to supplant others, the society institutionalises the urge for physical conquest of neighbours. The majority of the people come to favour aggression, and the Ashanti become famous as a warring nation. Thus, apart from the gold deposits that attract foreign economic attention to them, their liking for war, which makes them a threat to surrounding tribes/empires, brings them into the ruinous public glare of Western colonial interests. This was because the martial outlook of the Ashanti led to an expansionist drive that made more enemies than friends for them, and they also failed to recognise the bounds of their political power. In these enemies, the British and other early colonists easily found allies. For one thing, the vassal chiefs of the defeated kingdoms who became subordinate to the Asantehene paid tribute to him as an obligation. As J. K. Fynn （1971: 153） confirms:

Subject peoples paid tribute and were often the objects of heavy exactions … The end result of this kind of ‘indirect rule’ was that subject peoples never identified their interests with those of the empire as a corporate entity … they regarded themselves as subjects of a distant and harsh political overlord. Thus before the reforms in Asante government initiated by Osei Kwadwo the Asante empire suffered from a series of internal revolts.

With these revolts comes disunity of the type that forms the starting point of Armah's diagnosis in The Healers, for it is disunity that constitutes the internal sources of the social tragedy in Asante society at the time of the second Asante war which is fictionalised in the novel.

At the time the story begins, a festival of competitions in various sports and games has just been held, and after it Appiah, one of the key victors in the games, is murdered mysteriously and his body mutilated. The memories of the murdered Appiah's participation in the games, his victories and the manner of his death make his young companion and rival Densu begin to ruminate on the overall implications of the competition that characterizes the games.

In earlier times, the narrator tells us, the festivals in which the games featured had been

made for keeping a people together. They are not so much celebrations as invocations of wholeness. They were the festivals of a people surviving in spite of unbearable pain. They were reminders that no matter how painful the journey, our people would finish it, survive it and thrive again at the end of it, as long as our people moved together … But the hard realities of our scattering and our incessant wandering had long disturbed the oneness these festivals were meant to invoke, to remember, and to celebrate.

（pp. 4–5）

All the migrant peoples who were scattered in Two Thousand Seasons had conceived these festivals as a unifying principle, a reminder of “a past oneness” which could be revitalised and put into positive use in the present. But with the passing of time the meaning of unity “had been torn to shreds” （p. 5）. It is this dissociation which comes in the stead of unity that the young Densu finds incomprehensible even as he ruminates upon it:

These rituals had celebrated the struggles of a people working together to reach difficult destinations. The games were now trials of individual strength and skill. At their end a single person would be chosen victor, and isolated for the admiration of spectators and the envy of defeated competitors.

Thus, a ceremony of wholeness metamorphoses into a ritual of separation.

This realisation underlies Densu's initial unwillingness to participate in the games, and when he eventually decides to, he participates and loses deliberately in order to frustrate those who are used to applauding conventional victors, as well as to refuse to be used by people like Ababio who inordinately aspire to positions of power within the king's court.

Ababio is one of the cronies in the king's court and he is determined to eliminate Appiah, the legitimate heir to the throne, and install Densu who he erroneously believes he can manipulate to achieve his selfish ends. He of course plans the murder of Appiah and sees to its execution through using the brainless brute, Buntui. When Ababio finds out that Densu refuses to cooperate with him, he decides to implicate Densu in the murder of Appiah, by framing trumped-up charges, and faking public grief for the dead prince.

It is to escape from the clutches and evil influence of Ababio while investigating the circumstances surrounding Appiah's murder and his mother's disappearance that Densu runs away to the Eastern forest where Damfo and his group of followers, the healers, reside. Densu's meeting with Damfo opens his eyes to the wider implications of the power tussles in the court for the whole society, and the spiritual demands of healing work to which the healers have submitted themselves.

Unsure initially of the firmness of Densu's resolve and zeal, Damfo spends some time explaining to him the demands and implications of healing. As Damfo says, healing as a vocation demands all sorts of self-denial, and the qualification for healing discipleship are second only to those prescribed by Jesus Christ to those aspiring to follow him. As Damfo puts it,

… the things a healer turns his back on are innumerable. These are the things of the world. Not only things of the flesh, but also things touching the spirit. There's comfort. Wealth. There's also love, the respect of close ones. Even fame, the respect of distant people. Power among men. The satisfaction of being known wherever you go. These are the things that sweeten life for men. The healer turns his back on all of them.

