Books & arts

Set The Truth Free: Soyinka the Activist

2006-04-26, Issue 252

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/books/33843

Printer friendly version

Wole Soyinka, Nigerian Nobel Literature Laureate, shares thoughts on current hot topics of African politics, during readings and interviews this week in San Francisco's Bay Area.


It has been a busy week for Wole Soyinka. He is in San Francisco Bay Area to promote his new memoir, “You Must Set Forth At Dawn”, published this year. However, Africa’s first Nobel Literature Laureate is as well known – perhaps better known – as a political human rights activist.

At 70, the Nigerian writer who famously wrote: “The truth shall set you free but first the truth must be set free,” is still a fiery advocate for oppressed populations, from the indigenous peoples of the Niger Delta to the victims of Darfur. Most recently, he founded a new political party: the Democratic Front for Peoples’ Liberation (DFPF), that will put up candidates on a platform of pluralist democracy in Nigeria’s next elections. “I never accepted I was an exile from Nigeria,” he said on Saturday, at a reading in Berkeley. “I told myself and others I was on political sabbatical.”

Below is a selection of Soyinka’s political comments, culled from a range of readings, discussions and interviews in the Bay Area over the past 3 days. Next week’s column will focus on his thoughts about his work as an artist and writer.

Q: Are you better known for activism than for literature?

A: It’s difficult to say. Because the nature of my work – theatre – has always brought me in contact with a lot of people. Especially the living theatre – we do it in streets, offices, public places – so it is a direct creative encounter with all kinds of people.

Q: Do you feel a conflict, or tension, between being an activist and writing?

A: Most human beings, especially creative human beings, would rather be doing something other than what they are doing. But basically, you respond to what’s happening around you. So while I do not separate the two personae, there are times I do resent being pulled into the political arena.

Q: What are your thoughts on the current Nigerian government?

A: It’s an oligarchy. Almost like a Mafia kingdom.

Q: You once said that as you saw things over the years, it always seems to boil down to two questions: truth against power and power against truth.

A: Yes, and power against freedom. Power needs lies to survive, deceit, manipulation. The truth is, for me, the expression of freedom.

Q: What can you say about the conflicts over oil in Nigeria.

A: We all agree, we wish we’d never found oil. The worst developed areas in Nigeria are the oil-producing regions. And those who suffer most are the indigenous people who live in those regions.

Their farmland has been depleted. Their ponds and rivers are polluted. The very air is degraded. [The indigenous grassroots democracy movement] has brought the Federal government to the negotiating table to demand that oil revenues actually benefit them before they remit taxes to the center.

Q: One of the issues you’ve spoken about is what’s happening in Darfur. What can be done about Darfur?

A: People are still hedging the truth in. There is a brutal ethnic cleansing going on, and anodyne language is being used, by the UN, by the African Union. This is a renegade government, and the UN and AU must declare Sudan a renegade state, guilty of genocide.

Sudan is a member of both the African Union and the Arab League. It has one foot in the African world and one in the Arab world. The silence that is most deafening is that of the Arab League. We must put them on the line. The Janjaweed make no bones about the fact that they are pushing an Arabist agenda – to cleanse Darfur of African presence. This is being done in the name of Arabism. It is time for the AL to take the lead, to excommunicate the Sudanese government.

There has been a coyness about assigning primary responsibility. The primary responsibility for curbing this genocidal criminality rests with the Arab League.

Q: What is your view on the war crime tribunals in Rwanda and Sierra Leone? Do you think America’s refusal to participate, or be subject to, international war crimes courts, undermines their purpose?

A: Even if one individual identified is brought before the world tribunal, it gives hope to the victims that if they keep up the struggle, they may achieve something.

So we shouldn’t bother ourselves so much with whether the US participates or not. Just keep working towards those achievable goals.

But we have to be more imaginative and creative. It’s not enough to bring Charles Taylor or Milosevic to trial. We need to construct cages for them and tour them around the world. (Laughter) Through refugee camps, hospitals – I would be happy to offer my services with such ideas.

Q: What do you think about the resurgence of the Biafra movement happening now, and the way the Nigerian government is handling it?

A: The movement successfully paralyzed the nation for 2 days last year when it called for all Biafrans to down tools. The fact that they acted, in union, and were able to bring the country to a halt, is very significant. The success of the call, compounded with the militancy in the Niger Delta (Nigeria’s primary oil-producing region) indicates a nation on the verge of disintegration. We’re in real trouble.

Q: What can we do about the brain drain from Africa? For example, there are more doctors from Ghana in the US than there are in Ghana.

A: Develop our own nations, create more jobs, so there is the prospect of professional satisfaction for the brains who have left.

The leadership must actually invest heavily in those projects that ensure our technocrats, professionals, can return and enjoy just a little of the satisfaction they have enjoyed outside.

Q: How can reparations for slavery be channeled in ways that reach the African people, rather than corrupt governments?

A: Without even considering financial reparation, there is a restoration that can happen of a far more egalitarian relationship between Africa and the enslaving world. For example, repatriation of all artworks that were stolen during the era of slavery. A people’s art represents their humanity.

And we must understand that it was a two way process. There was also an Arab slave trade. If we talk about reparations, we cannot be silent about the internal slave trades, and the internal racisms that are still alive in many African countries.

* Listen to Wole Soyinka interviewed by Michael Krasny on the Bay Area’s KQED radio (one hour) at:
http://www.kqed.org/programs/program-landing.jsp?progID=RD19

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Readers' Comments

Let your voice be heard. Comment on this article.

↑ back to top