Christian Church of God.^12 The truth of the matter, however, is that such moments of
multicultural triumphalism pale behind the overwhelming exclusion that still typifies the
lives of postcolonial exiles or migrants, as some prefer to call them. What is more,
measured against the political, economic and technological backwater that Africa as
home has become and the many ways in which the dystopian condition instigates border-
crossing to the West, one begins to wonder if the battle stops only at the cultural level.
Put another way, multicultural triumphalism that balks in the face of other social
constituents apart from fugacious moments of cultural ceremony fails to provide answers
to the exclusionary challenge that Africa and the Third World face both at home and in
exile.
Caryl Phillips’ (2006:5) predicament in the UK will serve this analysis further. He had
chosen to be part of the campaign team of the Labour Party in 1983. Moving from one
apartment to another in canvassing for votes should be natural; after all, he is no longer
an exile but a multicultural migrant whose integration into the British society qualified
him to be part of such campaign train, which should affirm the exercise of his civic rights
in his country of destination. To his shock, not only did he realize the level of rejection
that lurks in the status quo as he led a campaign team from house to house, he also
discovered that his colour could as well work against his white candidate at the polls if he
did not withdraw from the campaign team. Similarly, an African in person of Mathew
Ashimolowo, may now run the largest single congregation of Christian believers in
Britain, but the status does not insulate him from British police brutality to which black
folks are routinely subjected in the UK.^13 Yet, ordinarily his achievement in propagating
a colonial and western religion to a level of distinction should have prevented any such
brutality and humiliation. Therefore, for all its attraction, the multicultural slant to the
abstraction and practice of exile may be on the face value exciting and innocuous
altogether for postcolonial subjectivities, it is however in reality a far cry from the ideal.
12
13 This was on the 14th of November, 2007.
See The (Nigerian) Punch of Sunday December 9 2007.