（p. 91）

The principles that ensure the life of self-denial which healing demands are put down as seven commandments which Damfo expounds to Densu in a secular sermon. First, the pupil healer does not drink, or smoke intoxicants, and he “does not use violence against human beings. He does not fight” （p. 92）. The healer must not kill, only doing so if he must “out of respect for life”, that is, where what he kills destroys life （p. 93）. Again, the learner does not call upon his god to destroy anyone （p. 93）. The learner does not go to the king's court, or to any place where men go to seek power over other men, except of course he goes there to save a life. “That's different from going to the centres of power to flatter those already powerful. The nature that knows how to flatter the powerful is an inferior nature” （p. 94）. The learner must also not gossip （p. 95）. He does not waste the night （p. 95）, and he respects those older than himself （p. 96）.

Given the difficulty of these prescriptions, it becomes clear why “A decision to be a healer must be firmer than any other decision” （p. 101）. In spite of the strict code of conduct for healers, Dansu opts for healing and gets initiated after weighing Damfo's diagnosis of the malaise that bedevils his society.

It is after Densu's initiation that news comes to the healers of the illness of Asamoa Nkwanta, an Asante general who is now distraught and refuses to fight for the king because of the cold-blooded murder of his nephew, a murder as senseless as the murder of prince Appiah. The healers set out to diagnose his illness and revive him. The assumption here is that the cure of a disease is possible only after proper diagnosis.

Damfo's interviews with Asamoa Nkwanta unravels a lot of mysteries about his depression, and the sick general is tutored in aspects of Asante social reality of the past which are erstwhile unknown to him. Damfo's basic assumption is that “if we forget our past and have no vision of the future” （p. 176） we get lost in our non-comprehension of the present. The Akan and all black people in fact, Asamoa is told, were one in the past. Therefore, contrary to what contemporary purveyors of modern history suggest, “there is nothing eternal about our present divisions. We were one in the past. We may come together again in the future” （p. 176）.

Asamoa becomes confused because he has spent his life fighting to make Asante strong; that is, he had always fought to establish or maintain the separateness of the Asante. But this has involved helping to concentrate power or the control of people over others in a few hands: “When I think that the result of all my work, the best that is in me, is simply to give power to people who only know how to waste power and waste life, my arm grows weak and I feel all the forces of life and will deserting me” （p. 180）. What exasperates Asamoa the more is his realisation of the selfishness of the aristocracy: “The royals these days serve only themselves” （p. 180）. The tradition of selfish service had in fact been established in the court tradition in Two Thousand Seasons by the kings who are willing to sacrifice their own people for worthless gifts from white colonists. Armah's condemnation of these kings and their attitude underlies his portrait of them when the white men arrive at Cape Coast. Here, in Cape Coast, the chiefs who come to the shore to have their hands shaken by the new white men “were just ignored—left standing there like a heap of fools” （p. 191）.

The coming of the whites and the subsequent invasion of the Asante thus provides Armah another opportunity to continue the analysis of the causes of communal tragedy which he started in Two Thousand Seasons. In this novel as in The Healers, we have a pattern of gifts and treaties of cooperation, followed by military bombardments on pockets of resistance. Most importantly, the selfishness and greed of the chiefs is brought into sharper focus.

When the Europeans arrive, their primary objective is to launch an attack on Kumasi the headquarters of the Ashanti empire. They realise they can achieve their objective only if they secure the cooperation of the local chiefs. The scenes in which this cooperation is elicited constitute one of Armah's bitterest indictments of African chiefs in the novel, for they are shown to act mainly out of selfish interests, and this selfishness is shown to be one of the causes of West African communal tragedy in the colonial period. The chiefs are also shown to be stupid, for they are bribed and bought over with things as cheap and valueless as caskets of gin, with a mere oral promise and hope of future rewards after victory would have been achieved over the Ashanti: “We only hope this white general, being so powerful and rich, will be generous when the time comes for rewards” （p. 214）. （It is significant that at this time, the opportunist Ababio has become king at Esuano, following the confusion created by Appiah's murder. So these chiefs could as well be echoing Ababio's mind.）

