An African Thunderstorm Summary & Analysis
by David Rubadiri

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David Rubadiri's "An African Thunderstorm" describes an intense storm that sweeps through an African village, as well as the way villagers scramble to prepare for its approach. First published in the 1960s, around the time that Rubadiri's home country of Malawi gained independence from British colonial rule, the poem can also be taken as an allegory for the violent upheaval that Western nations inflicted on Africa during the colonial era and its aftermath. The storm, in this reading, represents the devastation of colonialism and of the conflicts that tend to arise in its wake.

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