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Ebrahim Hussein (born 1943 in Lindi, Tanganyika Territory) is a Tanzanian playwright and poet. His first play, Kinjeketile (1969), written in Swahili language, and based on the life of Kinjikitile Ngwale, a leader of the Maji Maji Rebellion, is considered "a landmark of Tanzanian theatre".
Hussein's work stands in a literary tradition expressed in the national language Swahili following the country's independence from the United Kingdom in 1961. Since his works, with the exception of Kinjeketile and another play, have not been translated, his work has not become well known outside of East Africa.
Still a student, he wrote his first short plays Wakati Ukuta ( Time is a Wall) and Alikiona ( Consequences) in 1967. They focus on tensions between the old and new generations and the social tensions resulting from European colonialism. Although he accepted elements of the European notions of a "well-made play" in the tradition of Aristotle, like the picture-frame stage, he was also interested in traditional African theatrical forms and the expectations of the audience. Some of his plays, like Alikiona, incorporate elements of kichekesho, which is a comical interlude found in the middle of many taarab performances and in other plays, Hussein used Swahili traditions of storytelling ( hadithi).
In 1969, Hussein wrote his first full-length play, Kinjeketile, based on the life of Kinjikitile Ngwale, a leading figure of the Maji Maji uprising during German colonial rule in East Africa. The play was directed by the East Germany literary scholar Joachim Fiebach, who was a visiting professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, and became a model for the new East African theatre. Starting with Kinjeketile, Hussein used elements of epic theatre as developed by German playwright Bertolt Brecht. During the following years, Kinjeketile became a sort of national epic, for the first time expressing anticolonial self-esteem in East African theatre. The text sold over 20,000 copies and was adopted as a textbook for secondary schools in the 1970s . Hussein himself translated Kinjeketile into English, and published by Oxford University Press in Dar es Salaam, the play became also known abroad.
During the early 1970s, Hussein studied at the Humboldt University in East Berlin and wrote his PhD dissertation "On the development of theatre in East Africa". Other plays include Mashetani (1971), an overtly political play, Jogoo Kijijini (1976), an experiment in dramatic performance, and Arusi (1980), in which Hussein's main character expresses disillusionment with the Tanzanian socialist practice of ujamaa. Hussein also wrote poetry in free verse, a new poetical form for Swahili literature that was also widely read in the schools and universities of East Africa. His works written in a poetic and, at the same time, modern language became a model for the socialist cultural policy of Tanzania, even if they contained ambiguous heroes, who sometimes doubt their actions. On the other hand, the "poetic, elliptic prose" of his later plays has been found difficult to appreciate.
In 1975 he began teaching theatre studies at the University of Daresalaam and temporarily directed their theatre group. Until his departure in 1986, he taught as a professor of theatre studies at this university. Since then, he has led a life without many contacts in his house in the district of Kariakoo.
This text is a retelling of a Swahili folk story in which Sesota is defeated by being trapped in a pot rather than killed and who eventually returns. In Hussein's version, Sesota represents colonialism that the "peasant" desperately tries to fight. Hussein speaks about how the remnants of colonialism still remain and that any amount of Western influence on African culture brings back that evil. Through this, the retelling also shows that there is no "good vs. evil" like in traditional stories, but that the world is rather morally grey. One significant moment is when the village is celebrating after Sesota's death; names of a variety of famous African writers and artists are listed. Here, Hussein seems to be criticizing his fellow artists, saying that their work only comes during moments of joy, rather than being used to combat oppression.Fiebach 1997, pp. 33–34
German literary scholar Joachim Fiebach published a German translation of Kinjeketile in his anthology of African plays in 1974.Joachim Fiebach, ed., Stücke Afrikas, Henschel Verlag, Berlin, 1974 In his study of Hussein's work, he pointed out that the play's anti-colonial message of the conflict between the colonised and the colonisers had overshadowed a second more general meaning: According to Fiebach's analysis, the colonised Africans are not glorified, but lacking strategic vision, mired in trivial disputes and impeded by personal hostilities. Referring to Hussein's theatrical style, Fiebach described it as a “dramaturgy that seems to merge or mix adopted European models of an intimate theatre with non-Aristotelic and completely unique techniques.”Fiebach 1997, p. 26
In his study on Hussein's importance for Swahili theatre, French scholar of African literature Alain Ricard wrote, "Ebrahim Hussein is the best known Swahili playwright, and Tanzania's most complex literary personality. Known first and foremost as a dramatist, he is also a theorist whose dissertation on the theatre in Tanzania remains the standard reference work. His plays are a corpus of theatrical material with great significance to an understanding of Tanzania's political and social development in relation to the Swahili/Islamic coastal culture, of which he is a part." Referring to the absence of Hussein's international recognition and the predicament of African literature written in African languages, Ricard wrote:
While Hussein focused on research at the Humboldt University in East Berlin for his PhD thesis from 1970 to 1973, the first scholarly study of his work, Drama and National Culture: a Marxist Study of Ebrahim Hussein, a PhD thesis was published in 1989 by the US-American literary scholar Robert M. Philipson. In his 1999 review of Alain Ricard's study on Hussein, Philipson wrote: “Ebrahim Hussein is a difficult case. After Wole Soyinka and Athol Fugard, he is the most interesting and talented dramatist that Africa has produced, but his name is rarely mentioned in European studies on African literature. ... The reason for this is simple: Hussein writes in Swahili, and his dramatic work, with the exception of Kinjeketile, has not been translated into a Western language.”
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