The position in The Healers is that the society suffers from a basic disease, disunity, which must be cured if the society is to be the same again. This diagnostic vision comes again to Densu as he water-gazes in Part 6, Chapter 5 of the novel. What he sees in the water is “a world in which some, a large number, had a prevalent disease. The disease was an urge to fragment everything. And the disease gave infinite satisfaction to the diseased because it gave them control. At the other extreme were those with a contrary disease, an urge to unite everything” （p. 230）.

Those with the urge to fragment are the kings and their cronies and lackeys who stand to gain from the disunity of the people which creates factions that are easy to manipulate. Those with the urge to unite are the minority like the group of healers who impose on themselves the duty of restoring the social health of the community. This state of affairs, we have noted before, began before the advent of the predators and destroyers in Two Thousand Seasons, but was reinforced in intensity by the colonial presence. It results in the bifurcation of the society into the majority of self-centred people （such as kings and their followers） and the minority who oppose the prevailing ethos. This prevailing ethos is greed and selfishness, and it manifests the most in kings and rulers or those in or near the corridors of power who have eyes on kingship. Intrigue, then, becomes a way of attaining power, and unsuspecting people are pitched against each other in power games in which the potential reapers are the umpires who goad contestants into competitions.

By the time we get to The Healers, the estrangement of the visionary members of the society from the rest is complete, because they are looked at with suspicion by those who feel threatened by the healers' beliefs, chosen options, or exemplary ways of life. （It accounted earlier on for the preference for Otumfur in Koranche's court to the seer Isanusi in Two Thousand Seasons. It also accounts for the incendiary raid on the healer's village in The Healers.）

The visionary members of the society choose a life of isolation and exile, gather themselves into the small community of healers with a common goal. They do so in order not to be corrupted by the prevailing materialistic ethos, and to coordinate their activities and achieve greater objectives. It is not surprising therefore that it is to the healers that Asamoa Nkwanta, the Asante general, is sent for a cure, at the onset of the emotional turmoil following the murder of his nephew, an event he sees as a betrayal.

As a trained healer, Densu has to get to the bottom of things in order to make an accurate diagnosis. And so just as their Freudian interview with Asamoa reveals the sources of his grief which set them on the route to curing him, Densu burrows into the service of the white general Glover, and in the course of espionage service he discovers the white man's views about the black man, views which underlie his methods. According to Glover, “Give the black man gifts, … and his soul belongs to you. He and his people will fight for you” （p. 259）. Unfortunately, however, the Greek gifts of the white colonist are accepted by their black recipients without the blacks giving any serious thoughts to their implications. For, as a strategy, the white man “had brought drinks to bribe the kings so they would bring their men to fight for him” （p. 259）. But the gifts are not confined to the drinks: “The gifts were many—large bottles of gin, often given in whole cases; bright new guns and powder and bullets to go with them, and always the coins that could make the angriest king break into smiles” （p. 259）. The gifts achieve the desired effect, and the bribed kings come to see their fellow black brothers as the common enemy of they and the whites.

In the light of the healers' diagnosis of the problem of the blacks, Armah uses the final battle encounter between the Asante and the white colonists as a test of the solidarity of blacks, a test which they fail because of the dissociating effect of the colonialist's tricks. Only the healers have the proper vision of black unity, and this vision underlies the role they play in persuading many black porters to abandon the loads they are made to carry for the white men, thereby slowing down or halting the movement of the whites. But the healers' project is to help install Asamoa as the ultimate power in Asante, so that he could be used to cure the society of her ills （p. 271）. For as Damfo puts it, “Among our people, royalty is part of the disease. Whoever serves royalty serves the disease, not the cure. He works to divide our people, not to unite us, no matter what he hopes personally to do” （p. 269）. Thus while the whites are mustering their forces for the final onslaught, the royals at the court are engaged in intrigue, seeing the healers as a threat to their existence, to the extent of carrying out incendiary action on the healers' village in Praso. In this way, the last bastion of hope—the community of healers with their curative vision—is put in disarray. And significantly, it is at this point that the final showdown on Asante takes place.

