And so I put the cat among the pigeons, or perhaps the pigeon among the cats. I deliberately waited for everyone to sit down, for that moment when silence fills the air. I then posed the question: "Will someone please tell me why JM Coetzee is more deserving of the Nobel Prize for Literature than Chinua Achebe or Ngugi wa Thiong'o?" The answer came as swiftly and directly as the question: "Because he's white." And then someone else suggested that Wole Soyinka had filled the quota for black ...read more
And so I put the cat among the pigeons, or perhaps the pigeon among the cats. I deliberately waited for everyone to sit down, for that moment when silence fills the air. I then posed the question: "Will someone please tell me why JM Coetzee is more deserving of the Nobel Prize for Literature than Chinua Achebe or Ngugi wa Thiong'o?" The answer came as swiftly and directly as the question: "Because he's white." And then someone else suggested that Wole Soyinka had filled the quota for black African writers, despite Africa's long list of writers from Ayi Kwei Armah to Ben Okri writers whose accomplishments are far superior to Coetzee's. Then someone else suggested this was the cultural version of a resurgent European-American reassertion of global white supremacy, along the precedent set by George Bush and Tony Blair. It soon became clear Coetzee had no sympathisers among my friends, even as our leaders proclaimed him a national hero.