Armah presents another dimension to the tragic experience of his society in the consequences of treachery and betrayal for the bribed chiefs when they begin to go back on their promises to their white friends. The march of Wolseley to Asante gets beset with problems as the black chiefs he had bribed begin to show signs of hypocrisy in their refusal to provide men to build the road through which the march to Kumase was to be effected. When bribes of money, ammunition, firearms and alcohol fail, the white man resorts to intimidating the populace with acts of violence （p. 271）. Villages are burnt at night, towns are threatened with destruction, populations are terrified, and men are taken hostage. When the men run away, women and children are used in their place. So a reign of terror spreads over the land as the road to Kumase progresses.

Despite the apparent military superiority of the white man at this point in time, Asamoa Nkwanta prepares for the final onslaught against the whites with his tried and tested military tactics, and with his characteristic nationalist and patriotic zeal. But he discovers at the last moment, and too late, that he has been betrayed by selfish interests at the court, led by the king's mother herself. As Oson the eunuch tells him after Kumase had been overrun, the selfish concerns of the king's mother are the reasons behind the orders from the king to Asamoa to withdraw the fighting men: “… she asked the king if he would rather be king of a violated kingdom or be nothing in a virgin nation. … She said if Asante followed Asamoa Nkwanta's plan and resisted the whites, there would be nothing to stop Asamoa Nkwanta from becoming king of the inviolate nation. She said the wisdom of a king lay in knowing at all times what to do in order to remain king” （p. 291）. This Machiavellian logic proves that she would rather her son ruled in hell than serve in heaven. For the individual welfare of the Asantehene and his cronies at court mattered more to the king's mother and the king than the collective welfare of the people. She forgets that even if Asamoa had an eye on the throne, his kingship would be more beneficial to the people, given the healing process he has undergone in the hands of Damfo and his followers, than anything the incumbent king could offer the society.

The final scene of the novel is the achievement of the visionary ideal, the bringing together of black peoples through the dissolution of those barriers that had kept them apart, especially during the period of colonial occupation.

Asante has of course been overrun; Ababio is now king at Esuano—the community in which the story began—and the white man has established his presence as overlord after looting the place at Kumase. King Ababio, seeing Densu as the only threat to his continued illegitimate occupation of the throne, brands Densu the murderer of Appiah and arranges a trial presided over by a white man. It is during this trial which Ababio had hoped would go in his favour and eliminate Densu that Araba Jesiwa, the mother of the murdered prince Appiah （the legitimate heir to the throne Ababio now occupies） who had been undergoing medication in the hands of the healers, miraculously talks and gives the crucial evidence which confirms the complicity of Ababio in the murder of Appiah. This evidence turns the tables, and Ababio the accuser becomes the accused. The white judge, confused but happy at the emergence of truth, orders Ababio to be taken in handcuffs to Cape Coast for trial.

It is symbolic that the day of Ababio's trial becomes the day of unity for black peoples, for it would seem that Ababio is an epitome of those divisive obstacles that stand in the way of the unity of black peoples, and his removal ushers in a new era of concerted action. Ababio is not a creation of the white presence per se, since he and his type predate colonialism. But his action has been shown in the novel to create obstacles for the black man and cause tragedy both for individuals in society and for the society as a community. Thus Armah's conclusion of the novel implies a certain ambivalence towards colonialism, for by removing Ababio and the obstacles he symbolises from the society, the white man, even while contributing earlier to destroying the society, helps too to revitalise it. Ama Nkroma, one of the female healers, recognizes the significance of the event:

… look at all the black people the whites have brought here. Here we healers have been wondering about ways to bring our people together again. And the whites want ways to drive us further apart. Does it not amuse you, that in their wish to drive us apart the whites are actually bringing us work for the future?

（p. 309）

The work for the future, the assignment for the healers is the cultivation of the awareness that can ensure a complete return to the ethos of “the way”, connectedness and reciprocity. For the fall of the Ashanti empire in The Healers is shown to be a consequence of both the colonial experience, and the roles of divisive manipulators like Ababio. With their actual or expected exit therefore, it is hoped that the society would be healed once again of its most serious ailment, disunity, which is one major consequence of the colonial experience. In this way, connectedness, that major defining attribute of pre-colonial West African society, would be re-established as part of the healing process.

Armah makes the point of course that while the whites may not be the original source of the tragic disunity of African peoples, their coming led to the increased atomisation of social bonds with their propensity for encouraging “divide and rule” and whetting the appetite of greedy kings and chiefs with gifts which made them turn against their own people. The extent to which this is made possible is established through Armah's use of contrastive images in his presentation of the white ways in Two Thousand Seasons while showing what “the way” is not. That the ethos of the predators and the destroyers comes and successfully supplants whatever was good in the black ways of life is Armah's focal point in his diagnosis of the roots of the African tragedy.

What Armah shows is a concern for the fate of his society as a victim of colonialism, and he shows in the process what was good in the society and why the loss of that patrimony was tragic. As he puts it in The Healers:

The events that have shattered our people were not simply painful events. They were disasters. They were strange, unnatural catastrophes. Those who survived them could only survive in part because they found ways to forget the catastrophes. When you're still close to past dangers that threatened to wipe you out, even remembrance pains you. Our people forget a lot of things in order to survive. We even went beyond forgetfulness. To forget thoroughly the shattering and the dispersal of a people that was once whole, we have gone far as to pretend we have always been these silly little fragments each calling itself a nation.

（p. 83）

The tragedy of African societies is therefore defined in terms of the disastrous and catastrophic nature of the shattering of their past. He also examines the extent of the complicity of Africans themselves in the process, due to the selfish interests of a few.

Armah embarks on this process of retrieving the racial memory through cultivating what T. S. Eliot calls “the historical sense” （1932: 14）. This is the perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of the manifestations of the past in the present, for the writer “is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past …” （1932: 22）. Armah's cute sense of history enables him correctly diagnose the causes of the tragedy of West African societies, tracing them to both the effects of the colonial experience, and internal sources within pre-colonial African societies. Based on these, he also makes implied projections on the causes of the political problems in the present.

Armah starts with a look at the structure of the Ashanti polity, but he ends up with a general observation on African societies. He suggests that just as was the case with ancient Ashanti rulers, contemporary leaders in Africa adopt all sorts of divisive ploys to get at power. And once they are in power, in order to perpetuate their tenure, they and their cronies devise and employ all kinds of diversionary measures that remove the attention of their unsuspecting subjects from the ties that bind them, and thereby blind citizens to the misdeeds of such leaders.

Armah's ultimate prescription as a panacea to Africa's ailment is that leaders should start to emphasize those things that cement tribes or ethnic groups and individuals together, and be ready to recognize even when a collective action or what looks like a group decision is made to serve the interests of an individual. Once this happens, leaders would start ab initio to emphasize mass-oriented programmes; and only those who share the common interests of the people and are ready to work towards them would be encouraged to seek or remain in political power.

References

Armah Ayi Kwei, The Healers. London: Heinemann, 1979.

Eliot, T. S., “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” （1917） in Selected Essays 1917–1932. London, 1932.

Fraser, R., The Novels of Ayi Kwei Armah. London: Heinemann, 1980.

Fynn, J. K., Asante and Her Neighbours 1700–1807. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1971.

Nwahunanya, C., “A Vision of the Ideal: Armah's Two Thousand Seasons.” Modern Fiction Studies Vol. 37 （1991）, No. 3.

Ogede, O. S., “Patterns of Decadence, Visions of Regeneration in Armah's Fragments.” Modern Fiction Studies Vol. 37 （1991）, No. 3.

Ogede, O. S., “The Rhetoric of Revolution in Armah's The Healers: Form as Experience.” African Studies Review Vol. 36 （1993）, No. 1, pp. 43–58.

Peek, R., “Hermits and Saviours, Osagyefos and Healers: Artists and Intellectuals in the Works of Ngugi and Armah.” Research in African Literatures, 20/1 （1989）.

Wright, D., Ayi Kwei Armah's Africa: The Sources of His Fiction. London: Hans Zell Publishers, 1989.